Put the Leaven out and Let Christ In

The Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread are a time that's filled with much symbolism. And it's symbolism that's designed to teach us some very important and some very valuable spiritual lessons that God would have us to learn. Now, the days leading up to the Holy Days themselves are important to us as well. I think probably to most of us that those days represent still a part of the Holy Day season because of the preparation and the self-examination that we walk through during that time. As I consider this year the preparation period, as well as keeping of the Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread, there's two main themes that generally stand out to me as significant. Number one is that we need to put the leaven out. We need to put the leaven out, and the focus on that was primary in our run-up to these days. Secondly is that we must let Christ in. We must let Christ in, and that action is portrayed by the actual observing of the Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread. So we put the leaven out and we let Christ in. That's my title today. That's SPS of my message. That's what I'd like to focus on this afternoon. Put the leaven out and let Christ in. In Exodus 12 we find the instruction that God gives to the observance of the Days of Unleavened Bread. Let's turn over there and read that as we begin this afternoon. Exodus 12, beginning in verse 15. Here we have the instructions laid out very clearly before us, and hopefully we've gone to this passage already this year and read it for ourselves. Exodus 12 verse 15, it says, Seven days ye shall eat unleavened bread. On the first day ye shall remove leaven from your houses. For whoever eats leavened bread from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel. On the first day there shall be a holy convocation, and on the seventh day there shall be a holy convocation for you. No manner of work shall be done on them, but that which everyone must eat, that only may be prepared by you. Verse 17, so ye shall observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread, for on the same day I have brought your armies out of the land of Egypt. Therefore ye shall observe this day throughout your generations as an everlasting ordinance. On the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at evening, ye shall eat unleavened bread until the twenty-first day of the month at evening. For seven days no leaven shall be found in your houses, since whoever eats what is leavened, that same person, shall be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether he is a stranger or a native of land. In verse 20 says, ye shall eat nothing leavened, in all your habitations ye shall eat unleavened bread.

So here God clearly lays out His instruction for ancient Israel, but by extension us as well. During these seven days on unleavened bread there should be no leavening found in our homes. We're not to possess it, we're not to consume it, we're not to have it in our midst. In addition to that, we're to consume unleavened bread during the course of these days. Now prior to these days beginning, a very important process has to take place in order for us to fully obey God's instruction. All the leavening has to be gathered up and removed. Throughout the course of the last week or so, your house has probably looked a lot like mine. There's been a thorough search going on to find any products containing leavening. That search involved opening the refrigerator, clearing off the shelves, opening the cupboards in the pantry, and going through the cabinets and the shelves everywhere we had storage. It involved opening a car up and pulling everything out of the house. It involved opening a car up and pulling everything out of the car, cleaning out the car, and probably throwing away a certain level of food as well.

Throughout the course of the last week, that's been our focus. Now, almost every year at the Moody House, about a week before the days of the leavened bread, we ended up with a nice pile of leavened food that ends up on the countertop that basically we have a week to consume. So whenever I want a snack, whenever I'm looking for a meal of some type, you know that that pile gets heavy usage. But that being said, there's a time when all the remaining leavening has to be gone. That time was sundown last night. The leavening had to be completely out of our home and out of our lives as commanded by God. Now, during these days among leavened bread, leavening represents something different than it does the rest of the year. Leavening represents sin. You know, during the rest of the time of the year, leavened food represents something that is good to eat. But during these days, that juicy hamburger on that nice bun represents something that's been contaminated by sin. And the instruction and the lesson that we're supposed to learn is that we need to put that sin out. So during the days of the leavened bread, leavening represents sin.

Now, brethren, as we know, there's a number of spiritual lessons that we learn as we walk through the process of finding the leavening and putting it out of our homes. In principle, it reminds us of the need to search for sin in our lives. We need to find it. We need to understand what, in fact, it is. And we need to remove it.

First step to doing that is simply recognizing that Spirits 11 exists in our life. We need to take a look around in our personal lives. We need to recognize Spirits 11 for what it is. And we need to acknowledge that it exists in our life. Spirits 11, at its core, is active rebellion against God. Let's go to 1 John chapter 3 verse 4. Very familiar passage. I'd like to simply apply the symbolism of leavening to it. 1 John chapter 3 verse 4.

It says, "...whoever commits sin also commits lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness." So sin, that Spirits 11, that leaven of our lives that we spent the last week searching for, it represents lawlessness. Physical leaven represents lawlessness. Spiritual leaven is sin, which is lawlessness. The Nelson Study Bible says that lawlessness, as it's in the context here, means active rebellion against the law. So on one hand, you have God's law that reflects God's nature, God's way of life, God's character, that character that he would have us instill. And on the other hand, there is sin, which is essentially active rebellion against God's law. Active rebellion against the nature and the character and the standard of God. And brethren, for you and I, it's that carnal rebellion that we must come to recognize in our lives as we walk up to and as we keep the Passover in the Days of the Eleven Bread.

The Passover in the Days of the Eleven Bread season is a time of reflection. It's a time of honest self-examination. It's a time when we're reminded of the need to look deep down in ourselves and see what ingredients there might be on our packaging that is inconsistent with the calling of God. For in the Days of the Eleven Bread, we have to be willing to acknowledge that sin dwells in us. And that's not always an easy thing for us to do. It's not always an easy thing for us to recognize. Going back to the page, here is 1 John chapter 1 and verse 8.

1 John 1 verse 8. It says, if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. I think, brethren, we certainly don't want to be walking through these days deceiving ourselves. We don't want to be walking through these days blind to recognizing what exists within us. We want to acknowledge that there are things that we need to put out of our lives, and we want to go about finding them for the purpose of removing them. And that's steeped very heavily in the symbolism of the days leading up to the observance of the Holy Days. We hunted for that leaven for the purpose of finding it and putting it out of our homes. Now, what we find as we examine ourselves is that some of our sins are more obvious than others. Some are more obvious than others. When we'd 11 our homes for the Holy Days, there were probably some products that we didn't even need to read the label on to know they contained leavening. For me, if I were to look around my house, probably the first thing I could identify that would have to go would be that loaf of bread on the counter. You know, that's in plain sight. That gets used every day. You know, I don't even have to read the label to know that there's leavening in that product. You know, some sins in our lives can be that way. They can be very plain. They can be very easy for us to see. You know, it doesn't take much looking around to identify what they are. On the other hand, some leavening isn't so easy to spot, is it?

You know, there were probably a few items in our homes that we looked around and we pulled this item out. We read the label and we scratched our head because we still weren't sure if that item was leavened or not. Darla called me about a week and a half ago from Costco. She was out making a shopping trip and she wanted me to look up a particular ingredient online to see if it was a leavening agent because she wasn't sure. You know, and as you know how Costco is, you don't want to stock up with six months of some leavened product a week before the days of unleavened bread. But the point is sometimes we can even get partway through the days of unleavened bread and not even realize that we have leavening in our homes. Not even realize that we have it sitting on ourselves. It may be something that we missed reading the label on. It might be something that, you know, we just skimmed the label real quickly and didn't recognize it. Or it may be something that we didn't even realize was leavened. This year, Darla and I learned that some brands of iodized salt have baking soda in it. That never crossed my mind to grab the salt shaker and see if it was leavened. You know, we pulled the container of iodized salt off the shelf and read it and sure enough it said baking soda, which means leavened salt has probably spent a number of days of unleavened bread in our house and sprinkled on our meals. Again, there's spiritual significance to walking through these days year after year and hopefully seeing something new and identifying something new that we can put our focus and our attention on. Now in the light vein, sometimes spiritual leaven, as I said, is not so obvious to us. Sometimes we don't always see it for what it is. When we look at ourselves, sometimes we don't always see it in ourselves. Sometimes other people can see it very clearly in us when we can't even see it in ourselves. Now this last week when Dari was visiting, Dari came over for a day to work. He sent an email ahead of time before he even arrived in Spokane and he said it was his dream to go out and work with me. I thought, well that's interesting, it's my dream not to have to work at all. But I guess some of us are shooting at different levels. But Dari said he wanted to come out and work with me. So I figured, okay, I'll line up some jobs around the house or some landscape jobs we can go out and do. He showed up on last Wednesday and it was a rainy day. The sun would shine for 10 minutes, then it would rain, and then it would hail, and the wind would blow. So I decided landscape work wasn't so good. So we decided that we'd play rancher for the day. So Dari had purchased a piece of equipment that was out in the hills past Liberty Lake. So Dari and I hooked up the trailer and headed out in the truck. Hauled that home. We hauled a load of gravel for the driveway for filling in the potholes. Then in the afternoon we went out kind of on the back roads between 7 miles and airway heights and we picked up a horse that we were hauling home. So Dari got to play rancher. He got to stack a little bit of hay and hopefully fulfill his dream. But sometimes we don't always see things in ourselves. And earlier in the day Dari and I were out driving. We were heading out towards Liberty Lake and we were on one of the back roads. It was kind of a quiet country road and we came up to a stop sign. I pull up to that sign. I look both ways. Nobody's coming. And I pull out. And immediately Dari says in his Nigerian accent, ah, this is what you call a California stop.

All right. Yes, Dari. This is a California stop. He says, ah, I didn't recognize I was doing it. You know, we weren't in the middle of town. We were in the middle of the countryside. And Dari says, ah, California stop. He pointed out something to me that I hadn't seen, something that I was doing. And then from that point on, I made sure I came to a full and complete stop. I didn't want to hear Dari say, ah, again. But sometimes, spiritual leaven is not so obvious to us. Sometimes we don't always see it in self. A good example of that would be pride. Did you know that pride is one of the hardest things to see in self? Pride can be very deceptive. Pride is an over-estimation of self. It's attributing to self the glory that belongs to God. Oftentimes, when a person is full of pride, they tend to look on others and see the faults in others rather than seeing the faults in themselves. Brethren, are any of us leavened with the sin of pride? Indeed, it's something we should examine ourselves for during these days. Again, there's sin in our lives that can be very well hidden, even from us. We need to ask God in His mercy and ask Him, simply in His mercy, to us to pour out a blessing. And that blessing would be simply opening our eyes to see what it is that we need to overcome. Jeremiah 17.

Again, that hidden leaven needs to be discovered and it needs to be removed.

Jeremiah 17 verse 9. It says, The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it? Who can know it? Do you know it? Do I know it?

You know, we can be pretty easy and we can be pretty good at tricking ourselves and deceiving ourselves about ourselves. We can be pretty good at justifying our actions, justifying why we might do certain things that are contrary to God's way of life. As humans, it's so easy to look at the faults in others and not see them in ourselves. It can be so easy to say, well, I know God's Word says this, but here's, in my mind, a legitimate exception. We tend to justify or we can tend to work our way around what God's instructions are and how we should be living. Verse 10, in the heart of the seeple, who could know it, verse 10 says, I the Lord search the heart, I test the mind, even to give to every man according to his ways and according to the fruit of his doings. And so God knows. He knows the truth about us. He can look down on us and see what it is that's inside, even when we don't know, or even when we hidden it from ourselves. God can see those things and he can reveal those things to us if we ask.

Then, brethren, the time of reflection, the time of self-examination leading up to these days and walking through these days is essential. There's hidden leaven within each of us. The purpose of these days is to put it out. We need to ask God in his mercy to reveal it to us. The problem is that we can't change what we don't acknowledge. We can't change what we don't confront.

If I don't take a package out of the pantry and read it to see if it has leaven, I won't know if it's leavened or not, and I won't throw it out. And if it is leavened, it'll sit there through the days of leavened bread. That's why we take everything out. We read the label. We can't put out what we don't acknowledge. Psalm 19. Psalm 19 verse 12. David was facing the same concept here. Psalm 19 verse 12. It says, Who can understand his errors? Cleanse me from secret faults. Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins. Let them not have dominion over me. Then I shall be blameless, and I shall be innocent of great transgression.

So David's basically saying, God, please show me what I'm not seeing. Help me to acknowledge what it is that I need to confront. Please help keep me from stumbling into prideful or arrogant or presumptuous sins in my life. That way I can be clean. Verse 14. It says, Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my strength and my Redeemer. And that's what we want as well. We want a heart, we want a mind that's free from sin, we want a heart and a mind that's clean before God.

That takes recognizing sin for what it is, but it also takes repentance as well. It takes repentance as well. When you and I had 11 our homes, we found the product that contained the leavening. What did we do about it? Well, we had to be willing to part with it, didn't we? We had to be willing to throw it out, to get rid of it. And the same is true with us spiritually. Repentance, by definition, is not only being sorry for our sins, but it's having a change of heart and doing something about it.

It's doing something about it. Repentance means a reversal. It means a change in direction and a change in behavior. So how do we react to sin in our lives? Do we react in the same way as we would react to finding a box of baking soda in our cabinet during the days of 11 bread? And we just think how you feel and how maybe you felt in the past on some year when you've been halfway through the days of 11 bread and you discovered some leavening in your house.

How did you react to those things? Hopefully we react to sin in the same way. I remember a couple years ago we were on our way to the night to be observed at the Emheiser home and it was shortly just a few minutes before sundown and Darla for some reason opened a compartment in the car that apparently hadn't been searched because she pulled out a couple of power bars of some brand.

I don't remember what it was but she read the label and there was leavening in them. And I remember as quick as a wink the window went down, those bars went flying out into the field alongside the road. You know, she got rid of them like they were on fire in her hand. And I just remember I looked at her and I said, well, you could have at least peeled the wrapper off first. You know, the birds and the scavengers had to, I guess, text her the foil to get their prize.

But the question is, is that how we respond to sin? When we discover sin in our lives, do we separate ourselves from it in haste? I remember when I was a child it was one of the very first years that we kept the days of the leavened bread and it was the last day of the leavened bread. We went to services and my grandparents lived next door and my grandmother knew that we had put out all leavening during that time.

And on that last day, she went grocery shopping. So we come home from the afternoon service on the last day of the leavened bread. We walk in the house and what is sitting on the kitchen counter except the loaf of bread? My grandmother in her kindness and her generosity said, well, they're going to need bread for tomorrow for the kids' lunches.

And she bought a loaf of bread and she brought it home. And we walked in the door hour before sundown and it's sitting on the counter. I remember my mom's reaction. It was horror. It was almost panic. She grabbed that loaf of bread and ran out to the car, drove a mile and a half down the street to throw it in the dumpster. You know, we had to get that leavening out just as quick as we could. It could have been easy to say, well, we almost made it through the days of the leavened bread and it's almost sundown.

But no, that bread still represented sin and it had to go. Do we separate ourselves from sin and haste? Deuteronomy 16, we see some more instructions, kind of a repeat of the instruction for these days of the leavened bread.

Deuteronomy 16, verse 1, it says, Observe the month of Aedib and keep the passover to the Lord your God. For the month of Aedib the Lord your God brought you out of the land of Egypt by night. Therefore, you shall sacrifice the passover to the Lord your God from the flock of the herd and the place where the Lord chooses to put his name.

Verse 3, you shall eat no leavened bread with it. Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread with it, that is the bread of affliction, for you came out of the land of Egypt in haste. That you may remember the day in which you came out of the land of Egypt all the days of your life.

Israel came out of Egypt in haste. They took the dough before it was leavened. They bounded up with their belongings. They threw it on their back in a walked out of Egypt on leaven. Brethren, when we discover sins in our lives, we need to separate ourselves from it in haste. When the time came to leave, Israel went out in haste. We can't afford to just let sin sit around in our lives until we feel like dealing with it someday. We have to depart from it in haste. We have to turn and go the other way.

And that's repentance. Repentance is a critical step, not only to putting the leaven out, but also to letting Christ in as well. Repentance is the attitude that opens the door to letting Christ come and live in our lives more fully. There's actually a principle from the ministry of John the Baptist that illustrates this quite clearly, so let's take a look. Now to chapter 3.

John the Baptist was the cousin of Jesus Christ, and his short ministry began prior to Christ for a very important reason. John's purpose was to prepare the way of the Lord. It was to open the door for Jesus Christ's ministry then to come in and address those people who were willing to hear. Matthew 3, beginning in verse 1, it says, In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, and saying, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

John's ministry was a ministry of bringing people to repentance. It was a ministry of helping them to see the need to turn from sin and to walk in newness of life. John taught repentance. He baptized in repentance. John's ministry was a ministry that prepared the way for what Christ had to offer. Verse 3, it says, For this is he who was spoken of by the prophet Isaiah, saying, The voice of one, crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make his calves straight.

Back in that time when a king or an emperor or some new overseer came into power, they like to go out and tour their territory. They like to go out and see just what it was that they were reigning over. And so if you were the governor or you were the local head of a district in that territory, and you knew the king was coming through, you would prepare the way for the king. You would try to remove all obstacles to his arrival. You'd go out, you'd clean up the streets, you'd patch the potholes, you'd roll the boulders out of the way and wrap up the construction project. You know, here in Spokane, if the president comes and visits, they probably widen the lanes, restrike the lines, remove all obstacles that are there in an effort to prepare the way for the arrival of the king. Likewise, John the Baptist prepared the way for the arrival of Jesus Christ. He didn't prepare the way with roads or by filling potholes, but John prepared the way by preparing the hearts of the people to receive Christ. The obstacles of sin and lawlessness were smoothed out as people came to repentance, as people came to recognize the issue that sin played in their life. It was that repentance that then prepared them to receive the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. That's what Jesus Christ did. That's what John the Baptist's ministry prepared the people for. Brother Nitt is an attitude, it's a heart of repentance that opens the door for Christ to come into our lives. When I baptize somebody and when I counsel them, but actually at the time of baptism before they're submerged, I ask them, have you repented of your sins which are contrary to God's holy, righteous, and perfect law?

And that person has to come to the point where they answer, yes, I've confronted my sins, I've acknowledged my sins, and I've repented of my sins. And they have to come to that point before they're ready to be baptized and have the laying on of hands and receive the Holy Spirit. There has to be a heart of repentance in our life preparing the way for Christ. Verse 4, continuing on, Matthew chapter 3 verse 4, it says, And John himself was clothed in camel-pair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locust in wild honey. Then Jerusalem, all Judea, and all the region around the Jordan went out to him, and were baptized by him in the Jordan, confessing their sins. But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, Brute of vipers, who has warned you to flee from the wrath to come. Therefore bear fruits worthy of repentance. And do not think to say to yourselves, We have Abraham as our Father, for I say to you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones. So John said, bear fruits worthy of repentance. He said, You need to have a change of heart. You need to have a change of action, and you need to display by your actions that you truly have repented, that you've rejected sin, and you've gone and turned the other way.

Unrepentant sin is an obstacle to having a full relationship with Jesus Christ. The Scripture shows us that sin separates us from our God. It builds a wall of separation. It's an obstacle. It's a stumbling block to our relationship. So that sin has to be removed. It has to be removed through the process of repentance, and then ultimately through the extending of forgiveness, which comes from God. Every year, when we walk in the Passover service, we come before God and Christ in a very humble and a very repentant attitude. That should in fact be our attitude. If we've examined ourselves, if we understand the significance of that service, we need to come before God in a very humble and a repentant attitude, because we realize what the consequence of sin is. The wages of sin is death. The consequences of our sins took the life of Jesus Christ. He paid that penalty for us, and he died in our place. Passover is the time when we acknowledge our need for that covenant relationship. We recognize for the need of that relationship that our sins are going to be removed. When we're at the Passover and we accept the bread and the wine as a symbol of Christ's sacrifice, we're accepting Christ as the one who covers our sins. We're accepting Christ as the one who died in our place. So this whole process, everything we walk through during this season, it begins with identifying the leaven in our lives. And we do that in the preparation for the Passover and the Days of the Leavened Bread. It then goes on to recognizing the need to put it out. We find that leaven in our homes. We recognize it has to be removed. That prepares the way for us to receive Christ as the one whom forgiveness comes from, and we do that at the Passover. And then finally, brethren, we move into these Days of the Leavened Bread where we continue to walk in newness of life for taking in the bread of life, which is Jesus Christ. It's all a part of a very important process that we walk through each and every year. Jesus Christ is the bread of life. We partake in Him during these days, and He sustains us spiritually. John 6, we read through this at the Passover, and it applies to the Passover, and it applies today. John 6, verse 27.

Hear the words of Christ, John 6, 27.

Jesus Christ said, Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which leads or endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you, because God the Father has set His heel on him. Christ said, Don't labor for the food that perishes. He was talking to these multitudes that were following Him around. He just fed them the previous day. He performed a miracle and provided the food, the fish and the bread, to feed these people. They were following Him around, and He said, Don't look to me for the physical food that's temporary. You need to look to me for the food that leads unto eternal life, and the food that's going to sustain you spiritually. Verse 28.

Jesus answered and said to them, This is the work of God that you believe in Him, whom He sent. Therefore they said to Him, What sign will you perform then that we may see it and believe you? What work will you do? You know, they're looking for Christ to perform some great miracle to prove that He actually is who He said He was.

I guess they forgot very quickly about the miracle He just performed from the day before. Verse 31. Our fathers ate the manna in the desert, as it was written. He gave them bread from heaven to eat. Jesus said to them, Most assuredly I say to you, Moses did not give you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven.

For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives His life to the world. Then they said to Him, Lord, give us this bread always. And Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life. He who comes to me shall never hunger. He who believes in me shall never thirst. Christ identified Himself as the bread of life.

It is the Christ that we come to be sustained spiritually. It is through Him that salvation comes. You know, Christ said Israel in the wilderness with the manna, those 40 years, and that manna was a type. It was a physical forerunner. It was only physical food. It was a physical forerunner of the spiritual nourishment, the spiritual bread of life that would come in the form of Jesus Christ. That would be the food that sustains the people of God. Christ is the bread of life. Verse 48, Christ again reiterates, I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness and are dead because it was physical food.

There was nothing eternal about it other than the fact that it pointed to something much more significant. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness and are dead. This is the bread which comes down from heaven that one may eat of it and not die.

I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I shall give is my flesh, which I shall give to the life of the world. The Jews therefore called amongst themselves, saying, How can this man give us this flesh to eat? Then Jesus said to them, Most assuredly I say to you, Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink His blood, you have no life in you.

Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is food indeed, my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on me will live because of me.

This is the bread which came down from heaven. Now that your fathers ate the manna and are dead, he who eats this bread will live forever. Brethren, Christ is the bread of life, and He is unleavened. He is unleavened bread because He was without sin.

He was blameless. He was without fault, and He was perfect in the eyes of God. The taking of the unleavened bread, not to be just a once-a-year event, but to be a continual way of life as is portrayed by these days.

We partake of that unleavened Christ, the unleavened bread of life daily. During the Passover, we took down unleavened bread, and it symbolized the broken body of Christ that was sacrificed for us.

He died for us. He was brutalized. He was beaten. He was shredded, and He died. That's what that bread represents. During these days of unleavened bread, we partake in the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth, symbolizing taking in the nature, the character, the likeness of Christ, that fullness of Christ that must dwell in us.

You know, in the days of unleavened bread, we eat something. We take it in eternally. Internally. We don't rub some unleavened face cream on our face. It's not the days of unleavened face cream, but we have to have a change from the inside out. We take in unleavened bread, and it symbolizes the taking in of Christ. We change spiritually from the inside out.

We're picturing during these days the pushing out of the old leaven, the pushing out of self, the pushing out of sin. We're picturing the letting in of the unleavened bread of life, Jesus Christ. He's the one that sustains us. He's the one that gives us strength. He's the one that guides and directs us, and as we heard in the first message today, through that Holy Spirit of God. Now, Jesus Christ led Israel through the wilderness, and He fed them the manna those 40 years up until the day that they entered the promised land. They had manna. When they entered the promised land, the manna ceased. Christ is also leading us in this life. This life is a spiritual wilderness. Jesus Christ is leading us, and He provides us daily with the bread of life. Until we enter into the fullness of the kingdom of God, as long as we are alive in this flesh, we will have the bread of life available to us daily. During these days, we're reminded of the need to get rid of sin and to replace it with righteousness. The righteousness that we replace it with isn't the righteousness of ourselves, it's the righteousness of Christ dwelling in us. It's the righteousness of the nature of God and the nature of Christ being developed within us. That's why it's so important that we eat the bread. That's why it's so important that we consume 11 bread during the days of 11 bread. Remember, Exodus 12, the instruction, it said, you shall eat 11 bread. It's not good enough just to put the leavening out. It's not good enough just to put sin out. We have to replace it with something. Nature abhors a vacuum. You remove something. If you don't put something in place, what you put out is going to come right back in. You need to push the leavening out, put Christ in in its place.

The goal for us during these days is to become unleavened just as Christ was unleavened. And we need to let Christ in. And when I say let, I mean let. Christ doesn't come and break down the door into our lives. He stands at the door and knocks. We have to respond. We have to open that door through recognition of sin, through repentance. We need to let Christ come in. Hebrews 12 verse 22.

Hebrews 12 verse 22.

It says, speaking of the church, it says, But you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn, who are registered in heaven to God, the judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that seeks better things than that of Abel. And so, brethren, you and I are people with God's Holy Spirit. We're a part, through the church of God, by the power of God, by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, and in light of those things, what should our response be? Well, continuing on, verse 25, it says, See that you don't refuse him. For if they did not escape who refused him who spoke on the earth, how much more shall we not escape if we turn away from him who speaks from heaven? Whose voice then shook the earth, but now he has promise, saying, Yet once more I shake not only the earth, but also heaven. Now this, yet once more, indicates the removal of those things that are being shaken, as are things that are made, that the things which cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have grace by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear, for our God is a consuming fire.

God's creating in us a nature that will not be shaken. He will eventually place us in a kingdom that is immovable. Therefore, the word says, don't refuse him who speaks. Don't refuse the love. Don't refuse the care. Don't refuse the nature and the character of the one that was offered as the true unleavened bread of life, Jesus Christ. In the model prayer, Christ taught us to pray, give us this day our daily bread. And he wasn't just referring to physical food. He wasn't just referring to what we need daily to live physically and survive. He was referring primarily to the bread that brings about eternal life. He was referring to the fact that we need to partake in him daily. If we look back in time at various cultures, bread was such an important facet of their life. Bread was the center portion of every meal. Nowadays, in our lives, bread is more of an accessory that's on the side, so maybe we don't analyze it quite the same. But we need to take into that bread of life daily. We need to partake in it not just during the Passover, not just during the days of unleavened bread, but continually, every day of our lives. Galatians 2, verse 20.

Galatians 2, verse 20. Again, we have to change from the inside out. That's why we take Christ in.

Here's the apostle Paul writing. Paul says, I have been crucified with Christ. There's no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me, in the life which I now live, in the flesh I live by faith, in the Son of God, who loved me, who gave himself for me. So hopefully we can all say that. Hopefully we can all say, I've been crucified with Christ and he lives in me. When we put the spirits 11 out and we come before God in repentance, we crucify the old man. We put to death the old way of life, eating the unleavened bread, portrayed walking in newness of life, in which Christ will open us. Final scripture for today, 1 Corinthians chapter 5. 1 Corinthians chapter 5. The apostle Paul is confronting the Corinthian church for tolerating open sin in their midst. The time frame is the days of unleavened bread. 1 Corinthians chapter 5 verse 6. Paul says, your glorying is not good. Do you not know that a little leavened leavened is the whole lump? Just take that tiny little speck of leavening to spread like an infection. Spread through everything if you allow it to go unchecked. Verse 7. Verse 7, 1 Corinthians 5. Therefore purge out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened. For indeed Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us. Therefore let us keep the feast. What feast are we talking about? Well, it's the feast of the leavened bread. Let's keep the feast not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

If you and I were going out and looking for sincerity and truth, and hopefully we are, where do we look? Well, we would look for the source. We would look for the author of sincerity and truth, which is Jesus Christ. Brethren, we're in the midst of a holy day season that's full of symbolism. In its symbolism, that's designed to teach us a number of spiritual lessons. Let's use this time well. Let's learn the lessons well. Let's use the special time God given us to put the leaven of malice and wickedness out of our lives. Let's be actively replacing it with Jesus Christ, that unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.