Gooding, David: 2 - The Feast of Passover

Let's begin by reading in the book of Leviticus and chapter twenty three. Book of Leviticus and chapter twenty three. Beginning tonight in verse four. These are the set feasts of the Lord, even holy convocation, which he shall proclaim in their appointed season. In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at even, is the Lord's Passover. And on the fifteenth day of the same month is the feast of unleavened bread unto the Lord. Seven days ye shall eat unleavened bread. In the first day ye shall have an holy convocation. You shall do no servile work, but you shall offer an offering made by fire unto the Lord seven days. In the seventh day is an holy convocation. You shall do no servile work. And that suffice for our reading from the Old Testament, but shall we remind ourselves of some passages in the New? The Gospel by Mark. The Gospel by Mark, chapter fourteen. Now after two days was the feast of the Passover and the unleavened bread. And the chief priests and the scribes sought how they might take him with subtlety and kill him. For they said, not during the feast, lest haply there shall be a tumult of the people. The Gospel of John and chapter two, Reading there in verse thirteen. And the Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. He found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting, and he made a scourge of cords and cast all out of the temple. Chapter six of that gospel. After these things went Jesus away to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, which is the Sea of Tiberias. The great multitude followed him because they beheld the signs which he did on them that were sick. Jesus went up into the mountain, and there he sat with his disciples. Now the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was at hand. Finally, for the moment, in chapter eighteen of the gospel, and verse twenty eight, They lead Jesus therefore from Caiaphas into the palace, and it was early. And they themselves entered not into the palace, that they might not be defiled, but might eat the parcel. The Lord grants us good understanding of his word this evening. We found in our study last week that the year of the Israelites was punctuated by certain holy holidays. Holidays that God himself had instituted for the good of his people. It wasn't, of course, that God disagreed with work, not even with hard work. God is a tremendous believer in work. And what a good and a sane and a salutary thing it is to have a job of work to occupy muscle and brain. But God instituted these holidays not because he was against work, but because he was against slavery. And it is so very easy in this fallen world for work of various kinds to descend into being slavery. God was against slavery in Israel in regard to their daily toil. God, thanks be to his name, is against slavery still when it comes to the matter of our Christian salvation and the manner in which we lead our Christian lives. Let me immediately remind you of two passages in the New Testament that bear upon this latter thing. Paul tells us in his epistle to the Romans and chapter eight that God has not given us, and we have not received the spirit of slavery again to fear. But we have received the spirit of adoption or sonship by which we cry, Abba Father. It is a very kind and loving thing of God to tell us this matter. As so often, he tells us about the Holy Spirit's working in our lives in negative sentences. The Holy Spirit and the kingdom of God is not this, and it isn't that, and it isn't the other, and it isn't this. We are surrounded both from without and from within by all sorts of urges and demands, and we need on times to be able to discern which of those urges and which of those demands are God's Holy Spirit, and which are false demands and false urges that would lead us into slavery. If I might address my younger Christian brethren for a moment, let me remind them that if they should ever find urges within them that terrify their lives, or run their Christian work into a kind of a slavery and a bondage which somehow they feel they daren't stop, because otherwise they would somehow be displeasing God. Let them bear this verse in mind. God's Holy Spirit will never reduce your life to a slavery. You have not received the spirit of slavery again to fear. God wants hard work. God wants sacrifice, but he doesn't want suicide, and he certainly doesn't want slavery. It happens sometimes to young folks. With good and admirable zeal for the Lord, they set about serving him and praying and witnessing and striving, till at last, before they are aware, they become so involved that their nerves become frayed. And with midnight prayer meetings and all night prayer meetings and fastings and witnessings and preachings and workings, they fall victim to psychological urges that presently waste them away and drive them towards breakdown. Sometimes they find they can't stop because the urge that urges them simulates the voice of God's Holy Spirit, and they feel it would be a sin to stop. It is a merciful provision of our Father, and absolutely typical of his heart, that he reminds us and spells it out. The spirit by whom he leads us is not a spirit of slavery. It is, of course, basic to our very preaching of the gospel, isn't it? Paul, in his letter to the Galatians and chapters four and five rehearses for us the story of Abraham and the birth of Ishmael and then of Isaac, to remind us again that his basic salvation, the terms of our justification, and the terms of our Christian inheritance are these. We, brethren, as Isaac was, are children of promise, but as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the spirit, even so is it now. How be it, what saith the scripture? Cast out the slave woman and her son, for the son of the slave woman shall not inherit with the son of the free. Wherefore, brethren, we are not children of a slave woman, but of a free woman, with freedom did Christ set us free. Stand fast, therefore, and be not entangled again in a yoke of slavery. So that in our daily work and in our spiritual work, as in our great salvation, we need from time to time to pause and reflect, to allow God's Holy Spirit to flood our hearts with that sense of sonship, royal sonship, and freedom, that all our work may be done in the spirit of free sonship and not in the spirit of slavery. It is no accident, therefore, that, as you see here on the chart before you, so, uh, clearly, uh, listed, the holidays in Israel's year began with the festival of Passover. Passover, in fact, formed for them the beginning of year- of the year, the b- first month of the year. Now that is significant because in Israel, the Israelites were very much like us. They had several New Year's each year. We do, don't we? We have that New Year that comes after Christmas when you've taken your stockings down and, uh, all the trimmings and you start New Year in January in the January sale. That's one kind of New Year. But then in schools and colleges and universities, we have another New Year. Our New Year for the purposes of education, starts in, well, it depends, uh, September or October. Yeah. And some people have a new year that starts when they got married, you know, life didn't begin till then, they say, and so they celebrate it every year, coming around to this great beginning of a new way of life. Israel had different new years. For the purposes of politics, they had a different New Year from this. But in their year of, uh, redemption, so to speak, their year of spiritual experience and relationship with God, that year had its beginning, marked by the feast of Passover. And for a very good reason. There would have been no nation to celebrate any New Year's, had it not been for Passover. The first Passover had been that tremendous occasion when God had visited them in Egypt and redeemed them and set them free. I say again, had it not been for redemption, there would have been no nation free to worship God and serve him. It is a reminder to us at once, is it not? That there can be with us no true serving of God until we have known the grace and wonder of personal redemption through Christ. But then think again, for it is opposite to our theme. God's original Passover was not only a remembrance, a a a a form of deliverance, it was precisely and explicitly a deliverance from the house of bondage. They had been slaves before, and God had visited them for this express purpose, to set them free, that they should no longer be slaves. Set them free that they might worship him and serve him as his freeborn son. And yearly, therefore, he instituted this feast of remembrance, that as the years and the centuries went by, they might annually be reminded of that tremendous historic intervention on the part of God in their nation's lives to set them free from bondage. The yearly remembrance of the great historic occasion should, in God's good hand, be the means of keeping them free and saving them from lapsing again into all kinds of slavery. In that remembrance, as they celebrated the Passover, there would be two elements, among others, prominent. They would remember how that God visited Egypt and delivered the Israelites through the blood of the Passover lamb. They would remember with solemn and humble gratitude, deliverance from the wrath and judgment of God through the Passover lamb. There would be impressed on their minds the cost of their redemption, the cost of setting them free. With it there would come a godly concern that the lives so delivered should be maintained free for the service of God. And secondly, as they remembered that great Passover event, they would recall how that on that occasion God had delivered them not only with the blood of the Passover lamb, but with a stretched out arm and mighty power demonstrated particularly at the Red Sea. And if as a redeemed people under the covenant of God, they fell to wondering from time to time how they should find strength to do and perform and work all those duties that God laid upon them. They should be reminded of the source of that strength as they saw, felt, as they remembered the power that God had then exerted to set them free. And each generation would be moved to seek for themselves that personal experience of the power of that selfsame God. That, it seems to me, is where the lesson lies for us in our age. We too have been redeemed. Though, as Peter would remind us, not with the blood of animals, nor yet with silver and gold or any such perishable thing. But we have been redeemed by the precious blood as of a lamb without blemish and without spot. We do look backward to an historic event. That central event in all human history, and we dare think in eternity itself. When Christ, the Lamb of God, died for our sins, to redeem us and set us free. And indeed, we have a freedom, an inalienable freedom, purchased by the blood of Christ. Freedom from the chains of guilt. Freedom from the fear of the righteous wrath of God. It is God's will that we constantly remember it as the very basis of everything. Here spiritual experience begins. To it all spiritual experience must constantly recur. And as we recur in memory to the redemption purchased for us by Christ, we too shall find the secret of living a life in true spiritual freedom. I wonder if you would ask your hearts honestly, as I ask mine right now. As redeemed folks. Under obligation, so the New Testament tells us, to lead a life of service for God. Have you ever, my brother, have you never, my sister, come through a patch in life where the commandments of the Lord have seemed to you to be grievous, and they've hurt? And you found them beginning to appear a kind of slavery? And you wished you didn't have to come to the prayer meeting? And you found the recurrence of the Lord's Supper a bind? And you wished the preachers who reminded you of your responsibility to testify to the Lord, you wished them further. Never found that? Well, a hundred percent marks then. But I've got to confess that I have. Though I've told the unconverted with bright shining face that if you come to Christ, it's all marvelous. In my heart, I've known times when God things have seemed a bit of a slavery. Well, if you've never found it so, well, just tuck this under your cap in case you do one of these days. What is it that will take out of our Christian duty and work hard as it may be, the sense of slavery. What is it? First is... the realistic remembrance of what it cost Jesus Christ, my Lord, to redeem my life. If I forget it, if I forget the cost of that precious blood, then presently my naughty heart begins to protest that God is expecting too much from me. And like that servant in the parable, I begin to protest to my Lord, but thou art a hard man, reaping where you didn't sow, and gathering where you didn't winnow, and always expecting something for nothing. And then my Christian duty appears to be a slavery. Imposed by a hard. Let my heart have imprinted upon it, and the imprint constantly refresh, what it cost Christ to shed that infinitely valuable blood. And the protest goes. Though I were called upon to offer my body a living sacrifice, I come to see, as Paul phrases it, that that is merely my reasonable service. There will come into my Christian life again a sense of slavery. Even now, if I have the best will in the world to perform my Christian duty. If I forget that I myself have not the power to fulfill the things that Christ has a right to expect of me. If I forget that sovereign, infinite power of God that was demonstrated when Christ died as my redeemer to set me free. That exceeding greatness of the power of God that he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and us too. That great historic event that followed Calvary, when Christ was raised and presently ascended into the heavens by the power of God. I need again. I need my times of quiet, away from my service. I need my times of rest that God may be able to flood my heart and mind with the memory of that tremendous thing and the reality of it now. That same power available to me in my daily chores, in my spiritual ministry. Otherwise, the caring for the family, the emotional strain of having to look after young children, or more so teenagers, the complexities of work, the bargainings with the trade unions, and all those thousand and one things that fill so much of our time will crumple us, and in our feeling of defeat, we shall sense the bitterness of slavery. Oh God, give us wisdom to take our times, our spiritual rest, holiday, to think again of the great work of redemption at Calvary and the resurrection and ascension. To let God open our my hearts, minds to perceive in the very depths of our personalities, that reservoir of power that there is available to us. Sometimes God shows some of his people these things by lightning strokes of revelation. But the most of us, not being geniuses, we have to learn these things gradually. God's spirit must be given time to repeat his lessons and to repeat them and repeat them, and bit by bit strengthen us in our inner man by his spirit. Bit by bit we come to learn, and bit by bit to use the power that God has available for us. From spiritual rest to spiritual work, and from spiritual work back to spiritual rest, this is the ebb and flow of God's program for our lives. Israel then were commanded of the Lord in the kindness of heart to keep this feast, the first feast of the year. We spend a little time thinking how they got on, shall we? And to be fair to them, we must remind ourselves that for centuries after century after century, multitudes of godly Israelites devotedly kept that feast of Passover and prayed and gave their thanksgiving to God, and God heard them and blessed them. We mustn't get it into our heads, maybe, that, uh, most of the Israelites were badens, and God rejected them. There were multitudes of Hannahs. Yeah, and Huldahs, and Miriams, and Josephs and Hezekiahs that did as God told them to do and were blessed, and we shall meet them in glory by and by. But Israel suffered as we do. It is so desperately easy, isn't it? When you have recurring celebrations, be it Passover or the Lord's Supper, for it to become a formality and a routine, and its impact is lost. It was easier for them, perhaps, because they dealt solely, and very often in little more than symbols. Hard for them always to remember the reality. Let's profit, however, from their mistakes, lest we should be guilty of the same thing. John's gospel tells us how on four occasions, our Lord Jesus went up to Jerusalem to celebrate a feast of the Jews. And on three of those occasions, the feast in question was a feast of Passover. And John, in his lovely way, pictures our Lord going up with the festal crowds. What fun it was when you could down tools and leave the old harrows, eh, for a little while in the barn and forget about what this new New Year's crop was going to be like, and you could dress up in your Sabbath best and go off with the wife and the family. And presently down the road, as the little side roads joined the main roads, the trickle of pilgrims mounting to a great caravan, and it was fun, particularly at night round the campfire, wasn't it, when the stars came out and they had their old banjos to sing the Psalms. Oh, we're going out to Jerusalem. Won't it be tremendous when we get there? And at last, of course, they would get there. And coming over, over the top of Mount Scopus and seeing Jerusalem, the little ones for the first time, all through, our feet shall stand within thy walls, O Jerusalem. And that mixture of holiday and holy day, when aunts and uncles long lost in Patagonia on business came with their young families to celebrate the feast too, it was a tremendous occasion. And there, says John, see him, don't you? See that one there? You should know that in that otherwise indistinguishable figure is God incarnate going up with the pilgrim to keep the feast. What for, you say? Well, because he's the God that they're supposedly worshipping. He's joining in. Listening to the way they sing. Reading their hearts as they say the prayers. Watching actually what is their response to the public reading of Holy Scripture? Searching always, wanting to be sure that they have the reality behind the outward ceremony. And now, says chapter two, they are celebrating Passover. And Jesus went up to Jerusalem, and he went into the temple, and he found... What do you think he would find? Well, he'd find Uncle Hezekiah, wouldn't he? With Naphtali, his long lost brother, and after they talked about business and how is inflation and all that, saying, and my brother, what have you been enjoying of the Lord this past year? You know, I've been finding out what God said to old Moses is a real thing, you know, and the experience of our nation way back there in Egypt at the Passover and the power of God. You know, when I was a kid, I thought it was a bit of magic or something, like Jack and the Beanstalk, but I've been proving that to my brother, that it's a real thing, and you can have an experience of God yourself, you know, at the personal level. Isn't the power of God wonderful? And he found... in the temple. He found them selling oxen, doves, making a packet of money out of changing the pilgrims' money for the offerings. And he was so incensed. He cast them all out. Poof, they said. Oh, well, you've got to be realistic-minded in this world. Money doesn't go on trees, you know. You see this temple here, it took forty seven years to build. It isn't built finished yet. You don't get money off trees. What What a had gone wrong? When first their nation had been delivered out of Egypt, and they first felt the thrill of freedom, and God had proposed to build a tabernacle, they had come with their gifts, ex-slaves though they were, and they had so pestered now Moses to take the mountains of their offerings that he had to tell them, please stop. What had happened now that you had to screw the farthings out of them and turn the whole temple thing into a charade of business and represent God to the people as though God were in religion to make money, out to sell salvation to the highest bidder. What had happened, do you think? Said they to Christ, what sign showest thou that you make this commotion and turn out our commercialism? He said, destroy this body, destroy this temple, and I will raise it up again in three days. They thought he spoke of a literal temple, and they hadn't a clue what he meant. He spoke, of course, of that divine power that should raise his body from the dead and set him at the right hand of God in the heavens. The talk of the power of God in that fashion to these people, and you were talking double Dutch. They were celebrating Passover. They hadn't a notion of personal experience of the power of God. Why hadn't they? We'll move along the street on one of the nights doing that Passover week with our Lord and watch the shadowy figure emerge from the darkness. It's the rabbi himself, the professor of theology in Jerusalem, and now you'll find out where things have gone wrong. As you hear our Lord talk to that man of the power of God to be experienced at the personal level. What it means to be regenerate by the workings of the Spirit of God, to be born again of water and of the Spirit. Theologian of many years though he was, he too had not a notion. How many times had he read it in Ezekiel's prophecy? Still his mind was dark. He hadn't the beginning of a notion of the power of God in regeneration in his life. Do we say to ourselves, as we read that ancient story, oh yes, but if Nicodemus failed there, I passed. Well, thank God for it. That we have had that experience that is fundamental of the power of God in our lives, being born again of his spirit. But put it in Pauline terms, will you? We are children, not of the slave woman. Children of God. Children of the Jerusalem that is above. Born of God's Holy Spirit, born sons of the Father. We shall never be anything better than slaves in our religious motions until we have learned this marvelous and wonderful thing at the personal level, to be born a child of God, a prince in the divine family, with the Father's own life, and forever free. There was another feast at Passover at Jerusalem, and our Lord had went up to it, as far as we know, but before he did, when the time was getting near, the feast of the Passover being at hand, and he himself was up north in Tiberias, not far from the Sea of Galilee. He fed the multitudes with bread, and gratefully they ate the loaves and the fishes. The time of Passover was near, says John. You see, Passover was the feast about which you would use the phrase to eat the Passover. You didn't talk about eating, uh, the Feast of Trumpets, obviously not. You didn't talk of eating the Feast of Atonement. You did talk of eating the Passover. And so this time our Lord spread a feast up north when Passover was drawing nigh and invited the people to eat by his sovereign provision. They came clamoring the next day, seeking another free meal, and our Lord had to say to them, but gentlemen, you seek me today not because you saw any sign in what I did yesterday. To you it was simply another free meal, another dish of Kellogg's, another plate of sardines, and that's all you saw in it. It was meant to be a sign of an eating far more profound than the mere eating of bread and fish. It was meant to be a sign that in your midst is the very manner of the God, the true manner, the bread that came down from heaven. As bread came down to your fathers in the wilderness when they had been redeemed by the Passover and were passing across the desert to their inheritance, and bread came down from heaven to feed them. So in your midst stands the very bread of God, and those loaves were meant to lead you to him. They were not interested, found it a hard saying. Presently, our Lord had to remark, what if you should see the Son of Man ascend up where he was before? What was all that about? Where was he before? Where was he going to ascend to? What was he talking about? Ah, how little they had learned over the centuries, hadn't they? Will you not remember that when they kept that first Passover feast, they had to keep it specially dressed? Their loins girded, a staff in their hand, sandals on their feet. Why so? It was the Lord's Passover. So what? Why? Because if you ate that food of the Passover and really believed what God was saying through that Passover meal, you were expecting the door to open and at midnight to go forth and to begin a journey that should take you far away into your inheritance. To eat the Passover and not be prepared to journey, nor to know where you were journeying to, was a sad contradiction in terms, wasn't it? But behind that historic Passover and a literal journey across a Sinai wilderness to a literal Palestine of their inheritance, behind all that, there was a bigger journey, wasn't there? A journey that should start at a bigger redemption, at a bigger Passover, and lead the redeemed man and woman in the steps of Christ through this world and on into the inheritance that lies beyond. And Peter has caught the idea. He says, you have been begotten again unto an inheritance incorruptible and defiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, and therefore, being redeemed, gird up the loins of your mind and pass the time of your sojourning here in fear. For you too are on a journey. They could not understand it. When he talked at that Passover time of going back where he had come, they said, oh, we've had enough of that. Religion we understand, but not that kind of stuff. Oh, come on, they said, and they went back to Jerusalem, and they kept a Passover, but there wasn't much in it. And we? Redeemed, yes. Dare I ask you, have I, have I your permission to ask? Loins girded, my brother. Mind actively thinking it out, working out the logical implications, girding up the loins of our mind as to how we should be journeying. Eyes on the goal. Making progress, not just chronologically as we tear off each leaf of the calendar day by day, from seventeen years to ninety seven and a half, but making some kind of spiritual progress as well. For to be redeemed and not to be journeying is a contradiction of what Passover stands for. There came a last Passover. Last of those our Lord attended. And we read those sad verses together, how they assembled... and refused to go into Pilate's hall... in order to accuse Christ and compass his execution. They refused, did these holy men, to enter Pilate's hall, lest they should be defiled. They so wanted to keep the Passover. Passover they kept. Now it had become an utterly mingless, empty thing. As in that moment, those responsible leaders hugged their chains to themselves. Once their fathers had been in Egypt, under the domination of a cruel Pharaoh, Prince of Egypt. And God had broken their chains and set them free. The evangelist comes towards the end of his gospel and records our Lord's conversations and sayings as the cross drew near. You will find our Lord repeating this phrase, the prince of this world. The prince of this world. The prince of this world. Oh, what a mastery he had. Even over so many of those that kept that actual Passover. He had Caiaphas, didn't he? Oh, Caiaphas, so enamored of his place in society, his position as high priest, his comfort in his occupation under the Romans. But if it came to it, he would choose his career and position in this world rather than God's Christ. Prince of this world had Judas, didn't he? You may think very cheaply. thirty pieces of silver, dangled close up against his eye, till it blotted out God's divine son and all that went with him. The prince of this world, chained Judas a slave. They say, what do you think about those brethren who were sitting round when Judas began complaining about the money that had been spent on Christ? Do you think perhaps the prince of this world had sort of insinuated himself a bit into their hearts as well. Let us not forget he's at his masterly tricks always. Nor is it always with fabulous wealth or exalted position in the state or something that he gets his grip upon our hearts, but often by little things here and little things there. He moves us from using this world till we love it. And whatever we say with our lips, in actual fact, given the choice a hundred and one times, we choose things rather than Christ. That's worldliness, isn't it? You can be worldly with very respectable things, can't you? Or a thing, however good and lovely in itself, however legitimate, yea indeed, however much a God-given gift the thing is, Satan can get me of an attitude of heart towards that thing or person, instead of leading me eventually to God, takes me from him. Then has he succeeded in making me worldly. Our only proof against it is to dwell constantly near our Lord, near in spirit to that cross. My brother, rules and regulations will never deliver you from worldliness. Oh, what a sad mistake they have made. Who with goodwill have tried to save themselves and their fellow Christians from worldliness by inventing all sorts of rules. Rules can't save you from worldliness. Worldliness is an antidote of heart. The only thing that can cure worldliness is to abide by that path. That Jesus Christ was put to shame for me. To remember who he was and who he is, and all those incalculable possessions and glories that are his, and to remember that there came a time when he surrendered them all without reserve to purchase me. I could do it again if it were necessary to do it. That is his system of values. When I see by God's illumination that that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and I wake up to it, that it wasn't merely some lowly carpenter, but God's own son, who for my sake became poor and died in poverty to redeem me. There is born in my heart the secret of overcoming the world. For who is he that overcomes the world, save he in whose heart there burns a vigorous and daily faith that Jesus is the Son of God. You will notice from the scripture and from this outline before you, that the feast of Passover was followed immediately by the feast of unleavened bread. So immediately that there was not a day's gap between them. So closely did they follow the one the other that as the years went by in Judaism, the feast of unleavened bread was, so to speak, extended backwards, and the whole thing was often called the feast of unleavened bread. Certainly you couldn't keep the one without the other, not even in Israel. You had to keep both together. And unleavened bread followed inevitably, like day follows night, followed ever the Feast of Passover. There was, of course, a historical reason for that. It is given us in the, uh, book of Exodus at the account of the, um, uh, Passover in chapter twelve. and I read the verse to you. They baked unleavened cakes of the dough which they brought forth out of Egypt, for it was not leavened. Because they were first out of Egypt and could not tell, neither had they prepared for themselves any vittles. So they ate unleavened bread. For the historical reason that they were pushed out in a hurry and hadn't got the time to go through that lengthy process of making leavened dough and therefore making leavened bread. As, however, the years followed, the Jewish rabbis came to see in the Feast of Unleavened Bread not only that reminder of a historical fact, though they never forgot it, that the historical reason for eating unleavened bread was to commemorate that when their fathers came out of Egypt, they just didn't have the time to make leavened bread. The rabbis themselves came to see added significance in it. For to the rabbis, leaven was a symbol of corruption. And the sweeping of their houses clear of all leaven for the time of that feast symbolized to those rabbis the cleaning out of the unclean things that's come from time to time to roost in one's life. And still in Belfast in nineteen seventy five, Orthodox Jews diligently at the appropriate time of the year search their houses high and low in a mock seeking of leaven, and they cast it all out. And of course it is a symbol, and they know it's a symbol, the better informed among them. Standing for the casting out of the life in the yearly house spring cleaning, so to speak, of all that is sour and corrupt and corrupting. It ain't a bad idea, is it, to have a yearly stock taking, do you think? You think that's very unspiritual? Perhaps you do it every week, so you wouldn't be content to do it, uh, just once a year, huh? But if we're busy, it ain't bad sometimes to have even a yearly stop taking it in. What have I been allowing this last year, unconsciously maybe, or little by little slipping here and slipping there and infiltrating this and infiltrating the other? Come! Has this year seen, uh, an actual fact of deterioration in my standards of holiness? At any rate, when you come to the New Testament, you will see that, uh, Paul has taken over this idea, uh, that he learned as a young Hebrew, and he uses it upon which to base a very practical exhortation to the likes of us in the Christian church. The passage is one Corinthians five, where Paul says like this: Your glorying is not good. Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump? Purge out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, even as ye are unleavened. For our Passover also has been sacrificed, even Christ. Wherefore let us keep the feast, not with the old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. I want to have a quick word to the experts. I want to beg of them to observe that when we come to interpret the typology of Holy Scripture, that you must allow for this basic principle, that things that had one meaning in the history of Israel sometimes gathered to themselves extra and deeper meanings as the years went along, yeah? You mustn't call me fanciful now for saying that, uh, just as in Israel, Passover was followed by unleavened bread, so in Christianity, redemption is in Christ must be followed by a holy life in which leaven has been cast out. You mustn't call me fanciful, may you? Well, you can't anyway. But Saint Paul says so. And you do see what's happened, don't you? What was here merely an historical reason has come to had added, come to have added and deeper spiritual significance. And that isn't because I turned fanciful all of a sudden, but because God thus designed it. That by the way. Shall we not now take to our hearts the practical lesson? Redeem, set free. Never again to be bondmen, or at least not by God's fault anyway. But that does not mean license, does it? Oh, indeed not. We know enough of that. We know exactly what Paul means when he says, look, I'm speaking at the practical level after the manner of men. Don't find fault with me afterwards for my imperfect illustrations. I am speaking as the manner of men, but to whomsoever you yield yourselves to obey, his slave you are. And it doesn't matter whether you be Christian or non-Christian. If as a Christian I constantly yield myself to sin, I shall for all practical purposes become a slave to that particular sin. God's redemption notwithstanding. That's how we're built. We constantly do a thing that's wrong. It builds up a habit. It becomes a habit we can't break. We become slaves. And we sense enough in our heads, haven't we, by God's grace, to see that if indeed we have been redeemed and set free and made sons of God, it doesn't mean that we're going to, um, indulge in license and evil things until the habit of them has become a slavery. It is the fact that now a claim to have been redeemed by the blood of Christ brings with it an irrefutable obligation to live a life of holiness. My brother, it won't happen automatically, will it? It will happen as we cooperate with God and his Holy Spirit, and we, by his grace, diligently search the rooms of our personality and by his grace exclude what is unworthy. It has two levels at least of reference, hasn't it? Here in one Corinthians five, the exhortation is in the context of church government and discipline. A grave and grievous subject, perhaps, to to raise at quarter past nine on a Tuesday night, but an exceedingly important one, and one that will grow more important as the years go by. The necessity for church government and discipline is not a necessity that they only need acknowledge who are super duper holy. It is a necessity founded in the very message of the gospel we preach, as well as in the honor of Christ. See here a Christian group of people, saved, and manfully preaching and witnessing the gospel to their neighbors. God bless them. But since they are, as we all are, human still and beset with frailty and weakness and the flesh, they suffer in their midst some grave antisocial. What are they to do? Let's hope they ho- let's hope they do it with contrite and broken hearts, and with com- the compassions of God, but let not sentiment prevent them. That church must publicly disown it. Why so? Why, if you don't, my brother, you will not only dishonor the fair name of Christ, but you will make ludicrous the gospel you preach. There is no true gospel that says that you can be saved by Christ and live a life of sin, and it doesn't matter. And the church that lives as though that were true, and it doesn't matter if its members are known, publicly known, as extortioners, publicly known as unclean and immoral. I say the church that takes the view that that doesn't matter, and that's all right, and when we preach a gospel that you're saved by grace, well, that's what it means. It doesn't matter what you do in the end. That church is fast on the way to denying the very gospel it preaches. The Christian church as a whole has not always seen this clearly, has it? In the dark medieval age, the thing became, uh, forgotten completely. A saint and lurid sinner mixed in the church and in high office in the church. But alas, at Reformation times, it wasn't seen all that distinctly, was it? There were godly men, sometimes called the stepchildren of the reformers, who pleaded with men like Luther and Zwingli to return to Holy Scripture and to exercise godly discipline and to set up churches that were gatherings of true believers and to excommunicate men guilty of grave public misdemeanor. But Luther and Zwingli and Bullinger and many of those dear men of God, alas, returned to the former ways, insisted on having churches that were coterminous with the state political, and refused to cast out men guilty of enormous sin. Protestantism has inherited a very large difficulty from the decision in that respect of men like Luther and Zwingli and Bullinger. In Protestantism, you will hear today the same scripture as Luther urged in his day and many since, as why you should not attempt to exercise church discipline. Say they, did not our Lord tell us to leave the tares along with the wheat? Did he not forbid us to root up the tares from among the wheat, lest perchance we root up the wheat in the process along with the tares? Well, he did do that. Though, to be sure, he didn't tell us that. It's what he told the angels, not us. For in that parable you will observe, will you not? That the field in which the wheat and the tares are sown is not the church, but the world. And the servants who are instructed to leave the tares are not the elders of the church, but the angels responsible for the judgment at the end of the age. And to apply that parable to church discipline is to confuse completely two utterly different categories. And what a sad confusion of the gospel has it become when people who have had no experience of Christ are allowed to imagine themselves members of a Christian church. When the man stands to preach the gospel, they don't know whether he's talking to them or who he's talking about, for they have been led to think, aren't we all Christians? Let us keep the feast, says Paul in relation to church discipline. Let us keep the feast. For Christ our Passover has been sacrificed for us. You must excommunicate that grievous fallen brother. Pray God for his restoration soon. But you must cleanse out the leaven. I have one last series of observations. We read in Mark fourteen how that there do nigh the feast of Passover and unleavened bread. And following Paul's hint, we shall say to ourselves, yes, and what was it meant to stand for? Passover and unleavened bread. Not the leaven of malice and wickedness, but the unleaven of sincerity and truth. And the high priests now were making their preparations to keep the feast of sincerity and truth. And they sought... how they might take him by craft. Yes, even on that feast of sincerity and truth. For they said, don't do it that way, don't do it that way. You make some excuse for doing it this way. It was the working of dastardly craft. As these men were supposedly keeping a feast of sincerity and truth. They came with their schemes to the garden. Judas came out to help the arrest, and he did it with a kiss, or he had done better to have done it with a sledgehammer. Oh, how low can a human heart fall? If he must be an enemy, why can't he be an honest enemy? Why must he stoop to such craft? Tell me, said Christ to the officers. Fine array this, isn't it? Spears, lances, swords, ropes. Tell me, what are you expecting to find out in this garden in this dark night? You come out against a political activist, a terrorist or something. Well, I tell you what, I'm a terrorist, am I? Why didn't you arrest me when the people were around, uh? If I'm a terrorist, they might have given you some support, might they? Of course, they knew he wasn't a terrorist. Knew he was unarmed. They wanted to make it look good for the press tomorrow morning when he should be dragged through the street, bound by an armed guard, and it would give the impression that they had found him up to some nefarious deed. Public life can be corrupt, can't it? Sincerity and truth. How will you judge sincerity? Well, we should stop all the malicious gossiping, can't we, to start with? That would go, I mean, that's a simple matter, isn't it, to break off the malicious goss- gossiping over our dinner tables? You know, have you heard about, well, of course I, I wouldn't say anything, but you know what so and so's done, you know. Oh, I wouldn't say anything. I mean say that. You do know, don't you? Oh, what a fearful thing to sit round our Lord's Supper, having spread and about to spread some malice about a fellow Christian. The sincerity. Would you say Peter was sincere? Or would you say I believe he was, at least as far as he knew he was sincere, wasn't he? He said, Lord, if it be necessary, I'd go to prison and to death with you. No, you won't, says our Lord to Peter. Yes, I will, he says. I suppose he was sincere, as best he knew how. It wasn't a very well-informed sincerity. Three times over in that upper room, had our Lord to say to his disciples, verily, verily, verily, I say to you, truly, gentlemen, oh, truly. I couldn't see it. Verily, I say, I shall drink another cup of wine till this is fulfilled. Was it so near? I mean, taking a glass of wine was a thing you did, uh, two or three times a day at your meals in Palestine, not to drink another glass of wine until everything was fulfilled. Was the cross indeed so near? And these disciples that they hadn't dreamed it was so near, had they? They were disputing about who should be first and chief. Would you say they were sincere? Verily, said our Lord, I'm telling you straight, there's one sitting here that shall betray me. I couldn't take it in. I couldn't grasp it, that the human hearts would be so evil as that. Evil is ever nearer than we think, you know. We open our eyes and look. Verily, Peter, said Christ, verily. Now, old man, I must tell you the truth. Do you think you're sincere? But truly I tell you, the hawk shall not crow thrice till you've denied me. What must I learn from that? I must learn not to trust my own judgment. I must learn meekly to come to the Lord and say, Lord, as best I know, I, I want to serve you, but oh Lord, search me. Prove my heart. See if there be any wicked way in me. I am worse than I think I am. But in your love, and in your grace, and in your power, there is enough. But Lord, make me a realist. Sincere. Oh, let us come to that exhibition of what sincerity in the last analysis is. And see our Lord himself come to do the work of our redemption. Father. Abba Father. I don't want to do it. Let the cup pass from me. You love me? Abba Father. By your love, let the cup pass. I don't want to do it. Father, all things are possible. By your very power, I plead, let it pass, for I don't want to drink it. It was honest, wasn't it? No superficial tide of sudden excitement carried our Lord to the cross, you know. Emotionally, he prayed with all the sincerity of his heart, cut thy paths. How about emotions are not our final guide, nor were they his. Having looked at the very last degree of what it would mean and his own personal preference, then he said, nevertheless, not what I will, but thy will be done. And we are saved because there was a someone in whose life there was no leaven and nothing but absolute sincerity and complete truth. God, make us like him for his name's sake. Amen. Shall we pray? Lord, now take thy holy word, we beseech thee. With it, quicken and cleanse our hearts. Use it, Lord, to the purifying of soul and spirit. And yet, Lord, as we sense our own weakness, we praise thee for thine encouragement. Use thy word to lead us to discover yet more thy grace and love and power. Being those that are redeemed and freeborn sons, we may journey resolutely towards our home, while perfecting holiness in thy fear, through Jesus Christ our Lord.