A Long Walk To Freedom Part 3 "Freedom's Feast"

Welcome to the River City Church Podcast and a message by our

lead pastor Jason Powers. Our prayer is that this message

would inspire and encourage you build your faith and point you

to the life changing love of Jesus.

May you enjoy the goodness of God as you follow him today.

Hi everybody. Hey, listen, that is such a good

song. Because here's the deal.

Here's that means ready. Means our hope is alive.

And that means that thing that you're hoping for that just

seems out of reach. It's alive.

It's accessible. You have access to it.

That is good news. Hey, I don't do this very often,

but we got a lot of stuff going on and so I just kind of want to

point at some of it. When you go outside, there's

Conan Ice out there. We're grateful that they're

here. We've got a lot of stuff.

Especially I want to talk about our men's ministry.

I love. What's going on in our men's

ministry right now? And guys searching for Jesus,

trying to figure it out, finding their way.

But it's a great place to be. And on September 2nd, coming up

in a couple weeks, we're going to have a men's conference and

it's going to be here. Now here's the bet.

You know what I like best about our men's conference?

It's not an overnight thing. So you don't have to bunk with a

bunch of people that you don't know, right?

And it's weird. You get you got the snorers and

you got the one guy who doesn't know he's a snore.

And so like, right, we don't have any of that.

It's all of the best. And none of the worst.

And and we're just going to talk about things that are

significant and relevant to all of us.

So you can stop by the table out there and you can talk to Jaime

and the team that's out there. But if you got time and if you

got the ability to do that, I think it would be well worth

your time to do that. And so we begin, as we do each

week, with our confession. Our confession as a church is we

are badly broken. Yes, you are grace and peace to

you. You said a couple of weeks ago

that that phrase, that that statement is a declaration of

freedom, right? Like we said, if we would really

lean into that and unpack it and take for all that it's worth, if

we would really get into that place and we could be free.

But what it means is telling the truth about all of it.

Not just saying in kind of a general sense, hey, I'm broken

and kind of some nonspecific kind of general ways, ways that

aren't too close to me, that you'll never really figure out.

And I'm really not going to admit really to anybody, but if

we will get into the nitty gritty and acknowledge I am

addicted, I am jealous of every person who has more money than.

Me, or a bigger house than me, or a smaller waste than me, or

better reputation than me, I am if we will admit, man, give me

one second to say something negative about another person,

boy, and I will jump on it. Because underneath I know that I

have a. Deep and growing insecurity, and

who I am, if we will acknowledge the reality, if we will.

Face the idea that we have imposter syndrome and I can talk

about. That's one of my, one of my

things that I really struggle with, right?

Like I walk in to whatever room that I'm in and my the voices in

my head. That thing that I believe just

says you're a fraud and everybody knows it.

And in just a minute it's going to be exposed and you're going

to be exposed and there's going to be shame.

There's going to be all that. And So what I do instead of that

what do I do is I tell jokes and I'm funny guy and then but then

I'm not really real with who I am.

And so we've talked about how if we could just.

Tell the truth about who we are. Then we could begin to

experience that love and kind of this verse that has been

throughout our whole time together is maniculations 5 One,

right? It's for freedom, the Christ to

set you free. You know what all of this is

about? The law and the prophets and

Jesus and all of it. It's about freedom.

God's design and his desire for life is that you would live

free. But we don't.

We live as slaves, bound to our mask.

And so because of that, we have to hide from the reality of real

life. And the idea is freedom.

And I'm not talking, I'm not talking like freedom in any kind

of geopolitical social kind of sense.

I'm talking about the freedom to be really fully alive, to be

able to wake up in the morning and go.

Today sucks. And I've been having a bad day

and I don't like it. And to just feel that all the

way down to the bottom and know that I don't have to hide from

it and I don't have to pretend from it.

Because at the end of the day and at the end of the life,

that's not final, it means acknowledging.

I've got anxiety that most days calls the shots in my life.

And I've got a way of dealing with it that doesn't include

facing it owning it. And moving through it.

See, that's the freedom that Jesus has set you free for.

The freedom to be fully alive, to experience every aspect of

humanity, the best parts of it, but also the worst parts of it,

and to overcome and to live ultimately in light.

Of those, that is freedom. It means that we are free.

We have been set free to live. Listen, Christian, this is so

much for us. Are we ready?

Listen, you are free to live unoffended.

You are free to not get your feelings hurt by things that

happen out there. Because like Jesus said right

when they were nailing to the cross, he says they don't even

know what they're doing. They don't even know the stakes.

You are free to know that another person's belief or idea

about you or their behavior does not diminish or destroy you in

the least. You know why?

Cuz you're free and we're broken and we diminish.

We hurt other people's feelings and we diminish them in ways

that maybe we know and maybe we don't know, but we are free.

We are free from jealousy. You don't have to be jealous of

another person's anything because God made You Beautiful

and enough and sufficient, and then on top of that he gave you

his spirit. So that you can overcome.

And when you do find those ugly things, those weaknesses, those

failures, those insecurities, when you do experience those

things, you have the ability and the power to go beyond those

things you have. You are free to live, fully open

to your relationships. Not have to hide from people.

To accept people as they are and to live fully expected.

Basically. Listen, you are free to grow in

this life. You are free to not be defined

and identified by what you were, or even by what you are now.

You are free to grow. Into what God has created you to

be. And listen, students, this is

really for you because you're going to a place tomorrow and

some of you went back this past week.

You are going to a place tomorrow that is going to try to

define you for who you are, whether it is by your grades or

by the clothes that you wear, or by the car that you get dropped

off in or the car that you drop yourself off in.

There will be no shortage of people trying to tell you that

you don't measure up unless what I want to tell you students is

you are free from that. You do not have to buy into a

system that tells you you don't measure up, that you're not

enough. See, this is the good news.

This is why we get together at the as a church, because that's

not a message that really resounds through our culture.

Is it that you're enough? Because it's easier to sell you

something if you don't have enough?

It's easier to make you afraid and then control you if the

other guy is the bad guy, if the danger is always out there

lurking. But that's not the story in

Scripture. And I'm not just talking about

the story and the Gospels of Jesus is teaching.

I'm talking about the whole story, Scripture going all the

way back. See, in the beginning, after

mankind fell and they walked out of the garden, there was this

period where they didn't know what was going on.

Who are we? How do we find?

And there was the ark and the rain and all of that.

But God found a guy called Abraham.

And he said, Abraham, I am going to make you into a nation, man.

That's a big promise, right? Like, I'm going to make you and

I'm going to give you children and your children, children, so

that an entire nation's worth of people will be from you.

And those became the Hebrew people.

And he says, and I'm going to give you a place.

And so they left, and they ended up in Egypt.

And for 400 years they lived in Egypt.

But at some point during that time, they became enslaved.

See, that's what us and them always leads to, right?

Like, that's how political power, and that's what all this

ultimately ends up devolving into, controlling and

manipulating the other people. So God's people were enslaved in

Egypt, and God comes to Moses and he says, Moses, I want you

to go tell my people that their time of bondage and slavery is

up. And Moses was a.

Shepherd in the wilderness. And he's like, you got the wrong

guy. I don't know what you're talking

about, but God sent him. And so Moses went to Pharaoh and

he said Pharaoh, you've heard the song, right?

Let my. People go.

And Pharaoh said no, because as you would like, you don't want

your whole labor force getting out.

Like you can't do that. That doesn't make any kind of

economic sense at all. So then what this ultimately

comes down to is who's God has the right to say, who comes and

goes. And God demonstrated his power

over the Egyptian gods through a series of plagues.

Right. At first it's the plague of the

Nile, the blood of the water. The Nile turns to blood, right.

So God is bigger than the than the God of the Nile, right, The

Egyptian guy. And over and over and over and

over it goes down until finally and every single time Pharaoh's

like, no, no, no. And finally says OK, maybe you

can't, OK, no you can't, right. And he goes back and finally at

the end God, through Moses, goes to Pharaoh and says listen, a

plague is coming on the people here and what's going to happen

is the first born of everything is going to die.

You're like, that's brutal. God, how could you do that?

First born of the cattle, the first born of the Egyptians,

even the first born of the Israelites.

If, are you listening? If he said.

But there's a way out. If you'll take a spotless lamb

and listen, I'm not an agriculture guy.

I don't know what that means, right?

But I know they knew, right? And they were in the situation.

But it meant without blemish, without, without a spot.

It meant their fur and their pedigree and everything was

perfect. And if you'll take this spotless

lamb and on this night, this night comes, if you will

sacrifice this lamb, and if you'll put the blood of this

lamb on the doorpost of your house, is what will happen is

the Angel of death that's going to come through the land and

kill the first one, is that he will pass over your houses.

Now here's the thing, though. It wasn't just limited to the

Israelites, right? Anybody in all the land who put

the blood of the lamb over the doorposes, over the doorposts.

The Angel of Death would have passed over.

See? So here's the thing.

It's not really about their power, is it?

It's not really about their strength.

It's not really about their might.

It's not about their wisdom. It's not about their ingenuity

at all. What it really is about is God's

protection and God's plan and his and his deliverance.

And he says, if you'll obey and if you'll follow, then I will

pass over you. And sure enough, that night he

did in Pharaoh his house, his first born, dies.

He comes out and he kicks the people of Israel out, and they

go in, and for 40 years they wander in the desert.

Now, 40 years is a long time, and it's an entire generation,

an entire generation passed away.

And so at the end of their forty years, they're standing, they're

ready to enter into the promised land.

And the promised land is the land that God had promised them

is described as a land flowing with milk and with honey.

A picture of abundance, right? A picture of of wealth and a

picture of it's the The idea is they don't have to do it.

They're going to go into a land in a place that is so bountiful

and so full and so rich that they'll have everything that

they need. Absolutely.

Just. Provided for them after a year

of living in the wilderness and living in the desert.

That's got to sound pretty good, doesn't it?

But because of Moses did some things that he shouldn't have

done, he didn't get to go in. So what happened is Moses

gathers the people. On the foot of a mountain, right

on the very edge of the promised land.

And what he does is he reminds them, and we have his reminders,

the book of Deuteronomy. The book of Deuteronomy is

basically a sermon. It's Moses's last sermon to the

people of Israel. And if you go look at it, it's

even longer than one of my sermons, which gives me great

comfort and hope. And I just, I feel really good

about that. But this theme that runs

throughout one of the things that runs throughout the Book of

Deuteronomy is don't forget. God made a covenant with his

people. Don't forget where you came

from, he says it's. Listen to Deuteronomy chapter

Deuteronomy 16 · chapter mention

16, verse one. This is Moses now remembered.

There's about a million people listening to him and he's

standing up and he's telling Listen what Moses tells the

people of Israel. Observe the month of a bead, and

keep the Passover to the Lord your God, so we know what

Passover was, right? Passover was the remembrance

that God's Angel of death passed over the people of Israel.

Observe the past over, for in the month of a bead, the Lord

your God brought you out of Egypt.

By night, the Lord God brought you out of Egypt.

He didn't say, Listen, you didn't escape.

You weren't so sneaky, right? You didn't muster up an army

that overthrew the Egyptians, he said.

Listen, in the middle of night, God brought you out of Egypt

because you were captive. You were slaves.

You had no power, You had no money, You had no authority.

And God said, I'm about to lead you into the promised land where

you're gonna have everything that you ever want.

But the idea is every year you need to celebrate this so that

you. Don't forget see what God was

doing was building into the people of Israel.

This mechanism that would trigger so that they could not

become a people with masks. So that they would not be a

people who lived in denial about their great tendency and

penchant for finding themselves in the midst of slavery.

Don't forget Israelites, you were slaves.

You have been slaves. Remember where you come from,

verse 2, and you shall offer the Passover sacrifice to the Lord.

You remember what it was? The spotless lamb.

They sacrifice the lamb, they eat the lamb.

They put the blood on the doorpost and the Angel will will

pass over, he says. You'll offer the Passover

sacrifice to the Lord your God from the flock or the herd at

the place the Lord will choose to make his name dwell there.

So he's talking about the place where he was choosing, right.

So what happened is, as they wandered in the wilderness, they

built a big tent. They call it a Tabernacle, And

the presence of God dwelt in that place.

And they were going to take that Tabernacle into the promised

Land, and they would set it up. But someday there would be a

temple, and that temple was going to be a reminder that

God's presence dwells in the midst of the people of Israel.

And So what began as a family, family meal in the middle, in

each individual homes would grow and expand to the people.

We'll celebrate in the place where I show you in the city and

in the temple where you show you, and there will be the

sacrifices there, he said, listen, our bondage and our

slavery is both individual and corporate.

You remember what Isaiah said last week?

I am a people. I am a man of unclean lips.

And what I live among the people of unclean lips.

Said listen, bondage and slavery is individual.

It is our story and corporately it is our story.

We spent all summer talking about these idols that we pick

up, and we have individual idols and we have corporate idols.

We have things that we worship and we grab on to individually.

But Father instituted into the mythos of his people a symbol,

the symbol of the Passover lamb. That would tell them, hey,

listen when you find yourself locked in.

When you find yourself locked down.

When you are just stuck. When the hurts that you've

experienced in your life threatened to overwhelm you and

you can't get free and you can't see how you could possibly be

free. When you pick up habits just to

cope with life. When life is so big and so scary

that you can't imagine not taking a drink to deal with it,

or not spending a dollar to drink with it or not, whatever

it is, whatever that thing is. When you get stuck like that,

when you have these hang ups that you just can't get around,

well, God put right into the center.

Right into the middle of his people, was this symbol, this

Passover lamb. That said, freedom isn't about

your way to finagle your way out of it.

It's not your ability to be stronger.

This isn't about pulling yourself up by the bootstraps.

This isn't about every person makes their own way.

This is anything like that. This is a picture of

deliverance, not escape. We serve a God who finds his

people in captivity and leads them to freedom and leads them

out. And what God said is every year,

remember? Every year you need to remember,

we say every week we get together and we remind ourselves

that we're badly broken, to remind us that even if you're

not in the middle of some horrendous heinous hang up right

now. We tend that way if we don't

keep short list and if we don't take care of what we're supposed

to do, we'll end up there. So we let the symbol this

Passover land. But he went beyond that too.

Verse three, you shall eat no leavened bread with it.

Leaven was. Yeast.

You can scrape it off of the grape leaves, right?

And you would put into a lump of flour or a lump of dough and it

would rise and you would make bread out of it.

He says you shall eat no leavened bread with it.

Right. So it's imagined bread.

If you take all of the yeast out of it, it's just gross, right?

We let it. Great.

God bless the 21st century. Like, we got like, like sugar in

it. And we like, oh, it's like a

tortilla. Listen, I loved it.

This was not that. It was just.

Gross, right. You shall have no leavened bread

within, and listen for seven days.

You shall eat it the Passover with unleavened bread, the bread

of affliction. For you came out of the land of

Egypt in haste, that all the days of your life you may

remember the day when you came out of the land of Egypt.

He says, I want you to live. I want you to remember that you

were slaves, and that God led you out.

And so this symbol, the Passover land, But this unleavened bread,

became a symbol too. And here was the deal.

It takes time for the yeast to rise, doesn't it?

They put the yeast in there and then it rises.

Right. Well, here's the deal.

Slavery is ending tonight. Who's going to hang around and

wait for the bread to rise? Lord, I would love to be free.

I would love to enjoy all the good things.

But I'm waiting for this lovely ciabatta to read.

It's got, it's got a proof for another hour and then we're

gone. No.

When freedom comes, you go. Now.

Can you imagine that jail doors being thrown open?

And you're like well. But I've got 3 squares here, and

I'm getting kind of used to the Blumpy pillow.

And know that, listen, you don't toil in slavery.

You don't linger in bondage. When the opportunity comes, you

go and you get out. And So what Levin was, was

yesterday's on. Here's why it took for seven

days. Right?

Because it would be easy to go. Yeah, I can choke.

Anything down for a day, right? The Levin was that fermented

lump. And you would say this is the

lump, the Levin lump that I have, and you would take a

little bit of it all and you would save it for tomorrow.

So when you start tomorrow, you've already got a rise and

God said for seven days you got to get rid of all of it so that

there is none of it left. You don't take anything with

you. Listen, we don't take mementos

of slavery because slavery is something that we want to

remember, but we want to leave behind, isn't it?

We want to do that. And so God built into the

rhythms of the Israelites, the rhythms of the people, don't

linger in slavery. And so this leaven, this yeasted

dough, became a symbol. It became a a reminder of

captivity. And the thing with captivity is

it is fundamentally incompatible with freedom.

You are either free or you are not.

You are either captive or you are.

And the question is why would you bring it with you?

Can you imagine like like buying your own, buying a brand new

house and you're ready to move into the new house and you just

go walk in and you just like, break the plumbing because,

well, the plumbing at your old house was bad and so we're just

going to do the same thing here, no?

When you get free, when you get new, when something new happens,

you lean into all of that. So keep that in mind, right?

Keep that symbolism of the Passover, the Lamb, and 11 keep

that in mind as we read this in Matthew chapter 13.

Matthew 13 · chapter mention

This is Jesus talking and he picks up this.

Symbol of 11 that everybody would know.

And he uses it this one time in a really unique way.

Listen, verse 33 and Matthew 13. He told him another parable.

The Kingdom of heaven. Right?

This is good. This is the Kingdom of heaven is

like 11. We know what that is, right?

The lump yeasted dough. It's like 11 that a woman took

and she hit it in three measures of flour until it was all 11.

So like you take a golf ball size of 11 and you take 3

measures right? Three measures of flour with

£50. So you take £50 of flour and you

take a golf ball size of Leven dough and you throw that in

there and soon enough the. Whole thing, right?

Just blows up and it expands and becomes this yeasted lump.

Said the Kingdom is like that. This is a good analogy, right?

He says. Listen, the Kingdom can be like

that. If you just get a little bit in

there and you let a little bit of a freedom start to grow and

you hit, it'll expand and it'll grow.

But that's not the usual use of. 11 If you go to verse or to

chapter 16, what did it say? Verse 6.

And we're gonna go down to verse 12, it says this Jesus is

telling his disciples, watch and beware of the 11 of the

Pharisees and the Sadisties. Right.

So the Pharisees and the Sadisties were the religious

leaders and now his disciples, Jesus disciples, were a lot like

me, really slow on the uptake, right?

So they start just being like, oh, he's talking about bread.

Jesus hungry. He's that bread.

And they're all looking. They're like, well, I don't have

any bread. So, Jesus.

Starts like rubbing the bridge of his nose and he's like no

verse 12, he explains me, He's like, I'm not talking about that

Listen verse 12. Then they understood that he not

tell them to be aware of the leaven of bread, but of the

teaching of the Pharisees and the sadness.

He said be careful. The teaching that you sit under

because a little bit goes a long way because that teaching that

they do, you just hear a little bit and it gets in your brain

and it starts to grow and it starts to ferment, it starts to

expand and it can take over the whole thing.

And you go, well, great, well, what's the what's the 11 of the

Pharisees? What's that that they're talking

about? Listen, Luke, chapter 12.

Luke 12 · chapter mention

In the meantime, so many thousands of the people had

gathered together that they were trampling one another.

Jesus began to say those disciples first listen, he turns

around, there was all these people and he turns around.

He says beware of 11 of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.

Do you know why the 11 of the Pharisees was hypocrisy and this

is important? The Pharisees whole world was If

you keep the law good enough, God will come back.

If you behave, then you will have the blessings of God if you

do all the right things on the right days, the right time with

the right people if you are good enough.

Then you will be accepted, and then you will be free.

And Jesus knew what we know, what we masked.

There is no escape from that other than hypocrisy.

Do you know why? Because you're not good enough.

Because you can't keep the law well enough.

And the thing that I would say to us here is whether those of

us in this room, there's a couple of 100 people in this

room right now. Listen, whether you're rich or

poor. Whether you were raised in

church or you've never been to church in your life, whether

you're a Republican or Democrat, whether you're black or white or

brown, you cannot do good enough to make Jesus accept you.

You cannot be good enough to earn your way.

And yet we try, don't we? We divide the world up into us

and them. People who look like me, who

think like me, who talk like me, who earn like me.

And we say, well, that's got to be good enough.

And what Jesus said is beware of that.

Beware of the mask. Right, Because that's what it

is. Every time I say it's us and me,

that's a mask where I just say no, yeah, no, no, we're OK.

We're good enough so that what happens in is I have to hide all

the things. This happens a lot in church,

doesn't it? You've experienced that, you

know. I had someone last week come and

talk to me. Right?

And the house is going fine. Fine.

I said it too. I'm fine.

You're fine. We're all fine.

Everything's fine. Maybe not.

And again, like, you don't have to unpack it, all right here on

the front row for me, Right? But the question is, do we walk

around like it's fine? Do we just say it's fine, see

what happens then as we get into this place where we have to

cover up where we really are and Jesus can't heal what we're not?

Jesus can't deliver us from a slavery that we don't admit that

we have. And so this symbol of leaven,

the symbol of yeast rising and expanding and spreading through,

became a symbol. At first it was a symbol, a

symbol of literal captivity, the people literally captive in a

literal time and in place. But it grew, and Jesus took it

and coughed it and used it and expanded to be a symbol of

spiritual slavery. Of spiritual bondage.

And what the symbol conveys to us is that whatever you tolerate

will permeate, for better or for worse, the Kingdom of God.

The holiness and the righteousness that He came to

set us free from that He said, us free, for that will permeate

God's love and his. Rule in your life a little bit

will spread, he said. It's like a mustard seed, right?

It's the smallest of all seeds, but boy, it grows into the

biggest tree in the garden. Even the birds can sit on it.

What we tolerate will permeate. What that also means is that a

little bit of prejudice will spoil the whole lump, right When

we say, well, I don't like that kind of person, but this kind of

person's okay, beware. That's prejudice.

And it will spread. You begin by having nice, nice

and neatly lines. But eventually what happens is

it begins to spread everywhere. A little bit of fear spread

through the whole, through the whole lump.

Whether we're afraid of a medical outcome, it will grow

and it will consume us, and we'll become afraid of

everything to the point where every itch on the back of our

elbow. Sends us into anxiety.

And I don't say that judgmentally or to cast one like

I I know because I've been there.

But it can also be fear of people.

It spreads. And what happens is we live in a

culture where we can find a bunch of people who think

exactly like we do, who will reinforce that fear to us that

the problem is the other guy out there.

And so it grows and it grows. And then we begin to walk around

in our lives looking for people again who look and think and

talk just like us, who tell us that the bad guy is in that

camp, the bad guy isn't in our camp.

What about anger? You get angry at somebody and

you tolerate it and you let it set in your heart.

And then what does it do? It consumes you and becomes

bitterness. And you know, have you ever

known somebody just ate up with bitterness?

Didn't start that way. It started with a little

offense, a little slight, a little wound, probably

justified, probably rightfully earned.

But that little offense consumes and grows and expands and takes

over until we are completely and totally eaten up with it.

Affairs, nobody sets out and says today I will have an

affair. Today I will destroy my marriage

and my children know what happens is we have.

We feel overlooked. And so we have a little bit of

indiscretion, a little bit of innuendo, and a little bit

leavens the whole lump. That's how addictions start,

right? You learn at some point in your

life that if I take a drink, I'm better able to cope with the

pressures of this life. If I spend a dollar, I feel

better. But you know what?

Those aisles are diminishing returns.

The same dollar that gives you relief today won't give you

relief tomorrow. So you spend 2.

Now it's not 1 drink, It's two drinks.

And before you know it, it is our very existence.

It is our survival. And friend, I want to tell you,

Jesus came to make you free. Now that freedom isn't easy.

It's not. It's it's hard fought.

You've got it. You got to get it.

But you need to know any remnant of slavery that we tolerate.

Any remnant of slavery that we tolerate will eventually consume

us. That one group of people that

you allow yourself to be distrustful of just on the

surface of it. And So what that means is so.

So the response to that then is is good religious word repent.

Right. So the word repent means you're

walking down a road and what you happens is you come to discover

that that word Rd. that you're on leads to bitterness.

It leads to anger. It leads to addiction, it leads

to fear, it leads to separation and all of those things.

And you're walking down that road and one day the light goes

on, you go. You know what?

I don't want to be on this road anymore.

I don't want to live afraid anymore.

I don't want to be addicted anymore.

I don't want to be angry at the world anymore.

I don't want to be angry at my mom or my dad anymore.

And so we just go, I'm going to turn around and I'm going to get

over here on this road where freedom is.

But the problem is all of the things that make that road, that

road, aren't on this road. And So what repentance is.

It is the intentional and deliberate and systematic

rejection of all of those things.

It is saying no when that feeling comes up.

And I want to have that anger fantasy at my dad for the things

not you dad. That's my daddy's right there.

It's not him. He's wonder if I love it right.

But whatever it is that thing right?

Like you just go, no, I'm not giving into that.

I forgive my dad. Not because I feel like it,

because I am free from it and you And here's a question,

right? A lot of times the question that

we get is, well, how much can I get away with?

Like how much sin can I like can I like nibble at listen, did you

know there are acceptable in the city?

There are acceptable levels of fecal matter in the water.

Do you know what an acceptable level for me is?

Zero. I want 0 feces in my water,

right? At no point do I just go.

Well, what if it's? 10 parts per million, How's

that? None of it.

The answer for the answer for our sin isn't how close can I

get to slavery? The question is how far can I

get? And So what happens is we begin

to systematically route those things out.

Listen, I'm about to get your business.

You ready? Some of you need to go have

lunch with a Republican. Last time I said a Democrat,

right. So we're equal opportunity here.

But here's what I mean. It got real quiet.

And you're like when we said that I'll get the emails this

week because here's. But here's the thing.

You need to sit down and long enough till you realize that

they're not monsters and whatever you agree or disagree.

With their policies and their politics and their thoughts, you

need to look at them and you can ask them directly, are you

trying to destroy our nation? And then when they say no,

believe them and listen real and honest and sincere differences.

But. You need to sit down long enough

to you can believe those people on the other side.

They are not my enemy. They are people as prone to

slavery and addiction and bondage as I am.

And so I will not. Because he came to make me free.

Because I'm created to be free. I will not tolerate separation

and division and prejudice in my life.

I will not. And so we repent and listen, if

you're going to be free, get totally free.

So what the Passover? Means for us is that we find and

we root out every single trace of sin that we can.

And listen, we don't root out sin so that Jesus loves us.

We root out sin. Because Jesus loves us, we root

out sin. Because every time that I

separate from you for some difference, I'm not love.

That's not love, that's hate. And so every time I go, no, I

can't be with you because you you look a certain way or feel a

certain way or think a certain way.

Every time we do that, we're not experiencing the love of God.

We're experiencing the fall. And we're free to not.

We're free from that. And So what we do is we don't

have to pretend. We don't have to have mass this

is. And hey, I'm OK.

You're OK than anything like that.

But what it does, we just say we're going to root out every

prejudice, every fear, every anxiety, every addiction, every

uncoming thing that is in us. And we root it out.

And that symbol of 11? It didn't stop with Jesus.

Paul picks it up in the book of First Corinthians.

The book of First Corinthians is the Apostle Paul, right?

He's a church planner and he's a preacher.

And he went around and he found this church in Corinth and he

preached to him. They got and had a bunch of

gifts. They had great preachers.

They had all of this. But what happened is in their

group, right in their, their church, they had tolerated this,

this kind of big, huge, gross sexual sin.

It was a guy, and I think it was his motherinlaw or something

like that. And and what happened is the

church in Corinth was like well. What are you going to do?

I can't can't really say anything about that because

everybody to each his own, everybody.

You do you and you can do whatever.

And Paul's like what? You're free.

Listen, First Corinthians, chapter 5, verse six, you're

1 Corinthians 5 · chapter mention

boasting is not good, he's saying.

Because they're boasting about, hey, well, we're free to do

whatever we want. We can do whatever and whatever

feels good. Whatever things are left, that's

good enough, right? And he's like, that's not good.

You're boasting isn't good. Do you not know that a little

Levin, Levin's the whole lump. See, now he's not just talking

individually. I mean, it's talking

individually and corporately. He's like, your stuff affects

all of us. Your goodness, your

righteousness affects all of us, and your sin affects all of us.

Don't you know that elevens a whole lump?

He says cleanse out the old Levin, that you may be a new

lump. He's talking corporately.

Get rid of that so that you can be new for Christ.

Our Passover lamb has been safe, has been sacrificed.

So now we see, look, side note here.

You remember what the Passover lamb was in the Old Testament?

It was a lamb. What does Paul tell us now that

the Passover lamb is for us? It's Jesus the lamb that was

spotless, whose blood allows the Angel of death to pass over us.

And you know what? The person who never experiences

death has eternal life, right? And So what Paul says is,

listen, get rid of the. And then some of you right now,

like, yeah, time sinners, right? Listen, here's what it doesn't

mean when it says get rid of 11. Get rid of all that.

What it doesn't mean is you find people who sin, and you, they're

not welcome here, because if that was the case, this would be

an empty room. And what we do though, is when

we find out people, we get really serious about the people

who sin differently from us. That's the sin.

That's not okay like. Listen, I will cover my shame

with ham sandwiches till the sun comes out.

And So what I'm going to do is I'm going to make much less of a

deal about gluttony than I do about alcoholism, right?

And what I'm going to do is I'm going to find people who believe

like. Me who wrestle with the same

thing so that we can go easy on ourselves and we can go hard on

the other people. That's not what it means.

What it doesn't mean is that we stand at the door and we check

sin cards and make sure that only the right kind of sinful

people get in. So the question that we ask as a

church that we have to ask is what do we do with sinful

people? Some of you right now feel just

to tell them like bigots, I hate them at this.

And the other thing that it doesn't mean is that we don't

talk about sin generally or specifically.

What it doesn't mean is that whatever you do is okay, as long

as you do it privately, in the sin of your own home, in the

comfort of your own home, or with a clean conscience or or

anything like that. It doesn't mean that we ignore

sin at all. It doesn't mean we ignore

specific sins. What it does mean is this.

Jesus explained it to us. He told us in Luke chapter 6.

Luke 6 · chapter mention

He's talking again to his disciples and he says this Luke

Luke 6:42

chapter 6, verse 42, he says, how can you say to your brother,

brother, let me take the speck out that is in your eye when you

yourself do not see the log that is in your own eye.

You hypocrite. Remember that word, the teaching

of the Sadnessies and the Pharisees.

This is where it always leads up when your acceptance before God,

or your acceptance or your place in this church is how clean your

eyeballs are, how few specks you have.

We've missed it. Take the log out of your own eye

and then you will see clearly to take the spec that is in your

brother's eye. What it doesn't say is that we

don't ever talk about each other specs.

What it means is we talk about our own spec first.

So what that looks like is I go to my friend Joe here and I can

go instead of going to Joe. You suck, man.

You're the worst dude ever. Like how could you possibly be

here with that kind of said Joe, you're great.

I love you bro. Like no, what it means?

Is I go to Joe and go Joe? This week I my imposter syndrome

was so huge bro and I I like and I just felt worthless in a crowd

of people and and instead of just challenging that imposter

syndrome what I did was I told a lie about somebody else that

would make me feel better and I confess that sin to Joe so that

Joe can go, man. Jason you have to get out of

church now because we don't have sinful people here, right?

No, he doesn't say that. You know what Joe says is he

looks at me in the eye and he goes.

I forgive you and Jason. I had a rough week too when this

happened. I did this.

And that's not the response. And what happens is me and Joe

now we begin to pray for each other and now and it's me and

Joe. And we've confessed to each

other and we like, we confessed our sins to each other.

Hey, and some of your just like, oh, you've never had.

Do you know where that happens? Recovery groups go to a A1 time

and you'll watch people talking down and dirty about all the

stuff. But then what happens is me and

Joe, we've gotten this together and my friend Shane comes over

and talks about we see Shane and we go.

We're in a conversation with Shane and Shane afterwards.

Like Shane. Listen man, when you said that

to your kid, I watched his eyes, man.

I think you can be more gentle, right?

But because we have we. We do it differently.

When I've taken the log out of my own eye and I've wrestled

with my own sinfulness and my own pain and my own hurt, I'm

much more aware. I know that I am badly broken.

And so when I go to Shane and it's different we.

Go differently, right? Because we know that we're all

in this together, That it's not us and them, it's not them and

me. It's all of us together.

First we get right. 1st we confess and then.

We begin to deal gently and lovingly with what's in our

midst, right, Because a little leaven works through the whole

dough. Whether that leaven is

confession or just radical, unconfessed, unrepentant sin

will be defined by what we tolerate.

And the reality is, in Jesus you are free, but you cannot live

free unless you eradicate every trace of slavery.

So let's go back to that First Corinthians 5 passage, verse

eight, he says, Let us therefore celebrate the festival.

Talk about the unleavened bread, right?

Like that you don't have to actually have to celebrate.

But getting rid of the yeast? Getting rid of the leaven, Let

us celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven of malice

and evil. We're not mean to each other.

We don't hold. Grudges against each other.

We don't keep lists against each other.

We don't measure each other against some standard that we

have set up, and we don't. It's get rid of the evil too.

We don't just go. Well, my behavior is fine

because it's mine. And who are you to judge me?

Get rid of that. And instead, with the unleavened

bread of sincerity and truth, we tell the truth at River City.

We tell the truth about our weakness and about our failures

and about our insecurities and about our dishonesty and all of

those things. We replace legalism.

We replace masks with love for God by loving our neighbors.

All, all of them. We hunt it out and we root it.

We ruthlessly evaluate our own motives.

We ruthlessly evaluate our own responses.

If I'm harsh with you, that's not OK.

I am accountable and responsible to the Lord.

And So what we're going to do today is we're going to remember

the Passover. We're going to remember the

Passover the same way that Jesus did.

And here's how this is going to work.

It's going to be a little bit different in just a second.

I'm going to talk through Passover celebration.

We're not going to take the elements right now, but the team

is going to come and lead us. And here's why, what I always

say Every time I get together, every time we get together, we

take them. You know, I always say this out

of First Corinthians Chapter 11, the apostle rites where I

1 Corinthians 11 · chapter mention

received from the Lord who I also passed on to you the Lord

Jesus on the night he was betrayed.

Listener, are you listening? He took bread.

Now you know what? This bread is right.

Gross. It's like Styrofoam, right?

It's unleavened and we know 11 is right.

Sin. Jesus said this is my body,

which is for you. See, we've got piles of sin in

our life and we use that to separate from each other for our

own kind of saving wellbeing. Jesus came and said, I don't

have any sin, but I give it for you.

This is my body, which is for you.

And he said do this as often as you drink it.

In what? In remembrance of me.

And same way after supper took the cup.

And he said, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

See, the old covenant was the lamb, right?

So how we Here we have this picture of Jesus's sinless body,

his sinless life, and we have this blood, the blood of the

spotless lamb, that allows the. Change of death to pass over us

so that we can have eternal life.

And typically we stop there when we take communion.

But I want to read Message out of the Out of the Message,

Eugene Peterson's kind of commentary, and I want to read

Out of the Message what comes next, because it's relevant for

us too. First Corinthians Chapter 11,

1 Corinthians 11:27

verse 27 and 28. Anyone who eats the bread or

drinks the cup of the master irreverently.

If you come to this table because you think you deserve

it, that is your reverend. If you take this bread like it's

your sinless body, like your sin is less responsible for sending

Jesus to the cross, like you are less in need of this cup.

Anyone who drinks it irreverently is like part of the

crowd that jeered and spit on him at his death.

Let it sink in. Is that the kind of remembrance

you want to be a part of? So Paul gives us instructions

for preparation, for communion. Examine your motives, test your

heart, and come to this meal in holy awe.

Make sure as you hold this bread and as you hold this cup.

You remember our need for it. You don't just remember that we

need it. You remember that it's provided.

And this, this reminder of grace.

This is our invitation to repentance, to turn around and

do it differently. Jesus.

We take this bread, the symbolic reminder of your sinlessness, of

your moral perfection. And we remember that that moral

perfection caused you to give your life for us.

Your moral perfection didn't cause you to stay away from us.

It didn't cause you to separate from us.

Because of your perfection, because of your righteousness,

you came to identify with us. You came to give your life to

us. So as we take this bread, as we

take this reminder of what absolute righteousness looks

like, as we remember You empower us to do likewise.

Jesus, we take this bread and remembrance of you.

Let's take the bread, Jesus. As we hold this reminder and

this remembrance of your covenant, of the way that you

purchase us freedom, we remember that it cost you everything you

gave your life so that we could be free.

And as we hold this cup, we're reminded If we're going to have

a life of freedom, that means we have to utterly abandon our life

of sin. And that doesn't mean that we

won't sin, not just from time to time, but moment by moment.

But it means that as often as we remember it, as often as we

think of it, as often as we are convicted by it, we repent.

We turn away from every idol that would woo us, from every

addiction that would comfort us. Lord, I would rather be anxious

independence on you than falsely comforted by an addiction.

Jesus, you gave your life to us so that we could be free.

So as we take this cup, we remember the freedom that you

purchased for us. And it doesn't make us feel

guilty. It makes us want to live free.

So, Jesus, we take this cup in remembrance of you.

Let's take the cup together. For as often as you eat this

bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until

it comes. Jesus, you died so we don't have

to. You died so that we could have

eternal life. You died so that we could

confess without fear of condemnation from you.

Jesus. Let us be a church that models

that to the world. And let us not just model non

condemnation, let us model confession.

Let us model the kind of community where it is safe to be

imperfect, but it is not safe to stay that way.

May we be a place that grows and that experiences redemption

moment by moment in you. May our prejudices vanish.

May our fears vanish. May our insecurities and

addictions vanish under the weight of your grace.

And may we be an example of freedom in this world that so

desperately needs and tries every other way.

May we not settle for less than you.

We thank you, Jesus, for the way that you make us free.

We accept it and we receive it today in your name and for your

boring Amen. Thank you for joining us today.

River City Church is all about experiencing and expressing

God's love in our lives and community, and we hope that

you've been able to experience that today.

As grateful as I am that you've spent this time listening in

this morning, this podcast is no substitute for full

participation in a local church. I love it when River City people

listen to other pastors, but it is those who show up week after

week faithfully giving their support and time and resources

that make all of this possible. If we can help you get connected

to a local church, pray for you or support you in any way, click

the link in the description and let us know.

If you'd like to financially support the Ministry of River

City, click the give link on our website in the description.

Don't forget to subscribe and don't forget to share this with

your friends. Thanks so much for listening.

May the Lord bless and keep you in all grace and peace.