We're going to be doing Exodus 12, 14 through 20, whatever that paragraph is. Yeah, it's 14 through 20. How about now? Can you hear me now? Does it come in front of the speakers? Yep. OK, cool. Well, good morning. We're continuing our study of Exodus. We are in Exodus 12. I think we've been here for a little bit. Another week or two to go, I think, and then we'll move on. I think we'll kind of pick up some speed after, once we get through the Passover. So let's look real quick at, we're basically in the third paragraph of Exodus 12. And so what I wanted to do is take a step back, look at the first two paragraphs very briefly, just a couple of bullet points or a handful of bullet points, and then we'll move forward into 15 through 20. All right, so the first six verses, we have the Lord establishing the new Israelite calendar with Nisan as the first month. So essentially, it's almost like he's resetting time, time itself for the beginning of the establishment of the Israelites. He wants their calendar to reflect that, kind of all aspects of their lives will reflect that. He also provides the criteria for lamb selection, that they should be free of blemish and unblemished, and a male of roughly a year old. So this should be the highest value lamb that they have in their flock are the ones that they're going to be offering for sacrifice. He makes a provision for very small families or those without families where they're too small to consume the entire lamb, then he provides for them to be able to combine with households around them. I think this is a... It's kind of a detail, but I think it's a wonderful reflection of his character, where God wants to make provision. He does make provision throughout his law for those who are either cast out, or I should say outcasts, or the oppressed, widows, orphans, that sort of thing. Then as we get into the next paragraph, Exodus 12, 7 through 13, the Lord specifies the painting of the blood on the doorposts and the lentils. The lamb, he specifies it's going to be roasted whole and not boiled. And I think there the concept is that, you know, the flame, you know, roasted over the fire. And I think there the concept is we have a, you know, fire is typically used for, as a symbol of holiness and as opposed to boiling. So fire will keep, you know, there's an aspect of holiness and cleansing. At the same time, you know boiling kind of tends to dilute things and God's not into He's not interested in diluting anything. He wants to he wants to keep it pure and whole And then none of it shall be left until until the next morning He says you you have to eat all of it then he says If there is some left until morning then burn it And again, this is another one of those provisions where if for some reason you're unable to do that, then he wants to make provision for that. But if you're not willing to do that, then you got a bigger problem. So the lamb shall be eaten in haste with sandals and staff. Don't take that to mean that you're eating your sandals and staff with your lamb. Take that to mean that you've got your sandals on and your staff at hand, and that's how you're eating your lamb. So you're eating in a haste. You're ready to go. And the idea there is that there's not a doubt in your mind that the Lord is going, or for the Israelites, there's not a doubt in their mind that they're going to be freed and sent out of Israel, right? Thank you for the courtesy laugh. I appreciate it. The Lord will pass through Egypt. He talks about that as well. He'll pass through Egypt and strike, or he will strike the firstborn, strike the firstborn dead, but he will pass over where he sees the blood of the Passover lamb, right? And so that's where we are at this point, picking up in Exodus chapter 12, verses 14 through 20. Go ahead. This day shall be for you a memorial day. You shall keep it as a feast to the Lord throughout your generations. As a statute forever, you shall keep it as a feast. Seven days, you shall eat unleavened bread. On the first day, you shall remove leaven out of your houses. For if anyone eats what is leavened, from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel. On the first day, you shall hold a holy assembly. On the seventh day, a holy assembly. No work shall be done on those days, but what everyone needs to eat. That alone may be prepared by you, and you shall observe the feast of unleavened bread, for on this very day I brought your hosts out of the land of Egypt. Therefore you shall observe this day throughout your generations as a statute forever. In the first month from the fourteenth day of the month at evening you shall eat unleavened bread until the twenty-first day of the month at evening. You did all that without taking a breath. That was pretty impressive. All right. Excellent. All right, so let's pray and then we will dig into this passage. Father, here we are once again. We thank you for this opportunity to come together to study your word. Thank you for the occasion, not only the occasion that we have here on a Sunday morning, just with the ability and the privilege to to worship you, to worship your son, to be grateful, to be thankful for all that you've done, but also looking back on the way you've provided deliverance to your people going out through time. We understand, Father, that There are ways that we're different from them, but ultimately we're the same in that we're all saved by the blood of your son. I'm looking forward to the blood and us looking back. We love you. We trust you. Bless this time. Only let truth be spoken and remembered, and help us glorify you in everything that we do. We pray all these things in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, so verse 14, this day shall be for you a memorial day, shall keep it as a feast to the Lord throughout your generations as a statute forever. You shall keep it as a feast. So, yes. Okay. ceremonies, all the looking forward is obviously to Christ's death, to his life, and like this is what this is, right? So you think about something like this, the spotless lamb, right? That's pointing to Christ, but today people are looking for that spotless lamb in order to perform some type of dispensationalist type of point of view when it comes to rebuilding the temple and everything else, which I would assume rebuilding the temple was Christ's rising. But how much of this stops at Christ and then how much of this is there a place in the end times? I know it's a loaded question. Yeah, I can answer it in 30 seconds. Yeah. All right. Did you catch all that? Okay. Yeah, please repeat it. I'll summarize it. How's that sound? So what Randy's asking is, we have all of these concepts like the Passover lamb pointing forward to Christ. And of course, throughout the Old Testament, there's all sorts of things that are pointing forward to Christ. But there are folks who look at some of perhaps revelation, almost said packages, passages, maybe Daniel passages, whatever, Ezekiel, as times in the future where some of those things are going to be done. So for example, there's folks that will say that they're looking for a perfect lamb to be slaughtered in the future. for forgiveness of sins. Yeah, that sort of thing. So that's the gist of the question. And so what I'll say is, yeah, it all points back to Christ. And if we have any theology that says that we need to sacrifice another lamb or anything in addition to the sacrifice of Christ, then I think we're outside the realm of orthodoxy. I think we get into, very quickly can get into some heretical areas, right? Now, that said, that said, I'm not gonna have you a good answer for this. So I'm probably getting ready to raise up more questions than answers. One second, Stuart. When I read passages like Ezekiel, so for example, you also mentioned specifically raising the temple, raising Christ, right? Here's the thing. When I read Ezekiel and I read about the construction, the instructions for the future temple, Okay? I can remember the exact chapters, but in Ezekiel, there are very specific instructions, dimensions, that sort of thing for constructing the temple in the future. When I read that, it doesn't sound figurative to me. That said, I don't understand a purpose of a future temple, right? we have Christ, we have the Holy Spirit living in us, that sort of thing. So it gets into pretty deep, broad-ranging theology to be able to answer a question like that. And I think there are folks that'll start opening Genesis and work all the way forward and be able to support, but the question is how much of that is gonna be out of out of context, how much of it is going to be good exegesis. And then the last thing is we have to remember that Christ's blood is sufficient. And I used to have a boss that used to always say, full stop, end of story. But that's the ultimate full stop of end of story. Christ's blood is sufficient. If we have to add anything to that, we're not on thin ice. We've already fallen through. Make sense? Yes, sir. Yeah, in the verse from Hebrews, he enforces that. When it says that it's impossible for the blood of goats and goats to take away sin. So I mean, the animal sacrifices never provided true redemption. It was always pointing forward. Always pointing forward, exactly. Exactly. And actually, we'll probably touch on that here in just a few minutes. But that's a good point. Anybody else besides Randy? No? OK. Awesome. Good question. All right. So this is? Sorry, yes? No, go ahead. So in the NASB, the last sentence in verse 14, it says, as a permanent ordinance. Yes. Which seems pretty permanent. Yes. Who's he talking to? Well, this is a logical question. Yeah, no, I'm with you. He says for a statute and it says forever, right? And what does yours say? A permanent ordinance, absolutely. And when we get into Christ fulfilling these things, there's so many, there's so many, aspects of the Old Testament that point forward to Christ, where He is the ultimate fulfillment, which in a sense, that's what fulfillment means, is kind of pointing forward to. He's the completion of them, kind of that sort of thing. If we are in Him, and actually there's a 1 Corinthians 5 passage that we'll talk about in a second. If we're in Him, then we're living the Passover as well, right? It's a symbolic, figurative thing. And actually, you need to re-ask that question when we hit 1 Corinthians 5, let me know. All right? Cool. All right, so why is it so important for the Israelites to remember this occasion? How does the Lord want it to affect them? They want future generations to learn about it. Okay, they want future generations to learn about it. Why, why is that so important? I mean, think about it, we can apply that to the Lord's Supper as well too, right? Why is it so important for us to have remembrance of what Christ has done, to celebrate the Lord's Supper whenever we're gathered together? Yes, sir. Good, good. Absolutely, it's about Thanksgiving, right? Okay, so let's take that for a second. Psalm chapter 50, I think is a Psalm that's often overlooked, but I think it's probably one of the most important Psalms, one of the most important passages in all of Scripture that deal with the way God wants to deal with us, okay? And so we'll pick up, it's Psalm chapter 50, yeah, chapter 50, and we'll start in verse seven. It says, hear all my people and I will speak. Oh Israel, I will testify against you. I am God, your God. Not for your sacrifices do I rebuke you. Your burnt offerings are continually before me. So what he's saying at this point is, Okay, you're doing what you're supposed to do and what I've told you to do in terms of sacrificing lambs, bulls, goats, kind of that sort of thing, right? Verse nine, I will not accept a bull from your house or goats from your folds. For every beast of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills. I know all the birds of the hills and all that moves in the field is mine. So in other words, all these cattle, all these birds, everything, they're mine. They're mine. They're not yours. They're mine. He says, if I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and its fullness are mine. Do I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats? And I'll stop there real quick. So the idea there is that If, hypothetically, he were hungry, but God, of course, doesn't get hungry, right? God doesn't need anything. If God did need something, there would be nobody to give it to him because he's completely self-sufficient. But what he says is that he's not like the pagan Gods, false gods, who the idea behind paganism, why did you sacrifice to a pagan god in the pagan world? Why did you do that? You're feeding them. They needed sustenance. And essentially what he's saying is, those pagan gods, don't associate me with them. I'm not like them. He's the one true and living God. He's the thing from which everything comes. The pagan gods were feeble. First of all, they were inventions of the human mind, but they were feeble. And they needed sustenance. They needed mankind to sacrifice to them, to feed them, and then in return, they would protect or do whatever it was that the humans wanted. So that's the whole concept behind paganism. What the Lord is saying is don't take me as one of those false gods. So verse 14, here's kind of the point. Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving and perform your vows to the most high and call upon me in the day of trouble, I will deliver you and you shall glorify me. And so what he's saying is those sacrifices, There are ways that you should offer them with a heart of thanksgiving, because that is your motivation, is being thankful for what I've provided, whether it's oxygen and water or eternal life or crops and rain or whatever the case may be. And so that concept has never changed from Abraham, before Abraham, going all the way back to Adam, all the way up through today, our hearts should be a thankful heart. And if we have a heart full of thanksgiving, then it's very difficult for us to take our eyes off of God and begin to sin. So if our focus is on the right thing, then there's no room left to try to want to offend him, right? So the idea here is that these things are a, whether it's Passover or it's the Lord's Supper or it's preaching sermons or whatever the case may be, there's lots of reflection going back on remembrance because these things are, they should foster Thanksgiving. And that's, I think, an aspect of our prayers that that we need to lift up more often than not. We should confess our sins. We should adore God and praise him. We should ask for forgiveness. supplication in terms of those we love, those we don't love. Well, we should love everybody. But those we like, those we don't like, our friends, our enemies. But then Thanksgiving is also a key component of that as well. Thoughts or questions? No? OK. So what's a feast? So let me rephrase that. What's a feast mean today? What's that? Yeah, child time. Yeah, yeah. If somebody said, yeah, we had a feast, what are they saying? Had a ton of food, right? And I can't get my, every time I see this, I can't get my mind off a fancy feast for some reason. You know, cat food. I don't know what that has to do with anything. But yeah, a feast is like plentiful, lots of food. And I think we can very quickly associate it with, you know, gluttony and that sort of thing. Thanksgiving, hey, we're supposed to be thankful and we gluttonize ourselves. I'm not sure if that's a verb or not. All right. But a feast is a sacred communal meal set aside for celebration, remembrance, and worship. So they're not about, the amount of food that you have, they're about the occasion and what you're doing. And the key there is communal. We're together, right? The Lord's Supper is a communal meal. We tend to quote 1 Corinthians 11, every time we do, or almost every time we do the Lord's Supper. But chapter 10 gets into the unity of the church, and it's kind of the background behind the idea of a single loaf and things of that nature. All right. So what do feasts accomplish? I know it's kind of an esoteric question. So, there are collective and consistent remembrances and Thanksgiving, right? And the reason I say consistent there is because when you look at, you know, the Passover meal, there's kind of a set of steps that you go through or the Jews would go through, and they were the same every year, every time that they did it. Kind of this, you know, do this and then do this and then do this. And so if they're consistent, then you lack divergence away from, they don't turn into something that they're not supposed to be, at least in theory. They help teach the next generation. Somebody commented on that a few minutes ago. I can't remember who it was. But if we jump forward to verses 26 and 27, it says, when your children say, what do you mean by this service? You shall say, it is the sacrifice of the Lord's Passover. And so the idea behind these feasts are not only to have community and do something that's very, very human and sharing a meal together, but also the idea of teaching the children as you're going along, kind of like an object lesson or something like that. All right. Yes, sir. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Oh yeah. That to me is no excuse, but then when they had their kings, after what God did for King David, they were all celebrating God, loving God, and they quickly fell away due to King Solomon and his son. and I can't help but think okay what the exodus that was no excuse because they all experienced it king david aspect just one generation they quickly forgot what god did and turned to other gods and my question is why and how because the reason I ask that question is that's pertinent to us today too right um we have Christian family, the parents being very passionate and loving to God, and the next generation gets sent to college and all of a sudden they walk away. Extremely disheartening, but the question is what have we done or didn't do that I don't know if it was you or did I hear from someone else where they say, I don't know what happened to my kids. But look at what you put first. Every time there's a softball game, you skip church. Every time there's this event, you skip church. And what does that teach children then? Church is not important. So my question is, What, how, I mean, how do we pass on our faith to the next generation so that they can pass, continue to keep them, you know? Boy, there's a lot there, but I think we can, I think it's definitely worth exploring. So the idea, the basic idea, did everybody hear most of that? Okay, so the basic idea is that you have generations where you may have a generation that is faithful, but then the children fall away. And the question is how can we kind of assure that children, what do we do, how do we assure that the children won't fall away? The short answer is that it's not up to us. It's the Holy Spirit working in folks' hearts. Now, that said, it doesn't mean we're off the hook. And what I mean by that is there are certain things that we're commanded to do to live out the faith. And by and large, God will honor that. So I look at, for example, I'm still kind of pulling my thoughts together. But if we go back to the first example that was brought up, and that was the miracles that were experienced in, and actually it wasn't even the next generation, it was the same generation. the same folks that experienced the miracles of, well, one, the Passover, but then secondly, the splitting of the Red Sea, you know, the pillar of fire and smoke. They saw all of that, and they still, what did they want to do when they got, well, they had the manna, and they had the quail, and God kept, it was miracle after miracle after miracle, How is that generation characterized? Idolatrous. Idolatrous? And what's the verb that's used for them? Grumbling. Grumbling, yeah. They grumbled. They complained. They were idolatrous. What did they want to do every time something went wrong? They want to go back to Egypt. They're seeing with their own two eyes, they're seeing all of this stuff, right? Jesus said something about that. He said, you know, essentially, I'm gonna paraphrase, essentially, miracles aren't gonna convince anybody of anything. That's a more modern, you know, interpretation of what he said. Because ultimately, we all know the truth. We all know that there is a holy God, I'm sorry, I hate it when I use a holy God. There's not a holy God, there is the holy God. There is the holy God who is the creator of the world and everything in it. We all know that. Paul tells us that in Romans chapter one, verses like 18 through 22. He says that the eternal power and the divine attributes of God have been seen in the things that have been made. Those are clearly perceived. But what do we do? We suppress that knowledge in unrighteousness. So the reality is that we know the truth, but our tendency, our overwhelming tendency is to rebel. just like Adam and Eve in the garden. And I think I say this like every week, we commit the act of the same sin that Adam and Eve did in the garden. We rebel against God. We want to be our own gods. We want to define what is right and what is wrong for ourselves. We want to determine who to sleep with. We want to determine how we spend our money because we have earned it. It's about us, not about our creators, the way that we tend to look at it. So the idea there is that you can have the most faithful parents in the world. You can have, which I don't think there is such thing as most faithful parents in the world, but hypothetically, you could have the most faithful parents in the world. You know, or you could have the most blasphemous parents in the world. And there's a lot of people that did not grow up in Christian churches that heard the call. I mean, I'm one. I didn't grow up in a Christian church. I probably, until 2004, I was 36 years old. I'd probably been to church maybe a dozen times in my life. I didn't know who Christ was. The first time that somebody said something about Jesus being God, I was like, what? I mean, it completely, I'd heard of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost all my life. I had no idea what that meant. I didn't know that it meant that Jesus was God, among other things, right? But when the Holy Spirit, to use a phrase, came a knockin', there's no denying it, okay? And even though I kept trying to rebel, I'll tell you firsthand, that grace is irresistible. And if the Holy Spirit gives you belief, you're gonna believe. And that he's gonna convict you. And the saying is, carrots are sticks. You know, carrots being things we want and sticks being things we don't want. Carrots are sticks. You're gonna believe, right? And so, anyway. kind of getting off a little bit, but that said, we do have a responsibility. Okay. Even though ultimately it's that a person's salvation is in God's hands, ultimately, um, or even though it's ultimately in God's hands, we still have, we're supposed to still do what we're supposed to do. Right. And, um, There's my favorite example of this, and it's a general principle, and half of y'all or most of y'all have probably heard me say this multiple times, but I always go back to the book of Joshua in the early chapters when, as right before Joshua, they're getting ready to go into the promised land, right? So if you go back, you go back into the Pentateuch, into the Mosaic books, what happened when, what did Moses do before they went into the Promised Land? They were getting ready to go in the first time. What did he do? The first time, when they were getting ready to go in. Yeah, it's in the spies, exactly. So Moses sent spies into the land and they came back and said, well, there's giants in the hills, right? And so the people were afraid. And how did God respond? He said, you're not going into the promised land. You're gonna wander in the wilderness for four years. The next generation is gonna go into the promised land. So Joshua and Caleb were the two faithful spies that had come back, right? Now Joshua, like Tula says, takes over for Moses. Now Joshua is getting ready to lead Israel into the promised land. What's the first thing he did? He sent in spies, there you go. Now, Didn't work out too well for Moses, but Joshua did it. Are we thinking that Joshua lacked faith for some reason? Why in the world would he send those spies in? What do you think? Why did he send the spies in? Wisdom, okay. Anybody else? He was a responsible military commander. That's what a responsible military commander does. God had told him that he would be with him. God said, I will be with you, and the land will be yours, in so many words. That did not mean that Joshua wasn't responsible, wasn't supposed to do what a good military commander was supposed to do. And so it was prudent for him to send those spies in. And it turns out the spies ran into a lady named Rahab that ended up being what? In the line of the Messiah. We remember her as a prostitute, but in reality, we need to think about her as she's in the line of the Messiah. Right? That's her most significant thing. And so anyway, the point there is, is that yes, God is sovereign. Yes, God is in control, but that does not relinquish our responsibilities. And so as parents, we raise our children in the instruction and the discipline of the Lord. It says that in Deuteronomy 6, right around verse four, it's called the Shema. And it's also a Christian teaching as well. We raise our children in that way. And so, and many times God honors that. And then sometimes, sometimes he doesn't. That's his prerogative. All right? So anyway, but ultimately the lesson there is miracles and evidence don't convince anybody of anything. Because ultimately our rebellion against God is not an intellectual rebellion. It's an emotional rebellion. It's a prideful rebellion. We want to rule ourselves. We want to be our own gods, right? Any questions, thoughts? Yes, sir. able to instill in our children a love for God, a real love for God, by showing him who he is, what he's done, then maybe we can protect them from the harm that God is trying to protect us from. Well, so I think the idea is that We do raise them up, like I said, in the instruction and discipline of the Lord. We do protect them. It's our calling to protect them. As a father and a husband, it's our primary ministry. As a mom and a wife, it's our primary ministry. But in terms of protecting them, I guess it's the language. God doesn't try to protect anybody from anything. God does protect people from things. God gets what he wants. Yes, sir. One of the hardest things for a parent to do is to allow their children to fail in situations. But that's often where God teaches us the most, is when we struggle and fail. And then that child can learn, OK, I need to trust God in this. I can't solve it on my own. So allowing your children to fail is an important thing. No, you don't want to let them make catastrophic mistakes. But there are times when you need to let your children learn through their failure. Because if you always protect them, then they're not going to trust God as easily. Does that make sense? No. Yeah, it's crazy hard. And the thing is, whether it's a child, it's some other loved one, it's a dear friend, one of the hardest trials that I went through, I was a Christian for about a year, and my best friend from, you know, I was in my mid-30s, my best friend of 20 years, I'd watched him suffer, you know, with lupus his whole life, and he had legs amputated, and just, it was the most horrible thing you can imagine. And, you know, he died, you know, about a year after, I'd become a Christian, and he wasn't. He wasn't a Christian. And man, that was some deep, deep, deep, deep soul-searching. And kinda me and the Holy Spirit really going to work. But what I realized was, you know, I don't love God. We're not to love God because he gives us what we want. We love God because of who he is. And sometimes that means we don't, We don't get what we want and we don't always understand that. Sometimes it hurts very, very deeply, but faith is trust in God. Especially when we don't understand what he's doing and we don't. Maybe we don't like what he's doing, but it does not mean that he's wrong. It means that we don't. It means that we don't understand. And but faith is is. is going through that and loving and trusting him anyway. And I mean, if it were easy, we wouldn't even need to teach classes like this, right? We wouldn't be called to teach. We wouldn't, you know, it's just, it'd be something that we just do. But it's hard. It's the hardest thing in the world. All right. All right, Exodus 12, 15 through 20. Wow, we made it through a verse. And by the way, I love the questions. They're mostly relevant, but it's good. I think we learned from them. All right, so what is leaven? What's another word for leaven? Yeast, OK. What is it? It's kind of a spore that reacts. I think it gives off oxygen or something. It puts air in your bread, you know. It multiplies a lot. That's kind of how it's characterized, right? So how is the word or concept used in the Old Testament? What's that? It's in? Anybody else? Can you give me a passage in the Old Testament where leaven is used figuratively? In the Old Testament? Yeah. Okay, here's the thing. In the Old Testament, Leaven is just leaven. It's something that generally goes in bread. It's not really talked about. In Exodus here, Leviticus, it talks about unleavened bread. But the first use of leaven is actually in the verse that we're studying right now, Exodus 12, verse 15. Okay? And if I recall correctly, it's used about 19 times in the Old Testament. 12 of them are in the Mosaic books. I think the closest it comes to some kind of figurative thing is in the book of Hosea. But even then, it's neither sinful nor good or anything. It's just leaven. It's just talked about, right? But in the New Testament, How is the word or concept used? Sin, there you go. But kind of not, it can be, right? Yeah, I did, I did, you're welcome. It's actually used as a, it's not used as something sinful, it's used as something that replicates itself, right? So let's look at Matthew 13, verse 33. Jesus says, the kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour till it was all leavened. So here it's, what comes right before this? What's the analogy? The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, right? It grows. Here it's used in terms of growing. Okay, so it's actually compared to the kingdom of heaven, so it's good, right? Matthew 16, Jesus said to them, watch and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees. How is it that you fail to understand that I did not speak about bread? Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees. Then they understood that he did not tell them to beware of the leaven of the bread, but of the teaching of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. So the idea is the teaching of the Sadducees and the Pharisees was replicating itself, it was going out like crazy. And he was saying, beware of that, okay? 1 Corinthians 5, your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? There's the concept. And so boasting is like leaven, that it repeats itself, it replicates itself. Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump. Are you really unleavened? For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been crucified, I'm sorry, sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth." Now this goes back to Steve's question a little bit earlier. Here we have, let us therefore celebrate the festival. So, Side note on this passage real quick. So here the idea is the festival is pointing to the Feast of Unleavened Bread. It's pointing to the Passover, right? In a figurative sense. Because if you're in Christ, you're celebrating the Feast of Unleavened Bread. So you don't have to celebrate, literally celebrate the Feast of Unleavened Bread going forward because you're celebrating it in Christ. And that's what Paul is saying here, right? Does it make sense? Okay, so that goes back to the forever, when it talks about forever, in reality, if you're in Christ, then you're doing what that commandment for for the Passover to go on and on forever, we're fulfilling that. Does it make sense? Yeah, okay. All right, so here, your boasting is not good. Little Levin goes the whole way. So this is where Levin is getting its reputation as a bad thing. Okay, so I say all of that to say this. We have to be careful not to project our later understanding of a concept onto an earlier audience. So, The Jews, the Israelites, when they were getting ready to leave Egypt, they were not getting rid of the leaven because it was evil. Why were they getting rid of it? Yes, ma'am. Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely, that's it. So the whole idea, oh, let me come back to that. The Exodus text does not indicate that the prohibition against leaven had anything to do with replicating substance or anything intrinsically evil. What did it have to do with? That's exactly what Christina said, haste. It was don't take the time. You're not gonna have the time in order to let your bread rise. So basically be ready, have your sandals on your feet, have your staff in your hand, and be ready to roll, right? And the leaven, you're gonna eat unleavened bread. It's not as tasty, doesn't have the right texture, there's, you know, not cool, man, but it's something that you're going to do. And by the way, every time you eat unleavened bread, you're gonna think about this. You're gonna think about this occasion. Because it was something that was, it was a unique aspect of the Passover meal, right? The lamb was not unique. The bitter herbs and those things, those were not unique. The only unique thing was eating unleavened bread. And that's the part where the Jews were being told, okay, now you need to look back. This will be like a symbol of your remembrance, right? Passover lamb is very important, because ultimately that was the sacrifice. But it's the unleavened bread, which is the symbol that you're pointing back to. Let me go back up to that bullet point that I missed. You have to be careful not to project a later understanding of a concept onto an earlier audience. So our modern, when we read Genesis, we shouldn't throw in modern physics into that because they would not have understood. I remember there was a commentator that said something about, Genesis 1-2, where it says the spirit was hovering over the face of the deep. You know, so that spirit is like electromagnetic radiation. And no, no it's not. Number one, it's a lot deeper than that. It's very poetic. But even if it was, that's not the way that people would have understood it for 3,500 years. or 3,400 years. They didn't know what electromagnetic radiation was. So we can't take our modern ideas and project them back, our modern knowledge and project them back. We can't even take certain concepts of post Christ and project those back. Now that said, here's the bullet point, later revelation does often clarify, amplify, and complete earlier revelation, right? My favorite example of this is in Genesis chapter three when it talks about the seed of a woman crushing the head of the serpent. When you look at that, there's not a lot of, it's like what in the world does that mean when you first read it? But as you look at the progressive revelation over a period of 1,500 years culminating in Christ, all of a sudden there is some really, really, really deep meaning there. So, there are concepts where you do later revelation does clarify and amplify and complete earlier revelation, but we have to be careful. And I wish I could just give you a principle to say do it, you know, when this happens and don't do it when this happens, but I don't think you could do that. Questions? Thoughts? Concerns? No? Okay. OK, we'll see how far we can go. Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. And actually, I just talked about this. Why make unleavened bread rather than the lambs, herbs, whatever the focus of the memorial feast? It was the unique component of the exodus meal. Eating it at the memorial feast intentionally recalled the original departure. Eating it for seven days tended to fix it in one's consciousness. On the first day you shall remove leaven out of your houses, for if anyone eats what is leavened, that person shall be cut off from Israel." And then skipping down to verse 19, if anyone eats what is leavened, that person will be cut off from the congregation of Israel. First, what does cut off mean? What's that? Left out, right? Left out, cast out, right, absolutely. So removal from both God's benefits to Israel in the near future and from eternal life with them in the ultimate future. It's a big deal, okay? Somebody eats leaven, they're cut off, that's kind of a big deal, right? It doesn't seem to be a command though. One of the commentators I was reading said the expression would be more of a statement of fact. Says, this would be the eventual outcome for the person who committed the violation of God's law. An appropriate paraphrase might be, God will see to it that this person is cut off. It was thus more of a divine curse than a legal guideline. Now, that's one of the things that's, it doesn't really come out in the text quite like that, but, That's one of the reasons why we have teachers. We have people that study the original languages to bring out these nuances. But either way, whether it's God cutting them off or it's the leadership of Israel cutting them off, then we're talking a significant thing here. So why such drastic consequences? What do you think? What do you think, Brandon? No? You're good? Okay. Yes, ma'am. Yeah. Yeah. a large lump from Galatians. So God's holiness is important to him and he could be telling the people, like, you let in a little and you're going to spoil all of it. And just like the New Testament passage about, you know, if your eye offends you, cut it out. If your hand offends you, cut it off. Like, he takes sin very seriously. So, like, don't even let a little in. Right. So I think you're on to something. And so specifically, the idea is God's giving a command. And he's saying, look, don't eat leaven. It ain't good. It ain't bad. It just is. And if we take it as creation, part of creation, then it's good, right? But it has a characteristic of spreading. And so I want leaven to be symbolic of this time, or the absence of leaven to be symbolic of this time. And to Megan's point, if you just eat a little, you might as well eat the whole thing, because I told you not to. I said none, right? And so Douglass Stewart, the same commentator I quoted a few minutes ago, he said, God had declared that the action of smearing blood on doorframes was a sign of faith he would accept in order to avoid death in a household. Now he declared that eating the Passover with its special non-yeasted bread was the sign of faith that indicated a person was keeping the Passover as a believer in its meaning and therefore a true member of the covenant community of Israel. And so So in other words, it's the sort of thing that they need to take it seriously. And that was the whole point. They needed to take it seriously. And then we'll wrap up with this one. So what's the point of removing it totally from the houses? In reality, what it's doing is it's preventing somebody from accidentally eating leaven. It's like a protection mechanism. And if they go through the effort of removing the leaven from their houses, then it's, they're showing a sign of faith and obedience, right? You know, just by doing that, right? And it's that obedience, that attitude of obedience that goes a long way, right? Yes, sir. Right. preventing any temptation. It's similar to God's command to the Israelites. When you go in to take their land, you need to completely wipe out. Because otherwise those people, you're going to end up intermingling with them and doing what they do. It's the same concept. That's a great point. That's a great example. If you didn't hear, God, you know, God told Israel, when you go into the land, you need to wipe them all out. Because if you leave any of the pagans, it doesn't matter what race they are, it's not a racial thing or an ethnic thing, it's a religious thing. They were worshiping pagan gods. If you leave any of this paganism intact, honestly, it's gonna be like leaven, it's gonna spread, right? And guess what? That ended up happening. That's exactly what ended up happening was it spread. So cool. So we're going to stop there. Next week we're going to pick up. I think the next bit is kind of summarizing and then we'll be able to move on to the next several chapters or paragraphs. So, Stuart, do you mind praying? I don't mind. Father, thank you for giving us your word. Thank you for the ordinance of passover that you've given that festival to celebrate the deliverance that you provided for the nation of israel and more importantly it points forward to what christ has done for us how he delivered us from the the your wrath that we deserve for sin father thank you for uh the truth that you've given us and and the way that your spirit works to regenerate us and I pray that you would continue to use our time for your glory and our good now in Jesus name. Amen. Thank you, sir. Thanks, everybody.