As the Twig Is Bent

There was an old picture that made it to the big leagues in the 1950s after having pitched in what they then called the Negro Leagues of American Baseball, a league only for black players during the 30s and 40s before Major League Baseball became integrated. That picture was a man by the name of Satchel Paige. Some of you may know that name of Satchel Paige. Having heard of him, I see a gray hair nodding on that and everybody, younger ones are saying, who? He was a character. What brought him to mind is there's just been recently published a book about him along with some other pictures from that era, Dizzy Dean and others. But Satchel Paige was a character. I do remember him vaguely from my youth when he broke in and when he was still playing. Nobody ever knew how old he was. They thought he was probably up in his 50s and maybe even into his 60s and still pitching. But he was a remarkable player. Had he had the same opportunities, he would have been one of the greats in terms of baseball. But there was a saying that was attributed to him that I've always remembered. It was part of his philosophy, I suppose, about life. He said, don't look back. Somebody may be gaining on you. Don't look back. Somebody may be gaining on you.

It's a good piece of philosophy. It's not a bad piece to start off with here in this sermon. And to think about, during these days of Unleavening Bread, don't look back.

Because when we start to examine ourselves and think about life, particularly at this period of time, we look at ourselves and sometimes that causes us to look back to what got us to this point, who we are. And that can be interesting. And it can be very helpful in certain ways, as long as we know how to handle it.

But it's important to not dwell there too long, especially when it comes to our life, and especially to get to the full meaning of these days. When we look at the plan of God, one of the constants about God is that God is always moving forward in His plan. The Holy Days are a forward-moving, into the future approach to life. We begin with the sacrifice of Christ. We begin with these days here, the days of Unleavening Bread, which we're now drawing to a close in a couple of days. And we move forward until the time of Christ's return and ultimately the period beyond the millennium, the Great White Throne.

So it's a forward movement. When we walk through every step of the plan of salvation, the Bible is a story of moving forward to the point where God will ultimately bring together His family. The Holy Days are stepping stones each year that we go through, as we begin with this one. Unleavened Bread pictures, many things. Israel coming out of Egypt. God moved them out from slave status to become a nation on their own. We move to the time of the Church and the return of Christ and all of this. It's just a constantly forward-moving dynamic. As you and I bring that down to our level, and what we think about and dwell upon during this time, there are many things.

We've examined ourselves prior to the Passover. We've put the leaven from our homes. And certainly, I hope we've all spent more time on the spiritual preparation and spiritual thoughts during this period than so much the physical. Because the physical rituals that we have only show us service to the point that they show us the deeper spiritual intent behind them. This time of year, this season, with the rituals of unleavened bread, a vial of wine, putting out the leaven, washing feet.

These are highly ritualized motions that we go through in the Church. We don't have a whole lot of rituals in the Church of God, but those are rituals that we go through every year. And as we do, it's important that we don't get hung up on just the rituals, but that we move beyond and understand that they are to show us something beyond. Deeper spiritual matters. Deeper spiritual truths. A good question for us to pause and to consider today is, what has God shown you during the Holy Days?

What have you seen about yourself? About your past, about your present, has there been something that has come up that has prodded you to walk away from the past and how we are and how we have been to move away from the sins of the past to indeed put out the old leaven? When we turn back to 1 Corinthians 5 and look at a keynote scripture for this time of year, 1 Corinthians 5 and verse 7, let's remind ourselves of what verses 7 and 8 say, it says, Therefore purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you are truly unleavened.

For indeed Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us. And therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness. But with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth, we keep the feast with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth, the spiritual as well as the literal application. We literally put out the sin. That's the truthful part, or the leaven.

That is how we keep it in truth. In sincerity, we understand the deeper spiritual meaning of that leavened bread and the unleavened bread that we should eat during the seven days as well. We understand the spiritual significance of that. And that is the deeper thing. But what has God shown you during this period of time? What have you learned about yourself as we've gone through this practical experience?

That's important to understand. Now there's another saying, as the twig is bent, so grows the tree. As the twig is bent, so grows the tree. When a young tree is formed in a certain direction in its infancy, it will grow in that direction as it matures through the years. And it's a metaphor for a human life. We can be bent, shaped, formed, and are in our early years by a parent, by an environment, by an experience, and it will impact us for good, for negative, depending upon what it is.

We are all shaped and formed in our earliest stages of life, and bent, if you will. And sometimes, depending on what it was, as we go on through our life and we start looking back, as I said with the satchel page quote, it can be a bit problematic, because we might see somebody gaining, and somebody can be the old self, or the problem that is there.

That does, as the twig is bent, so grows the tree, does say a lot about our past, and it can also hold a key to the future until we get a handle upon that future. We're all products of our environment. What we are, the way we think, reflects our past.

A weird aspect of human nature wants to defend the past, and defend things, and the way we are, and what we are. And yet, when it comes down to the exercise that these days picture, God says to come out of the past. God says to put that away, and to come out and begin walking, in a sense, to the future. And each of us have to look at that each year as we go through these days of Unleavened Bread. And I think they are, it is a heightened period of time, seven days, that we go through this process. We could call it a Holy Week if we want to. The world talks about the Holy Week of East leading up to Easter, and Good Friday, which was yesterday, and then Easter Sunday and all. Yet, when we look at the Holy Days of this season, we really have a whole week, our own Holy Week, in terms of the, not that every day is a Holy Day, but it is an experience to kind of set ourselves apart through the process of examination, through the process of focusing upon our lives, the sin, and focusing more importantly upon the life of Jesus Christ within us, and how much that is being lived within us, how much of that is being developed within us. And to do that, we've got to learn a lesson of dealing at times with the past in the right way, and leaving it there, and not letting it continue to influence us in the present.

We're all creatures of, we get nostalgic at times, we sometimes look at the past through rose-colored glasses. Somebody once said in a sermon, I remember years and years to this day, this is an old sermon, but sometimes we're like we're in a car, we're driving down the road, and we're looking at the future, which is the road ahead through the windshield, we spend too much time looking in that rearview mirror. The idea of looking at the future through a rearview mirror is not good. You want to keep your eyes focused on the future, and not on the rearview mirror so much, because the future is where we're going. The future is how we steer toward and drive toward and move toward now with our life. In Psalm 78, we have an interesting Psalm that encapsulates this season because it goes back through a chronicle of Israel coming out of Egypt, the Exodus story, and all that they learned and experienced. It's a long Psalm. It's 72 verses, not going to go through all of it, but it's a Psalm that shows Israel and can help us understand certain lessons because Israel didn't want to leave the past behind. They kept wanting to go back at various times. Every time they met a challenge, they wanted to go back to the leaks and onions of Egypt, back to what they thought was the comfortable life or what they remembered to be a certain security. We all know the stories, the chorus stories, the Miriam stories, the challenges to Moses and to what God was doing. They came to the Red Sea. They wanted to go back. They ran out of food. They got hungry. They wanted to go back. They remembered things. When you look back in the past, it's never the same. It really never was the same. Our memories distort things through the years. Things are, you know, things are bigger in our mind. Maybe it's a place, a home, a building, an experience, nicer or whatever than it really was. Time and distance have a way of distorting that within us. The past is never what we remember. Here in Psalm 78, we see, let's just look at verse 17. Psalm 78 verse 17. It says, "...they send even more against him by rebelling against the most high in the wilderness, and they tested God in their heart by asking for the food of their fancy.

Yes, they spoke against God, and they said, Can God prepare a table in the wilderness? Behold, he struck the rock so that the waters gushed down and the streams overflowed. Can he give bread also? Can he provide meat for his people? Whatever God did, they wanted more.

They were never completely satisfied. They could not abide in faith. And therefore, the Lord heard this and was furious. So a fire was kindled against Jacob. And anger also came up against Israel, because they did not believe in God and did not trust in his salvation. Verse 22 is a key. They did not believe in God and did not trust in his salvation.

Salvation is a key theme for Passover in the Days of Unleavened Bread. As we rehearse Christ's sacrifice, his resurrection, his life within us, salvation and what God is doing to bring us to eternal life is a key thought theme of this time of year. And trusting in God's salvation is what is at the heart of it, where we trust the process God has placed us in. And we believe in that process, that he has called us, that he has revealed himself to us with a unique calling, a unique revelation. The truth is unique. God's laws, the Sabbath, and particularly the Holy Days, it is unique. To appreciate that is all important for us. Look, tomorrow, again, is Easter Sunday. And in some ways, Easter Sunday is the most insidious of the holidays, more so than I think Christmas, because it hides so much of the truth when you really delve into it and you look at the teaching, what it misses. Yes, it does focus on the resurrection, but there's a lot of truth that is missing in focusing on that. And the Holy Days adds so much more rich dimension and texture to the understanding of God's salvation and what he is doing with us, and how he is bringing all mankind ultimately to that opportunity of salvation. The truth that God has given to us is unique, and it is important that we cherish that and understand why we do what we do, why we walk through the steps of God's plan and purpose through the Holy Days, the truth that we have, because that is what God has placed us in, and it is what we've placed our trust in and our confidence. I do marvel. I do appreciate. I give God credit, because it's his Spirit in each of us that brings it about, but I do certainly give God the credit for the faith and the obedience of his people, for you and all the others who hold fast to God's truth that we have been given. What we are a part of is more than an organization, more than any human organization, more than anything that a man has been a part of, past or present. When we go through the Holy Day experiences, and we focus on those eternal truths, we're really focusing on the matters that keep us tied to God and trusting in his salvation, because it's his salvation that gets us through the challenges of life. It's nothing else. It's nothing else. And that's what the truth is to do. Israel had a problem trusting in the power of God. He didn't trust in his salvation. It says in verse 23, He commanded the clouds above and opened the doors of heaven, had rained down manna on them to eat, and given them of the bread of heaven. And men ate angels' food, not the cake.

And he sent them food to the full. On through here, they list all of the miracles and what God did, the problems that they had, God's faithfulness to them. Verse 32 says, In spite of this, they still sinned, and did not believe in his wondrous works. Therefore, their days he consumed in futility, and their years in fear. That's a pretty deep thought there. Their days were consumed in futility, emptiness, no substance, years of fear. Again, keep in mind that one of the key themes of the Passover and this period of time is to banish fear, not to have our years consumed in fear, and our lives consumed in fear. And yet, God was merciful to them. It says in verse 38, He, being full of compassion, forgave their iniquity, and did not destroy them. Yes, many a time, He turned His anger away, and did not stir up all of His wrath. For He remembered that they were but flesh, a breath that passes away, and does not come again. He understands that about us. Again, is part of the reason He extends to us His mercy. Verse 42, it says, They did not remember His power the day when He redeemed them from the enemy. The key was the Holy Spirit.

Not fully understanding that it was God's Spirit that was so important.

Do we remember His power? Do we remember and recall the power of God to call us, to bring us to the point of salvation? Do we recall the joy that we had in finding the truth, becoming a part of the Church, responding to that calling, if it was something that we kind of grew up in, as many of us did, and coming to a point where we began to understand what it was. We said, this is my Church. This is my calling. This is my life, not just my parents or some other adult. That was God's Spirit moving with us. And it is the Spirit of God that gives us that power to remember His works and to overcome and to deal with anything in the past, if we're willing to give it up. Because the past can be a serious problem if we look back too much from the wrong perspective, because it can regulate us, form the way we are. Ask yourself, how do you look at your past? Any part of your past? Is it with fear? Nostalgium? Is it with rose-colored glasses?

Is there a yearning, sort of like the Israelites, to kind of recapture something? Sometimes, as we get older, we fear losing our youth. And it causes sometimes people to make some pretty bad decisions when they are faced with mortality or years and recognize certain things. How do we look back? Because it's the key to how we look at the future. Every once in a while, a movie, a song, or something else will pop things into our mind that will cause us to remember things and good or bad, the wallow in the past. A great deal of self-help and popular psychology is based on looking into the past and people trying to come to grips with certain things. And there are certain things that need to be dealt with and worked through at various times, but eventually they have to be covered over and moved on. So much of what passes for self-help or popular psychology doesn't always help people to accomplish that in the right way. God's calling, the blood of Jesus Christ, repentance, basic things that again echo it during this time of year, are the ultimate, if you will, in self-help in the sense that they are things that we can choose to take part of and to yield to. And with God's help, we can move away from anything in our past. We can put it so far behind us that it does no longer influence us. Then it becomes something that we look at and understand for what it was and we move forward. Whatever it may be, some type of abuse, some bad experience, there are ways to move beyond that. The past is no place to live. A big key to any examination of the past is the key of forgiveness. And it may be another person. Sometimes the forgiveness may be something just that we give to ourselves. We decide to forgive ourselves and recognize that that too is right, godly, necessary, and we move on and not look back at the past as something that we want to hold on to. You know, the well-known story of the book of Genesis of Lot being drug, literally it seems, out of Sodom and Gomorrah. We all know that story where God came down the angels and first visited Abraham, then went to Sodom and basically pronounced that judgment was coming and gave Lot and his family the opportunity to come out. And they, again, just had to be literally drug out in Genesis 19 as they came out of Sodom. And the instruction there was to not look back. Don't look back. Well, you know the story of Lot's wife. She did look back, and she was turned, we are told, into a pillar of salt. That's one of those fantastic stories of the Scripture.

The idea of God destroying two cities with fire coming down out of heaven as he did itself is fantastic enough. But the idea of a human being looking back and being turned to a pillar of salt. Now, you go over to Israel today, and they'll take one of the tours. They'll drive you past a spot on the Dead Sea where they say that's Lot's wife. There's kind of a rock formation, and I've been by it once or twice, and for the life of me, it doesn't look like a human being. I think that if you catch it from a particular angle with the sun just right, you might be able to imagine that it looks like a human being. But it's one of those things that you will see pictures of or hear about of, I guess it's an assault-like pillar on the shores of the Dead Sea that's not that uncommon. They call it Lot's wife. The problem is it's not anywhere near where Sodom was, and of course it's not Lot's wife. But if you look at the Scripture for what it is, the event did happen. Long since faded from the scene, but it did happen because in Luke 17, Jesus Christ referred to Lot's wife in the context of part of his teaching. In Luke 17, verse 32, he said, remember Lot's wife. Jesus didn't recall something that didn't happen like that in the context of his teaching if it hadn't been true. So it was true. It did happen, but he uses it to really teach us the example in Luke 17. Remember Lot's wife, verse 32. Verse 33 says, whoever seeks to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it. In the context of what I'm talking about here today, I think we could take verse 33 to mean that if we seek to save some part of our life that we shouldn't need to save, that's better left in the past, that's better just left buried in the waters of baptism or under the blood of Christ, leave it. Don't try to save that by mistaken identity, nostalgic longing, or thinking that you might ever return because he said you will lose it.

And the life that he's really focusing on is eternal life or spiritual life, but whoever loses his life will preserve it. There are certain things that are just better left and lost, better left behind and lost. And each of us have to examine that, come to understand that, and move into the future, move forward into the future. See the past for what it is, view it through God's eyes. We seek to preserve our past. The bad aspects of it, we can jeopardize the future. We can properly deal with the past with the help of God's Spirit, then we can preserve our future and move ahead and build on a solid foundation. That's what we have to do. You and I are products of a unique time and human experience, a society that has produced us.

We can look at the story of Lot and draw the scenarios of what that world was like, the immorality, the hostility toward God, and recognize that even though it was a part of an ancient world, that it was something we really can't even imagine how people lived and what they did, but they had the same human sins that we have today. And the problems that are fundamental, it's just a little bit more modern, technological, glitzy, prevalent, perhaps, and in front of us. 2 Timothy chapter 3 tells us the type of society that has produced us. 2 Timothy chapter 3, verse 1.

Paul was moved to write and placed this in the context of the last times.

And it may be that God's Spirit was moving him to put emphasis on just a more prevalent impact of these particular problems in time. It's not that they were not part of Paul's world or the world of Lot and Sodom. But it says, Know this, that in the last days perilous times will come. For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanders, without self-control. We're going down the list. I'm not going to read all of those here. But it's quite a list that talks about our world today. Talked it was his world too. But we could put stories right out of the Drudge Report, right out of the headlines of today onto each one of these and illustrate people who are lovers of money. Lovers of themselves, right on down the list. There are so many modern examples that if we, in fact, we talked in one of our editorial meetings a couple, three years ago, we talked about a series of that for our publication just to show what Paul was talking about from a modern perspective and put a modern face to that. And it would be very instructive. Nobody's got around to doing it yet, but it would be very instructive. But this is the world that we've come out of, and are coming out of. This is the world that formed and produced us. And in that sense, we've been just like Lot, or his wife, victims of circumstances beyond our control. But there's no need to defend it.

We're told to put it under the blood of Christ and not look back, because that's exactly what God has done with it for us. In Ephesians 2, Ephesians 2, verse 1, it says, "...you he made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins." That world of 2 Timothy 3 that produced us, produces a way of death, where we were dead in trespasses and sins. But we've been made alive through the blood of Christ, through baptism, through this calling to the truth that we have. "...in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works and the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lust of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others." But God has called us, because in verse 4 it says, "...he is rich in mercy because of his great love, with which he loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved, and raised us up together, and made us set together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus." That explains the whole process that has brought us to where we are today. To be able to begin to walk away from the past, and to focus on that, and to understand it, and to move into the future, which is where he wants us to be. Here in chapter 3 of Ephesians, verse 16.

Let's begin in verse 14. For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that he would grant you according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might through his Spirit and the inner man. That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you being rooted and grounded in love may be able to comprehend the depth with the saints, what is the width and length and depth and height, to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge, that you may be filled with the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, that's the power of the Holy Spirit. That's the power that back in Psalm 78, Israel didn't catch on to and missed in their dimension of understanding. To him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus, to all generations, forever and ever. God's Spirit is the power to walk away from the past. Gives us that ability to do so and to handle it and to deal with it in the right way and to move away from where we are and with what God is doing. That's the dilemma that is the challenge that we find ourselves in. Retooling behavior, retooling thought patterns, not repeating the same mistakes.

We've all seen in some depiction, some form, the work that psychologists do with rats in a maze where they put a piece of food at one end, they put the rat in at the other end, and eventually the rat knows his way around. He knows there's food someplace. After walking down a few dead ends, he eventually makes his way to the cheese or to the bread or whatever it is.

And they can repeat that with the same rat, and the rat will get better at doing it because he learns not to go down the dead ends. And he'll eventually get to the point where he'll go make a straight line without any diversions straight to the piece of cheese. And he'll do that over and over again because he's learned the habit, learned how to do it. It's just kind of a common, those common lab things that they do with a lab rat. They also let know that they can take that rat after a while, after he's learned that behavior, and they will remove the cheese, but put the rat down in there, and he'll still go there. But after two or three times, whatever, and there's no cheese, he won't go. He'll just stay at the gate and won't move because he knows there's no reward. And it's too long, and he figures out that the food's not going to be there, so he stops going. He alters his behavior accordingly. And the moral is, there's a difference through that between rats and people. The rats stop. People don't.

Sometimes we keep traversing the same paths for no gain, and we don't learn the lesson. But there's variance of that story that teaches the lesson. The point's very real. We get into the roots. And we keep doing the same thing, experiencing the same results, and never learning the lesson because of habits from our past. Habits that aren't always good.

Desires that we've not been able to properly grapple with.

We keep fighting the past with the same responses. We don't make any progress. We have to learn new responses. Rats can learn that. Human beings take a little more time.

And that's why we have God's Spirit. That's why we go through these holy days, and particularly the daisylin, love, and bread are so vital in so many different ways, certainly as we focus upon the death of Christ, His life, our response and obligation to put out sin, which is what these days teach us along the many things in Christ's life within us. All of these are deeper things. If there is one thing we should learn as we move through, especially this time of year, as I said earlier, we have rituals. And those are important rituals. Washing feet, taking bread and wine, putting out sin, endeavoring each day to eat some unleavened bread, to remind us that we're to put Christ in us, put His life within us, not just seven days, but all the days of the year. That's a ritual. By itself, it doesn't do anything. Bending over and washing our feet year after year at the Passover service by itself doesn't make us humble.

It's to teach us that we are to be humble. There has to be something else that we move on to. Eating the bread and the wine, drinking the wine, by itself doesn't make us better.

We have to move on to something else. Cleaning out our homes doesn't make us righteous.

Never made anybody righteous. But we do it because it teaches us something else. We have to move on to that something else as we go through this. That something else is a changed life. That something else is all that the scriptures point us to in terms of how to live with God's Spirit actually changing us. We can continue on here in Ephesians 4. Look at verse 17 to illustrate this.

It says, Again, we put off the old. We're told to put out the old leaven, to keep the bread of sincerity and truth. We put off the former conduct. That's what we move to. And the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful of us, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind. That you put on the new man which was created according to God in true righteousness and holiness. In true righteousness and holiness. That is what we are to do.

Going on to verse 25. Therefore, putting away lying, let each one of you speak truth with his neighbor. For we're members of one another.

Be angry and sin not. Do not let the sun go down on your wrath, nor give place to the devil. It's interesting how this reference to giving place or opportunity to Satan is put right here next to anger. So, anger, there's an anger that is of a righteous nature at a certain degree. And there are times to be angry at something that is unjust. But never let it take us to the point of sin and certainly don't let it linger because anger can work and develop in one's life and heart to the point where it really becomes a problem.

Verse 28 says, let him who stole steal no more. But rather, let him labor, working with his hands. What is good that he may have something to give who has need. But no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth. But what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the ears.

I don't know of any time when any of us wouldn't benefit from an examination of the words that we speak in private, in public, the words that we write, and how much grace they give or lack of.

That's something for us all to think about because it says, whatever comes out of you, the words that come out of your mouth should build up. That it imparts grace to the ears. You know what that means? It makes people feel good.

It makes people feel good. It gives them joy, encouragement, courage, help, direction. But nothing more difficult than this grace that makes them feel good. When did you last get a phone call, a letter, or an email, which is the preferred form today, it seems like, and you didn't feel good? You didn't feel good after reading it?

I get a lot of those. I get a lot of those. Being on the Council of Elders, you get a lot of those. Sometimes you read something and, I don't feel good. I don't feel good. To the point where I don't even want to open my email.

And you've had those. And that's what grace is. Grace is imparting something, giving something, a feeling to people that builds them up. Edifies. This is what we're to put on. I've made my share of mistakes with emails, words, so on, just like anyone else. And having been on the receiving end of a lot, I redoubled my efforts to make sure that my words, more often than not, impart grace.

And I have made a concerted effort to not compose emails in haste and in anger. I always make sure I know who I'm sending them to and what I'm saying.

As we all know, with emails, you can just fire back a reply. And once it's out there, it's gone. I mean, it's in cyberspace. If it's on your Facebook account or an email, it's out there. And I've said many things about that. But I have redoubled my efforts, and I'm not perfect in this, to make sure that I try to send out words that are filled more with grace than with anything else. And sometimes when I've received certain emails from individuals who take me or others to task, and if I choose to answer them at times, I try to do so tactfully and point out their error or their misunderstanding or whatever it may be. And on occasion or two, I will tell people what you wrote. I don't see any grace in that. And I will just make a pointed effort to say, I see little grace in what you wrote.

Because there's plenty of instruction in the scriptures that just this and Colossians 4 is another place that I'm thinking about, that our words should be seasoned with salt, or with salt seasoned with grace. And I sometimes have made a point just to go ahead and if sometimes it's been a particularly flaming and insensitive and remark, I will just say, there's no grace there. And an attempt to at least point out something from the scriptures about how we are to communicate. So these are things to think about in terms of how we are to what we're supposed to be putting on, walking away from. Verse 30 here, it says, Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.

Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor... I love that word clamor.

To me, it talks about just the chattering class, the yammering that can go on, and people can get caught up in clamor. It's kind of a group-think, herd mentality approach toward a situation. Don't get caught up in the clamor of an issue, of a movement. Be able to distance yourself. Let all that and evil speaking be put away from you with all malice. And be kind to one another. Tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you. This is what we focus on, the forgiveness of Christ through sacrifice this time of year. And there are so many applications of that for us to look at and to move on. These days are a learning tool for us, to examine ourselves, to see what we've learned, what we need to learn. It's a part of the forward movement of God's purpose and His plan as we move forward into the future and move on to the deeper things.

I can read here what you could pull up from other scriptures, Psalms, Proverbs.

These are the spiritual principles that we are to move on to as we keep the days of Unleavened Bread, as we keep the Sabbath, as we keep any part of God's law. Sometimes religion is given a bad rap because of do's and don'ts, commandments.

When we had a focus group a couple months ago as a part of this project we were involved with on the branding project down in Cincinnati. And one night I went down with a focus group. They brought in some people and they put some of the issues, religious issues, and teachings of the church and everything in front of this group. We were behind the mirror watching it. One of the things that stood out, especially we had an older focus group and we had a younger focus group. And in both cases, but particularly among the younger ones, 20s, 30s, there was an aversion toward anything dealing with commandments.

We put certain religious wordings and terminology up there. People don't like the word commandment today. Now how do you then write and reach, project the message of the gospel to an audience when they have certain built-in aversions to what are really the basic things of the truth? How do you talk about the Bible without talking about the commandments?

Well, if you're talking with an unchurched, brand-new audience, and actually these younger ones, they were not unchurched. Many of them were part of churches. But people didn't like commandments.

They would reword a statement and take something like that out. They didn't like the word sin, either. That's our time. That is the mindset of people today. How do you reach them with the message of the gospel to bring them along to where they will eventually would consider that? That's a challenge. That's not impossible. But it is where people are. These things are not what people want to deal with. That's why I say religion and the Bible gets a bad rap. Because if you look at it only as matters of commandments or do's and don'ts and things of that nature, yes, there are things that we're told to do and not to do. Yes, there is a strict law of teaching from the Scriptures. But God's Spirit and the practice of the ages and the years that one, a converted mind, should come to as we go through our years of experience in the truth and in the church should eventually take us to the point where we move on to the deeper things behind them.

We continue to keep the Sabbath. We continue to obey God's law. We do what we do, whether it's a specified ritual or practice, from the obedience to God's teaching, his law. We do what we do because we know there's something beyond that.

There is righteousness. There is grace. There is forgiveness. There is kindness.

There is this new man that we read about here in Ephesians, this new person that we can become.

We do all of those things to remind us of how we are to live and what we are to eventually become.

It becomes a part of us as we move into the future.

One must always approach God and the Bible and what is laid out before us as a way of life, as a way of life that gets us someplace to a different person, a better quality of life. It's like Mr. Johnson was speaking, I guess, a couple of weeks ago when he was here, David Johnson, and he was talking about, you decide that this is how you're going to live, regardless of anybody else, in terms of this way of life. You come to a point in your mind where you realize, this is the way I will live. This is not just a good way, it is the good way. And if there was no one else, and if there wasn't a church, this is how I would live, because we have proven that it is the way to the new person, the different person than we were when we were that twig that was bent, or whatever it was in the past. With God's help, we can straighten the tree.

We can straighten that tree and be more upright, be more perfect, if I can cannibalize the language like that. Better people, good people, people that are ministering grace to one another and banishing all that is detrimental. Philippians 4 And verse 6 Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your request be made known to God. Put away anxiety, worry, and concern.

Spending too much time on the past, spending too much time on any person or any subject or any particular problem to the point of being frozen, immobilized, out of fear. Put in the past, transfer to God, and move on. Let Christ live His life within us to deal with our past, moving in us to help us face and overcome the sins of anger and bitterness, doubt, fear, lust, or greed, whatever it might be. Learn to live in the present rather than the past. Philippians 4 And this is the way by which, then, the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

John 14, we read on the Passover night, Christ said, Peace I leave with you, be you not afraid. It is one of the signal teachings of the Passover experience, to banish fear.

We can learn to do that and take on that peace of God. The Pass is all understanding. It will guard our hearts, will guard our minds through Jesus Christ. And as we are taking that bread into our lives, symbolically, through these days of Unleavened Bread, it teaches us that. And moves us to that point. Then we can have God's peace governing our heart. It's a peace that will not let us be afraid.

So what has God taught you thus far during these days? What have you learned?

I hope it is a greater measure of looking at the past and moving away from it.

Because, like the old baseball pitcher said, don't look back.

Somebody might be gaining. Where we want to go is into the future. Because it's in the future is where God is.