The Two Ways of Unleavened Bread and of Leavened Bread

Thank you so much. What a beautiful song. Very nicely done. Very good introduction, too, to my sermon. So, appreciate that very much as well. Did you know, I find it so interesting that the symbols that we are partaking during these seven days of Unleavened Bread are actually two symbols, and they actually represent two ways of life. You have the days of Unleavened Bread, symbolized by matzo like this, doesn't have any leavening. And then we have regular bread, which people are eating throughout the week. They have not come to the knowledge of the truth.

But actually, from those two symbols, you can understand God's plan of salvation. Because when God reveals something, it is so deep. It is so profound. Actually, it's like going warp speed ahead of society and history. We are so blessed to understand these wonderful truths. But unless we're not keeping them, if we are not keeping them, we cannot understand these things.

That's why God says, blessed is he who is not just a hearer of the Word, but a doer of the Word. He will be blessed. Let's go to 1 Corinthians chapter 5, because here we see a command that Paul is following in the Corinthian church. Christ had died probably some 20 years before. And so, what were they teaching at this time? Way past Christ being resurrected, going up to heaven, the brethren receiving the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the organization getting set up.

So, 20 to 25 years before the Apostle Paul wrote this. And so, what were they doing? Were they keeping Easter? Were they keeping some of these other popular ideas? Notice in 1 Corinthians chapter 5, in verse 6, he says, your glorying is not good. We're getting puffed up and vain in certain ways, which he addresses later. He says, do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump, indicating in a spiritual way that allowing a little bit of sin eventually it will spread throughout the mind of that person?

Verse 7, it says, therefore purge out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened. For indeed Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us. Therefore, let us keep the feast. In particular here, the Feast of Unleavened Bread, they had already kept the Passover, or they were about to keep the Passover, but then he says, 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.

When I read this scripture, I always remember a comment mentioned in the Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th edition, where it mentions about Easter. In page 828, it says, there is no indication of the observance of the Easter festival in the New Testament, or in the writings of the Apostolic Fathers. So here you probably have about 200 years. Nobody ever mentioned about keeping Easter during that time. He says, the first Christians continued to observe the Jewish festivals, though in a new spirit, not like the Jews were doing, but now in a new spirit, they were keeping these festivals, as commemorations of events of which these had been the shadows.

Thus, the Passover, with a new conception added to it of Christ as the true Passover lamb, continued to be observed. So here you have the historians from the Encyclopædia Britannica admitting that this is what the Christians did, and that there's no hint of Easter during those first 200 years of Christianity.

Those were introduced later. And so, in 1 Corinthians 5, 6-8, we see the New Testament Passover and the New Testament Days of Unleavened Bread being kept. And if you focus on verse 8, it says, Therefore, let us keep the feast, not with all leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. So he's emphasizing that this has a new spiritual dimension. Those that have God's Spirit that received it at Pentecost and the generations afterwards would be keeping these feasts with a new spirit.

And what does it mention there when it says that don't keep the feast with the old leaven of malice and wickedness? Let's just think because these are profound thoughts that God inspired the Apostle Paul to write.

Now, malice is an attitude of heart when you harbor malice, yet wickedness is the action that follows malice. First of all, he's saying is don't have the attitude of malice.

The attitude of malice is described as the inward thoughts and feelings a person has. And wickedness is the outward manifestation of that attitude. As the believing Bible version, the Bible in basic English, it says evil thoughts and acts. See, those are the two things that we're not supposed to have in our hearts. Wrong attitudes which lead to wrong actions. And so Paul is saying if you're going to keep the feasts properly, it's not just carrying it out and having matzos every day and avoiding eating leaven bread. See, it goes far beyond that. It means keeping your minds with avoiding wrong thoughts, wrong feelings, wrong attitudes. And then it won't produce wickedness, which is basically the breaking of God's laws, actions that produce that. And notice the contrast.

So the way of leaven bread is having malice, the wrong attitudes, and the wrong actions. Wickedness. In contrast, look at the way of unleavened bread, of sincerity and truth. Now, is sincerity an action? No. It's also an attitude. Thoughts and feelings. And if you have the right thoughts and feelings, that's something genuine in you. You're not making it up. You're not imitating. And as a result, what are the actions? They're going to be truthful actions. They're going to be something that they're real. People can see that because they can look and say, look, there is sincerity. There is the right heart involved in this. As the word study Greek dictionary mentions about truth, truth is the reality of the thing. The reality or the manifested essence of a matter. So truth is what actually comes out. Truthful actions or untruthful actions. It's going to be seen, but it can be traced back to wrong attitudes, wrong thoughts that we harbor that produce the wrong actions. And we can see how this can be applied to our beliefs. For instance, Easter. It was invented with malice. It became a counterfeit to God's holy days to the Passover and Unleavened Bread. For the first two centuries after Christ, people were keeping the Passover, days of Unleavened Bread, except for some that fell away and started exchanging them. But we see here the problem that you begin with the wrong attitudes. It is against the Old Testament commandments and of Jewish Christianity. And along with Jewish and Gentile Christianity, they were keeping the right holy days.

They were not substituting the Passover and Unleavened Bread for Easter.

So you have wrong motives, and those produce wrong actions, which is keeping Easter instead. That's an affront to God. You are obeying a lie which is against everything that the Bible teaches, because God never substituted His holy days for these pagan-type holy days. Of course, people are now with Easter hunts and all this with rabbits producing eggs, which they don't. They produce live young. And all of these wrong ideas.

We can also apply it to the commandments of God. Do we do them in sincerity and truth, or is there in sincerity? You can keep the Sabbath in an insincere way. You can just do it outwardly. Maybe a young person will say, Well, I'm doing it because my parents are doing it, but I don't have personal belief about that. Well, in that case, they need to mature until it's something internalized. It's something that we have because we want it, and we have proved that's the way to do it. We can see people that have kept the Sabbath outwardly, but not inwardly. Not with sincerity. Oh, and some close to 30 years ago, we had some that started saying, Well, the Sabbath is no longer holy. It's not necessary. We can start keeping Sunday and things like that. And some people went along and left the church over that. So you can say, Oh, I was keeping the Sabbath, but I really didn't want to keep it. I just felt kind of obligated. And this other people were doing it. This was my tradition. But when they had a chance to opt out, they jumped from the seventh day, which is holy, to the first day of the week. Also, we can go to the fifth commandment says honor your father and mother. But you can do that sincerely or insincerely. See, it depends on the attitude and thoughts. Maybe a person inwardly does not truly respect it. And outwardly, it's a show. But inwardly, they are not truly honoring their father and mother. It has to be inward first with our thoughts and feelings, and then outwardly, it does show to respect. We can do that with all of the commandments. Of course, I don't have enough time for that. But there are these two ways of life that can be described by the unleavened bread. This one, humble, keeping God first in your life, not getting puffed up, not having the outward look that's so attractive. No, we just keep humbly, obeying, and keeping God's commandments in the proper way. And then the other way of life is the one of leavened bread. It looks good, it tastes good, but it's filled with leaven. It's filled with malice and wickedness, the wrong way of life. And we see that more and more in today's society. Notice in Galatians chapter 5, Galatians chapter 5, we see the struggle between these two ways of life. Galatians 5 verse 16 and 17, it says, It says, I say then, walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh, and these are contrary to one another. Two ways of life inside us, struggling to dominate so that you do not do the things that you wish. And human nature is carnal and very powerful. And you can yield to that. So it's a warning. There's a battle between the world and ourselves between these two ways of life. And we see this pattern of the two ways of life. One is the unleavened, that you're not contaminating yourself with the wrong values and the wrong actions and thoughts. But you're keeping yourself humble. You don't see yourself highly or important. God is the one that is important. We see this throughout the pattern, throughout Scripture. Before the beginning of creation, we can say there were still these two ways. The unleavened way and the leavened way.

And to do justice to this message, this is only going to be part one. Because I cannot, it's too big of a subject, so this is part one. Next Friday, God willing, I'll give you part two. Get the beginning part of these, the two ways of unleavened bread or of leavened bread.

Let's look in John chapter one. We're going to go way back, even before the beginning of creation. John chapter one. This is before God created the universe, created the laws that govern the universe, created the dimensions of an expanding universe. And it says in verse one, and we're going to read all the way through five. It says, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. How many people do you see here? Divine beings, two. And yet, they share the common name of God as the head of what describes them. It says, verse three, all things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. That means that the Word was uncreated, just like God the Father, because it says everything else was created by Him. Well, if He didn't exist, He couldn't have started anything, right? He would have had to be created first. That would have excluded what He created, but it says all things were created by Him. Verse four, in Him was life, and the life was the light of men. Here's another analogy to the way of unleavened bread. It's characterized by light. It's pure. It's clean. It has right motives. It has right actions. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. And so the way of unleavened bread is the way of darkness. It's what the world is filled with it. Many of them don't realize how they got into that position of following the wrong God. They're following the God of this world who says He has deceived the entire world. And so even before the existence of the universe, we have here God the Father, God who became the Father, and the Word who became Jesus Christ. And they were of the way of unleavened bread, of purity, of perfect righteousness.

Darkness represents malice and wickedness. And they revealed the great purpose of life. And so let's look at a bird's-eye view of the meaning of the Passover and unleavened bread.

Let's go to 1 Peter 1. 1 Peter 1. In verse 17.

And philosophers through the ages have tried to understand what the purpose of life is, of how to live it. Philosophers have debated the issue, but God's Word reveals it to us. 1 Peter 1. verse 17. 1 Peter 1. verse 17. It says, And if you call on the Father, who without partiality judges according to each one's work, conduct yourself throughout the time of your stay here in fear. This is a passing stage that we're in. Knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things like silver or gold from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ as of a lamb without blemish and without spot. He was totally unleavened. There was not one sin that he ever committed during his lifetime. He indeed was foreordained before the foundation of the world, talking about the universe. But was manifest in these last times for you. Another parallel scripture. Let's go to Revelation chapter 13. Revelation chapter 13 verse 7.

It says in verse 7, It was granted to him to make war with the saints and to overcome them. And authority was given him over every tribe, tongue, and nation, talking about the coming beast, power. Verse 8. All who dwell on the earth will worship him, and that's along with a false prophet, whose names have not been written in the book of life of the lamb, slain from the foundation of the world. So that's one of the fundamental truths that we need to understand. And that is that from God's plan, he knew there would exist these two ways of life. And what was the great purpose for creating mankind? Genesis 1, 26.

And 27. It says, So he created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him male and female. He created them. So both male and females are made in the image of God. They've got the same spiritual potential to be spirit beings. And so that's why God created the earth. He didn't create it just to populate it with monkeys and fish, and that that was going to be the end result.

No, it was because it was part of creating man in an environment that would be beautiful and that would entertain mankind. Notice in Hebrews chapter 1, in verse 10. So God created us in his image, but of course we are not right now. I'm sorry, Hebrews 2.10. Here it shows us the ultimate purpose for creating man. It says, For it was fitting for him, talking about God the Father, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, and bringing many sons to glory, to make the captain of their salvation, talking about Jesus Christ, perfect through sufferings.

So bringing many sons, and the term here means children. It includes men and women. It says, To glory. So the purpose for our creation is for God one day to swell and multiply his own family. He's going to share that divine nature with all of us. And that's why the whole universe was created and what we are here on earth doing. So God the Father and Jesus Christ, they had all the time in the world to think through every detail and prepare for every contingency to carry out their plan of salvation. Now God doesn't improvise.

Now the how, why, the what, where, and when to do it, God had to reveal to us. And so I just can go over the how. I'll go over, God willing, we discussed the why as well, but the what, where, and when we need to do it the next time around. So the how is the goal, which was to create physical beings that were independent entities with free will.

For them to carry this out, they couldn't create perfect, godly character on their own and just program beings to be that way. No, they would have to freely choose between these two ways. The way of unleavened bread or the way of leavened bread. God did not want programmed robots or automatons that would just automatically do the right things without any choice.

That was not the purpose. So in order to do so, God would have to create the possibility of following the way of leavened bread, the way of evil, the way of malice and wickedness. He created the possibility that people could choose that way. Now to permit the possibility of evil and sin to temporarily exist as it does today, along with pain, suffering and death, God knew it was necessary for a greater good.

Notice in Romans chapter 8 verse 18, and this is very comforting. We know people are suffering today and all kinds of diseases. We went through two years of COVID and lost dear friends and brethren. But we remember in Romans 8 verse 18, when we look back, it says here, For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. So God knows there's temporary pain, suffering, temporary death.

But he says when all of his plan is carried out and a person is glorified, they're going to look back and say, Well, what happened to me as a physical being is not anything important. It's not something to just anguish about. He says, For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. Again, better translated, children of God. So the whole creation, this is what it was created for, for the glorification of these children of God.

For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope. So there are all kinds of things right now that are necessary evils for people to have a choice so they are not obligated and forced to just follow God's way of unleavened bread. They have to choose so. Sometimes they choose wrongly. They learn. They get burned. They touch that stove. God said, Don't touch it. You touch it. You get burned. Oh, I'm not going to touch that anymore.

Okay, well, that's a way of learning. God's way of unleavened bread. You learn. Don't challenge God. Don't disobey him. It's always going to work out for the worse if we do so. Notice an example. I do have time for this in Genesis. Genesis chapter four.

We see how God works. And, of course, the two trees in the Garden of Eden can also be symbolized. The Tree of Life as the way of unleavened bread and the way of the knowledge of good and evil as the leavened bread. It might taste good, but it's laden with sin and eventually leads to death.

But here's a very concrete example in Genesis chapter four. And it says here in verse five, when they brought the offering to God, it says about God, He did not respect Cain and his offering. And Cain was very angry and his countenance fell. See, his attitude was changed. Now he got rebellious. He let anger get the best of him.

And so the Lord said to Cain, Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen? Why have you gotten into this wrong attitude, this bad attitude? And then God says to him, If you do well, hey, if you change over to the unleavened bread, if you start obeying me and keep respecting me, he says, Will you not be accepted? God is going to bless him. He says, And if you do not do well, if you keep that wrong attitude, which brings about wrong actions, like the murder of his brother Abel, sin lies at the door. So you see, you are getting into this potential area of evil. Yes, you're going to taste that temporary evil. God's going to remove it one day, totally. But in the meantime, we have that choice. And then he says, And its desire, talking about its choosing, is for you, not God. God's not going to live Cain's life. He could have said, Oh, Cain, I don't want you to kill your brother. I'm going to put shackles on you so you can't do anything against it. That way I'll prevent you from killing your brother. No, God said, no, you are a free will agent. You are going to decide which way of life you're going to take. And so God said, and its desire is for you. It's your choosing, but you should rule over it. Don't yield to sin to the wrong way.

And as you know, in the next verse, now Cain talked with Abel, his brother, and it came to pass when they were in the field. So in a sense, Abel just meekly and obediently was following God, and Cain took him out there in a solitary place. That Cain rose up against Abel, his brother, and killed him. So we see evil thoughts, evil attitudes will produce evil actions.

But God knows that this is just temporary. There is a greater good in the end. Let's go to Revelation 21 as we finish. Revelation 21, verses 1-5. I'm actually revealing the conclusion of the story. So this is how it all ends. Who wins? The path of 11 bread or the path of 11 bread? Revelation 21, 1-5. It says, Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. This earth is going to be completely renovated. Also, there was no more sea, so all of that has evaporated. Then I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. So beautiful. And I heard a loud voice from heaven, saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God, which is that New Jerusalem, is with men. And He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God. Talk about the family of God. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. So all the suffering, all the pain, all that temporary pain that was produced will be all satisfied by God. There shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away. They were temporary. And yes, we go through a lot of temporary pain and suffering. But we have to look at the big picture in mind that God's way of unleavened bread is going to triumph. And God will comfort us. And as it mentioned in Romans 8, 18, that one day we'll say what we went through is not worthy to be compared with the glory that will be shown. And then to conclude, verse 5, then He who sat on the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. Yeah, there won't be human nature anymore. Satan will not be around. And He said to me, Write, for these words are true and faithful. Yes, the truth about God's actions and how He is carrying it out with Jesus Christ and how this first day of unleavened bread, symbolizes this way of life, not the world. Which, brethren, are we going to choose for the rest of our lives?