This is a day you are to commemorate. For the generations to come you shall celebrate it as a festival to the LORD, a lasting ordinance. For seven days you are to eat bread made without yeast. On the first day remove the yeast from your houses, for whoever eats anything with yeast in it from the first day through the seventh must be cut off from Israel. On the first day hold a sacred assembly, and another one on the seventh day. Do no work at all on these days, except to prepare food for everyone to eat—that is all you may do.
Celebrate the Feast of Unleavened Bread, because it was on this very day that I brought your divisions out of Egypt. Celebrate this day as a lasting ordinance for the generations to come. In the first month you are to eat bread made without yeast, from the evening of the fourteenth day until the evening of the twenty-first day. For seven days no yeast is to be found in your houses. And whoever eats anything with yeast in it must be cut off from the community of Israel, whether he is an alien or native-born. Eat nothing made with yeast. Wherever you live, you must eat unleavened bread.
Let me start, ladies and gentlemen, by calling our memories back to another verse from the same chapter, Exodus 12:11
This is how you are to eat it: with your cloak tucked into your belt, your sandals on your feet and your staff in your hand. Eat it in haste. It is the LORD's Passover.
On the night that the Israelites were freed from the bondage of Egyptian slavery, the Lord provided for them a way to leave the country with full stomachs--by eating the Passover lamb (which we will talk about more later) and by eating the Passover bread. The firstborn of all Egypt, from the firstborn of the domestic servant to the firstborn of Pharaoh, were all killed by the Lord in one night--but those Israelites who put hyssop (dipped in blood) on their doorposts were to stand out as a people whom the Lord chose for His good and holy purposes (see Exodus 12:1-10).
Now, let us go back to those words: "Eat it in haste."
What does that mean?
Well, the very next morning, all the neighbors of the Israelites, the Egyptians who had been holding them in bondage, were so anxious for them (and their God) to leave the country, and so despondent over the loss of so many dear children over Pharaoh's stubbornness, that they literally ushered them off their land, giving them whatever they wanted just so they would go. The Israelites, therefore, had to leave in haste--and the night before, as you can imagine, was one in which they knew the seriousness of what they were about to enter into as a people. From that night on, they would be uprooted, never again to know the predictable terrors and comforts of generational slavery.
Yes, you read that right. I said "terrors and comforts"--because the same generation that walked out of Egypt the next morning with their heads held high was the one that grumbled against Moses, and God, for taking them away from a life in which they had beds to lie in, houses to work in, and regular allotments of food.
What does that have to do with unleavened bread, you may ask?
Well, ladies and gentlemen, as all of us who grew up in country homes can tell you, the process of leavening bread--i.e. the process of putting in that wonderful yeast that makes dough rise and acquire that wonderful fluffy texture to which you and I are so accustomed--takes a lot of time. It takes several hours for "leaven" (or yeast) to do its work, and all of this must happen before the dough is baked (another hour). There is absolutely no way that a couple preparing to leave in haste would be able to allow themselves the luxury of waiting until a batch of dough had risen before baking it, particularly when one considers the other main element of the Passover meal: the lamb.
This scene was to be reenacted every year by each and every household in the community of Israel. Why? Because every year, it was to serve as a reminder that, while not always comfortable, their lives would be free. The Israelites were to have a living (or at least edible) testimony every year that the Lord knew what their needs would be before they even asked, and that He would always be there to provide for those needs.
What a wonderful picture this is of the Lord's goodness . . . and how little even those of us who call ourselves Christians grasp it today.
In Matthew 16:6, we read the following words of Jesus, which I'm afraid are often misunderstood in today's American Christian context:
Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees.
Later on, Jesus explains to the disciples that he is speaking metaphorically, since they at first assumed he was chiding them for not bringing any bread with them. (Ladies and gentlemen, we love to laugh at the disciples and their "tomfoolery," but we in the 21st century United States are no better.) However, the meaning and symbolism of Jesus' words are lost to us unless we first take the time to examine Exodus 12.
You see, the Pharisees had a very simple problem, one that every facet of American Christianity suffers from today: They assumed that the worldly systems and structures that kept them in place as respected members of their society would always remain, even unto the end of the age.
They were comfortable, they were complacent, and they had no inkling that the Roman system which allowed them to serve as honored men would only last as long as those in charge of that system wanted it to. Approximately 30-40 years after Jesus' resurrection, not only the priesthood but the nation of Judea itself were destroyed by the Roman emperors, resulting in what we have today come to call the Diaspora, or dispersal of Judeans (or "Jews") across Europe.
Much of American Christianity is in the same boat, ladies and gentlemen, and it pains me to watch people in conservative Christian circles talk as if the systems and structures of the United States are eternal, both in significance and longevity. Christian radio talk show hosts urge their listeners to vote, to write their congressmen, to march in political rallies, as if the American political system can always be trusted to serve Christian ends. They talk of supporting our troops and refer to military enterprises currently under way in the Middle East as if they were "our wars" fought by "our boys."
Ladies and gentlemen, I am all for loving our troops--as I am all for loving Osama bin Laden, Sheikh Nasrallah, and Iranian President Ahmadinejad. The Bible says, after all, that we are supposed to love our neighbors, and I believe Jesus' parable of the good Samaritan served as ample answer--then and now--of who our "neighbors" are.
I also believe in praying for our nation's leaders. Paul wrote in Romans 13:1 that "there is no authority except that which God has established," and this principle is clearly articulated throughout the Bible. I think it is also important for us to remember that Paul wrote those words in a world in which his own people were subjugated by a pagan empire that invented methods of torture and execution (including the cross) which were designed to prolong the victim's life as long as possible, with as much pain and suffering as possible. Whether the governing political authorities in a particular nation are "just" or "unjust" in the eyes of the world has no bearing on whether or not a Christian should submit to them--the Bible is very clear that to rise up in bloody rebellion is not only to disobey men but to disobey God.
No, ladies and gentlemen, what I object to is the whimsical attitude with which war and economic exploitation and, worst of all, nationalism are associated in the minds of most Americans with serving the Lord. Is this not the same Lord who, when His disciples attempted to strike his captors, rebuked them with the words "all who draw the sword will die by the sword" (Matthew 26:52)? Is this not the same Lord who reached out his hand to a Roman soldier--a member of the same army that would later crucify Him--and heal that soldier's slave (Matthew 8:5-13)? Is this not the same Lord who lifted up not one finger in anger against those who called him a servant of the devil, a drunkard, a glutton, and a madman?
Ladies and gentlemen, I submit to you that the life we are offered in Christ is more than a comfortable life in a suburb, surrounded by friends who vote the same way we do, wear the same clothes we wear, and (probably) attend the same church we do. Christ said "it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God" (Matthew 19:24 and Mark 10:25), and that is as true today as it was 2000 years ago.
Are you willing to enter the alleyways and search out the homeless, the wanderers, the prostitutes, and the drug addicts in order to show them that there is a Savior and that, yes, they are worthy of love?
Are you willing to walk into a poor neighborhood in your city and share the same kind of warmth, smiles, and love that you share with your middle class neighbors in the cul-de-sac?
Are you willing to go to a country in which Islam is the main religion and risk life, fortune, and blood to win souls for the Lord, Christ Jesus?
Ladies and gentlemen, the American church today is full of leaven. We are too comfortable, too fat, too lazy to see a world of pain outside our doorstep, and the hurting souls that cry out day and night, "Where is the one who will tell me of a reason to go on living?" We don't want to leave our homes in haste, as the Israelites did for their Lord--in fact, we don't want to leave our homes at all.
A nation in which 80% of the people claim to be Christians while families and marriages are breaking apart in droves and children--born and unborn--are dying because of a pronounced lack of love in their culture is a nation which is an embarassment to Christ, not a testimony. We had better get on our knees, my friends, and beg the God of Heaven, and the Father of our Lord, Christ Jesus, to make us new creations and to spare our land from the measure of wrath which is assuredly being stored up against it. This land is bleeding--and the blood is crying out to God for vengeance, and the Lord is looking to us for answers (see Genesis 4:7-8)
We cannot afford to be complacent anymore. The system that has become so comfortable for us to live in is going to self-destruct in approximately 10-20 years, and the next generation, I'm afraid, is ill-equipped to take leadership in this country, either political or spiritual. We are simply out of room, ladies and gentlemen, and whether we like it or not, the Lord is going to call everyone who professes the name of Christ to take some steps into an economic and spiritual wilderness, just as the Lord called the Israelites to walk into a physical wilderness so many millennia ago.
It's time to separate the men from the boys (or the women from the girls, if you prefer). Are you willing to let go of the political and economic systems and structures of this world for the Lord, or is your allegiance to Christ only skin deep? You may think I'm harsh for asking this question in such blunt terms, and maybe I am, but my friend, it is better for you to find out where your loyalties really are here and now than for you to find out the hard way in a time when Christ and His people may not be so popular anymore.
Where is your loyalty?
Who (or what) does your heart really belong to?
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