Unleavened Bread of Sincerity and Truth

Thank you again to Carrie and Liz for that beautiful special music. Unfortunately, you have to leave this coming Monday, but we hope to have them back in the future. In the Scriptures, we have a place that describes the feast of the Passover and the days of Unleavened Bread in a beautiful and meaningful way. It is found in 1 Corinthians 5, verses 6-8. I'd like to read it to you. It says, Your glorying is not good. Do you not know that 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. For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us. 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. God was inspiring the Apostle Paul to show us that this wasn't just a physical ritual, it was also a spiritual festival. It had to do with our inner person and not just an external ceremony. And so, as the Apostles became more and more aware of how these feasts in the Old Testament were shadows of what was to come, what Jesus Christ would bring to these feasts at that present time and also in the future. That's why Colossians chapter 2 verse 16 called these feasts shadows of things to come. Not something in the past, but because they pointed to Christ. And of course, Christ has not fulfilled these feasts totally, because in His first coming He just was able to accomplish certain parts of this meaning. But when He returns, it's going to have much more fulfillment then. But they are shadows of that reality that is coming in the future. Just like before a person is seen, many times you see around the corner, the first thing you see of that person is its shadow. And you know that shadow is accompanied by something physical, a body. And so the shadow casts first this glimpse of what is coming.

And so it is with these feasts. As a matter of fact, the famous Encyclopedia Britannica, the most authoritative encyclopedia in the world, wrote this. It says, the first Christians continued to observe the Jewish festivals. It should be Old Testament, because it wasn't Jewish. It was in the Old Testament festivals. Though in a new spirit, as commemorations of events of which these had been the shadows. So they no longer kept it, just like the Old Testament, which pointed to Christ. They were keeping it in a new spirit, as we do also. But because now Jesus Christ, who is at the center of all seven of these feasts, it doesn't mean you do away with the feasts. It has much more significance than ever before, much more. In the Old Testament, they really didn't know exactly what all these feasts pointed to.

And many of the rabbis came up with speculation, which they still have their own ideas about. But Christ showed what these feasts all really mean.

So we are going to look at why the Apostle Paul called this feast of unleavened bread the feast of sincerity and truth. Because those are not physical things. Those are spiritual elements. We have to learn how to keep them, not just physically, but spiritually in our lives.

Now, the Corinthians were about to keep those feasts. That's why he said the Passover, Christ is the symbol of it. And these feasts that are coming up, you're putting out the leaven. But he says, but remember, this all has a spiritual meaning as well. And they were not keeping it with the proper spirit. So Paul was concerned they weren't learning the spiritual significance of the feast of the days of unleavened bread.

He believed that at large or in general, the church at Corinth wasn't being sincere and truthful in the way they were doing things.

And that is a terrible condition to come into the days of the Passover and of unleavened bread. That's why Paul was so concerned about this. So he says that the feast, in order to keep it properly in our inner person, is a feast where you need sincerity. That's the word he used.

The Greek word Hely-crenaia, e-i-l-i-k-r-i-n-e-i-a, actually comes from two words.

Hely, h-e-i-l-e means sunlight from the rays of the sun. That's why they even had the word Helyus. That's where the sun, the word for the Greek for the sun, Helyus, which means sunlight, and then crenaia comes from the word judging. So it was judging something using the sunlight. And they had to hold up to see if it was the genuine thing or not. Back here on last Sunday, we had a chance to take the dense moors to see Hollywood, of course, kind of obligatory. They'd never seen it, so I did. Liz, could you take out of my bag? There's a little bit of wax that I brought with me. And in Hollywood, we went to the Hollywood Wax Museum. And that was Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum. In the case there, sorry. My props didn't bring my props properly this time around.

So we went to the Hollywood Wax Museum. And I had visited Madame Tussaud's...there we go. That's the one. Thank you. I had visited as an Ambassador College student at the end of my junior year in the summer. I got a very cheap, chartered flight for like $250 to fly to London and back. Can you imagine that? And so I was able to visit London, went to Bricketwood Ambassador College there, and I went to Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum. Well, I was so impressed because the figures looked so real. And now we went to the one they have here. And I could not believe how they improved upon it. If they looked real, what, some 40-plus years ago, now they've perfected this art. And the Denzmor's were very impressed because you could be next to them, take photographs, and you couldn't tell virtually that they were not real. They could just, if they started walking you here, you wouldn't be so surprised. They got the eyes and everything just perfect. But the point is that all that wax, all these figures that they had...oh, back in 1925, this was a French lady that actually, during the French Revolution, was ordered to take wax masks of these aristocrats that they were going to cut their heads off. And so she became very expert in making wax figures. And she finally had a whole crate full of these figures, and she'd take them around all of London and went to Ireland too, and other parts of France. And they finally settled down to London, where they have the famous Madame Tussauds wax museum. But the point was, in 1925, they burned down. And all these beautiful wax figures of all the kings and all the royalty and all the important people, they all melted! They became little wax, like this little piece of wax all melted. So all these famous statues just melted away. They appeared to be the real thing, but the fire showed they were just made of wax. And wax looks good until it is exposed to heat. This is something that Romans knew back in Paul's day when they purchased their marble or stone statues. And sometimes these artisans would make this beautiful statue and a little bit of a chisel, and they'd pop, and something would crack. And they think, oh, I spent six months on this thing. What am I going to do? Well, they got a little bit of this wax, and then they'd get marble, white marble powder, and they'd mix it up, and they'd fill in the crack. And you couldn't tell. And they'd sell this beautiful statue to the persons. And what would happen? The person would put it out there in their patio, and that sun would hit it. And eventually that wax started to melt, and the cracks would show. And the Romans would say, this is a statue, con sera, which means with wax. It wasn't what it was built up to be.

It had cracks. It had flaws. And so what they would do is, after getting wise to this, the people before they bought the statues, they said, I want to see it here in the sunlight.

And then they would check it all out in the sunlight, and carefully, and then they would say, yes, this is a statue, sin sera, without wax. This is the genuine thing. This will last. As a matter of fact, that's where we get the word sin sera. And if you look in the cyclopedia, some will say, well, there might be some other derivations. But from the Greek, it meant to hold something out to the sunlight. And the Romans had that idea, let's watch this thing for a while, to hold it to the sunlight, to see if it is something clear, truthful, and transparent. So the word in English, sincere, means something true, transparent, genuine, and unaffected. It's not somebody that's faking their attitude. When you sign a letter, sincerely yours, you are saying that, quote, my words and affections are genuine and true. I'm not fooling you. In other words, I won't melt and start running as wax does under heat.

Barkley, the commentator, adds the following illustration.

In the Middle East, the bazaars have shops that are small and dark. An object, be it made of stone, wood, or cloth, looked very nice. But a smart shopper would first take it out to the light of the sun, where many times it would reveal defects that would never have been detected inside the darkness of the store. And so Paul was saying, look, we've got to keep this feast with sincerity and with truth. And truth is very similar. It comes from the word alethis, true, and it comes from two words, a, which is something like not, and let this, which means to conceal or hide. So this is something unconcealed. It's not hidden.

The Greek idea of truth is of having it out in the open, where it can be shown in the sunlight.

It's the reality of things. Somebody's not faking it, is not deceiving anyone. So this is a lesson for all of us during these days. We have to learn to be sincere.

First before God, and then before men, before people. And as we know, sincerity is not a very commonplace virtue. It never has been, and today it's rarer than ever before. Seeing somebody that's sincere, that has a mask on, that is not acting out a different attitude. Notice in Hebrews chapter 10 verses 22 through 25, Hebrews chapter 10. I have here another translation as well, that's even clearer, but let's go to Hebrews chapter 10 verse 22.

Paul writing to the Hebrews says the following.

He said, let's start in verse 22, it says, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. The Good News Bible has it this way. So let us come near to God with a sincere heart and assure faith.

With a heart that has been purified from a guilty conscience and with bodies washed with clean water. It goes on to say, let us hold on firmly to the hope we profess, because we can trust God to keep His promise. Let us be concerned for one another, to help one another, to show love and to do good. Let us not give up the habit of meeting together as some are doing. Instead, let us encourage one another all the more, since you see that the day of the Lord is coming near. So God wants us to keep these feasts in a sincere way of getting rid of sin, not like the Corinthians, who were tolerating sin in their midst and even boasting about it, about how tolerant they were. And we need to have the right motivation about this feast for appearances can deceive. God wants to see us not in some dark corner of a shop, but out in the open and in the sun. Notice another scripture in Ephesians chapter 5, verse 8.

Ephesians chapter 5 and verse 8.

Paul, talking about his own life, he had to change, and so do we. It says in verse 8, For you were at once darkness. Yes, we lived in this world deceiving and being deceived.

But now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light. Learn to tell the truth. Learn to be what you talk about and what you describe yourself. It says, For the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness, righteousness, and truth, finding out what is acceptable to the Lord, seeking His will, in other words, and have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them. Or it says in the margin there, Refute them. For it is shameful even to speak of those things which are done by them in secret. But all things that are exposed are made manifest by the light, for whatever makes manifest is light. So this feast is a time to purify ourselves and to learn to be more sincere, not to lie, not to deceive. You can have two different habits. You can get into the habit of deceiving and lying and covering up, and pretty soon it just is a natural way of doing things. Or you can learn to say the truth. Sometimes it's hurtful. Sometimes it's difficult, but believe me, it is the best. And saying the truth with humility goes a very long ways. People forgive you if you made a mistake. But if you cover up, you try to say, no, that wasn't what I meant, or no, that was something else, you're living this deceitful way. You're not being truthful. The light isn't there. One of the most terrible scenes here in the Scriptures in John chapter 3. To me, it made a big impact because a lot of people use this section, but they forget to read the rest of John chapter 3 in verse 16. Oh, that's a wonderful scripture. But let's continue reading down John chapter 3 verse 16. It says, For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world. It's not there against us. He's there to save us, rescue us, help us. But that the world through him might be saved. He who believes in him is not condemned, but he does not believe is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten son of God. And this is the condemnation that the light has come into the world and men loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. So they do it late at night and where there's darkness.

But it's hard to do that at 12 noon, right? People don't go excess drinking or excess cavorting at 12 o'clock at noon. But you can do that late at night. There's darkness. There's a different mood there. But he who does the truth comes to the light. That is, these may be clearly seen that they have been done in God. God's working through them. We know no one's perfect, but we have to come to the light.

So why are we here? Do we really need these days? I'm very grateful for this lesson about the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. And I keep these days with a thankful heart. I need them! We have seen in our recent past many were doing these things out of routine. They were doing it mechanically. They weren't looking at the deep spiritual significance. And so something that just is put on like clothing can be cast off. But if you have it inside you, if you have inculcated, these principles, you're not going to remove it because it's not something exterior. You have to remove the interior. Do you mean to say I'm supposed to leave the lessons of this feast, of being sincere and being truthful? Is that what I'm going to cast out? No way! No man can force a person that's keeping these days in that way from doing and observing them.

And so this is why God wants us to keep these days in a sincere and truthful way. Now Joshua had to face the insincerity and untruthfulness of the Israelites in his day. And actually you can see the parallel between 1 Corinthians 5 that actually goes back to Joshua chapter 24 in his last speech to the Israelites. Let's go to Joshua chapter 24 verse 14. Notice the parallel, the similarity of expression here in Joshua chapter 24.

It's one of my favorite verses. I've had to use them a couple times in my life. Joshua 24 verse 14, he says, Now therefore, saying to the Israelites, Fear the Lord, serve him in sincerity and in truth. Same words that Paul used for the feasts. And put away the gods which your father served on the other side of the river and in Egypt. Serve the Lord. And if it seems evil to you to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve. Whether the gods which your father served that were on the other side of the river. Mentioning here, usually the river Euphrates, or the god of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. So he says, look, if you don't want to keep God's way, you don't want to keep the Sabbath, you don't want to keep God's feasts, choose. You want to keep the feasts of the gods of the Egyptians? They were the ones that had the first Christmas Day, four thousand years. Way back before, two thousand years before the time of Christ, they were keeping the the the nativity of the sun god because that December the 24th was the shortest day of the year at that time. Now it's changed a bit, a couple more days later, but at that time it was the shortest day of the year. The Egyptians were very good astronomers, so they had it as the 25th was the birth of the Egyptian sun god. And eventually this got into Christianity. Instead of worshiping Christ, you're worshiping Ra, the sun god, in a person's ignorance. Check it out in an encyclopedia. What the birth of the Egyptian sun god is, December 25th. And so what Joshua was saying, look, I don't know what you're gonna do. He was looking at God's people then, and he said, look, you go ahead and choose. You want to go and go this way? You want to keep Easter instead of Passover or Days of Unleavened Bread? That's up to you. But then he says at the end here of verse 15, he says, but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. We've made our decision. This isn't something about how many do this or not. If two people are keeping God's feasts and keeping what God says in the Bible, that's worth all the thousands of people meeting somewhere else. To God, those are the ones that he honors because they're keeping his word. This isn't a suggestion book. It's an instruction book. It's a book of commands, not of suggestions. But God gives people free will. They can choose what they want, but they also will pay consequences. And so the first lesson then to reiterate is we have to first of all be sincere. First before God and then before men. The second lesson is that we have to follow the truth of the Word of God. We cannot become leavened or adulterated with wrong teachings because God says, here's my word. He doesn't say, I've got another book you can go to and get the instructions. This is my word here. This is what I've authorized. This is what I have given the stamp of approval. Christ said, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. So the second lesson is that we have to follow the truth of God no matter what. Notice in 2 Corinthians 4.

2 Corinthians 4, verse 2, some people have had to leave father and mother. Some have had to leave.

Their own kin and whatever to follow God. It's not easy. Christ said that if you can't carry your cross, which means the sufferings and persecutions, you cannot be my disciple. 2 Corinthians 4, verse 2. He says, but we have renounced the hidden things of shame, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully, but by manifestation of the truth, commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God. You have to figure out if this is truth or not.

Don't take my word for it. You check it out. See if this is what God's word said. The most important thing is to prove it to yourself. I proved I was in the right church basically by asking four questions. First, does God exist? Have I proven God exists? Well, I have proven God exists, studying what nature is, that we have to have a first uncreated cause to have brought everything about. We were walking through a little park right there behind our house and looking at just the marvels of all the ducks and all the lily pads and you look at all of these things and someone created that with design, something much greater than all of us.

We didn't create ourselves. Did somebody come up here and say, oh yeah, I made myself. I took a test tube and poured all my stuff and out came me. No, we didn't choose it. Somebody made us. Somebody much wiser and powerful.

And like I said, I've proven it beyond a shadow of a doubt. And if I've proven that God exists and that He is, well, the second one, where do I find God? Well, I've found that He is the God of the Bible. The Bible is the only book that doesn't contradict itself. Again, the term unity is the thing that I always teach the kids.

It's unity. The first proof is the unity of the Bible. It doesn't contradict. It starts in Genesis. It has the same truths like tapestry all through it to the end of Revelation. It has the same laws, same principles. It has all of these stories of people that kept God's truths and those who broke God's truths. And you see, it's consistent. And it has no myths.

It has no mythology behind it. The Greeks had the God of policy, you know, who was supposed to hold up the earth. Well, you know, astronauts have gone around the earth. They don't see anybody, huge giant. No, they had it wrong. But the Bible tells us there in Job 32, verse 6 and through 8, he says, God holds the earth on nothing. He holds the earth up on nothing. What do you find? There's nothing.

It's gravity that holds the earth in its place. There was no other book in the past that was able to predict the truth there. And then you have I, which is, it is intact. It has come to us through all of the Old Testament and the New Testament copying. And we have here an authentic copy of what was inspired.

We have over 5,000 manuscripts in the New Testament of Greek and Latin, and it corroborates the New Testament text. And then we have the Old Testament text, which was carefully copied by the scribes, where they counted every middle letter to see if everything was written out, how many letters were in each page, if it had to have the same number of letters throughout it before it was approved.

And so it is intact. I don't have to worry that, well, somebody wrote this and kind of messed it up with the copying, and now it's not gen—no, it is the genuine thing. Then comes the T, which has to do with the kind prophecies that God gave prophecies with specific times that they would be fulfilled, and they have been. There are over 70 prophecies about Jesus Christ and what He would do. Very careful detail.

No Bible, no other book besides the Bible, can predict things and actually happen time and time again. And then the last of this acronym, UnityY, yields results. I've seen the fruits. I've seen the results. It works. Just put it into practice. So anyways, that's what it tells us here. We have to follow the truth of God.

Truth is something certain, reliable, real, and accurate. And Christ warned His disciples of the leaven of religions, of religious leaders, and followers as well. We have to avoid filling ourselves with the wax or the leaven of this world, the falseness. We have to get rid of that, just like we get rid of that leavening during this week. Notice there are five types of leaven we are warned about in the Bible, and each holds a lesson. So the remainder of this message I'm just going to cover. The first was the leaven of Corinth, which we already covered, which had to do with allowing sins to pervade and pretend they are not there, not overcome them. There in 1 Corinthians 5, 1 through 7, it says that, I'll read it, it says, it is actually reported that there is sexually immorality among you. Don't you know that a little leaven? Leaven's the whole lump? The leaven of Corinth was tolerating immorality, sexual sins. During the year, we have to keep away from the immorality of this world, where it is so common. And are we truly being sincere about this? Do we make it a sincere effort not to get that leaven of the world around us to leaven us with all kinds of thoughts of immorality and lusts and things like that that are so pervasive? The second leaven is the leaven of Herod. That's kind of a strange term, the leaven of Herod. Christ mentioned it in Mark chapter 8, verse 15. He says, beware of the leavened. And then he mentions of Herod.

Also about the Pharisees, but he focused that the Herodians, which were the followers of King Herod, they were full of leaven, talking about sin here. The followers of the Herod's were the political religious party in Israel. They backed the man. Yes, he was a murderer. Yes, he was a robber and sinful, but he's the guy in charge. And so they backed politically as a religious group. They mixed religion with politics. These were the Herodians.

And we have to avoid just going along with the crowd, letting wordliness set in.

And the leaven of Herod was the love of the world and mixing it with politics. People can get all wrapped up into this. That's why our church doesn't... we call ourselves apolitical. Do you remember how the term there, alethe, means not with something, and lethe is hidden? Well, it's apolitical. We don't deal with politics. People can want to do something here with local politics and what you have to do with your water and things like that. That's different. That's basically an issue that doesn't involve politicians and parties and taking sides and things like that. But at the leaven of Herod, we have to be careful with that. That's one way we can be contaminated. The third one is the leaven of the Sadducees. Matthew 16 verse 6.

Christ said, Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Sadducees.

The leaven of the Sadducees was unbelief or not believing in spiritual miracles.

They didn't believe in that. They just believed in what existed. Notice in Matthew 22 verse 23.

Matthew 22 verse 33.

Looking at 22-23. The same day the Sadducees who say there is no resurrection came to him and asked him a certain question here about the future. I don't want to go into that, but just to point here. See, they didn't believe in angels, in resurrection. They didn't believe in the spiritual world. And so these were the religious intellectuals. They used Greek thought a lot. They were more of the rich and well-to-do, and many of them were priests. But they just followed basically the physical things in the Bible. They didn't believe in the spiritual world. They didn't believe there was another life afterwards.

So this was something that we need to avoid. We have to have faith that God does have miracles. There is a spiritual world. There are angels, and God is a rewarder of those who believe and trust in Him. Hebrews 11 verse 6. Hebrews 11 verse 6 says, But without faith, it is impossible to please Him. For he who comes to God must believe that he is, that he exists, and that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. So we have angels about us. We can rely on God. We can rely on miracles. We should never lose sight of that. We shouldn't become so intellectual, like some of these theological schools where they have the professors, and they cut out all the miracles of Christ out of the Bible because they don't believe in anything supernatural. They just want Him as a great moral teacher, but not as one who intervened in nature, multiplied the bread, walked on the water, raised up the dead. See, the Sadducees wouldn't believe that. There are some people that believe in Christ, but they don't believe in His miracles. But we should never fall into that pitfall. And then we have the fourth, the leaven of the Pharisees. This is the most common one that Christ warned about. Luke chapter 12 verse 1, it says, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. That's the word that Greece used for an actor. In other words, pretending to be something one is not.

In the word study dictionary, it talks about this word hypocrisy. It says, in John's gospel, it is equated with the term pseudos, which means something counterfeit or false, meaning falsehood, lying, which is equally condemned. Our Lord presents this evil as something hidden that one day will be made manifest, a sin which glories in misleading another by smooth flatteries, like Matthew 22 16. The religious hypocrites of Jesus' day went about in long robes seeking to be reverented by the public and the crowds taking honor for granted and cloaking oppressive avarice with long prayers. So they were very covetous of money, but they cloaked it. Everything was hidden. Oh, they look so nice, so spiritual. Hypocrisy cleanses the outside of the cup and platter while leaving them full of extortion and wickedness. It makes men as hidden tombs, white and shining without, but foul within. Luke 11, verse 44. So we're not to become like the Pharisees, a type of religious actor going through the motions, feigning being religious to be seen by others, and then spiritual pride sets in and you're intolerant of others. The final one is the leaven of Galatia, because Paul wrote to the Galatians about being careful of this leaven as well. In Galatians 5, verses 6 through 11, let's read that. Galatians 5, 6 through 11. It says, For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but faith working through love. So he's talking here about the ceremonial law.

Before, an Israelite had to be circumcised to be part of the community of Israel, but Paul's saying here now it is baptism that is what seals us with a laying on of hands. That's what separates us. But he says here being circumcised or being uncircumcised is not important, but faith working through love. Verse 7, So again, here we have the leavens of the cross. And I have confidence in you in the Lord that you will have no other mind, but he who troubles you shall bear his judgment whoever he is. And I, brethren, if I still preach circumcision, part of the ritual law, why do I still suffer persecution? Then the offense of the cross has here. We have the leaven of Galatia believing through circumcision and keeping the ritual law that you can have your sins forgiven and only through Christ's sacrifice can you be forgiven.

I'm going to read Romans chapter 10 verses 1 through 14. I'm going to read it in the contemporary Jewish Bible. It has a very good translation of this. It says, Brothers, my heart's deepest desire and my prayer to God for Israel is for their salvation, for I can testify to their zeal for God, but it is not based on correct understanding, for since they are unaware of God's way of making people righteous and instead seek to set up their own, they have not submitted themselves to God's way of making people righteous. For the goal should be translated as goal, not end, for the goal at which Torah, which means God's five first books with a law. The goal at which the Torah aims is the Messiah. He's our example. He is our sacrifice who offers righteousness to everyone who trusts in his sacrifice. That's the right way of doing it.

So you see, one of the lessons God wants us to learn about the Feast of Unleavened Bread is to be sincere and genuinely follow the truth, no matter what happens. It doesn't matter if your friends or others don't agree. You will do it because you sincerely believe that is the truth. I remember that's what kept me going. I had my whole family against me. I was 17 years old at the time. I hadn't finished high school, but I found the truth. And I told my father, I can't go against the truth. And that kept me going. Eventually I had to move out. I went to Ambassador College on my own. I was able to continue following God's ways, but that sincerity of keeping that truth in front of you, letting it be the beacon that will guide you through life was the best decision I ever made. I'm still doing it. Still following that beacon all the way, hopefully, into God's kingdom. The Passover is only one day long, just as we only have one sacrifice of Jesus Christ for our sins, once and for all. But there are seven days of unleavened bread, a lengthy period, which has to do with reminding us there is a lifetime of purifying ourselves until the work is completed, although we'll never get to perfection. But we are being perfected just as we have not symbolically entered into that seventh day of unleavened bread, which pictures God's kingdom, the removal of Satan. Sin will not be there in the kingdom as promoted like it is today.

So we have not finished the work of these days.

They signify a complete removal of the leavening in our lives, the sin that so easily ensnares us, as Hebrews 12 tells us. We just have to patiently and with perseverance continue our work until God finishes the job. Let's go to 1 John chapter 3 to finish. 1 John chapter 3, verse 1. Beautiful verses expressing the spiritual truth. Verse 1, Behold, what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us that we should be called children of God.

Therefore the world does not know us because it did not know him. Beloved, now we are the children of God. We started the process. This guy got a little baby in the womb of the mother. We've already been begotten with God's Spirit, but it's going to be in God's kingdom that we are born into a spirit life and into a spirit that kingdom of God. He says, And it has not been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when he is revealed, when Christ returns, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. We'll see him as he sees us with spiritual eyes, not these old globular things that just wear out and got all kinds of problems of diabetes and all that. No, we're going to have spiritual eyes that will never fade. We will see him as he sees us. We're going to have a body, a spiritual body like Christ has. Of course, he will always be God in every way that we just are going to be God's children, but we're going to be part of that God family. Continuing on, it says, verse 3, And everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself just as he is pure. That's a process. So, just like in that wax museum of Madame Tussaud, it showed wax just can't take the heat. Objects that look great in the dark just can't take the light of the sun. Let's remember, brethren, the spiritual lesson of these days, that God wants us to put that old leaven, the wax that looks so good on the outside but is not real, and put instead something genuine in its place through God's Spirit to be sincere and truthful before God and before men. That's what keeping the days of unleavened bread are all about.