The Feast Of The Unleavened Bread | Pastor Greg Ford Sermon | One Church Columbus

Amen.

If you have your Bibles turned to Matthew 26, uh while you're going there, I'm going to kind of introduce where we're going to be speaking the next few weeks.

We're going to be in a series we're calling symbols.

And so what we're going to do is take some things that appear first in the Old Testament, and we're going to show you kind of how they go from the Old Testament into the New Testament, and then even more importantly, how that what that matters for us today.

Sometimes you'll see something in the Old Testament.

Like, what how is that relevant to my life?

And how should I be interpreting that theologically?

And what does it matter?

So that's what we're going to do.

I'm going to start reading in verse Matthew chapter 26.

Matthew 26 · chapter mention

We're going to start reading in verse 17.

And then we'll uh so we're actually going to start in the New Testament, then we'll swing back into the old.

Okay, here we go.

Matthew 26, 17.

This is Jesus talking.

This is right before the Last Supper, what we would know is the Last Supper, right before Jesus is betrayed and crucified.

It says in verse 17, on the first day of the festival of unleavened bread.

So you're going to want to remember that.

That's we're going to we're going to talk about that a little bit today.

The festival of unleavened bread.

So on the first day of the festival of unleavened bread, the disciples came to Jesus and asked, Where do you want us to prepare the Passover meal for you?

Alright, this is one that uh we're it'll really, the Bible starts coming alive when we see things like festival of unleavened bread and Passover, and we understand a little more deeply what's going on, the story takes on a whole new meaning.

Uh that's verse 17.

We're going to skip down to verse 26.

It says, as they were eating, they being Jesus and his disciples, Jesus took some bread and blessed it, and then he broke it in pieces and gave it to the disciples, saying, Take this and eat it, for this is my body.

And he took a cup of water and gave thanks to God.

Not water, wine.

The Baptists think it was water, but it was wine.

And gave thanks to God for it.

He gave it to them and said, Each of you drink from it, for this is my blood, which confirms the covenant between God and his people.

It is poured out as a sacrifice to forgive the sins of many.

Alright.

When we read this, if you've ever taken communion before, you've heard this passage.

And at this point, I don't know that we've ever taken the time to look deeply enough into this to understand what is really going on here.

So that's what we're going to do.

In verse 17, he mentions the festival of unleavened bread, and then he mentions the Passover.

So what are those things?

Okay, so if you go back to the book of Exodus, second book of the Bible in the Old Testament, you'll see in chapter one, um, the context is that the children of Israel have gone into bondage and slavery to Pharaoh, who's the essentially the king of Egypt.

And so what he's doing is he's he's taking the um the children of Israel who are living in the land, and he puts them in bondage.

He makes them slaves to help to expand his empire.

And uh they build the the supply centers and the distribution centers of Pitham and Ramses to uh expand this empire.

And so they're in a place where they're not free.

Um they're essentially making bricks 24-7, 365 days a year, year over year, decade over decade, generation over generation, and they are miserable.

And so they begin to cry out to God.

In chapter two, it says they groaned and they cried out to God for mercy, to cry out to God for help.

We we we want to get out of here.

And if you've ever been in an Egypt of any kind, you've ever been in a place where you were in bondage, and and it just felt hopeless, and you cried out to God.

I love chapter two, it says he heard their cry.

He heard their cry and he remembered his covenant, he remembered his promise.

And so he raises up a deliverer, which is Moses, and we could we could talk about Moses forever.

There's a lot of really good stuff with Moses, but God raises up Moses to lead them out of bondage.

And so Moses goes to Pharaoh.

I'm gonna really summarize this thing, but he goes to Pharaoh and says, Pharaoh, God told me to tell you to let his people go.

And Pharaoh's not having it because uh he likes he likes the slave labor, he likes what they're doing for him, and so he hardens his heart.

And Moses says, You need to know God's not playing around.

In fact, if you if you want to learn the hard way, you can.

And what he'll do is he's gonna send plagues one at a time, and it's gonna get progressively worse until you realize that he's the one true God, and all these gods that you've been thinking are gods aren't the real gods, and it's gonna, however, you want to learn, it's up to you, man.

And Pharaoh hardens his heart.

And so it's one plague after another until the final plague, which is the the death angel that goes through past each home.

And and Moses says, tells all of the people, you've got to put the blood of the lamb over the door.

So this is the original place that we have the blood of the lamb, right?

So if you're in church, you hear about the blood of the lamb, it starts with the Passover, and the blood of the Lamb covers the door, and and the death angel will pass over because of the blood of the lamb, gives grace to the home, spares the home.

Without the blood of the lamb, death enters the home.

And so, because of that, uh, you know, Pharaoh, uh death comes to Pharaoh's house and he releases the people and they go.

So the Passover origin is the grace and the mercy and the protection, the salvation of God.

Uh keep sparing them from death, and then ultimately they're delivered.

Now, when it's time to go, they gotta go now.

They got this small window.

It's like if you're been like, hey, we gotta go, gotta go now.

Pick up, pack up, go, we gotta get out of here.

And so they go to pack up, and what they do is they go, they have got to take food.

So they pack up some stuff and some food, and and so this is where now the festival of unleavened bread.

All right.

So, okay, what is unleavened bread?

Well, if you're making bread, you start with dough, and then you put in some yeast, like just a little bit of yeast into the bread, mix it in, and then if you give it time and a little bit of heat, it will rise and turn into this.

It takes time and heat, all right.

The I tried to get into the science of it in the previous two services.

I think I embarrassed myself.

It's basically yeast goes in the dough, there's some carbon dioxide that gets trapped in the gluten, all right, and then it okay, I'll shut up.

You get the idea.

Uh, it takes time and heat for it to rise, and so what what we gotta go now, we don't have time to wait for the bread to rise, so they have unleavened bread, and the unleavened bread is representative and a reminder that God is our deliverer, and when it's time to deliver, it's time to go.

He says in Exodus, it says in Exodus, God said, I led you out on eagle's wings, it says.

But that's a metaphor because he didn't just fly them out, they had to walk in obedience.

When he said it's time to go, they had to pack up and go.

They had to cross the Red Sea, they had to take many, many steps.

And when it comes to our deliverance, God is ultimately the one who initiates our deliverance, but we are not bystanders to our deliverance.

There's a bunch of decisions you're gonna have to make, there's steps that you're gonna have to take along the way.

And so now what this is gonna eventually turn into is the feast of unleavened bread that reminds them that God is their deliverer, and uh, and that ultimately, again, they have all these different symbols.

In fact, when you get to Exodus chapter 12, verse 14, it says, um, this is the institution of this festival.

Exodus 12:14

It says, This is the day you are to commemorate.

So this is after they've been led through the Red Sea.

They are now uh free from Egypt.

It says, I'm going to commemorate this day, for the generations to come shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord, a lasting ordinance.

In other words, he's saying, I'm gonna give you some rituals that I want you to do, because the further we get away from this event, the less real it's going to be to a generation.

And you know this, you learned something because you were there, you lived it, and the lesson is vivid to you, but over time, the further away you get from it, often it starts to dissipate a little bit.

Okay, and especially generationally, okay, you have to have rituals in place.

And so they set up specific rituals that were a sensory experience.

They would eat like bitter herbs, would feed bitter herbs to their kids, and they would say, Hey, you see how nasty that tastes?

Okay, that's that was the bitterness of our slavery.

That was the bitterness of our bondage.

Okay, we we may not have a perfect life, but thank God we're not back in Egypt.

Thank God we're not still in bondage.

He led us out, and we'll never forget how bitter it was.

And so then they'll they eat the unleavened bread, and the unleavened bread is a again a reminder of when God delivered and we had to go, and then they drink uh four cups of wine, and again, it had different symbolism around their deliverance and around God's grace and the blood of the Lamb that gives us grace and that saves us from death.

Okay?

Um, like anything, you you know, you see in the Bible, there are um, particularly in the Old Testament, a lot of feasts and festivals.

And anytime you have a ritual or you have a holiday or something, it's really important that you have that interruption in your normal life.

We we have certain things that are important enough that we allow them to interrupt our lives that we not only participate in the ritual, but we never lose the spirit or the essence of that ritual.

So let's think of a few or a couple.

Let's think of one.

One would be like um the 4th of July.

Right?

The 4th of July, uh, we know all the rituals, right?

You you cook out and you do the fireworks, you know, you shoot off fireworks, you watch fireworks, and so you've got all of these different parts of the ritual.

But you you got to think of why are we doing this?

This this isn't just sort of an act of patriotism alone.

There's something about our country that we're celebrating, and the thing we're celebrating is liberty.

We're celebrating freedom.

This isn't just a cookout, this isn't just about fireworks.

This is the point of this is for us to sit down and think about, contemplate, discuss, be grateful for the freedoms that we have.

Um, you think about an anniversary.

My wife and I have been married 21 years.

Um, we go out to dinner for our anniversary, and part of our custom is we just overspend on a meal, right?

We just spent way too much on dinner, right?

Okay, but what are we doing?

We get together, 21 years of marriage.

We're not just celebrating marriage.

Um, we're we're we're not just celebrating marriage, we're celebrating love.

We're celebrating commitment, we're celebrating faithfulness.

When we sit there, we talk about the best way to handle an anniversary would be to have dinner, but to discuss and remember what we've been through.

Let's remember the high times, let's remember the low times, let's go back through and talk through some key points, okay?

We could go spend a bunch of money on a dinner or shoot a bunch of fireworks into the air and just stare at our phones and not engage.

And and so we went through the motions of the ritual, but we didn't get to the essence and it didn't do what it was supposed to do.

But if we sit there and we talk about where we've been and what we've been through and the highs and the lows, the good, the bad, and the ugly, and the fact that we're still here looking into each other's eyes, we're still here as committed as ever.

Now we start to not only celebrate love, we start to even be matured and deepened in what love even is.

So the ritual is really only as effective as not just us doing it, but how we do it and our ability to attach and remember the why.

And so this is where, again, in Exodus 12, they they God institutes this Passover, seven days of Passover, and in the middle of that is the Feast of Unleavened Bread.

Now, the passage we started with is in Matthew.

So between Exodus 12 and Matthew 26, where Jesus, they're they're doing the feet the feast of unleavened bread, is uh, depending on how you date it, between 1200 and 1400 years.

So we'll just call it more than a thousand years.

Between the institution of the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and Jesus and his disciples sitting down for the Last Supper.

And now that we know that, we we know what they were sitting down to celebrate, now it becomes extremely provocative what Jesus says there.

He says, He takes the bread, and of course, again, let's put our heads in the heads of the disciples.

They think we're sitting down to celebrate what?

What God did in Egypt.

What Yahweh did for our ancestors in Egypt, taking them out of the bitterness of slavery, taking them through the deliverance, the unleavened bread, uh, the angel that passes over and God's grace, Yahweh to them.

And now Jesus, when he's breaking the bread, he's saying, This is my body that's broken for you.

He's saying, This is my blood that's poured out for you.

And so what he's doing is in um he's ushering in a new covenant.

He's revealing himself as the promise that this isn't about that one Egypt, that one time with those one people.

This is that God is the one who delivers you from your Egypt, whatever it might be.

It might be the Egypt in your mind, it might be the Egypt in your family, it might be the Egypt in the world around you.

Whatever the Egypt, God is the deliverer.

God, it's it's his grace, it's the blood of this lamb, the lamb of Jesus, that causes God to pass over the judgment that we deserve only to give us grace and to bring life on the other side of the door.

And so that's what he's doing.

Um, it's interesting when you get to the New Testament, leaven is used a few different ways in the New Testament, actually both positively and negatively.

So I'll I'll show you a quick one here.

So if you go to the book of Luke, chapter 12, okay, Luke chapter 12, verse 1, um, Jesus says, Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.

Luke 12 · chapter mention Luke 12:1

So Jesus uses yeast actually in a negative term, but he's using it metaphorically, sort of how we might say something spreads like wildfire.

Right?

So we'd say, if you say something spreads like wildfire, it could be positive.

You say, hey man, that that was a good thing that was happening.

You know, this is a great, great uh new trend or a great new product or something, and it's spreading like wildfire, or it could be it could be a bad thing.

That's a negative thing, and it's spreading like wildfire.

So he says, you know, the the um uh Pharisees, okay, they position themselves as pious, but they're hypocritical.

And hypocrisy at that time meant they're acting, they're actors.

They're playing a game, they're playing a role, they're they're not being who they really are.

And so um he says, be careful, because these people have positioned themselves as pious.

They've positioned themselves as uh you know holy people or representatives of God.

He says, but but it's like he goes, man, it's kind of like yeast.

It's like you have this dough and and their their mindsets, their attitudes, frankly, some of their um theological distortions, the culture that they're creating, it's like yeast and it and it's it's permeating everything.

And it rots them from the inside out, which Jesus told them point blank to their face.

But it's also it's it's also permeating the entire culture, uh, the entire community.

It's not just affecting them, it's affecting uh everybody around them.

So he uses yeast.

But look at this.

In the very next chapter, Luke 13, he says, What shall I compare the kingdom of God to?

So this is Luke 13, 20.

What shall I compare the kingdom of God to?

And then he goes back to yeast.

He says, it's like yeast that a woman took and mixed into 60 pounds of flour until it worked all through the dough.

So now he's using it positively.

He's using the spreads like wildfire positively.

He's saying, imagine 60 pounds of dough, and it's just this huge amount of dough, and then and then, or flour, and then she takes just a little, you know, a little bit of yeast, and then she works it in and it covers the whole thing.

So now he's saying, look, just like something little can contaminate the whole person or can contaminate the whole community in the negative way, he said, the kingdom of God actually is like yeast as well.

So don't be discouraged by the fact that you're outnumbered.

Don't be discouraged by the fact that you don't feel like you don't have enough resource.

Don't be discouraged by it's it's an intimidating task that you have in front of you.

He said, The kingdom of God, even though it's 60 pounds of flour, is like yeast and it's a little bit, but it has transformative power.

He's saying, Yeah, there's just a few of you, I'm sending you, but you're gonna affect the entire world, right?

So he's using this yeast analogy.

By the time it gets to uh the apostle Paul, when he's writing the epistles, um, he uses it.

He uses it in the book of Galatians.

You know, we spent a little time there uh before I took off.

He he he talks about the to the false teachers and he warns them and he says, be careful, those false teachers are like yeast.

And what they'll do is they'll come in and you you think it's little and you think it's harmless, but it's not.

It's affecting the whole community.

And then and then look at this.

I think this is the most powerful, uh, almost artistic the way that Paul does this in 1 Corinthians.

So he's gonna talk about yeast and he's gonna talk about communion, but the context is really what makes it come alive.

So you have Paul is writing to the Corinthians, the Corinthians are people who are from a metro area, metropolitan, they are successful, they're wealthy, uh, they're sort of the top of the of the food chain, the social strata, so to speak.

And yet these are people who have an issue of pride, and they don't have the self-awareness to realize how puffed up they are.

And in fact, their blind spot is that they want things that on the surface aren't bad.

In fact, on the surface they're good.

They want power, the power of the Holy Spirit, they want the knowledge from the Holy Spirit, they want wisdom from the Holy Spirit.

So, you know, Jeff Leak talked last week about the the Holy Spirit and the person, the power of the Holy Spirit.

And and so they they they were like, you know what, we want to have wisdom like nobody else.

We want to have knowledge greater than anybody else.

We we want to have the power of the Holy Spirit to do have God divinely working through us.

The problem is their motive.

They wanted the right thing, but for the wrong reason.

So their motive wasn't, God, I want you to use me in a powerful way to affect the world around me.

God, I want I want people to be blessed through you.

God, use me for your glory.

It was really self-aggrandizement.

It was, I want to be wise because I want to be, I wanna, I want to be wiser than everybody else.

I I want to be able to be seen as uh above everyone.

I want knowledge because I want to be the smartest person in the room.

I want power because I want to use it as leverage to be above others.

And so, just like anytime, if you've ever had somebody come to you where they wanted something or they wanted to have a conversation with you and you knew there was a different conversation that needed to be had, the Corinthians are asking Paul and they are wanting from Paul to know how to tap into the power of the Holy Spirit, the wisdom and the knowledge of the Holy Spirit.

And Paul says, guys, the problem is that until you get your motive right, God's not going to bless you with these things that are ultimately going to come from a corrupt motive.

This is it's in 1 Corinthians 8 where he says, Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.

If you just flipped and pointed and you're like, that's weird.

What do you mean knowledge puffs up?

Like, knowledge isn't bad, ignorance isn't bliss.

You know, we I don't want to be ignorant, I don't want to be naive.

What he's saying is the not the reason that they were, he's speaking to a specific group of people, the reason you want this is because you want knowledge to elevate you above other people instead of it being used for the greater good.

And so in chapter five, look at this, in Galatians chapter five, he says, Your boasting is not good.

Don't you know that a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough?

Now, right there, just stop there for a second.

That's beautiful what he's saying.

He said, just like the visual that what does yeast do to this dough, but it puffs it up.

It puffs it up.

And so he goes, Your boasting is like yeast and it's puffing you up.

And then he's giving them their action step.

Get rid of the old yeast.

In other words, humble yourself so that you may be a new unleavened batch.

Now that he's into this unleavened batching, now he's, I mean, now it's layered.

He's taking them back to all the way back to Exodus.

He's taking them all the way back to the Feast of Unleavened Bread and to some of the deepest, most important concepts in theology.

He says, get rid of the old yeast, you may be a new unleavened batch, as you really are.

For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.

Therefore, let us keep the festival not with the old bread, leavened with malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity.

And truth.

It all comes to a head, and this is this is, I'm gonna give you this, and we're gonna take communion better than we ever have, and then we're gonna get out of here and go eat uh leavened bread.

Um Corinthians 11, he's talking to them about the the way that they're taking communion, again, which has its origins in the Feast of Unleavened Bread.

He says, when you come together, verse 20, it's not the Lord's Supper you eat.

In other words, you're just blowing up stuff into the air, you're blowing up fireworks, you're not even thinking about freedom.

You just go into anniversary dinner, you're not thinking about love, you're not thinking about what you've been through, you're doing the right thing the wrong way.

He said, when you get together, what you're doing, you think it's the Lord's Supper, but it's not.

He said, for when you're eating, some of you go ahead with your own private suppers.

As a result, one person remains hungry while another person gets drunk.

You don't have don't you have homes to eat in, drink in?

Do you despise the church of God by humiliating those who have nothing?

What shall I say to you?

Shall I praise you?

Certainly not in this matter.

Let's stay there for a second.

Now that we've thought about the origin of the Feast of Unleavened Bread was what?

People who were in bondage, people who were as low as you can get, crying out, being seen by God, being heard by God, and being rescued by God.

That's the whole origin.

We're to be reminded, right, that we are in need of God and that he is our deliverer, and it's through him that we have grace.

And he said, This whole meal, that's the origin of it.

And yet when you get together, the haves and the have nots have a bigger disparity than ever.

You're taking people who came low and you push them even lower.

So he's like, this is where I he's like, you're missing the point so bad.

He goes, it would be better, he says, I believe in verse 17, he says, it would be better if you didn't even get together.

It would be better if you didn't even join together.

He goes, because you're doing more harm than good in your gatherings.

Because these things that are meant to help, designed to help people to remember who God really is.

That person that is in need of deliverance, that person who is stuck in their life, that person uh who is lower than they've ever been.

You don't come to the to the table of God only to be pushed even lower, but to be reminded he's a deliverer.

So he's like, it would be better if you're gonna keep doing it this way, just quit doing it altogether.

And then he reminds them, he takes them back to the words of Jesus, verse 23.

He said, For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you.

The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, he took the bread and we had given thanks.

He broke it and said, This is my body, which is broken for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

In the same way, after supper, he took the cup, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this whenever you drink it in remembrance of me.

We already talked about the significance of Jesus taking what Yahweh did for the nation in Exodus and saying, This is what I'm doing for the whole world in Matthew.

But I want I want to focus on one little part of that that maybe we we we, I know I have a tendency sometimes to just read past, and it really came to light for me this week.

He says, Take this, and when you do it, when when you are reminded of the bread, of the unleavened bread that reminds reminds us that God is a deliverer.

And when we take the cup, we're reminded that God is the lamb that gives us grace, that covers our sin.

When when we think about that, often we come to moments like this in communion, and we take some time to kind of think about areas that we need to clean.

Like if you go back to that verse in Exodus 12, remember where he's instituting the feast of unleavened bread, and he says, Before you have the feast, go and sweep your home of all leaven.

Do you catch that?

He said, Clean all the leaven out of your house.

So before they did seven days of eating unleavened bread, the first step was to prepare for the feast of unleavened bread by purging the house completely of leaven.

So it's not hard to connect that dot, right?

In communion is I'm I'm like a house, and you're like a house.

And I've got some things in my life that are like yeast that might be seemingly small thoughts, attitudes, or actions that are now I've been able to justify because I'm like, it's just small angles.

No, be careful of that, because it can actually fill your whole life for better or for worse.

And it can fill your whole community.

There are there is collateral damage that comes from the from the yeast in my life or your life.

And so it's moments like this that we go, you know, before I take this communion and I receive the deliverance from God and I receive the grace of God, the body and blood.

I take a moment to sweep my house.

I was telling my friend this, I'm like, yeah, I'm gonna do this Sunday, and then we're gonna take communion together.

And but I said, you know, I think we just need to have a moment where we sweep our house, you know, introspective.

And he goes, He's like, Man, can I tell you something?

He goes, I don't mean to rain on your parade or whatever, because I think it's all good.

He goes, maybe I just need help.

He goes, but he's like, Man, every time I am called to repentance or there's communion, he goes, I can't help it, but like you start talking about yeast and everything.

He goes, I know exactly what my yeast is, I know exactly what it is.

I know exactly what it is.

He's like, and and and he starts naming it.

He's like, it's stuff in my marriage.

He's my friend has battled uh bad habits and addictions all of his life, and he's had moments and seasons of doing well, and then he relapses, and I mean he's just he's one of these guys, I mean, he just beats himself up all the time.

And he's like, you know, I know I've got issues, and he's like, but I just have a hard time not getting stuck in my the the yeast, and I just I just it makes me think about it.

I always I I tend to always leave feeling worse.

And uh we look back at the verse, and Jesus says, Whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, he said, do it in remembrance of him.

He didn't say, hey, when you do this, do it in remembrance of yeast.

He didn't say, hey, this whole thing is designed for you to get stuck in your sin.

Repentance, the whole thing is designed to get you out.

Now, does that mean I have to be quiet enough and introspective enough and ask the Holy Spirit to search me enough to highlight for me maybe thoughts, attitudes, or actions that have become like yeast in my life?

100%.

100%.

But I don't stop there, I don't get stuck there, I don't do this in remembrance of yeast, I do this in remembrance of Jesus.

I remember that the blood of the Lamb is where my grace comes from.

I'm reminded that He is my deliverer, and when it's time to deliver, I just grab my unleavened bread and go.

It's go time.

I'm reminded, like on the seventh day of the Passover ceremony, where they extensively tell the story of crossing the Red Sea to go, you walk up to a sea and go, how am I gonna get through this?

That God makes a way where you see no way.

It seems impossible that things that seem impossible to us, that God can provide direction, solution, whatever you need, God will provide.

And so here we are in this moment.

I want us to take communion together.

And I want to do two things.

The first thing I want us to do is to sweep out the house.

Have enough faith in the grace of God, in the grace of Jesus, in the finished work of Jesus to allow him to bring to your mind.

Some of you, as I was talking about the East, you already knew what it was, you already knew what it was, and you're already fighting shame.

And for some of you, there is a blind spot of something in your life that maybe you've just looked right past because it was small, and maybe today God will show you the way that it's starting to negatively affect every part of your life.

You thought it was compartmentalized, and yet now it's spreading through your whole life.

It's it's spreading into areas you never thought it would, and maybe even into the community and the world that's around you.

So let's take a moment to prepare our hearts and to think and to ask God to guide us and to show us any area where we need to sweep some yeast out of our lives, and then we're gonna take communion with the awareness that we're supposed to have.

Let's take a moment.