Okay, if you would, turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 5. We're going to try to finish up our study on the Passover tonight. This is lesson number 15. And Lord willing, it will be the conclusion of this study. And next Sunday evening, we'll move on to something else. I've got a few things in mind. We'll see where the Lord leads with that this next week as I begin studying for that. But I wanted us to see something here. In the conclusion, I want to go back and just briefly, I say briefly, it's going to take some time tonight, but it's going to be a brief overview of what we've studied so far in the Passover, and to point out some things that I haven't talked about before, or maybe I talked about briefly, but want to talk more about. Specifically, sanctification and atonement. And we'll get to those later. But in 1 Corinthians 5, this is a popular chapter that we all know, I think, especially because at the beginning of the chapter, there was a man there in the church at Corinth, who was a member of the church at Corinth, who committed adultery with his father's wife, it says, would have been his stepmother. And the church there had not taken care of that situation. They had not enacted any discipline on the man. They had not taken care of the situation. And it was well known in their community that this was going on there. Now, I don't want to get into all that. But there are some things here that Paul brings out about the Passover that are part of that. And I want us to look at those as our text verses for tonight. In 1 Corinthians 5 verses 6-8, your glorying is not good. In other words, they were glorying in their sin. There was sin in the church. And there was grievous sin in the church. It was this adultery that had been committed and they had not taken care of it. And it was almost like they were telling people, when people would ask about it, they were like, oh, well, we're such good Christians. We love this man so much. We've got to show him so much love. And that's the way we see in the religious world today, oftentimes, people want to claim the love of Christ towards someone who's committing sin, open sin, and not take care of it, not chastise them for it, not do anything about it. And you see churches doing this at times, where they won't take care of members who, they won't discipline members who are obviously living in sin, who are not following the Lord, and it's a burden, even when it's a burden on the congregation. Especially in this case where the whole community knew about it. Even those outside the church knew about it. It wasn't being taken care of. Now, to get away from that part, he says in verse 6, Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump? When we read of leaven, we think of we think of the Passover. Because part of the meal, the Passover meal, was unleavened bread. And the Passover was the beginning of the seven days of unleavened bread. They were not to eat anything but unleavened bread for seven days after the Passover. And so that kind of sticks in our mind. We see this in the New Testament. These things talked about leaven in the New Testament and our minds automatically go back to the Old Testament. Or even to the Lord's Supper even. Because the Lord's Supper is to be taken with unleavened bread. Now he says, purge out there for the old leaven. Get rid of it. Get rid of it. And Paul is referring to sin here. Sin is a type of leaven. In the scripture, oftentimes, leaven is used as a metaphor for sin. And it's the example. Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. How were they unleavened? Because they had been saved. They had been sanctified. We'll talk about sanctification later. But they had been sanctified. They had been called out of the world and were saved and they were no longer leavened. They were supposed to be unleavened. But, they had let leaven into the church. They had let things of the world into the church. Where even Christ, our Passover, is sanctified, or sacrificed, is sacrificed for us. Christ. is our Passover. Now, again, and I'll mention this again later, but more, but remember, the Passover stopped with Christ. There's no need to observe the Passover any longer for God's people as a whole. The nation of Israel, Paul told them, in Romans, he told them that they could observe, they had liberty to observe those Jewish feasts and those Jewish memorials and the Passover and all that, but it was not mandatory. But God had told them, had told Israel they were to observe it forever. Now we know it's going to be observed by the Jews at least until the end of time. Or until the end of the tribulation anyway. Now, verse 8 says, Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. And this feast that he mentions here in verse 8 is not the Passover. Remember, the Passover stopped with Christ. He is the Passover. It is talking about the Lord's Supper here. So if there's sin in the church, you can't observe the Supper. You can't observe the Feast. Not with Old Leaven. In other words, if there's sin in the congregation, you can't observe it. Neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness. If there's strife and sin going on in the church, you can't observe the Lord's Supper. Not properly. But, with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth, the church has to be following the Lord's commandments. They had to be following the Lord, in other words, to be justified in following and observing the Lord's Supper. Now, that's kind of the final verse I want to give in the New Testament on the Passover. It kind of goes along with our study from last time. To get into the conclusion here of our study, we started this study of the Passover. I didn't realize it had been this far back, but February 16. So it's been a while. But I understand, too, there's been a few times we didn't have a lesson on Sunday evening because, one, we had our our conference in April, which would have been a few weeks after we started. There's been a few other times either we weren't here or we preached on something else that night. But still, it's been a long journey since to get to the point of the conclusion where this is June 8th, 2025. We've been in this for a little over, or a little less than five months now. We begin our study in the book of Exodus, where Moses recorded the first Passover. I'm not going to turn to everywhere that we went before. That would take way too much time. But just pay attention and listen to the things I've got to say. There will be a few places we will turn here in a moment. But we started this study in the book of Exodus where Moses recorded the first Passover. And if you remember, God made it clear while the children of Israel were still in Egypt and they were awaiting God's deliverance from Pharaoh, What did He tell them to do? Well, He told them the night, on the 14th day of the first month, the month of Abib. Remember, it was at that point that God gave Israel their calendar. It wasn't a calendar for the whole world. He just gave it to Israel. And often times there's some confusion there. And people think, well, we ought to be following the calendar of Israel. or the calendar of the Jews. There's no command for that. They had a separate calendar. It was for their purposes, for God's purposes, for them. God didn't command it for the whole world. Yeah, the calendar we have was created, I'm assuming, by wicked men, whether it was It's a Roman-ish calendar, Roman Catholic calendar that we follow. The months and the days are named after pagan gods, some of them, probably most of them. But that's what the world goes by. We couldn't live by the Jewish calendar today. Most of us wouldn't have a job if we did. Our employers would not put up with us missing as much time as the Jews do. They get by with it because they're religious holidays. And at least in our nation, with the religious freedoms we have, they are permitted to miss because of religious holidays. That's the labor laws in our land. But it's not for everybody. Tell your boss, well I'm taking off to observe the Passover tomorrow. He's gonna laugh at you. He's gonna say, well you're not a Jew. You can't do that. So, they had a special calendar. The first month, the month of Abib, they were to, on the 14th day of that month, they were to observe the Passover. That was the day that, that evening, at 6 p.m., at the beginning of the day of of the 14th, they were to eat the meal. The day before, they were to be preparing the meal, whether it was killing the lamb, getting everything ready, preparing everything, and then they were to start cooking, and they were to eat the meal after 6pm, and they were to have it eaten before daylight. As far as we know, from what the Scripture shows us, It appears as though all of the children of Israel that were in Egypt at that time participated in that observance. It doesn't tell us that there were any that did not. But he also told us Or it tells us in Exodus there. Not there, not just there, but in other places. In Exodus we went to Leviticus. Everywhere that God talks about the Passover, whether it was the first one or the ones afterwards when He was laying out the law to them in Leviticus and I think we went to Deuteronomy too maybe a time and a few places. But in those places, God always made it clear this was only for the nation of Israel. The Passover was only for the nation of Israel. Some say, well, it's for all of God's people. No. The Bible is clear on it. He says it's only for the nation of Israel. It was only for those in their households. In one place, when they're out in the wilderness, and Moses goes up on the mountain and he comes back, God's giving him more of the law. It took him a few different times going up to get the whole thing, but when he came down one time, God had given him the law and was teaching him on the Passover how to observe the Passover once they had the tabernacle built. and then how they would observe it when the temple came. The two were very similar. There was not much difference other than the temple would be stationary and in one place in Jerusalem. But God told them it's for each household was to observe it in the tabernacle. As they were represented there at the tabernacle, it was for them and those of their household, which included their servants. We studied that. If they had servants that lived in their homes, those servants were required to observe the Passover too. If there were strangers, those who came from the outside traveling through, it didn't matter if they were family or whoever they were, they were not permitted to observe it. the rest of the world was not, one, was not required to observe it, and two, was not permitted to observe it. God gave specific rules that it was only the nation of Israel. Now, from the very beginning, we saw the correlation between the original Passover observance and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It's there. We look back and we can see it. They couldn't see it. They didn't know. They knew there was a Messiah coming. They knew there was one coming. They had been taught that from Abraham's time. They had been taught that there was one that was going to come and was going to be their king on earth. They didn't know when. They didn't know who. God didn't give them all the details all at the same time. Over a time period, bit by bit, He gives them details of things. And it was the same way with the Passover. They didn't understand that the Passover was a picture of Christ. But God gave them a little bit of details as they went along. And as they were in the wilderness, He began to show them a little bit more each time they observed the Passover. And each time Moses gave them parts of the Law, He showed them a little bit more of what it was about. It was an observance, it was a memorial and a celebration of God taking them out of Egypt. That's what it was for them. But it was also a picture of Christ who was to come. The one who would come that would fulfill all of the law and there would be a day and time that would come when man would not be required to keep the law and would not be required to keep the sacrifices. And we'll get into the sacrifices later because it gets into the atonement. But we saw the types and similarities to his gospel. How that when the Lamb of God would be sacrificed, it would be his blood that would cover the sins of his people and only his people. That's another picture we see in Egypt when they observe the Passover. His blood The blood of the Lamb did not cover all of Egypt. And then Egypt rebelled against it. That's the common doctrine out there today that Christ, when He died on the cross, His blood covered the sins of everybody all over the world. That's not what He said. It was only for His people, for His elect, His chosen people. The same way with the Passover. God didn't tell everybody in Egypt, the whole nation of Egypt, He didn't tell them to observe the Passover, did He? They had no need to. They weren't all leaving. It was only the nation of Israel, those who were the children of Israel, those children of the descendants of Abraham who were living in the land of Goshen. Those who had been in the beginning had been permitted to stay there on peaceful terms but after a while when when the men of the people of Egypt forgot about Joseph they They began to take them captive, began to force them into forced labor. They were making bricks with straw, and they were having to do ridiculous things as far as labor was concerned. But God didn't tell all of Egypt to cover their doorposts in blood, did he? It's a picture of Christ. Again, Christ didn't, His blood doesn't cover the sins of everybody all over the world. Only His chosen people. Now, we also read in Exodus where God set the rules for the Passover. And I talked a little bit about that before, from what type of animal was to be sacrificed for the meal. It had to be a clean animal. He said a lamb or a goat is what he said in the beginning. Later, it changes to a lamb. And some say that the Jews were the ones that changed that. I don't know. It's just through the rest of the scripture you see a lamb is used. They were to use, we'll say a lamb for now, for all purposes. The lamb had to be within the first year of its birth. It couldn't have been sexually active. It couldn't have any blemishes, any scars, any broken bones. It had to be perfect. All one color. Later, we would see where it had to be completely white. And that was a representative of Christ. They had to be very particular about the animal they chose. They were to do, we saw what they were to do with each part of the animal. including the blood. Today, people get grossed out by the thought of blood, but they had a purpose for the blood. They weren't to eat the blood. That was God's command. He told them, do not eat the blood. They were to use it in other ways. After they built the Ark of the Covenant, And after they had the tabernacle, and then later the temple, the high priest was to sprinkle the blood on the mercy seat. That was part of the atonement sacrifice. But in the beginning they were to spread it over their doorposts in the original Passover. So when the Lord came that night, remember the Lord told them, I'm going to come. And the houses I see the blood over the doorpost, I'm going to pass over them. But those that don't have the blood, the firstborn of every home is going to die that night. And it wasn't just people. It was also the animals, if you remember. He killed the firstborn of the animals, of those who didn't observe this. Again, it's a picture of God's sanctification. Sanctification is a calling out. He had called the people of Israel out of the nation of Egypt. They were citizens in Egypt. They were set aside. They were not permitted to intermingle, as far as intermarry and all that, with the Egyptians. They had their own side of town, as we would call it. They lived across the tracks from everybody else. But they were called aside from the rest of the world. They were sanctified. And what is that? Well, we'll get into the meaning of sanctification later. That's later in my notes. But they were also, with the original Passover, there were other foods that were to be eaten, bitter herbs, there were some other things, and then the unleavened bread. And again, the unleavened bread would carry on for the next seven days as the Feast of Unleavened Bread. And if you remember, there was a Sabbath on the first day of Unleavened Bread, which was the day after the Passover. So the day after they left Egypt, they observed the Passover starting at 6 p.m., the evening of the day of the 14th. That morning when they were done eating, if they had their rest, They were to prepare, and as soon as Pharaoh gave the word, they were to leave. Pharaoh gave the word. After a night of death in the land, Pharaoh gave in and told Moses and Aaron to get out. Take your people and go. And they did. Well, they went out so far, They stopped for the next day at the evening of the 15th. They stopped. It was the beginning of the Sabbath. It was the first day of unleavened bread. They took, remember the Lord told them to take all the provisions they needed with them to make unleavened bread. So that's what they did. They stopped, they made the unleavened bread, and they began the Sabbath. Then the next Five days after that were days of unleavened bread, but they were to keep going, keep moving. On the seventh day, they were to stop again and observe another day of Sabbath. And so, that was the first Passover. Now, Exodus chapter 31, verse 13. And if you want to turn there, you can. I've got it in my notes, so I'll just read it. But he said, Speak thou also unto the children of Israel, saying, Verily my Sabbaths ye shall keep, for it is a sign between me and you throughout your generations, that ye may know that I am the Lord that doth sanctify you. What does he mean? We're going to concentrate now on this word sanctify. It means that he called them out. from the world, not just Egypt, but from the rest of the world. Remember, going all the way back to Abraham, he called Abraham out of what we would know as Persia, or what would later be known as Persia. He called Abraham out of a heathen nation. Abraham was a heathen to start with. He was not a Jew, he was not a Hebrew, until he crossed over the river. the river Euphrates. When he crossed over the river Euphrates and began to sojourn in the land of Canaan as God commanded him to, that's when God began calling Abraham and his descendants Hebrews. Hebrew, remember we've studied that before, Hebrew just means one who crosses over. So God, He says that you may know that I am the Lord that doth sanctify you. The Sabbaths that they were to observe were a reminder or a memorial of what God had done for them. Same way, why do we have our church service, our main church service for the week is on Sunday morning? Because our Lord rose from the dead on the first day of the week. That's clear in the New Testament, in the four Gospels, it's clear about that. It's a remembrance of the day that he rose from the grave. We do it every week. Some say, well, why don't we just do it once a year when the event actually happened? Well, How sinful would we be if we only met once a year? That would be a horrible thing, wouldn't it? And I think the example is in the Old Testament in the law. The Jews met on Saturday, on the seventh day of the week for their weekly Sabbaths. The Christian churches in the New Testament did the same. They met on the first day of the week when at all possible. That was their day of worship. It was the day that the Jews had met the day before. They couldn't, in a lot of places, if they were meeting in the same building as the Jews, they couldn't meet on Saturday. They began meeting on Sunday. And it was also because it was an observance of the first day of the week of the Lord's rising from the dead. Exodus 31.13 we just read. Also notice there it says, Speak also unto the children of Israel, saying, Verily my Sabbaths ye shall keep, for it is a sign between me and you throughout your generations. Again, it's only to the children of Israel. These Sabbaths were only for the children of Israel, not the whole world. We know There were Gentiles who were saved in the Old Testament. But God never commanded them to observe the Passover. He never commanded them to observe any of the other Jewish feasts. It was only for the nation of Israel and those in their households. Now, God did not reveal the true meaning of the Passover all at once. I mentioned that earlier to Israel. He gave them bits here and there and mostly showed them through the law. He gave to Moses to give to the nation of Israel the true meaning to the Passover and to all the feasts and celebrations he intended for them to keep. You go through the law and you see, especially if you read the complete law, which at the time they were getting it, they were getting it pieces here and there. They weren't getting it all at once. Once they did have it, they had to learn it. You know, we've been reading it all our lives. If you read your Bible through every year, if you do personal Bible study and you read these things, you can read, we can pick up a Bible anytime we want and read about, read the complete law of God in the Old Testament. It's there. They didn't have that option. For one, they had to go to the tabernacle and hear the priest preach it. There was only one copy back then. They didn't have a printing press. They didn't have a computer printer. They had to go where it was preached. Now, I think one of the things we have lost in our day is because of all the technology we have and all the things we have going on around us. In their day, they didn't have all that. It was easier for them to remember things. They could hear something once and could quote it back to you again later if need be. Sometimes we can't do that. Our minds can only hold so much. And we have problems with that often. But they didn't have that problem. As far as mentally speaking, they had a very simple life where if they weren't inundated with television and with the computer Thousands of different things on the news or on the radio, at work, whatever. It was easier to remember things. Now, part of all this was the doctrine of sanctification. To sanctify simply means to set apart from something or someone. Just as in the New Testament we are taught how the Lord sanctifies His people from sin and the world. How is that done? Through the blood of Christ. We also know the Lord has sanctified the members of His churches from the family of God. We don't think about that much, but that would fit the definition. If we're called out of the world, if we're called out of Especially the religious world, even after we're saved, say we were saved in some other denomination, some other religious order. The Lord saved us and sanctified us out of the world there. And then later, He called us to a true church. That happens to a lot of people. He calls us into a true church. He sanctified us. He called us out of the religious world into one of His true churches. Into His bride. He sanctifies His bride by pulling them out of the religious world and setting them aside. Sanctification simply means the Lord has called someone out of one group and placed them in another for a special purpose according to His will. Not because of our will, but because of His will. plans for his people. Whether it's to be in the bride or whether it's not. It may be that some people, it may be God's will to leave them in the family of God. And yes, as the bride, we are still family of the family of God, but we've been called out and sanctified to a special purpose to be in his bride. Those others who are in the family of God have not. There's a difference. just like the nation of Israel. There's the difference between the nation of Israel. Those in the nation of Israel who are God's elect and who God has saved, but they're still part of Israel and they're not members of a true church. They're still in the family of God. God says they are. He calls them His children. But they're not in the bride. Some will argue that. Some will try to tell you that When the Bible talks about the nation of Israel and talks about the bride, that they're one and the same, but they're not. It's very distinct in the scripture. Our responsibility in this is we are to keep ourselves separated from sin and from the world. And if we are members of a true church, we're to keep ourselves separated from those in the religious world who are of false churches. There are those in false churches out there, and I think we've talked about this often. We know people, whether it's friends or family, that we believe they're saved. We see their actions. We see their fruits. But they're not in a true church. They may not be in any kind of church at all. Maybe they got discouraged because what they were hearing wasn't true. There are those who sometimes are backslidden, that fall out of fellowship with one of the Lord's churches. The Lord can call them back if He wants. He may and He may not. But there are those, and we find it hard to believe, it's hard to imagine that someone would go to a false church and still be saved. That's something that's hard for us to fathom because of what we've been taught and what we believe. But it does happen. And there are examples given in Paul's letters where there were people, Paul mentions that they had fallen, they were weaker in the faith, some. Some had fallen after false doctrine. But He still referred to them as the children of God. You look at Israel in the Old Testament and all that they went through, all the grief that they gave to God through the years, through all the generations, and God still called them His children. This also means we should have no fellowship with the unsaved world. That doesn't mean that we don't associate with them, we have to. And we should be setting an example for them. We should, when given an opportunity, we should preach the gospel. Whether we think they're saved or not, we should preach the gospel to them, because we don't know, often times. We shouldn't have any fellowship with those who may be saved, but are preaching false doctrines. That's a very serious matter. And there are those today, even some Baptists, who have no problem with that. And maybe we might have limited fellowship with some, depending on what the false doctrine is. But when they're preaching a different gospel, especially, we need to stay away from them. Because they can influence us. That's why I caution people about the books we read. Be careful who you read after. They may have some good things to say, but eventually, the bad things they say are going to outweigh the good. And eventually, if you keep reading after them, their false doctrines are going to rub off on you. In Leviticus 9, verse 7, and again, I've got these written in my notes. I'm not going to turn there. Leviticus 9 verse 7, And Moses said unto Aaron, Go into the altar, and offer thy sin offering, and thy burnt offering, and make an atonement for thyself, and for the people, and offer the offering of the people, and make an atonement for them, as the Lord commanded. The Lord commanded that the high priest offer an atonement for the people. Not just for himself, but for the people of the nation of Israel. We'll get to the definition of an atonement here in a moment. But also in Leviticus 17, verse 11. For the life of the flesh is in the blood. There's the teaching on the blood again. And I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls. What was the last altar? The cross. The cross of Jesus Christ was the last altar. We have no need for any altar ever again. Because His blood was the atonement for our sins. For it is the blood that maketh an atonement for your soul. It's what gives us eternal life. Now, in their day, they were to do this every year. We don't have to do that anymore because the Messiah has come. The ultimate sacrifice has been made. The last sacrifice has been made. Another teaching we see with the Passover was a teaching of atonement for sin. In the original Passover, the children of Israel were to spread the blood on the door post on each side of the door and over the top of the door. as a way to cover their houses from the Lord when He came through the land of Egypt that night and killed all the firstborn of those who did not have the blood over their doors. We talked about that earlier. They did this and it appears from what we read in Exodus that all the households of the children of Israel followed God's command and their firstborn were saved from death. There's no mention of anybody in the nation of Israel or the children of Israel that had any of their children die during that time, during that night. It was all the Egyptians. But after that time, that was the first time. Things were different after that. The observance was the same, but God laid out the rules of how they were to carry it out from then on. Remember, before it was time for them to observe it outside of Egypt the next year, for the second time, the second observance of the Passover, they had the tabernacle built. God had instructed them at the end of the book of Exodus. God had instructed Moses on how to build the tabernacle and they had built it. And that's what we read in Leviticus 9 verse 7. That's what he was talking about there. The altar he mentions there was in the tabernacle. It had been built and completed in the wilderness. And so when they observed it the second time on the first one year anniversary, if you will, of the original Passover, they had the tabernacle. And things changed when the tabernacle was built. And the same things applied when the temple was built. And they were to observe the sacrifice of atonement at the place God commanded to meet with them. Wherever the tabernacle moved, that's where God had told him he would meet with them. Wherever it was at, that's where he would meet with them. And it moved around. Because they were traveling in the wilderness. When the temple was built, they had a set place. They had a permanent building to meet with God. And the command was every year at these observances, the heads of the house were to come, the male members, the heads of the house were to come to the temple in Jerusalem And they were to observe these national feasts as we learned. And the Passover, the Days of Unleavened Bread and all that being part of that. They were to observe those things there. The sacrifice of atonement that was to be observed there in Jerusalem at the altar. There was no other place. They could not do it any other place. Again, the blood of Christ, the blood of Jesus Christ, was the atonement for the sins of His people. We know that from what we've studied in the New Testament. His blood, it took the place of all those animals that had been killed over the generations in Israel, and their blood had been sprinkled over the mercy seat, in the temple, He took the place of all that. He finished all that. When Christ says that it is finished, or He says that He fulfilled the law, these are the things of the law that He fulfilled. He fulfilled all those feasts and all those observances that the nation of Israel was commanded to follow by God. He fulfilled all those on the cross. His blood was the atonement for the sins of His people. And it will be until He returns again. Until this life is over, His blood, it will be His blood that atones the sins of His people, of those, and I'm talking about those in the future, who are not saved yet. Those are for God's elect. Now there is another false doctrine out there that says that Christ, I've heard mentioned many years ago, and I was in a public place and almost choked when I heard it, but a youth minister telling a group of kids, they were teenagers I'm guessing, that Christ has to die over and over again every time someone is saved. That's false doctrine. That's blasphemy. Christ died once, and that was it. That's all it took was one time. His blood was the price it took to cover our sins. Only His blood could cover our sins. The blood of the animals that the high priest offered in the Old Testament was a picture of Christ. The blood over the door. of the Passover was a picture of Christ. They were to offer a sacrifice. Once the tabernacle was built and the temple was built, they were to go once a year to the tabernacle or the temple for the Passover. Those animals were shed for the whole nation. They were national feasts. They were shed for the whole nation and they would cover the sins of the nation for a year. That was their atonement. We don't have to do that anymore. Jesus took care of that on the cross. It only took one time with Him because He was the perfect sacrifice. He paid the perfect price. Another important matter, very important matter we have brought out in each lesson, and we've been talking about this some tonight also already, is how the Passover was only for the nation of Israel and those who were part of their households. We think, well, why was it very important? Well, in our day and time, I think it's very important because we have those, there are those who are the children of God who think that we need to be observing these old feasts and observances of the Jews, of the nation of Israel. There are those who want to take, they understand that the popular holidays that are out there are pagan in root and are not for the Lord's churches and they understand that God's people shouldn't be observing them. And so what they've done is they substituted the feast of the nation of Israel for those holidays. That's not what we should be doing. Those feasts that we've talked about in our study on the Passover were only for the nation of Israel, and that's it. No one else was given the command to observe the Passover, and no one else had a need to observe the Passover. We weren't called out of Egypt. Our ancestors, unless you're a Jew or have Jewish blood, your ancestors were not called out of the nation of Egypt. You're Gentile. And if you've got, even though you may have Jewish lineage, most of us, I think, or maybe all of us, have enough Gentile in us, you would have no resemblance at all of Jewish. heritage, you're Gentile. The Gentiles had no need to observe these things. And Paul made that clear in the New Testament in his letters to the churches. The Passover was an observance or a celebration or a memorial of how God had saved the nation of Israel from captivity in Egypt. That was the original meaning of the observance. But as I said before, As they went along and as God gave them the law, little by little He gave them the law, He began to teach them that it was of things to come. Their coming out of Egypt was prophecy. It was prophecy of how God was going to call His people out of the world. No other people have experienced this, as far as coming out of Egypt. So, what purpose would it serve? for anyone else. It doesn't. I mean, it's good for us to study these things. Don't get me wrong. We should be studying the Passover from time to time. Because of the examples that it shows, it points the way to Christ. The Jews didn't see that. And you look back, and many of those people, especially that first generation in the wilderness, the ones that first came out of Egypt, they didn't understand the prophecy. In the New Testament, Jesus instituted His memorial. What was that? The Lord's Supper is what we call it. For the Lord's churches, this is the observance we are to participate in as often as the Lord leads. We're not given time, we're not told to observe it at a certain time of the year or certain time of, you know, we do observe it on, at least try to, on the Lord's Day, on the first day of the week. It's, the main thing is the elements and the preparation. You know, it's not just the preparation of the unleavened bread and the wine, but the preparation of our hearts before we partake of it. And it was the same way with the Passover. They were to get right with God before they were to observe the Passover. Remember there was one instance, I believe it was in Leviticus, where there was some man who had touched a dead body. They weren't prepared. They hadn't sinned themselves, but they had touched something that was dead. A body that was dead, they had touched something that was sinned. They were not clean. And in their day and time, according to the law, if they touched a dead body, there was a whole cleansing process they had to go through. And those men were told they could wait till the next month. to observe the Passover. That gave them time to go through the cleansing process. What was that cleansing process? Well part of that was if you remember back to our study on the red heifers. The red heifers were to be offered as sacrifices and the ashes from those red heifers were to be mixed with water and whenever someone touched a dead body They were to go to the priest, and he was to sprinkle that on them to cleanse them. It was part of the cleansing process. And so those men would have had to, there would have been a red heifer killed, or they were also permitted to keep a container of the ash and the water for future use. There was no requirement for them to use it all at one time. They could keep it for future use. One reason for that was, Finding a perfect red heifer was a very difficult thing, even in their day and time. When I found one, they took care of it. They did the process and then saved the ash and the water. So those men would not have had to wait for them to kill a red heifer. It would have already been done, possibly. And so they would have been cleansed. That was an exception to the rule. There was another exception that God gave them. If they were traveling and couldn't make it back to, whether it was Jerusalem or to the tabernacle, wherever they were, wherever the place was that He set aside, if they couldn't make it back, they had one month to get back. And then they could observe it. There is no command nor example in the New Testament of the Lord's churches observing the Passover or any of the feasts and celebrations God commanded for the nation of Israel. Only the Lord's Supper. The Lord's Supper for the Lord's churches. And be careful of this. When I say the Lord's churches, I'm talking about His true churches. Those who are members of His bride. Not just those who call themselves churches. If they're preaching another gospel, If their organization is not correct, if they didn't come from another true church, they have no right to observe the supper. It's only those that are part of his bride, those who are his true churches that observe. Those are the ones that he gave it to. They're the ones who are to observe it. We saw in the New Testament in the Gospels where the day or the evening when the Lord's Supper was first instituted by the Lord with His Apostles, that was the last Passover. That's the last Passover that is observed as far as the Lord's churches are concerned in the New Testament. Israel continued on with it because they were told to observe it forever. Those who were saved out of the nation of Israel and added to the Lord's churches were never given that command to observe the Passover. Their memorial, our memorial, is the Lord's Supper. That's the difference. The last Passover again was the Passover that Jesus observed with His apostles that night before His death. In closing, I pray this has been as informative a study for those who watch these lessons as it has been for me. I've learned a lot myself through all of this. And oftentimes it's just because we don't go back and read, or maybe we read over these things. Like I said, if you read your Bible through every year, you read over these things and you don't think much about it until you just sit down and really study it. There's been things that, I've seen before that I had forgotten. There are things that I hadn't seen before. It goes back to what we talked about this morning, that sometimes the Lord hides things from us until He's ready for us to see them. There is much more we can learn from the Passover, and there's no doubt I've left out some things. I would like to have studied more on the sanctification and the atonement than we did, And maybe we'll do that at some point. Maybe we'll come back and do a study just on those two. But I encourage you to study these things on your own and see what a great blessing the Lord has for His people with the teaching on the Passover in God's Word. Don't just read books because I can tell you some of the commentaries that I went to were wrong. You compare what they had to say with what God's Word says. And you can see it. The commentators, even some of the oldest of commentators, don't have it right. Especially if you're reading after men who are universal church people, they try to put Israel and the church as one. And I've seen that in several places. And there's a great distinctive between the Lord's churches and the nation of Israel in the Scripture. You can't put them together. They are God's people. They're all part of the family of God. But remember, the churches are His bride, not Israel. Anyway, that's all we have on the Passover. Again, I don't know for sure yet what we'll go to next week. We'll see what the Lord has for us. That's all we have for tonight.