Three Questions to Ponder this Spring Holy Day Season

Well, today we are beginning the seven days of unleavened bread. There are two great lessons from this feast, and Mr. Lee already touched upon them. Number one, we are instructed to eat unleavened bread for seven days, picturing our fervent desire for the bread of life, Jesus Christ, to dwell within us, to rededicate our lives as disciples and followers of Jesus Christ. And I'll cover that in a little more detail on the seventh day of unleavened bread.

The second great lesson that the feast reminds us every year of is that physical leaven is symbolic of sin in so many ways. Once started, just like sin, it can spread quickly. One small piece of it can create an entire batch of dough and swell it and puff it up just like human pride and vanity. It takes effort to locate leaven in our homes. It takes effort to remove it, just like it does to remove sin from our lives. Leavened, like sin, is so much a part of our culture that most of us have to literally change our daily routine to remove it and avoid it for the next seven days. We're so used to all the things that are made in leavened products that is part of our lifestyle, as part of who and what we are, particularly as Westerners. Doughnuts and breads and cookies and so much that we consume, so much a part of our life, has leaven in it.

And of course, another lesson is that we should reject sin and haste, just like ancient Israel was told. And the whole purpose of being able to leave Egypt in a hurry is that the bread did not have time to become leavened. Therefore, it was unleavened, and they were to leave Egypt in haste. Remember, with a belt on their waist and a staff on their hand, they were prepared to leave on a moment's notice, the same way that when we discover some sin in our lives, that we leave it in haste, that we don't linger, that we don't compromise with it, but we reject that sin in haste. Let's go to a scripture, Exodus chapter 12 and verse 15, one of the original instructions about these days that we will be celebrating, and then I'd like to tell you a story.

Exodus chapter 12 and verse 15, if you'll turn there with me. And sure enough, the very first thing mentioned is eating unleavened bread.

The first thing mentioned is not removing leaven from our homes.

Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, on the first day you shall remove leaven from your home, so it immediately follows. For whoever eats leavened bread from the first day, end of the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel.

On the first day there shall be a holy convocation. God invited us to come here today and celebrate as a convention, a convocation of His people in Greater Cleveland. Thank you for doing that. On the first day there shall be a holy convocation. On the seventh day there shall be a holy convocation. For you no manner of work shall be done on them but which everyone must eat. So it's okay to prepare food, but we should not be doing our regular employment today on one of God's high days. If you're a shoemaker, you shouldn't be making shoes. If you're a business person, you shouldn't be conducting business. If you're a telemarketer, you shouldn't be making phone calls this afternoon to potential people to sell them. Take the day off, God says. Relax, enjoy, and celebrate this special day. Continuing here.

So, verse 17, so you shall observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread, for on the same day I have brought your armies out of the land of Egypt. And coming out, of course, the land of Egypt meant that they would no longer be under oppression. And God wants us to leave this world of sin, so we are no longer impressed by the worldly pharaoh, Satan, that we no longer are his slaves, and that we have an opportunity for freedom. Freedom having liberty in Christ by coming out of this world. Therefore, you shall observe this day throughout your generations as an everlasting ordinance. You know who believed this was an everlasting ordinance?

His name was the Apostle Paul, because many, many, many, many years after the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, in 1 Corinthians 5, he tells a gentile congregation, let's keep this feast. Not in an old way. We don't need temples, we don't need priests, we don't need animal sacrifices, but let's be a new lump, and let's keep this in sincerity and truth, and understand what God's meaning is behind this particular season.

So Paul absolutely believed this was an everlasting ordinance, and he taught it to gentile congregations in his lifetime. Verse 18, in the first month, on the 14th day of the month, at even, so that's when days begin, and that's when days end, at even you shall eat unleavened bread until the 21st day of the month at evening. For seven days no leavened shall be found in your houses. I want you to just hang on to that thought, because I'm going to tell you an interesting story in a minute.

Verse 19, hang on to that thought. For seven days no leavened 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's a stranger or a native of the land, you shall eat nothing leavened, and all your dwellings you shall eat unleavened bread. Now, with that scripture as a little bit of a background, I'd like to tell you a true story.

It's very recent. For the past 40 years, a single man in greater New York City purchased millions of dollars of New York's leavened products just before Passover. The information, the story I'm about to tell you, comes from a Jewish online publication called the Forward. You can read about this at forward.com if you like to have more detail than I'm able to cover today. But for decades, 40 years, a man named John J.

Brown was a hero, a legend in the Jewish community, even though he was a Gentile. He would meet dozens of Orthodox rabbis in a New York City synagogue in the morning before Passover, and one by one, the rabbis would sell millions of dollars worth of leavened bread and pasta and other leavened products to this one man. The rabbis were agents for their congregations. They were part of the Orthodox Jewish community.

Mr. Brown was a Gentile, had a deep affection for the Jewish community. He was also a real estate agent. And he acted as the center of a Jewish legal process that is crucial for Orthodox Jews, those who desire to keep the strict laws of Passover, including the days of unleavened bread, in the New York Jewish community.

Their laws forbid them from owning or benefiting from homets. Now, we call it leaven. The term they would use was homets, also sometimes pronounced chametz. When I say homets, think of leavened products, any products containing leaven. Because most observant Jews don't want to throw out their homets ahead of Passover, they sell it to a non-Jewish person who sells it back to them when the days of unleavened bread are over. Mr. Brown did this from 1977 to 2019. They were not able to do it last year because of the pandemic. Unfortunately, he died in February at the age of 88.

According to the rules of the Talmud and Revinic law, this is an acceptable practice. The transactions would take place about 10 a.m. on the morning before Passover. The last possible time when Jews were allowed to have homets in their own possession. Dozens of rabbis and Mr. Brown would gather around a conference table together at the Young Israel Riverside Synagogue, which is located in Bronx, New York. And a rabbi would begin by reading through the entire contract. Afterward, Mr. Brown would pay for the homets with bundles of coins, a few cents for each of the thousands of households whose food he was purchasing.

These coins were merely a down payment for the goods he was buying. According to the contract, he agreed to pay millions of dollars for all of the leavened products that he would now own. He would also receive a bottle of liquor as a gesture of goodwill for serving as an intermediary in this way. In addition to buying leavened products stowed away in people's homes, Mr. Brown would symbolically purchase company shares that people owned in Jewish-owned businesses, such as hotels that sold homets over the Passover, so he would purchase their shares of stock. Also, year by year, he also took ownership temporarily of people's pets.

According to the Jewish law, Jews are not allowed to benefit from homets in any way, so they were not allowed to feed it to their pets. They couldn't feed dog food or cat food that had leavened products to their pets. To get around that restriction, many people sell their pets along with their homets, so that the animals eating the leavened food on Passover do not technically belong to them. The pets are now owned by a gentile. At the end of Passover, Mr. Brown would sell the homets back to the original owners, always pretending regret that he was not able to complete the original multi-million dollar sale. He would appear in the final ceremony and apologize profusely that he just couldn't come up with the money for the final transaction, so he had to sell it back. So all of the leavened products the company shares and the pets would return to their original owner because Mr. Brown could not complete his obligation of the contract. In some other Jewish Orthodox communities, the sale contract gives the owner the exclusive right to buy back their leavened products and pets and company shares after the holiday. Now, originally, the Jews destroyed all of their leaven before Passover, just like we read in Exodus 12. Do you remember the Scripture I asked you to hang on to? No leaven shall be found in your homes. Well, leaven isn't all of their homes. It's just now owned by a Gentile, so they don't feel obligated to remove the leaven from their homes.

Originally, the Jews destroyed all their leaven before Passover, just as instructed in Exodus 12, but the middle ages saw the rise of Jewish-owned bakeries and breweries. As Passover approached, these businesses were often left with large inventories of leavened products, and they wanted to avoid a financial loss, so they came up with the idea to sell their homet's stock, the leftover inventories of leavened products, to a Gentile, and repossessing their homets after the days of unleavened bread. In time, this expanded from businesses, the middle ages, to individual ownership of leaven in the home to the point of where what I read about occurs today. Now, what I would like to point out, these are deeply religious Jews. They don't wake up every morning and say, we're looking for loopholes. They are orthodox religious Jews. They are often persecuted for the way that they dress and for their rituals and traditions. They are deeply committed to their faith. Now, we, of course, know that the Scripture states to us that this so-called legal process is unbelievable, perhaps enough to make some of us chuckle. And the first time that I read it, I have to admit, I openly chuckled. Not in any way to mock or deride these faithful to their faith, these orthodox Jewish believers. It's just from my culture where I come from, it seems unbelievable that you could find a way to avoid getting rid of leaven through this legal process.

But again, to these observant religious Jews, this is acceptable, and it's permitted according to Jewish oral and modern rabbinic law. Now, we don't accept the view of how they physically attempt to obey Exodus 12 and Leviticus 23 by creating loopholes. We don't agree with that. But here's my question for all of us today. We would look at that, and it's all unbelievable.

But my question is, brethren, are we capable of doing the same thing spiritually in some important area of our life? Are we capable of making compromises with what God instructs or God teaches? Maybe not in a physical way, like they do obviously, but maybe in some spiritual way, in some hidden part of our life. They're very sincere in believing that they are obedient to God. We may also be very sincere in believing that we are obedient to God, yet in some areas of our life, we may be missing the mark. That's actually the Greek word for sin in the New Testament is defined in what in English it's written sin. It's defined in Greek as missing the mark. Let's read about that. Just one example, Ephesians chapter 4 and verse 26, if you'll turn there with me.

Are we missing the mark? Is there some spiritual crevice, some area of our lives in which we need to have a crucial conversation with God, in which we need to maybe stop kidding ourselves, stop conning ourselves, stop justifying something we're thinking or doing in a spiritual way, much like these folks do physically regarding removing of removing of leaven from their homes. Ephesians chapter 4 and verse 26, Paul wisely wrote, be angry, and that's a natural human response to things that sometimes upset us, but do not sin. And this again, this is the original Greek word is from the same root as a word called hamartia, which means missing the mark. Do not miss the mark. Think of the mark as God's law, as God's will for our lives. That's what God wants. That's what he desires.

And when we sin, we miss the mark. We go around the mark, above the mark, below the mark, to the left of the mark, to the right of the mark, but we're missing the mark. He says, be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down into your wrath, nor give place to the devil. So again, this Greek word literally means missing the mark, and the mark is God's law, God's will. It's human for certain situations or events to make us angry. But what Paul is telling us is when we get angry, we need to process and discard that anger quickly, not to linger about it, not to think about it, because it becomes a burr into our saddle. Our minds have a tendency to make something small that irritates us, and it gets big. Just like leaven, we think it over and over, it gets bigger and bigger and bigger. We get angrier, angrier, angrier. And Paul wisely says, you know, of course, you're going to get angry. You're human. But process and discard that anger as soon as possible. His advice is, before sunset, don't let the sun go down while you're angry about something or upset about something. Because if you do, he says, if it's allowed to stay, it'll fester, and it gives the devil an opportunity to manipulate us or to take that anger and have us do something that indeed is truly sinful. We act in a certain way because of that anger that breaks God's law. We say something, maybe we regret something that's foolish or selfish. So he says we need to process and we need to discard that anger as quickly as we can. The truth is that we may be missing the mark or sinning in our lives and not even see it in ourselves. Much like the Orthodox Jewish community of Greater New York, our carnal lines can be very creative. When it comes to avoiding accountability or not recognizing our own weaknesses, we can be very imaginative, just like they are, to create a legal contract that turns all of their household leavened into the ownership of Gentiles so they can keep it in their homes but not be responsible to God for it and conveniently to immediately get it back when the days of the leavened bread are over. Our minds can be very creative, very imaginative, and convincing us that something wrong is actually right. We too, being human, we can seek for loopholes and self-justification, and we can thereby ourselves miss the mark.

What I'd like to do in the sermon today is I would like to mention three things for us to think about during these upcoming days, the seven days of unleavened bread. Three questions to ponder during these holy days, the focus on spiritual growth and making our lives better, the building our relationship with God. So let's begin to inquire in some of these. Number one, here's question number one. Am I adding to or deleting from the instructions of God? Am I adding to or am I deleting from the simple instructions from God? Deuteronomy chapter 12 and verse 28, if you will turn there. We'll take a look at a scripture in which God, after instructing Israel, encourages them to be faithful and warns them not to add or delete from the things that God instructs or says. Again, Deuteronomy chapter 12 and verse 28. He has just given a series of instructions. This is part of the Old Covenant. Obviously, in the New Covenant, we don't do the sacrifices. There are a lot of things in these instructions that were fulfilled by Jesus Christ that are not part of us as part of the New Covenant for us to obey. But certainly all of the moral law is. Observe and obey these words which I command you that it may go well with you and your children after you forever when you do what is good and right in the sight of the Lord your God. When the Lord your God cuts off from before you the nations which you go to dispossess and you displace them and dwell in their land, take heed. Remember this, humans. You are carnal and you will have a tendency to do this. If you're not on guard, if you're not observant, you'll have a tendency to do this. Take heed to yourself that you are not ensnared to follow them after they are destroyed from before you and that you do not inquire after their gods saying, how do these nations serve their gods? I'm going to do the same thing. Why? It's human to copy. It's human to be a copycat. Oh, that's so pretty. They use pretty things in their worship ceremonies. They use things that smell nice. So I want to do that.

They're pretty to look at. I want to do that. I want to see that. I want to have that in my home.

Verse 31, you shall not worship the Lord your God in that way, just copying and cloning what everyone else does. For every abomination to the Lord, which he hates, they have done to their gods, for they burn even their sons and daughters and fire to their gods. So, of course, this is all violating one of the Ten Commandments. It's disrespectful towards God because it's worshiping other gods. It's incorporating their worship practices, putting a little lipstick on that practice or custom to make it pretty and acceptable, and relabeling it as Christian something. And they're not even really good at that. For example, Easter is the name of a pagan sun goddess, a Germanic goddess of spring. Many Protestants have even begun to stop using the name Easter. They figured it out, and it's very embarrassing. They'll call it Resurrection Sunday, and they've eliminated the phrase Easter. So as human beings, we're not even really good at putting lipstick on a lot of these things. They're so obvious and plain that there should be no question about what we tend to do as human beings. Verse 32. Whatever I command you, be careful to observe it. You shall not add to it, and you shall not take away from it. Simple instruction by God. Important, because I can tell you from my nearly 50 years in the Church of God, I have seen a constant tendency of people to add to what God instructs, to simple instructions, or to ignore them and delete them and just, ah, they're not important to me, but they're not important anymore.

So it's either one ditch or the other ditch. It's rumored to take simple instructions and ignore them, or on the other hand, add additional layers of rules and instructions to what God clearly states. These are tendencies of human nature. People either ignore what God says, and it really has no meaning to them, but other personality types want to be more righteous than God. And so they create rules and regulations, and like an onion, they put layers of additional policies and customs and rituals on top of a simple instruction from God in order to be righteous. People do that all the time. My metaphor that I've used in the past that I'll bring up again to reflect what we struggle with as human beings is the pendulum on a clock.

That pendulum is always swinging from left to right, and that's true whether it's politically, in human history, religiously, in human history, things swing from left to right. And when the pendulum gets so far out of balance that it can no longer go any further, it has a tendency to start swinging in the other direction. But here's the key. Only momentarily is it ever balanced.

Momentarily, is it ever in the center? It's usually in the process of swinging in one direction or another, and that's exactly what God is saying here in verse 32. Have balance in your life.

Have balance in your congregation. Don't delete the important things, and don't add layers and layers of stuff onto the simple instructions that God gives us. Ignoring God's instructions results in sin and its consequences. Just literally ignoring them, thinking they're not, I don't need to do that, results in a lot of pain and suffering. It results in sin. Sin has its consequences. On the other hand, adding self-righteous requirements to something that God says is also a serious sin, and it too has disruptive results because it's a self-righteousness, it's a spiritual disease. Matthew 15.3, let's see where Jesus addressed this head-on. He's in a discussion with the Pharisees here. In Matthew 15.3, they correct him because his disciples don't wash their hands like the other Pharisees did before they eat. And here's his response to them. Again, this is Matthew 15.3. He answered and said to them, Why do you also transgress the commandment of God because of your tradition? Why have you added things like I said you shouldn't do in Deuteronomy chapter 12 and put layers and layers of poles through your own traditions and customs and thereby avoid obeying the simple commandment of God? This is what Jesus is saying. For God commanded, saying, Honor your father and your mother. That's the fifth commandment.

And he who curses father and mother, let him be put to death. Whoever says to his father or mother, but you say, according to their law, their oral law, whoever says to his father or mother, whatever prophet, you might have received to me is a gift to God. The Hebrew word here for gift is korban. Korban was something that was devoted to God and it was an unbreakable vow. So Jesus is saying, your parents, as they give elderly, they usually can't support themselves and you respect the fifth commandment when you support your parents financially. When you take care of your elderly parents, poverty is a terrible thing. Going hungry is a terrible thing. Doing out without the basic needs of life is a curse. It's a real struggle. Jesus said the commandment means to take care of our parents when you're elderly. And here what you've done is you've found a convenient loophole that says, well, if I can take this money that should have supported my parents and I can declare it korban. And it's an unbreakable vow that now I give this money to the temple. And I'm a hero.

I'm sure rabbis will tell me, oh, you're just so generous. It's so wonderful to have given the temple money. And here's how Jesus continues this. He says, and I'm going to pick it up here in verse five, but you say, whoever says to his father and mother, whatever profit you might have received from me, whatever financial support, help you might have received from me as a gift to God, then he may not honor his father and mother. Thus you have made the commandment of God of no effect by your tradition. Hypocrite, Jesus says. Well did Isaiah prophesy about you, saying these people draw near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts, looking for loopholes, looking for self justification to avoid the simple commands, instructions of God, but their hearts is far from me and in vain they worship me, teaching as doctrines, the commandments of men. So this may lead us to ask ourselves a couple of heartfelt questions during the next seven days, and we have a crucial conversation with God.

In what areas have I been ignoring God and what he truly desires? Have I been cherry picking God's instructions? I've known people in the church that approach the Bible kind of like a smorgasbord table. Oh, I think I'll, I like that. I'll accept that. Yeah, yeah, I'll take that. That's part of my life. Yeah, that's part of it. Oh, no, don't send money. You gotta be kidding me. Oh, no, fast.

No, no, that's painful. And people approach the law of God. They approach Christianity as if it's some type of smorgasbord table where they just simply get the pick and choose whatever it is that they want to obey. And we have to be very careful, brethren, that we haven't done that in some area in our life. Another heartfelt question we can ask yourself during the next seven days, in what areas have I added to the simple instructions of God by layering on my own ideas or my own opinions? Something God says is very simple, and I add layers onto it. And I'll give just a small example. And I don't intend to be critical with what I'm about to say, but I just want to use it as an example of how zeal can go too far. When I first came into the church, people exhaustively went through their homes to remove leaven. I knew people who, and their tile in their kitchen, would take a toothpick between the cracks and pick out all the cracks, because leaven may have fallen in there. I personally knew people who would take the vent register off of their homes, because leaven may have inadvertently fell down into the vent, into the metal vent work behind it, and they would suck it out. People in their zeal to be obedient to God's instruction, which is very simple, remove leaven from your homes, would take it too far, and would add layers and layers of complexity. And oftentimes, people, by the time they got to the Passover, were physically exhausted, because they had spent so much time meticulously, and that's a word that was often used, meticulously removing leaven from their homes, that they came to the Passover thoroughly and completely exhausted, without the ability to spend the majority of the time taking a look at our lives, examining our hearts, rather than getting carried away with a simple instruction to remove leaven from our homes. Just a simple example, and again, I don't mean to be critical by bringing that up. It was done because people were zealous, and that's a caution for all of us. So, brethren, is it possible for us to observe the Sabbath and Holy Days in vain, because we're missing the mark in some other area of our life? These were very religious people, but Jesus said they worshiped God in vain, because they had added things and complicated a very simple command that God gave, and that was to honor your mother and your father. As Paul stated in 2 Corinthians 11 and verse 3, But I fear lest somehow is the serpent deceived by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. You know, Christianity is really a very simple faith.

It's built on believing that Jesus is your Savior, walking in humility, desiring to be a disciple, to be taught to learn obedience, the God's way of life, and to do that faithfully until your life draws to a conclusion, or until Jesus Christ returns into this earth and you're transformed immediately. It's really no more complicated than what I just explained. It's people who make it complicated. People turn from the simplicity that is in Christ and make it much harder than it was ever intended to be. So again, number one, the question, am I adding to or am I deleting from the instructions of God? Here's number two.

Where do I clearly understand God's instructions, but I'm compromising with it. So this isn't just ignoring it. This isn't adding to what God instructs. This is, yeah, I know God says this, but I'm going to compromise to halfway, partway, and not really do the whole thing. Jeremiah 17 verse 9, a scripture we used to read often, many years ago, a true scripture, something for us to ponder during the next seven days. Jeremiah chapter 17 and verse 9.

Jeremiah says, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. You know who it's deceitful most of all to? You. Your heart's deceitful to you, my heart's deceitful to me.

I've talked about self-talk many times, so I'm not going to tail off into that, but our hearts, and that's what self-talk is, it's our heart and mind talking to us, that constant dialogue going on all day, lies to us continually. The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it? They're going to answer who can know it. I can't really know my heart, not as well as I should. You can't know your heart as well as you should, but here's who can. I, the Lord, search the heart. The heart can't deceive God. He knows everything.

He's inimitant. Can't fool Him. Might fool me. Might fool you. Can't fool God.

Search the heart. I test the mind. God says, I want to see what you're really made of, and how do I know what you're really made of? When you're under a little bit of pressure, what's the way that you react? What's the way that you think? What do you do when your feet are held to the fire in some situation in life? I, the Lord, search the heart. I test the mind even to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his doings. Hopefully our fruit is the fruit of the Holy Spirit. Hopefully our fruit are good things, positive things, abundant things, or pleased God, rather than negative things. It's so easy for us to justify tweaking God's instructions, or to con ourselves that something is morally okay by doing part of it than just doing what God simply instructs us, doing all of it.

It might be a little white lie. It might be a half truth, meaning not the whole truth, just the part of the truth that we want to tell a person. It might be purposeful exaggeration.

It might be a slight of hand deception, manipulating other people. The problem with all of these negative traits is that when we do them, they become part of our character.

They become who we are. We don't even look at them as wrong. We don't even look at compromises wrong or bad anymore. And the worst part is we pass it down to our children. And our children can pass it down to our grandchildren. It can happen from generation to generation.

Abram was told to leave his family behind. When he left for Haran, God made it very clear to him, leave your family behind. So what's he do? He takes family members with him. That causes a number of problems for Abram, later Abraham. In Genesis 12, Abraham tells Sarah to tell Pharaoh a half truth. We'll tell him that you're my sister. That's a half truth. She was his half sister, but she was also his wife.

Pharaoh gets himself into a little trouble. Everyone's humiliated because of a little half truth. What happens in Genesis 20? Abraham tells Abimelech that Sarah, who is actually his wife, is a sister, leading Abimelech to try to take Sarah as his wife. More humiliation, more half truths, more unhappy people, greater degree of stress. In Genesis 26, Abraham and son Isaac. Genesis 26, Isaac states Abimelech, different Abimelech at this time, that Rebecca, his wife, is really his sister because he worried that the Philistines would kill him in order to marry Rebecca. Pass down from dad to son. Same lie, same exaggeration, same compromise, and that's one reason, particularly us as parents, don't want to pass down those negative family dysfunctions by the compromises that we make in our lives, in our moral system. Abraham, Isaac, how about Jacob? Well, before God worked with him, the name Jacob itself means trickster, before God worked with him later on in his life, his early life was filled with white lies, half truths, purposeful exaggerations, and slight of hand deceptions. From father to son to grandson, that's why we don't want to compromise in God's moral law on principles of integrity. We don't want to compromise on the need to be sincere and open and truthful. As we can see from these examples, a little compromise is like a little bit of leaven. It spreads from generation to generation, even within our own families. Let's go to Ephesians chapter 4 and verse 17. Ephesians chapter 4 and verse 17 comment that Paul makes and realize he's talking to church brethren here. He's not talking to people in the world. He's talking to people who are converted and who are God's beloved. Ephesians chapter 4 and verse 17.

This I say, Paul writes, therefore, and testified in the Lord that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk. Now, why would he say this to church people? Because some of them were still walking as the Gentiles walked. It's the only reason he would bring this up. It's still a problem, and it can be a problem with us. If there are maybe areas in our life that we've compromised and we're still walking with half-truths, distortions, exaggerations, slight of hand deceptions, we're still walking like the Gentiles walk. Continuing, he says, in the futility of their mind. That word, which is futility, means in vanity. And there have worthless thoughts. That's what that Greek word means. Worthless thoughts and ideas. Having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart, who are past feeling. Meaning they have no conscious left. When you are past feeling, you no longer have a degree of sensitivity. You're not even sensitive about the words that come out of your mouth. You're not sensitive about the way that you treat other people, about the way you address a problem. You get past feeling. You no longer have those filters. You no longer have a conscience. Having given themselves over to lewdness, to work all uncleanness, with greediness. But you have not so learned Christ. That's not what you were taught, Paul says.

You were taught about a different way of life. A different mindset, a different attitude, different laws to live by. Verse 21, if indeed you have heard them and have been taught by them, as the truth is in Jesus, that you put off concerning your former conduct the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts. These are people who had already been baptized.

And symbolically, in that baptism tank, symbolically, that old man in us, I wish all of you would quit looking at me when I say old man, that old man in all of us, symbolically, was put in a watery rage. And we came out of that water as new creatures in Christ, to walk a new lifestyle, to live a new life, new attitude, spring in our step, new purpose. But Paul acknowledges here that we're carnal and we're human, and some of us are still struggling with that old corrupt man who occasionally raises his ugly head within our lives in some way, in some thought, in some action. And that happens because of compromise.

He says, in B, instead of that, allowing that old man that's growing corrupt to manipulate you, verse 23, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man, which was created according to God in true righteousness and holiness. So symbolically, again, we came out of the water of that baptismal tank, a new creature in Christ, a new man.

He says, start focusing, he's telling the congregation, you start focusing again on your new life, again, tying in with Mr. Lee's excellent sermonette today. Therefore, putting away lying, that's usually one of the compromises, we lie, we tell half truths.

Therefore, putting away lying, let each of you speak truth with his neighbor, for we are members of one another. So, brethren, are we compromising with that corrupt old man that's still lingering in us? Will we allow the spring holy day season to renew the spirit of our minds this year? That's what these days are all about, and that's exactly what Paul wants to remind the brethren in Ephesians. Verse 23, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, putting on the new man. Are we willing to do that? We are to think differently than the futility that is written in the minds of the Gentiles. The Gentiles here, meaning those who haven't been called those who live a little bit better in some cases than animals. And Paul says we should not live in a state of futility going on in our heads, in our minds. The third and final question I would like to ask us today as we begin the seven days of unleavened bread. Where am I spiritually blinded to my sins and faults? So this isn't some area in which we might consciously be aware that we're sinning and we avoid it, or we just add layers of things onto it. It isn't necessarily an area that we compromise. It's something we're totally blind. It's a blind spot. We don't even see it in ourselves. The sad things is that oftentimes our spouses can see it, our children can see it, our close friends can see it, but we don't get it. That's what I'm talking about here. Number three again. Where am I spiritually blinded to my sins and faults? Psalm 19 and verse 12.

Psalm 19 and verse 12. It talks about two different types of sins here. Faults. One is secret, and the other one is willful or deliberate. Psalm 19. Verse 12.

The psalmist writes, who can understand his errors? Well, we know the heart is deceitful above all things, so it's really difficult to get into those deep crevices of our soul. Very difficult.

He continues, cleanse me from secret faults. That's faults that I have that I don't even see, that I don't even acknowledge well within me.

Faults of my thoughts, conducts, personality that misses the mark. Keep back your servant. Also, from presumptuous sins, that's willful or deliberate sins. So he's talking about the two types of sin. The sin we're blinded to, we don't get it, and then the sin in which we willfully go and commit that sin. Let them not have dominion over me, because then it's controlling our lives. Then it's very dangerous when we're a slave to any sin, whether it be an addiction, a compulsion.

When we're dominated by a sin, that is spiritually very, very dangerous. Let them not have dominion over me. Then I shall be blameless, and I shall be innocent of great transgression. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart, in other words, let my attitude, be acceptable in your sight. O Lord, my strength and my redeemer. I'm going to read these verses from the translation that's called the New Century Version.

People cannot see their own mistakes. Forgive me for my secret sins. Keep me from the sins of pride, and don't let them rule me. Then I can be pure and innocent of the greatest of sins. I hope my words and thoughts please you, Lord. You are my rock and the one who saves me.

And indeed, that's very, very true. So these festival days are a good time for us to ask God humbly and in a way that we can accept it, to shine a personal spotlight on the areas of growth that we all need. And we all have our own cross to bear. We all come from different backgrounds. We acquired attitudes and habits from the families we grew up with, from the influences we had as a child, from school friends, from teachers, from preachers, from the person we married to every stage in life has made us who and what we are today. And in the majority of ways, they've made us better and they've made us very good. But there may also be ways. Attitudes, actions, thoughts, secret sins, doing something privately and we think no one's watching or no one could possibly know. There are certain things in which we may be totally missing the mark.

Our Heavenly Father knows all of our secret sins. There's really no such thing as a secret sin. We may be doing something and think nobody in the world knows that I'm doing this.

But what about God the Father? What about Jesus Christ? What about your ministering angel spoken of in Hebrews the first chapter? What about maybe 400 billion heavenly hosts, spiritual hosts that are observing the earth in any given period of time? They know! So we can kid ourselves that something is secret. But in reality, it's not really secret at all, is it? Psalm, this is Robert in the book of Psalms 139 verse 1. You can turn there with me. Psalm 139 verse 1.

This is a psalm that again highlights the omnipotence, the omnipresence of God. O Lord, you have searched me and known me. My heart might deceive me. I might be lying to myself.

But my heart cannot lie to God. He sees all. He knows all. Verse 2. You know my sitting down and my rising up. You know everything I do every day, all day. You understand my thoughts afar off the deepest recesses of my attitude, when I have a good attitude and when I have a stinkingly foul attitude.

Stankin' thinkin'! You comprehend my paths and my lying down. You know everywhere I'm going. You know when I take a nap. You know when I go to bed. You know when I rise. You're acquainted with all my ways, not just some of my ways, because I can't hide anything from you. I can't hide a thought from you. I can't hide a sin from you. I can't hide anything from you, because you're acquainted with all my ways. Verse 4. For there's not a word in my tongue that you wouldn't know or understand.

But behold, O Lord, you know it all together. Everything about me. Verse 5. You have hedged me behind and before. In other words, you're around my front and my back. And laid your hand upon me. You've touched me. You've held my hand. You've been there for me when I've needed you. Verse 6. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is high, and I cannot attain it. That's perfection. It's hard to hit the mark. And that's why we have a Savior.

And we emphasize to pass over that we have a Savior who shed his blood because we missed the mark.

And we also have a Savior who dwells inside of us when we receive God's Spirit, pictured by eating unleavened bread during these days, who lives within us. And his righteousness fills the gap where we miss the mark. His righteousness, because he's perfect and he died sinless, becomes our righteousness. And that's what makes us acceptable to God. Makes us his children. Makes us his church. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is high. I cannot attain it. Where can I go from your spirit? Where in the universe could I hide? He says. Or where can I flee from your presence? If I even try to. If I ascend to heaven? Oh, you're there. You dwell in heaven. That won't work. Get high from me there. If I make my bed in hell, you're there. You created all the dust, all the dirt, everything in hell, being buried and being dead. Your presence is there when I'm resurrected. Guess who I have to face. You. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, I can swim down the deepest of ocean depths. Then take a deep breath and try to swim five miles undersea to die from you. Sorry, doesn't work. You're there. Your creation, your presence is also there. Behold, you are there, verse nine. And if I take the wings of her morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there, your hand will leave me and your right hand shall hold me. Your right hand's always there to hold mine, to hold me up, to help me, to serve me. The psalmist here is reminding us that God knows us better than we even know ourselves.

He knows the absolute full truth about us. Where we live in a world in which our wicked hearts keeps us blinded to some things is always pushing us to compromise, pushing us to ignore the things that we should be doing. There's a big difference between the two here, and that's what the psalmist is saying. God knows the absolute, unvarnished, full truth about us. There's no place to hide from God because He's everywhere. Therefore, we should ask Him, our loving Father, to reveal to us our faults and our sins. He's a forgiving God. He's a merciful God. He's a gracious God. He respects us when we humbly come to Him and say, show me, put that spotlight on me in a way that I can understand it and accept it in mercy. Show me the areas of change and growth that I need to have in my life. Please reveal to me my personal blind spots through the gift of your Holy Spirit. Verse 23, dropping down to verse 23 here in the same psalm, search me, O God, and know my heart. Again, our hearts can deceive us. They can't deceive God. Try me and know my anxieties. Know those areas of my life that I've been avoiding, confronting faults and sins that I have. I've been pushing them off to someday where you know what, maybe this beast of unleavened bread is someday. Maybe it's time to stop pushing that off and face it and deal with it and process it and take your life, your spiritual life, your relationship with God to a whole new level of growth. Verse 24, and see if there's any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. I'm going to read these verses again from the new century version. God says, quote, examine me and know my heart. Test me and know my nervous thoughts.

There's some things that each of us have, frankly, that we don't want to approach. A problem we have, something we're struggling with that's foreboding. It's off limits to think about.

It's off limits to confront because it makes us uncomfortable. The thought of doing that makes us anxious. We've been avoiding doing it for so long. Know my nervous thoughts. See if there's any bad thing in me. Lead me on the road to everlasting life. What we read here in the book of Psalms is a bold prayer by David. It would result in him seeing some uncomfortable faults in himself.

So are we willing to ask the same prayer? Are we willing to humbly allow God to dig deep in our hearts and in our minds and allow us to see ourselves as God already sees us and as God already knows? I know that's a hard thing to ask. It's a hard thing to do. It takes courage and determination to do this. Are we willing to do that?

And how will God respond if we ask that prayer? How would he respond to us if we said, had a crucial conversation with God during his holy days and said, please, shine a spotlight in every area of my life and show me some areas that I need to stop conning myself, that my deceitful heart needs to stop saying, it's okay when it's not okay, and change my life for the better, for something wonderful and good? Help me to do that, Father. So if we ask that prayer, how do you think God would respond?

Well, let's see how God would respond in Isaiah 66, verse 1. Actually, our final scripture today. How will God respond if during the seven days of this feast we have that crucial conversation and we ask him to show us where we've either been ignoring something we need to give attention to or compromising on something that we know we should be doing fully, or we've been blind to something going on in our lives that we don't even know is there. We can't acknowledge it until we know it, until we know about it, to perceive it. Isaiah 66, verses 1 and 2. Thus says the Lord, Heaven is my throne and earth is my woodstool. I'm a very big God. My presence is everywhere, is what he's saying. Where is the house that you will build me? And where is the place of my rest?

You talk about a temple. I've got news for you. I dwell everywhere. To human beings, temples are important because they symbolize the presence of God. He says my presence is not limited to a building or a house that anyone could build me. Verse 2, for all those things my hand is made, the earth, the heavens, matter, everything that exists was made by me, God says, and all those things exist.

Says the Lord, but on this individual, on this person, I will look. It's on this person that I give favor. This kind of a person that I admire. I admire their courage. I admire their sincerity. I admire their humility. On this kind of a person, I will look. On him who is poor, that's the Hebrew word, afflicted in mind. On him who is poor in spirit, afflicted in mind, says I can be better. I can grow. I can change. I can get rid of that old man and continue to grow that new man that I was given when I was baptized, and I haven't been doing as good a job as I could, and I can't. On him who is poor, poor of spirit, and contrite of spirit, in other words, repentance. God says this is the person that I honor. This is the person that I favor. This is the person that I love. A person who says, show me Lord where I can do better, and I will immediately repent and make an effort to change that and to start hitting the mark rather than missing the mark. I'm going to read here verse 2 from this translation of God's Word for today. I've made all things. That is why these things have come into being, declares the Lord. I will pay attention to those who are humble and sorry for their sins and who tremble at my word. A person who has deep respect for what God says trembles at God's instructions and teachings, not out of fear, but out of deep awe and respect that if God says it, it's good for me.

If God says, I should do this, it will make my life better. It will make me happier, more joyful, more fulfilled, less personal problems, less things to struggle with.

Because if I love God's law, things in my life will go far better for me than if I'm just a slave to sin. And all the negative consequences and grief and self-afflicted pain that we bring to ourselves as sinners. So again, I will pay attention to those who are humble and sorry for their sins and who tremble at my word. So I encourage all of us during these upcoming days of Unleavened Bread to dig deep into our hearts. We can pray for understanding and see if we are adding or deleting from the instructions of God. We can ask that God's Spirit within us reveal where we're compromising on the Father's will for us. We can ask for spiritual blindness to be removed from us, from our hearts and minds, so we can see our true selves as God sees us. And why should we do this? Why should we do this during these spring holy days? Not to condemn ourselves, not to put ourselves down, not to go on a guilt trip because we are already forgiven. So we don't do it to beat ourselves up or to go into some state of depression by doing this kind of an examination. We are already forgiven. We do not do this to feel shame because God's grace gives us confidence no matter how many sins we've committed or things that we're still struggling with today. We do this because it will deepen our relationship with God.

And as we dig deep, our loving Father will admire and respect and favor our humility, our sincerity, our desire for repentance, to get rid of those faults that we're still lingering with, that's still harboring in our backgrounds and in our lives. As the Apostle John wrote in 1 John chapter 1 verse 9, if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So we do this to build even a deeper relationship with our loving God, our Father, and through that process to take us spiritually to another level of growth. That's why we should look for those secrets, compromised, or ignored areas of our life. I wish all of you the most inspiring and wonderful feast of unleavened bread ever. May God richly bless all of you.