Two Distinct Instructions in Exodus 12 for God's People

Well, good afternoon again. Thank you, both of you, who performed both to the group and art, who performed special music. Very beautiful, and indeed, two special musics are better than one. That was really neat. Thank you so much for that.

Well, I have come up here without my sermon. Maybe that's divine providence? Would you see it, my red thing there, the honey of my sermon is down there? While she's looking for that, there's one other thing that I actually forgot to add. Thank you, darling. One other thing I forgot to mention, and it was even in my notes, I got so excited about the ordinations, I forgot to say this. There's one other thing that I'm really excited about, and that is, as I look over the congregation, I see another generation of individuals in their 30s and 40s who are going to make outstanding deacons, deaconesses, and elders to serve the next generation here in Cleveland. Your service is acknowledged. Your service is appreciated. And I continue to encourage you to serve and love God's people, as your experiences will make you wonderful leaders in the future to serve the Church of God. So I wanted to mention that as well. Well, here we are on the first day of Unleavened Bread, and there's probably no better place for us to start than Exodus 12 and verse 14, if you will turn there with me. Exodus 12 and verse 14. There are actually two distinct and different instructions given to God's people in these verses. One instruction is one that we've actually done quite well in the history of the Church of God. We've done a good job at.

The other one, not so much. But first, let's read the verses. Exodus 12 and verse 14.

It says, So this day you shall be to you a memorial, and you shall keep it as a feast of the Lord throughout your generations. You shall keep it as a feast by an everlasting ordinance. Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. On the first day you shall remove leaven, that's the Hebrew word, by the way, a sea oar, which means yeast cake. You'll remove yeast that's causing the bread to rise.

Yeast cake from your houses, for whoever eats unleavened bread from the first day into the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel. On the first day there shall be a holy convocation. On the seventh day there shall be a holy convocation for you. And we are here on the first day, having a holy convention, many of us gathered here together, to worship God on his appointed day, on his holy day. No matter of work shall be done for you, but that for which everyone must eat, meaning you can prepare meals, that's okay.

That only may be prepared by you. Verse 17. So you shall observe the feast of unleavened bread on this same day. I have brought you out, brought out your armies from the land of Egypt. Therefore you shall observe this day throughout your generations as an everlasting ordinance. In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at even, you shall eat unleavened bread until the twenty-first day of the month at even.

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 in the land. You shall eat nothing leavened in all your dwellings. You shall eat unleavened bread. So two distinct instructions were given if you wanted to remain part of the covenant.

And they were these. Number one, an individual is to remove leaven or leavening agents by extension from their dwellings and not eat leavened bread products for seven days. That's number one. The second instruction as an individual is to eat unleavened bread during the festival period for seven days. Both are symbolic and essential biblical teachings.

So let's take just a minute to look at them a little more closely. First, the one that I mentioned, an individual is to remove leaven from their dwellings and not eat leavened bread products for seven days. We saw here it said in verse 19, for seven days, 11 shall be found in your houses. Verse 20 said, you shall eat nothing leavened. A beautiful biblical principle here. Yeast is a fermentation agent. In bread it puffs up. It swells the dough. It causes bread to rise and become puffy.

Yeast is symbolic of the corruption and the evil that expands within the carnal human mind. Qualities like pride and arrogance and attitude of superiority or an attitude of being a know-it-all are all symptoms of having a puffed up, inflated ego. Over many years, I found it kind of amusing how individuals would become bloggers on the internet.

Right? Blogging about the church. And they start out, they make some general comments, and then what they let go of. That usually moves on to them getting some comments from others and a little bit of praise. And a few years go on, then they become very dogmatic. And then a few years go on, and they're starting their own churches. So what happened? They grew from just simply making a few comments to the point of thinking that they had the authority or the ability to start their own churches.

Let's see what Jesus said in Luke chapter 11 and verse 52. A minuscule amount of yeast permeates an entire batch of dough, symbolizing the insidious spread of evil, of pride, of vanity. And this is how sin works in our lives. Here Jesus was confronting the Pharisees, and the lawyers. The lawyers were the authoritative interpreters of the Mosaic law. Oftentimes they would be called teacher, or they would be called doctors of the law, and they were kind of jurist. They would make proclamations, they would make decisions on what in the law was right or wrong, and what was good or bad.

And Jesus had just tangled with the Pharisees, and by the time we pick this up in verse 52, he's also having a conversation with the lawyers who were offended with what he had said to the Pharisees. He said, Woe to you, lawyers, for you have taken away the key of knowledge. You did not enter in yourselves, and those who were entering in you hindered. He's talking about them responding to the gospel. Verse 53, And as he said these things about them, the scribes and the Pharisees began to assail him vehemently, and to cross-examine him about many things. So they became verbally abuse. They became aggressive towards Jesus Christ himself.

Verse 54, Lying and wait for him, and seeking to catch him in something that he might say, that they might accuse him. In the meantime, when an innumerable multitude of people had gathered together so that they trampled one another, he began to say to his disciples, first of all, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is telling someone to do something and not being willing to do it yourself. It's a double standard. We have all kinds of phrases in our culture being two-faced, and we have all kinds of analogies in our culture about hypocrisy.

But the Pharisees were very good at lecturing and telling people what they should do, but yet they wouldn't do it themselves. In Matthew 16, verse 12, he also called leaven the doctrine of the Pharisees. He likened the doctrine of the Pharisees to leaven. They're teaching because it actually got people to focus on rules and got them to not think of God and to think of having a relationship with God.

They distorted the Scripture so that people thought their relationship is based on what they do instead of having a personal relationship with God. The Pharisees and the lawyers thought they were superior to others, yet they didn't observe or do themselves what they demanded other people to do. In another confrontation with them, Christ stated this in Matthew 23, verse 27. These are pretty strong words. He said, Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!

For you are like whitewashed tombs, which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness. Even so, you also outwardly appear righteous to men. By the inside, you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness. So they told everyone else how they should keep the law, but they didn't keep the law themselves and privately, personally. They told everyone else how they should act, but they weren't acting that way themselves.

So we can see here, even by the statements of Jesus, how leaven is insidious, how it puffs up, it creates pride, and pride unfortunately leads to other negative things. I won't have you turn there. A few of these scriptures I would have had you turn to. I will just refer to so we can get through most of the sermon today. Galatians chapter 5 and verse 6, Paul said, For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything but faith working through love, you ran well, he says to the Galatian come, you were doing so good.

Remember the context is that someone came in from the outside and said you had to be physically circumcised to be saved. Now, number one, remember I mentioned earlier that the New Covenant, men and women have equal membership in the New Covenant. Where does that leave women? If someone comes in and says, in order to be saved, you must be circumcised. Aren't they implying you have to be a male?

Paul wouldn't put up with that. Paul wouldn't stand for that. He said, you ran well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth? This persecution does not come from him who calls you a little leaven, leavens the whole lump. And false doctrine, like people's pet gospels, can quickly spread, not only inside of a person. They get a root of bitterness, and then that grows into anger, and that grows into someone who becomes a literal enemy of the Church of God.

And I've seen that far too many times in my walk with Jesus Christ. But also, people can acquire pet gospels, which is something we will not endure in this congregation. Are people walking around with their own pet gospels? Because that can quickly spread, and it can disrupt an entire congregation. Well, let me ask you this question. The Galatians were Gentiles. How would they have known the symbol of leaven, unless Paul had taught them? He said, a little leaven leavens the whole lump to the Galatians. How would they have even known that analogy, that symbolism, of what leaven represents spiritually, unless Paul taught the Gentiles about the days of unleavened bread?

1 Corinthians 5 and verse 1. Scripture, we read a few weeks ago that many of us are familiar with, but we'll look at it again. 1 Corinthians 5 and verse 1. The Corinthian Church was struggling with many issues and problems. One of them was they were allowing someone who was committing incest with his stepmother to fellowship with the congregation. And again, Paul had had enough. And he's going to use a number of symbols about leaven and the days of unleavened bread, because this was written in the springtime.

It was written during or just before the days of unleavened bread. So he's going to tie together the symbolism, again, to Gentile Christians, those who resided at Corinth. Verse 1. It is actually reported, there's sexual immorality among you, as such sexual immorality as is not even named among the Gentiles, that a man has his father's wife.

He says, you've crossed the line. Verse 2. When you are puffed up, again, he's going to talk about leavening in just a minute. They're going to get it. They understand exactly what he's talking about. You are puffed up and have not rather mourned that he who has done this deed might be taken away from among you. This was a Gentile congregation that knew nothing about the symbolism of leaven representing sin unless the Apostle Paul told and taught those Gentile Christians about what leaven represents. That's the only way this would have made any sense to them. Verse 6. You're glorying, again, that's vanity. You just thought they were so tolerant. They were so modern. Your glorying is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven the whole lump, in other words, a little sin like this says that this is acceptable, and then it'll grow, and there will be more people committing sexual immorality because, after all, if it's okay for this person, how come it's not okay for this person? He's saying, a little leaven leavens the whole lump, therefore purge out the old leaven that you may be a new lump since you truly are unleavened. They were unleavened in two ways. First of all, they either were preparing for or during the days of unleavened bread. They had removed leaven from their homes. Number two, they were a congregation of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ within his congregation, his righteousness made. That congregation is flawed as it was, unleavened in the eyes of the Father. He says, for indeed Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us. And we kept the Passover just a couple of nights ago. 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. You know with what Jesus Christ said to the Pharisees, they kept the feast. But he said they were hypocrites. He said their doctrine was distorted. You see, they kept the days faithfully of unleavened bread, but they kept the days of unleavened bread with malice and wickedness. Paul was saying, we don't do that. We need to keep the feast with sincerity and truth. He said, I wrote you in my epistle not to keep company with sexually immoral people. So again, I want to emphasize what Paul's telling these Gentile Christians 25 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, when we were told that everything was done away. He writes to six years after the ministerial conference in Jerusalem that occurred at 49 A.D., again, a time when many want us to believe that the law of Moses and everything regarding the Old Testament was just done away. Well, someone forgot to tell Paul.

Paul had taught these Gentile Christians what the symbol of physical leaven means. That's the only way any of this would have made any sense to them. Otherwise, it would have been like him speaking gibberish. We continue to follow this example because we know that leaven represents sin, hypocrisy, and evil, and we removed leaven and leavening agents from our homes because we understand that we need to continue to be sanctified, though Jesus Christ is our Passover and our sins are forgiven. That is wonderful, and that's great. Now we have a new calling, and we need to continue to walk like disciples, and we can need to continue to grow and be sanctified. Sanctification is the process of change, of being set apart, the process of becoming holy. So that is the first of the instructions given that we read in Exodus chapter 12.

Now I'd like to mention the second. You know, the first thing that I just explained, the church has done rather well over the years. For over 40 years, I've heard the church mention sin a lot. Sin, repentance, fasting, beating yourself up, soul searching, self-examination. Yeah, we've done that pretty good. But there's another instruction there in Exodus 12 that frankly we have not done a very good job of. And here it is. An individual is to eat unleavened bread during the festival period for seven days. As a matter of fact, you know, of those verses we read, verses 14 through 20, you know what's mentioned first?

You know what's given priority? It's not about getting leaven out of your houses. That's not given priority. That's not mentioned first. What's mentioned first in verse 15, seven days you shall eat unleavened bread before anything is said about removing leaven from your homes. Before anything is said about not eating leavened bread for seven days. It also says, Ron reminds us again in verse 18, you shall eat unleavened bread until the 21st day of the month at even. What does this statement mean? Well, it's symbolic of accepting the fact that it's not good enough simply to put sin out of our lives. Brethren, if we only strive to put sin out of our lives, we will not succeed. It doesn't work. When you put something out of your life, you have to replace it with something positive and something fulfilling. There is a void there. Nature abhors a vacuum. And when you go to the effort to remove something undesirable out of your life, you need to replace it with something positive because if you don't, the evil will return. I guarantee you that void will be filled. Either that same problem will come back or something very similar to it will come and fill that void in your life.

So again, I want to emphasize the fact that there is a void there when we do the necessary things to look at our lives, to examine our lives, to get this hidden sin, to get the crumbs out of our lives so that we can be closer to God. Many people over the years that I have known have made the mistake of doing a wonderful job emphasizing getting out to leaven. And they would take their carpeting of their cars out of their cars. And they would take their vents off of their homes and vacuum inside of the metal venting. And they would take toothpicks and get the crumbs out of the linoleum cracks in their carpeting. And they would do a meticulous job making sure they got all the physical leaven out of their homes knowing that it means that we need to get sin out of our lives. But we can do that, brethren, and forget what the first command is in those verses in Exodus 12, beginning in verse 14. And that is, seven days you shall eat unleavened bread.

Eating unleavened bread pictures us absorbing Jesus Christ into our lives that literally change who and what we are. You know, when we baptize someone, we don't just plunge them in the water, which represents dying to sin. We just don't plunge them into the water and hold them under the water for 30 minutes. We bring them out of the water and coming out of the water represents beginning a new life, becoming, what Paul would say, a new creature in Christ. Let's go to John chapter 6 and verse 48, something that we read on the Passover, but I think it is worth mentioning again. John chapter 6 and verse 48. Again, this is a few years before the Passover, the final Passover, the Jesus observed with his disciples. And I believe with all of my heart that as a church, we've done pretty good with emphasizing sin. But I want to make this very plain. You can think about your life, you can repent of sin, you can fast, you can beat yourself up, you can feel terrible, you can study about sin, you can fast another day, you can beat yourself up. But if you don't fill that void, what you did is meaningless because there won't be any genuine change. And that's what God desires to see in us. Jesus said in John chapter 6 verse 48, I am the bread of life. Again, that wonderful I am statement used to show that he had a personal relationship with Moses in ancient times. I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness and are dead. This is the bread that comes down from heaven that one may eat of it and not die. He's talking about himself. 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 give is my flesh, which I give for the life of the world. At his crucifixion, his fleshly body would be ripped and torn and pierced for the sins of all humankind. And on that very Passover itself, before that occurred, his crucifixion, he gave them unleavened bread and said, Take, eat. This is my body. It represents Christ living in us. Yes, it certainly represents his broken body, but it represents the fact that Jesus Christ wants to live within us. Notice, if you'll turn back to John 14 and verse 23, what he said later on that evening before he was arrested and crucified, John 14, verse 23, Jesus answered and said to him, If anyone loves me, he will keep my word and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. Notice that those who accept the new covenant are given a special, unique gift. The presence of both the Father and the Son enter the child of God through the power of the Holy Spirit. That's Christ in us. That's what he desires. That is what fills the void that must be filled.

He said in John 15, verse 14, You are my friends, if you do whatever I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing, but I have called you friends for all things that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.

If you'll turn with me to Romans chapter 8 and verse 10, let's explore this a little further. Romans chapter 8, verse 10.

If Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin. Well, that's not real happy news, is it? But the fact is, is every time I look in the mirror, I realize that I'm aging. And this physical body that I have, there is a clock ticking on me. I realize that I'm aging. And this physical body that I have, there is a clock ticking on me. And due to being physical and living in a physical carnal world, my body someday will be dead. And yours will too. He says, and if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, but the Spirit is life because of righteousness. By the way, that's the righteousness of Jesus Christ, not our own. Verse 11, but if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the cross of the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Jesus Christ, or he who raised Christ from the dead, will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who dwells in you. So what does God tell us about ourselves after conversion, and what should be our attitude as we discover our need to change? How does God look at us today, and how should this change make us feel differently about him and about ourselves? Again, traditionally, we are very good at pointing out sin. We are very good at encouraging everyone to examine sin, to get the leaven out of our homes, meticulously, in some cases. We've done a great job at that, but what we haven't done a great job at, traditionally, is what Paul said in 2 Corinthians chapter 5 and verse 17, if you'll turn there with me. 2 Corinthians chapter 5 and verse 17, therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, old things have passed away, behold, all things have become new.

And on this first day of unleavened bread, if you don't see anything new in yourself, if you don't think you're a new creation, if you don't feel energized like you're a new creation, then that may be the reason for the days of unleavened bread. That's the reason why, symbolically, we are reminded for seven days to eat unleavened bread.

I'm going to read these verses from the translation God's Word.

Please follow with me whatever translation you have. Whoever is a believer in Christ is a new creation. The old way of living has disappeared. Can we say that? Honestly? A new way of living has come into existence. God has done all this. He has restored our relationship with Him through Christ and has given us this ministry of restoring relationships. In other words, God was using Christ to restore His relationship with humanity. He didn't hold people's faults against them, and He has given us this message of restored relationships to tell others. By the way, that's the gospel message. Verse 20, therefore we are Christ representatives, and through us, God is calling you. We beg you in behalf of Christ to become reunited with God. God had Christ who was sinless take our sin so that we might receive God's approval through Him. End of quote. At conversion, we have that opportunity to be a new creation. So what should be new about us? When we received God's Spirit, we were able to acquire, if we so choose, if we're building that relationship, to have an added dimension to our existence. We can become a unique spiritual being with a fresh attitude. Do we have fresh attitudes? Or have we fallen back into the woe is me, the doldrums? You know, I remember seeing Ziggy cartoon years ago. There were two planets in Ziggy's universe. Ziggy's over here on this planet. This planet said, all the fun is here.

Is this kind of how we feel about life?

Or do we realize that we can have a new attitude, a fresh attitude about life, a new approach, a new purpose? Because it's not about us. It's about what God is doing for this world. And we have the opportunity to be His children, to be His servants. We have the opportunity to focus on the right things and not just focus on me, myself, and I, all three of us. We can make that choice. And when we make that choice, it changes our life.

We can have a new direction to guide us every day. That old way of living, which was selfish, was centered around me, and was destructive, and was detrimental, is intended to slowly disappear. God doesn't expect miracles. He knows the change is a process, not an event. But are we continuing to grow in that process? Are we closer to God this year, these days of unleavened bread, compared to a year ago, five years ago, ten years ago? During the days of unleavened bread, we remind ourselves of our need, not just to get sin out of our lives, but we should remind ourselves of our need to make sure that Christ is in us, that He's in us by studying His Word. That He's in us by studying His Word through the Gospels. That He's in us by daily prayer. That He's in us by meditation and thinking about spiritual things. That He's in us by public worship when we come together with brothers and sisters of like mind, and we sing praises to God in His Holy Day, and we worship together, and He smiles, and He's pleased with what He sees His children in His Holy Day. That's another way that we have Christ in us, in the ways that we serve in our own communities. Do we reflect that Christ is in us, or we know that in our neighborhoods is, you know, the person that does nothing for the community, the person we never see?

How do we have Christ in us, and how is that being reflected? Paul wrote in Galatians chapter 6 and verse 6, for in Christ Jesus neither circumcision or uncircumcision avails anything but a new creation. Paul says that's what's important, not these endless debates on non-essential issues and subjects. The main issue is that we have now become a new creation, and that should change everything about how we view the purpose in life. He's saying stop focusing on physical actions. He's saying that spiritual attributes of being a new creation is what's really important. In my 44 years in the Church of God, I've known some people who focus on doing lots of physical things to impress God. They're doing, always doing something. Some law, some rule they're doing, focusing on doing and doing and repenting and fasting and doing and doing. Brethren, we are not human doings, we are human beings, and we need to have Jesus Christ who should be in us.

And that can be reflected to our families, to our community, to our workplaces, to our church.

That can literally change this congregation, and it can change our own lives in a beautiful and in a positive way. So, what should be our perspective when we repent of our sins and when we strive to get sin out of our lives? I think it's an important question because we've usually done a very good job at picturing and understanding that leaven means we need to get sin out. But we haven't always understood the power behind real repentance. And here's the power behind real repentance. If you have truly repented, please stop living in guilt and shame from something that happened in your past. Stop reliving those episodes over and over again. As Stephen Covey once said, reliving the past is failure reinforcement. So stop thinking about the negative things. You're only going to beat yourself up more. You're only going to feel poorly again. You're only going to depress yourself and discourage yourself about reliving your past mistakes. Guilt-driven people are manipulated by their memories. They allow the past to control their future. They often unconsciously punish themselves and sabotage their own success. They sabotage their ability to wipe the slate clean and start something new. And instead of releasing their pain through forgiveness, they rehearse it over the hurts, the pain, that episode, that rerun over and over again in their minds. They end up hurting themselves. They end up hurting those that they really love. But being a new creature means really letting go of the past. As I have said before, you cannot change history no matter what mistakes you've made, no matter how much you've let loved ones down, or you may even feel that you let God down, you cannot fix it and change it. It's the past. It's done. Over. Completed.

But today, we can change and influence tomorrow. By how we act and how we think, and how we process things today, we can create a better tomorrow, a more positive future, or more fulfilling future, because that's what God wants for us. Let's go to Exodus chapter 14, and verse 10. Exodus chapter 14 and verse 10. This is an interesting Scripture, because it's how God wants us to be. This is interesting because Moses makes a statement and tells Israel to do something, and God contradicts Moses. Moses says, do one thing, and God says, no, don't do that. Do something else. And in this beautiful story, his true history, of the Israelites crossing the Red Sea, is the message that God wants to leave for you and I today on this first day of Unleavened Bread. Yes, we need to examine our lives, and yes, I hope we repent it, truly repent it, and I hope we look for those deep-hidden sins that oftentimes are hard to discover. And I know that sins can be very difficult to root out, and sometimes we're immune. We're blind to our own sins. For many years, I've used the analogy of God working with us. We are in a pitch-black room, and God has the blind drawn, and there's bright sunshine through the window. And if God ever just pulled that and that blind went up all at one time, whoa! We would just be blinded by the brightness, the righteousness of God. We couldn't handle it. So what God does is he just lets a little bit more light in at a time, and our eyes adjust. And we see that sin. We see through his righteousness and his life the darkness that's in our hearts and in our minds. And when we deal with that, he opens the blind a little bit more, and a little bit more, and a little bit more. Because God wants us to continue to be sanctified and to change and to grow.

Let's take a look at this story here in the book of Exodus, chapter 14 and verse 10. It says, And when Pharaoh drew near, the children of Israel lifted their eyes, and behold, the Egyptians marched after them. They were very afraid. And the children of Israel cried out to the Lord, and they said to Moses, Because there are no graves in Egypt, have you taken us away to die in the wilderness? Why have you so dealt with us to bring us up out of the land of Egypt? Is this not what we told you in Egypt, saying, Let us alone that we may serve the Egyptians? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians that we should die in the wilderness. Well, there's a people really appreciative for all God did. Let's see. He made plagues in Egypt, and Goshen was safe. People who were in slavery, he performed miraculous miracles to bring them this far, and they forgot about it already. And Moses said to the people, Do not be afraid. This is what Moses says. Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will accomplish for you today. For the Egyptians, whom you see today, you shall not see again no more forever.

And Moses says, Stand still! And you know what? If we work really hard to get the sin out of our lives, but we don't make the effort represented by eating that unleavened bread. If we don't make the effort to put Christ in us, if we don't fill that void, you know what? We're standing still.

We're standing still in our lives. And that's what he tells them here. Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord. God will do it all for you. God will do everything. Just stand still and watch. Verse 14, But the Lord will fight for you, and you shall hold your peace.

But God had a different opinion. Here's what God's opinion is of this matter. In verse 15, And the Lord said to Moses, Why do you cry to me? In other words, what are you talking about? Quit whining. Tell the children of Israel to go forward. Don't stand still. Don't look backward and relive your past. Don't long for the good old days and the way it used to be. Look forward. Be a new creature in Jesus Christ. The lesson here is not to look back towards Egypt, not to stand still and expect that God do everything for us, but to look forward with zeal and enthusiasm, knowing that we are forgiven, yet we are favored by God.

In this instance, Moses was wrong. He told them to just stand still and watch and wait for God to do everything. But God said, Don't just stand there. Get moving. Do something. Now, obviously, and I say this every year during the days of Unleavened Bread, if you have an addiction or live a lifestyle perversion, it displeases God and it can keep you out of the kingdom of God. There is no compromise. There is no ifs, ands, or buts about that. If you do anything that controls you, that you are addicted to, it can keep you out of the kingdom of God. You should be the master of your own destiny, not allow substances or anything else to control you, to use you, or manipulate you. And in the case, if you can't deal with it, I encourage you to get physical, spiritual help, get counseling, to help clean up your life if it's something serious, because that's one purpose of the days of Unleavened Bread, to remind us not to get complacent, not to become lax, but to deal with the sins in our lives.

One other thing I'd like to mention as we conclude these services in the first day of Unleavened Bread, if you'll turn to Luke chapter 8 and verse 15, I'd like to encourage you to realize that change is a process, and to have patience with God and patience with yourself. Over the years, I've seen many people get off the detour road and never saw them again. I've seen many people crash and burn. I've seen many people who were the supernovas in a couple of years. They were preaching. They were, wow, the glitz and glamour and the flare and lights. And then they just faded away and you never heard from them again. We need to have patience with God. We need to have patience with ourselves. Luke chapter 8 and verse 15, I'd like to remind you what Jesus taught us in the parable of the sower. He said, but the ones that fell on good ground are those who, having heard the word with a noble and good heart, keep it, that is, keep the word of God, and bear fruit. They don't stand still. They don't just focus on how bad they are. They don't focus on sin.

They focus on replacing sin with the fruit of God's Holy Spirit, otherwise known sin as the works of the flesh, as Paul taught us. Keep it and bear fruit with patience. We have to have patience with God because sometimes he may not hear our prayers the way we want him to. We need to have patience with what he's doing in our lives. Maybe you wanted that job and it was given to somebody else. Maybe you're living in a housing condition and you've got, how come I can't live in a nicer place? Maybe your car is breaking down. Maybe your car is the major cause of air pollution in the state of Ohio and you'd like to have another one? And God, help me! I've been praying about a new car, a better car for weeks. They keep God's word and they bear fruit with patience. That's what it says. Luke chapter 21 and verse 16. Growing and changing is a lifetime commitment. God is patient with us and we need to be patient with him and with each other. Again, I've seen a lot of people depart from the faith because they lacked patience over many things. Don't ever forget that our Christian walk is not a sprint. It's a tough, grueling marathon. When I was in high school, I was fortunate enough to win some awards and to win some track trophies because I ran something called cross-country. I don't even have cross-country in high schools anymore. They may have changed the perimeters, but I ran track. Frankly, compared to cross-country track was sissy stuff.

In track you might run. I ran a half mile in track. That was sissy stuff. In cross-country, you ran two and a half of the most gut-wrenching miles at full speed. If you didn't barf—I guess that's the best word I could come up with—at the end of the finish line, you didn't run hard enough. They would take us to golf courses and they'd put up little sticks.

There would be like 200 of us trying to run in a six-foot path. You've seen marathons, something like what you see in marathons. They would shoot off a gun, and for the next two and a half miles, we would run until we threw up. We would run until our sides hurt. Brethren, that's not a sprint. That's a marathon. And that's what our calling is. It's not about doing good for two years. It's not about being involved in the church for 10 years. It's about enduring to the end.

It's about remaining faithful, even when God seems distant, even when it seems like God isn't hearing your prayers. He is hearing them. He's not distant. He just wants to see how we'll react. He wants to see what we're made of, the stuff that we're made of. Luke 21. Verse 16, you will be betrayed even by parents and brothers and relatives and friends, and they will put some of you to death. And indeed, that did happen in around 60-70 AD. That certainly happened to the early believers in their own Jewish community. And you will be hated by all for my name's sake, but not a hair of your head shall be lost by your patience. Possess your souls.

So as we begin to celebrate God's feast during the next seven days, indeed, let's take an honest and heartfelt look at our lives. What are we hiding? What attitudes are holding us back from our potential? Why haven't we sought help for those sins that we've struggled with for many years? Why have we lived in denial? Likewise, let's allow the Spirit of God to reignite our hearts and minds with the mind of Christ. Let's rekindle what it's like to be a new creature in Christ and make sure that our attitudes reflect positive, can-do, godly attitudes. Allow the fruits of the Spirit to mature inside of us and displace. Fill the void that is there as we replace the works of the flesh with the fruits of the Holy Spirit. I wish you and yours a wonderful feast of unleavened bread. Let's make this the most exciting and positive and beneficial feast that we've had in our lifetimes. We are truly blessed to have had our eyes open to understand these days as taught in the Old Testament, as followed by Jesus Christ himself, as taught by Paul to the Corinthian brethren. We are truly blessed to understand what leavened really means, symbolically, in a spiritual way. And we are blessed to understand what it means that we eat unleavened bread for seven days. Have a great Holy Day!