Judges 10:13 - Who Will Save You?
Isaiah 1:16 - Make Yourselves Clean
Luke 6:36 - Mercy
Revelation 21:4 - For the Former Things Have Passed Away
Revelation 21:4 - The Bread of Affliction
Who Will Save You?
Yet you have forsaken me and served other gods; therefore I will save you no more. Judges 10:13
My brother, Bob, was three years older than me. Even though he pestered me and aggravated me until I was almost ready to scream, numerous times he rescued me from whatever predicament in which I found myself. He’s the one who taught me to ride a bike. He’s the one who, after I badly sliced my foot open on a shard of glass, slung me over his back and carried me back to the ranch house - even though I was nearly the same weight. He was a great older brother.
Another interesting fact about my childhood was my proclivity to sleep walk and sleep talk.
These two facts, my active sleeping and my older brother, as rescuer, collided one night at my grandparents’ ranch. Bob heard noise from the room I shared with my sister and came to investigate. I was jumping up and down on my bed, yelling, “Get ‘em, Bobby! Get ‘em!” I had no recollection of it the next morning, so we’re not completely sure what I was dreaming.
The reality is: we all need to be rescued from things in this life. Who do we look to?
Judges 10:13 says, “Yet you have forsaken me and served other gods; therefore I will save you no more.” If God is not going to save us because we’ve forsaken Him and served other gods, maybe we’d figure out what serving other gods entails.
The outright worship of other gods is obvious. Burning your children in the fire to Molech, building an altar to Baal, baking cakes to the queen of heaven - those all fall into the category of serving other gods in a very obvious sense.
But there are less obvious ways of serving other gods. For instance, when Micah (in Judges 17-18) made his own ephod, ordained a Levite as a priest, he said, “Now I know the LORD will prosper me because I have a Levite as a priest” (Judges 17:13). Wow! He’d broken so many of God’s commandments. He had a houseful of gods. He set up a Levite, specifically Jonathan, the son of Gershom, the son of Moses, as a priest, when the priests were supposed to come only from Aaron’s line. Yet, Micah thought God would be pleased with him because he had a Levite as his priest. The syncretism, the blending of what was right in God’s sight with what was right in his own eyes, was incredible! Needless to say, God did not prosper Micah!
Another instance of syncretism, blending God’s ways with pagan ways, is seen in the construction of the golden calf. The Israelites took that calf and declared that the next day would be a festival to Jehovah! All the time they had disobeyed God by making a golden idol, they decide to worship the One True God with the very object of disobedience!
Disobedience can happen on a daily level too - even during the Days of Unleavened Bread. The command is to get the leavening out of your house, and out of your borders, for seven days. Some people think that’s a little over the top. They think God didn’t really mean for us to do that.
Then there are others who think you should get the leavening out, but they don’t do the other half of the command: to eat unleavened bread for seven days. Some people don’t like how it tastes and they really don’t think God would require it of us. He’d understand if we just don’t want to do it!
The curious thing about this whole continuum of disobedience from not wanting to eat unleavened bread to burning your own children in the fire to a pagan deity, the curious thing is that whenever you disobey God, you’ve put something else or someone else in His place; you’ve decided that something else trumps God. You’ve allowed something else to become first in your life. It can be your own desires. It can be the desires of your friend or boss. It can be the gods of your imagination.
So God has a message for you, if you’re going to put something or someone else before Him. Judges 10:13 says, “Yet you have forsaken me and served other gods; therefore I will save you no more.” And verse 14 goes on to say, “Go and cry out to the gods whom you have chosen, let them save you in the time of your distress.”
So, what’s the bottom line? Are we obeying God to obtain salvation? No, absolutely not! Our salvation is a free gift from God, through the blood of Jesus Christ, lest any man boast. Nevertheless, if we’re not willing to obey God, it’s an indication that we may not have trusted Jesus Christ for our salvation. Our works are evidence of the new creature that was begun in us when we repented of our sins, accepted the sacrifice of Jesus Christ to pay the penalty for our sins, and were baptized to receive the indwelling of Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit.
My older brother died almost thirteen years ago, but truly, he couldn’t really save me from all of the trouble I can get myself into anyway. But I have an Older Brother, Jesus Christ. Hebrews 7:25 says, “Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.”
But you have to draw near to be saved. That’s implies an intimate relationship. That implies obedience to God’s law. That underlines even the necessity of eating unleavened bread every day during the Days of Unleavened Bread.
Who will save you?
Make Yourselves Clean
Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before my face; cease to do evil. Isaiah 1:16
Have your hands ever been so dirty, you didn’t think you’d ever get them clean?
Sometimes when I come in from pulling weeds in the garden, the dirt under my fingernails is almost impossible to clean out. I wash. I scrub. And, if that doesn’t do it, I find the fingernail clippers.
Sometimes when Ron has been working on the cars, he comes in with his hands covered with the blackest, grimiest hands. He asks for Goop, but sometimes that doesn’t even take it all off.
When Christopher broke his jaw and I held him on my lap until we got to the hospital, the shirt that I was wearing was covered with blood. It was one of my favorite shirts, but there was no way to get all that blood out. I ended up throwing it away.
Dirt. Stains. Blemishes. One of the good things about the Passover is the thorough house cleaning that I do. But one of the bad things about the Passover is the thorough house cleaning that I do. It’s good because the house is thoroughly cleaned. But as I’m thoroughly cleaning, I get a close up view of the stains that won’t come out, the nicks in the hardwood floor, the chips out of the paint on some of the corners of the walls. There are blemishes that cannot be scrubbed away. Additionally, it takes me awhile to clean the whole house, and once I’m completely done and I walk back into the first room that was done, there is dust on the shelves again, there are Japanese lady beetles crawling in the window, and the floor has to be swept all over again. When you’re talking about cleaning house, there’s never a time when you are done. Even when you think you are done, just wait five minutes. The dog will walk across the floor; someone will drop crumbs from their food onto the counter and then inadvertently knock them onto the floor; life happens. It’s a great object lesson from the Passover: we can’t get our house completely clean - and if we can’t clean up our house, how in the world are we possibly going to clean up our lives? How can we completely accomplish what Isaiah says?
Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before my face; cease to do evil. Isaiah 1:16
This inability to completely clean ourselves up is Biblical.
In Genesis 8:21, God says, “ . . . the intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth.”
Jeremiah 17:9 says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick;”
Paul says, “For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out” (Romans 7:18)
Paul goes on in Romans 8:7-8 to say, “For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.”
The Bible is very clear: we are sinful, carnal human beings. We are evil, the intention of our desperately sick and deceitful heart tends towards evil. There’s nothing good that dwells in us and we are hostile to God, unable to please Him. We cannot clean ourselves up. In fact, the carnal mind doesn’t even want to! It doesn’t matter how many times we wash our hands, so to speak; they are never going to be clean. We need a different solution.
Paul recognized the human condition: “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:24-25a)
Even though everyone has sinned, everyone has fallen short of the glory of God, Jesus Christ has paid the penalty for those sins (Romans 3:23-25). But more than paying for individual sins, Jesus bought us from the slavery to sin (Romans 6:6). We no longer have to serve our carnal nature; when we accept Jesus Christ as our Savior, we can choose to serve God (Romans 6:16-19). But what Jesus Christ did was even more than that! He not only paid the penalty for our sins, He not only freed us from slavery to sin, He has reconciled us to God the Father (Romans 5:10-11).
The Passover celebration is huge. It is the memorial of Jesus’ suffering and death in our place. But that’s not where it stops. He died so that we can live, reconciled to God - we live in newness of life, even while we still feel the pull of the carnal nature, the desires of the sinful nature. Even though there’s a battle between the flesh and the new creature in God, we live to please our God because we were bought with a price (1 Corinthians 7:23), the price of the Son of God, our Savior Jesus Christ. What commandment from God will we refuse to obey considering all that God the Father and God the Son have done on our behalf?!
What was previously impossible for carnal man to do, God has now made a way for us to do through the blood of Jesus Christ and the power of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit:
Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before my face; cease to do evil. Isaiah 1:16
You have all week to enjoy another object lesson. The Passover is past: you’ve been cleansed by the blood of the Lamb. Now, every day, for seven days (the number of completeness) you get to take in the unleavened bread - a symbol of our sinless Jesus Christ. Don’t just avoid leavening (and sin) for these seven days; eat the unleavened bread. Fill yourselves full of Jesus Christ. Spend some extra time praying, reading His word, seeking Him. And then, when the seven days are over, don’t stop seeking Him with all of your heart. He gave His very life so that you can live. Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before my face; cease to do evil.
Mercy
Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful. Luke 6:36
What is mercy? When you have the power and authority to punish someone because of their bad behavior, and you choose to show forgiveness and compassion instead - that’s mercy.
So when you’ve been bad, when you’ve done something that you know will get you into trouble with your parents, you expect to be punished. You could be grounded. You could lose privileges. You could be spanked. But you know that you’ve done the wrong thing. You know that you made a bad choice. Now you’re going to have to suffer the consequences. It’s a natural progression: if you’re bad, then you’ll be punished. But sometimes, just sometimes, your parents don’t punish you. They forgive you without you suffering the consequence of your bad behavior. Parents have to make a wise choice - because they love you - what will be better for you? Is it better that you suffer for your bad choice so that you won’t do it again? Or do they think you’ve learned your lesson and don’t need the consequence?
Regardless, the definition of mercy means that justice - the administration of consequences and punishment - is the expected, usual, normal result of transgressing the laws of your parents! Mercy is the exception, not the rule! Still, God has quite a bit to say about mercy - and how prevalent it should be in our lives.
Micah 6:8 - . . . what does the Lord require of you but to act justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?
God expects you to do what is right, but He also wants you to love mercy - to look for the opportunities to be merciful to other people.
Why do you think mercy would be so important to God? Part of the answer is the law of the harvest: whatever you sow, that’s what you reap. If you are merciful to others, you will receive mercy.
Matthew 5:7 - Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.
And we have to work at showing mercy to others. If it’s in our power to punish someone because of their bad behavior, many times that’s what we want to do. They did the crime, we’re more than willing that they do the time.
But twice in Matthew (9:13 and 12:7) Jesus told the religious leaders that they didn’t know and needed to learn what this meant: I desire mercy and not sacrifice. It’s a quote from Hosea 6:6
For I desire steadfast love (mercy) and not sacrifice,
the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.
You can make a sacrifice, offer something to God, and think that you’re a good person because you’ve given something to God. But then you go out and you’re nasty to your older brother or to your neighbor or to the dog. God can see what’s really in your heart by how you treat other people. It’s one thing to go through the motions of a relationship with God, but when you demonstrate that you have the love of God within you because of how you act towards others, that’s evidence of God in your life.
But why is mercy so important to God? This is the same God who caused the ground to open up and swallow Korah, Dothan, and Abiram and to consume 250 elders in Israel with fire because of their rebellion (Numbers 16). We often think of the wrath and judgment of God against all unrighteousness. But Jeremiah says
The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases;
his mercies never come to an end. Lamentations 3:22
God, in describing Himself says,
The LORD, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness . . . (Exodus 34:6)
The first attribute God applies to Himself, in this verse, is merciful.
We know God is merciful. He has not given us what we all deserve - which is death! In fact, He made a way that we would be forgiven, through the death and resurrection of His Son. Jesus died a horrible death so that we might be forgiven for what we did. Because Jesus was raised from the dead, we are adopted into the family of God and given the hope of eternal life! No, God did not give us what we deserved; He gave us mercy.
So Jesus says, “Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.”
We just celebrated and commemorated what God the Father and Jesus Christ did for us in their mercy towards us. Now we get to demonstrate that we understand just how great that mercy is - by being merciful to those around us. We are acting like our Father as well as our Older Brother and Savior - who are merciful.
But then, that’s what these seven days picture - taking into ourselves Jesus Christ, learning to live as He would have us to live. That’s the symbolism of eating the unleavened bread every day. It’s not enough to avoid leavening - to avoid sin; that’s like the sacrifice God was talking about in Hosea 6:6. We are commanded to eat the unleavened bread - which represents living without sin, living as Christ lived, which means being merciful to those around us. As you sacrifice your leavened bread this week - you don’t get to eat pizza or cheese and gherkin sandwiches or pancakes, as you instead eat the unleavened bread, remember that it is supposed to be teaching you to live God’s way. It’s supposed to be teaching you to be merciful.
For the Former Things Have Passed Away
He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. Revelation 21:4
The goldfish that we’ve had for almost 10 years is dying. I will be very surprised to wake in the morning and find her still alive. It’s going to be a painful way to start the first of God’s spring holy days, the First Day of Unleavened Bread. And yet, it will make this verse all the more poignant to the children. We do cry. We do feel pain. We do mourn. There is still death in this world. But it won’t always be that way.
And in fact, it wasn’t that way in the beginning. In June 2011, we started reading Genesis, beginning our second trip through the Bible. The first verse the children memorized was Genesis 1:31: And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
When God finished creation, He said it was very good. There was no death, no mourning, no crying, no pain. But that was before Adam and Eve disobeyed God. It was before sin entered the world, bringing decay, sorrow, pain, and death with it.
And yet, God had a plan. The second verse the children memorized that summer was Genesis 17:1: When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless.”
God began working through the Father of the Faithful. It would be through the Seed of Abraham, through Jesus Christ, that mankind would be redeemed and sin, sorrow, and death would be dealt with once and for all.
God foreshadowed His plan for mankind in the lives of Abraham and Isaac (and many, many others!). Genesis 22:8 says: Abraham said, “God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” So they went both of them together. This is the picture of Abraham being willing to sacrifice Isaac as God commanded. But God stayed the knife in Abraham’s hand, telling him that now He knew that Abraham would not withhold from God his precious son. It’s a fascinating foreshadowing of how our Heavenly Father sent His only begotten Son to this earth, to live a physical existence, and to die for our sins. When we read the story from Abraham’s perspective, we get a glimpse of the Father’s perspective of Jesus’ torture, crucifixion, and death. God, indeed, did provide for himself the Lamb.
Another verse the children memorized as we made our way through Genesis and Exodus was Exodus 13:9: And it shall be to you as a sign on your hand and as a memorial between your eyes, that the law of the LORD may be in your mouth. For with a strong hand the LORD has brought you out of Egypt.
What’s the context of Exodus 13:9? It was talking about God’s command to celebrate the Days of Unleavened Bread every year. That observance was to serve as a reminder of what God had done for His people. Eating the unleavened bread is a sign on your hand - the hand being a symbol of what you do - and a memorial between your eyes - between your eyes being a symbol of what you think. Eating the unleavened bread each day during the seven days is an action that causes us to think about what God has done in our lives.
Furthermore, it causes us to think about what God did in Genesis 22, when He provided the lamb for Abraham, causing him to stay his hand above Isaac. It causes us to think about what God did in Exodus 12-14 when the blood of the lamb stayed the hand of the death angel who passed over at midnight killing the firstborn in Egypt. It causes us to think about the torture, crucifixion, and death of our Savior Jesus Christ on our behalf - the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. It causes us to think of the Lamb, slain from the foundation of the world, who was the only one found worthy to open the scroll. It causes us to think of that time in the future, when the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ. That will usher in God’s kingdom when he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.
Once again, God will look at His creation and He will say that it is very good.
I hope you think about each of these things as you eat unleavened bread all week long!
The Bread of Affliction
He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain, for the former things have passed away. Revelation 21:4
What’s gone? What is “no more”? tears, death, mourning, crying, pain.
The Greek word translated death in this verse can mean natural or physical death or it can mean spiritual death. It’s application is very broad. So when I think about death being no more, two verses come to mind:
1 Corinthians 15:26: The last enemy to be destroyed is death.
Revelation 20:14: Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire.
What else is gone? Mourning - the Greek word here can be translated grief, mourning, or sorrow. Crying - the Greek word translated crying here means an outcry, tumult or grief. We’re talking about an intense crying. There are other references to crying, but it’s a different word. The word used here is also used in Hebrews 5:7 when it’s referring to Jesus’ loud cries and tears. (Hebrews 5:7: In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence.)
But this kind of sorrow and crying will be gone, over, finished. It must be important for us to know that because Isaiah tells us three times:
Isaiah 35:10, Isaiah 51:11: And the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.
Isaiah 65:19 I will rejoice in Jerusalem and be glad in my people; no more shall be heard in it the sound of weeping and the cry of distress.
Pain is the other thing that shall be no more. The Greek word translated pain here means “labor, pain, misery. It is labor which does not stop short of demanding the whole strength of man.” This is intense pain!
The other thing that will be gone are the tears, and the Greek simply means tears. But we can have tears for many reasons. They can be a reaction to physical or mental pain, physical or mental grief and sorrow. It’s important to remember that God doesn’t take them lightly.
Psalm 56:8 says: You have kept count of my tossings; put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your book?
Whether or not this is literal, it would seem to indicate that God keeps track of the tears we shed. But the other thing to remember is that sometimes God intentionally causes our tears.
Psalm 80:5 says: You have fed them with the bread of tears and given them tears to drink in full measure.
Why would God intentionally feed His people the bread of tears?
Psalm 119:67: Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep your word.
Psalm 119:71: It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes.
Psalm 119:75 I know, O Lord, that your rules are righteous, and that in faithfulness you have afflicted me.
Affliction from God and “bread of tears” sounds very similar to “bread of affliction” - what we associate with the Days of Unleavened Bread.
Deuteronomy 16:3 says: You shall eat no leavened bread with it. Seven days you shall eat it 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.
Why does God afflict us? To discipline us, to remind us what He’s done for us, to bring us back to Him, to teach us to obey.
But eventually, the tears will all be wiped away. Why are there tears? We cry because of pain and sorrow. Sometimes it’s because of physical pain; sometimes it’s because of the impairment of the relationship with God. But eventually we are told that the tears will be wiped away by God Himself. We find it here in Revelation 21:4, but in two other places as well.
Revelation 7:17 speaks of those who have come out of Great Tribulation: For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.
Isaiah 25:8 He will swallow up death forever; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken.
The reference in Isaiah 25:8 is very interesting, especially when you consider the definition of “wipe away.” The Greek word mean to erase, smear out, obliterate; figuratively, it means to pardon!
Think about this! If there is no more death, then there’s no more sin because Romans 6:23 says the wages of sin is death! If there’s no more sin and no more death, then God truly will have wiped away, for the last time, all of our sin debt. We will be fully, completely, for all time, pardoned.
Look at the language here: Revelation 21:3: And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. We’re speaking of a time when the battles have been fought, death has been conquered forever, Satan has been forever dealt with, and God is dwelling with us. This is huge! Remember, God cannot look on sin. God is holy and righteous. He will have no part of anything else!
So think again about Exodus 13:9: And it shall be to you as a sign on your hand and as a memorial between your eyes, that the law of the Lord may be in your mouth. For with a strong hand the Lord has brought you out of Egypt. We eat unleavened bread during the week of Unleavened Bread so that the law of the Lord may be in our mouths. Why? Because God wants to bring us to Christ. He is working to purify for Himself a people. Titus 2:14, speaking of Jesus, says, he gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.
The Days of Unleavened Bread picture Jesus putting sin out of our lives through His blood. But we also have to make that choice daily to distinguish between the holy and the common, the unclean and the clean. Remember, the unleavened bread should remind us not to hang around sin any more! Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God. 2 Corinthians 7:1
If we cannot do the physical, putting leaven out of our lives for seven days and only eating the unleavened bread for seven days, how will we ever make the harder spiritual and mental and physical choices of distinguishing between the holy and the common, the clean and the unclean. How will we ever become wholly devoted to God?
Make no mistake: there is coming a day when death, mourning, crying and pain are no more. Sin will be gone. Death will be swallowed up in victory. Tears will be wiped away and all sins pardoned forever for those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.
It’s important to remember that God, in His great mercy, gave us the bread of affliction, the bread of tears, to eat that we might ultimately be in His kingdom! But we can’t mix unleavened and leavened. There’s no communion between holy and common, clean and unclean. You’re either all in or you’re all out. You can’t sit in the middle.
So - have you eaten your bread of affliction yet today?
Isaiah 1:16 - Make Yourselves Clean
Luke 6:36 - Mercy
Revelation 21:4 - For the Former Things Have Passed Away
Revelation 21:4 - The Bread of Affliction
Who Will Save You?
Yet you have forsaken me and served other gods; therefore I will save you no more. Judges 10:13
My brother, Bob, was three years older than me. Even though he pestered me and aggravated me until I was almost ready to scream, numerous times he rescued me from whatever predicament in which I found myself. He’s the one who taught me to ride a bike. He’s the one who, after I badly sliced my foot open on a shard of glass, slung me over his back and carried me back to the ranch house - even though I was nearly the same weight. He was a great older brother.
Another interesting fact about my childhood was my proclivity to sleep walk and sleep talk.
These two facts, my active sleeping and my older brother, as rescuer, collided one night at my grandparents’ ranch. Bob heard noise from the room I shared with my sister and came to investigate. I was jumping up and down on my bed, yelling, “Get ‘em, Bobby! Get ‘em!” I had no recollection of it the next morning, so we’re not completely sure what I was dreaming.
The reality is: we all need to be rescued from things in this life. Who do we look to?
Judges 10:13 says, “Yet you have forsaken me and served other gods; therefore I will save you no more.” If God is not going to save us because we’ve forsaken Him and served other gods, maybe we’d figure out what serving other gods entails.
The outright worship of other gods is obvious. Burning your children in the fire to Molech, building an altar to Baal, baking cakes to the queen of heaven - those all fall into the category of serving other gods in a very obvious sense.
But there are less obvious ways of serving other gods. For instance, when Micah (in Judges 17-18) made his own ephod, ordained a Levite as a priest, he said, “Now I know the LORD will prosper me because I have a Levite as a priest” (Judges 17:13). Wow! He’d broken so many of God’s commandments. He had a houseful of gods. He set up a Levite, specifically Jonathan, the son of Gershom, the son of Moses, as a priest, when the priests were supposed to come only from Aaron’s line. Yet, Micah thought God would be pleased with him because he had a Levite as his priest. The syncretism, the blending of what was right in God’s sight with what was right in his own eyes, was incredible! Needless to say, God did not prosper Micah!
Another instance of syncretism, blending God’s ways with pagan ways, is seen in the construction of the golden calf. The Israelites took that calf and declared that the next day would be a festival to Jehovah! All the time they had disobeyed God by making a golden idol, they decide to worship the One True God with the very object of disobedience!
Disobedience can happen on a daily level too - even during the Days of Unleavened Bread. The command is to get the leavening out of your house, and out of your borders, for seven days. Some people think that’s a little over the top. They think God didn’t really mean for us to do that.
Then there are others who think you should get the leavening out, but they don’t do the other half of the command: to eat unleavened bread for seven days. Some people don’t like how it tastes and they really don’t think God would require it of us. He’d understand if we just don’t want to do it!
The curious thing about this whole continuum of disobedience from not wanting to eat unleavened bread to burning your own children in the fire to a pagan deity, the curious thing is that whenever you disobey God, you’ve put something else or someone else in His place; you’ve decided that something else trumps God. You’ve allowed something else to become first in your life. It can be your own desires. It can be the desires of your friend or boss. It can be the gods of your imagination.
So God has a message for you, if you’re going to put something or someone else before Him. Judges 10:13 says, “Yet you have forsaken me and served other gods; therefore I will save you no more.” And verse 14 goes on to say, “Go and cry out to the gods whom you have chosen, let them save you in the time of your distress.”
So, what’s the bottom line? Are we obeying God to obtain salvation? No, absolutely not! Our salvation is a free gift from God, through the blood of Jesus Christ, lest any man boast. Nevertheless, if we’re not willing to obey God, it’s an indication that we may not have trusted Jesus Christ for our salvation. Our works are evidence of the new creature that was begun in us when we repented of our sins, accepted the sacrifice of Jesus Christ to pay the penalty for our sins, and were baptized to receive the indwelling of Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit.
My older brother died almost thirteen years ago, but truly, he couldn’t really save me from all of the trouble I can get myself into anyway. But I have an Older Brother, Jesus Christ. Hebrews 7:25 says, “Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.”
But you have to draw near to be saved. That’s implies an intimate relationship. That implies obedience to God’s law. That underlines even the necessity of eating unleavened bread every day during the Days of Unleavened Bread.
Who will save you?
Make Yourselves Clean
Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before my face; cease to do evil. Isaiah 1:16
Have your hands ever been so dirty, you didn’t think you’d ever get them clean?
Sometimes when I come in from pulling weeds in the garden, the dirt under my fingernails is almost impossible to clean out. I wash. I scrub. And, if that doesn’t do it, I find the fingernail clippers.
Sometimes when Ron has been working on the cars, he comes in with his hands covered with the blackest, grimiest hands. He asks for Goop, but sometimes that doesn’t even take it all off.
When Christopher broke his jaw and I held him on my lap until we got to the hospital, the shirt that I was wearing was covered with blood. It was one of my favorite shirts, but there was no way to get all that blood out. I ended up throwing it away.
Dirt. Stains. Blemishes. One of the good things about the Passover is the thorough house cleaning that I do. But one of the bad things about the Passover is the thorough house cleaning that I do. It’s good because the house is thoroughly cleaned. But as I’m thoroughly cleaning, I get a close up view of the stains that won’t come out, the nicks in the hardwood floor, the chips out of the paint on some of the corners of the walls. There are blemishes that cannot be scrubbed away. Additionally, it takes me awhile to clean the whole house, and once I’m completely done and I walk back into the first room that was done, there is dust on the shelves again, there are Japanese lady beetles crawling in the window, and the floor has to be swept all over again. When you’re talking about cleaning house, there’s never a time when you are done. Even when you think you are done, just wait five minutes. The dog will walk across the floor; someone will drop crumbs from their food onto the counter and then inadvertently knock them onto the floor; life happens. It’s a great object lesson from the Passover: we can’t get our house completely clean - and if we can’t clean up our house, how in the world are we possibly going to clean up our lives? How can we completely accomplish what Isaiah says?
Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before my face; cease to do evil. Isaiah 1:16
This inability to completely clean ourselves up is Biblical.
In Genesis 8:21, God says, “ . . . the intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth.”
Jeremiah 17:9 says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick;”
Paul says, “For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out” (Romans 7:18)
Paul goes on in Romans 8:7-8 to say, “For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.”
The Bible is very clear: we are sinful, carnal human beings. We are evil, the intention of our desperately sick and deceitful heart tends towards evil. There’s nothing good that dwells in us and we are hostile to God, unable to please Him. We cannot clean ourselves up. In fact, the carnal mind doesn’t even want to! It doesn’t matter how many times we wash our hands, so to speak; they are never going to be clean. We need a different solution.
Paul recognized the human condition: “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:24-25a)
Even though everyone has sinned, everyone has fallen short of the glory of God, Jesus Christ has paid the penalty for those sins (Romans 3:23-25). But more than paying for individual sins, Jesus bought us from the slavery to sin (Romans 6:6). We no longer have to serve our carnal nature; when we accept Jesus Christ as our Savior, we can choose to serve God (Romans 6:16-19). But what Jesus Christ did was even more than that! He not only paid the penalty for our sins, He not only freed us from slavery to sin, He has reconciled us to God the Father (Romans 5:10-11).
The Passover celebration is huge. It is the memorial of Jesus’ suffering and death in our place. But that’s not where it stops. He died so that we can live, reconciled to God - we live in newness of life, even while we still feel the pull of the carnal nature, the desires of the sinful nature. Even though there’s a battle between the flesh and the new creature in God, we live to please our God because we were bought with a price (1 Corinthians 7:23), the price of the Son of God, our Savior Jesus Christ. What commandment from God will we refuse to obey considering all that God the Father and God the Son have done on our behalf?!
What was previously impossible for carnal man to do, God has now made a way for us to do through the blood of Jesus Christ and the power of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit:
Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before my face; cease to do evil. Isaiah 1:16
You have all week to enjoy another object lesson. The Passover is past: you’ve been cleansed by the blood of the Lamb. Now, every day, for seven days (the number of completeness) you get to take in the unleavened bread - a symbol of our sinless Jesus Christ. Don’t just avoid leavening (and sin) for these seven days; eat the unleavened bread. Fill yourselves full of Jesus Christ. Spend some extra time praying, reading His word, seeking Him. And then, when the seven days are over, don’t stop seeking Him with all of your heart. He gave His very life so that you can live. Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your deeds from before my face; cease to do evil.
Mercy
Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful. Luke 6:36
What is mercy? When you have the power and authority to punish someone because of their bad behavior, and you choose to show forgiveness and compassion instead - that’s mercy.
So when you’ve been bad, when you’ve done something that you know will get you into trouble with your parents, you expect to be punished. You could be grounded. You could lose privileges. You could be spanked. But you know that you’ve done the wrong thing. You know that you made a bad choice. Now you’re going to have to suffer the consequences. It’s a natural progression: if you’re bad, then you’ll be punished. But sometimes, just sometimes, your parents don’t punish you. They forgive you without you suffering the consequence of your bad behavior. Parents have to make a wise choice - because they love you - what will be better for you? Is it better that you suffer for your bad choice so that you won’t do it again? Or do they think you’ve learned your lesson and don’t need the consequence?
Regardless, the definition of mercy means that justice - the administration of consequences and punishment - is the expected, usual, normal result of transgressing the laws of your parents! Mercy is the exception, not the rule! Still, God has quite a bit to say about mercy - and how prevalent it should be in our lives.
Micah 6:8 - . . . what does the Lord require of you but to act justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?
God expects you to do what is right, but He also wants you to love mercy - to look for the opportunities to be merciful to other people.
Why do you think mercy would be so important to God? Part of the answer is the law of the harvest: whatever you sow, that’s what you reap. If you are merciful to others, you will receive mercy.
Matthew 5:7 - Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.
And we have to work at showing mercy to others. If it’s in our power to punish someone because of their bad behavior, many times that’s what we want to do. They did the crime, we’re more than willing that they do the time.
But twice in Matthew (9:13 and 12:7) Jesus told the religious leaders that they didn’t know and needed to learn what this meant: I desire mercy and not sacrifice. It’s a quote from Hosea 6:6
For I desire steadfast love (mercy) and not sacrifice,
the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.
You can make a sacrifice, offer something to God, and think that you’re a good person because you’ve given something to God. But then you go out and you’re nasty to your older brother or to your neighbor or to the dog. God can see what’s really in your heart by how you treat other people. It’s one thing to go through the motions of a relationship with God, but when you demonstrate that you have the love of God within you because of how you act towards others, that’s evidence of God in your life.
But why is mercy so important to God? This is the same God who caused the ground to open up and swallow Korah, Dothan, and Abiram and to consume 250 elders in Israel with fire because of their rebellion (Numbers 16). We often think of the wrath and judgment of God against all unrighteousness. But Jeremiah says
The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases;
his mercies never come to an end. Lamentations 3:22
God, in describing Himself says,
The LORD, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness . . . (Exodus 34:6)
The first attribute God applies to Himself, in this verse, is merciful.
We know God is merciful. He has not given us what we all deserve - which is death! In fact, He made a way that we would be forgiven, through the death and resurrection of His Son. Jesus died a horrible death so that we might be forgiven for what we did. Because Jesus was raised from the dead, we are adopted into the family of God and given the hope of eternal life! No, God did not give us what we deserved; He gave us mercy.
So Jesus says, “Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.”
We just celebrated and commemorated what God the Father and Jesus Christ did for us in their mercy towards us. Now we get to demonstrate that we understand just how great that mercy is - by being merciful to those around us. We are acting like our Father as well as our Older Brother and Savior - who are merciful.
But then, that’s what these seven days picture - taking into ourselves Jesus Christ, learning to live as He would have us to live. That’s the symbolism of eating the unleavened bread every day. It’s not enough to avoid leavening - to avoid sin; that’s like the sacrifice God was talking about in Hosea 6:6. We are commanded to eat the unleavened bread - which represents living without sin, living as Christ lived, which means being merciful to those around us. As you sacrifice your leavened bread this week - you don’t get to eat pizza or cheese and gherkin sandwiches or pancakes, as you instead eat the unleavened bread, remember that it is supposed to be teaching you to live God’s way. It’s supposed to be teaching you to be merciful.
For the Former Things Have Passed Away
He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. Revelation 21:4
The goldfish that we’ve had for almost 10 years is dying. I will be very surprised to wake in the morning and find her still alive. It’s going to be a painful way to start the first of God’s spring holy days, the First Day of Unleavened Bread. And yet, it will make this verse all the more poignant to the children. We do cry. We do feel pain. We do mourn. There is still death in this world. But it won’t always be that way.
And in fact, it wasn’t that way in the beginning. In June 2011, we started reading Genesis, beginning our second trip through the Bible. The first verse the children memorized was Genesis 1:31: And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
When God finished creation, He said it was very good. There was no death, no mourning, no crying, no pain. But that was before Adam and Eve disobeyed God. It was before sin entered the world, bringing decay, sorrow, pain, and death with it.
And yet, God had a plan. The second verse the children memorized that summer was Genesis 17:1: When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless.”
God began working through the Father of the Faithful. It would be through the Seed of Abraham, through Jesus Christ, that mankind would be redeemed and sin, sorrow, and death would be dealt with once and for all.
God foreshadowed His plan for mankind in the lives of Abraham and Isaac (and many, many others!). Genesis 22:8 says: Abraham said, “God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” So they went both of them together. This is the picture of Abraham being willing to sacrifice Isaac as God commanded. But God stayed the knife in Abraham’s hand, telling him that now He knew that Abraham would not withhold from God his precious son. It’s a fascinating foreshadowing of how our Heavenly Father sent His only begotten Son to this earth, to live a physical existence, and to die for our sins. When we read the story from Abraham’s perspective, we get a glimpse of the Father’s perspective of Jesus’ torture, crucifixion, and death. God, indeed, did provide for himself the Lamb.
Another verse the children memorized as we made our way through Genesis and Exodus was Exodus 13:9: And it shall be to you as a sign on your hand and as a memorial between your eyes, that the law of the LORD may be in your mouth. For with a strong hand the LORD has brought you out of Egypt.
What’s the context of Exodus 13:9? It was talking about God’s command to celebrate the Days of Unleavened Bread every year. That observance was to serve as a reminder of what God had done for His people. Eating the unleavened bread is a sign on your hand - the hand being a symbol of what you do - and a memorial between your eyes - between your eyes being a symbol of what you think. Eating the unleavened bread each day during the seven days is an action that causes us to think about what God has done in our lives.
Furthermore, it causes us to think about what God did in Genesis 22, when He provided the lamb for Abraham, causing him to stay his hand above Isaac. It causes us to think about what God did in Exodus 12-14 when the blood of the lamb stayed the hand of the death angel who passed over at midnight killing the firstborn in Egypt. It causes us to think about the torture, crucifixion, and death of our Savior Jesus Christ on our behalf - the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. It causes us to think of the Lamb, slain from the foundation of the world, who was the only one found worthy to open the scroll. It causes us to think of that time in the future, when the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ. That will usher in God’s kingdom when he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.
Once again, God will look at His creation and He will say that it is very good.
I hope you think about each of these things as you eat unleavened bread all week long!
The Bread of Affliction
He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain, for the former things have passed away. Revelation 21:4
What’s gone? What is “no more”? tears, death, mourning, crying, pain.
The Greek word translated death in this verse can mean natural or physical death or it can mean spiritual death. It’s application is very broad. So when I think about death being no more, two verses come to mind:
1 Corinthians 15:26: The last enemy to be destroyed is death.
Revelation 20:14: Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire.
What else is gone? Mourning - the Greek word here can be translated grief, mourning, or sorrow. Crying - the Greek word translated crying here means an outcry, tumult or grief. We’re talking about an intense crying. There are other references to crying, but it’s a different word. The word used here is also used in Hebrews 5:7 when it’s referring to Jesus’ loud cries and tears. (Hebrews 5:7: In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence.)
But this kind of sorrow and crying will be gone, over, finished. It must be important for us to know that because Isaiah tells us three times:
Isaiah 35:10, Isaiah 51:11: And the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.
Isaiah 65:19 I will rejoice in Jerusalem and be glad in my people; no more shall be heard in it the sound of weeping and the cry of distress.
Pain is the other thing that shall be no more. The Greek word translated pain here means “labor, pain, misery. It is labor which does not stop short of demanding the whole strength of man.” This is intense pain!
The other thing that will be gone are the tears, and the Greek simply means tears. But we can have tears for many reasons. They can be a reaction to physical or mental pain, physical or mental grief and sorrow. It’s important to remember that God doesn’t take them lightly.
Psalm 56:8 says: You have kept count of my tossings; put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your book?
Whether or not this is literal, it would seem to indicate that God keeps track of the tears we shed. But the other thing to remember is that sometimes God intentionally causes our tears.
Psalm 80:5 says: You have fed them with the bread of tears and given them tears to drink in full measure.
Why would God intentionally feed His people the bread of tears?
Psalm 119:67: Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep your word.
Psalm 119:71: It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes.
Psalm 119:75 I know, O Lord, that your rules are righteous, and that in faithfulness you have afflicted me.
Affliction from God and “bread of tears” sounds very similar to “bread of affliction” - what we associate with the Days of Unleavened Bread.
Deuteronomy 16:3 says: You shall eat no leavened bread with it. Seven days you shall eat it 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.
Why does God afflict us? To discipline us, to remind us what He’s done for us, to bring us back to Him, to teach us to obey.
But eventually, the tears will all be wiped away. Why are there tears? We cry because of pain and sorrow. Sometimes it’s because of physical pain; sometimes it’s because of the impairment of the relationship with God. But eventually we are told that the tears will be wiped away by God Himself. We find it here in Revelation 21:4, but in two other places as well.
Revelation 7:17 speaks of those who have come out of Great Tribulation: For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.
Isaiah 25:8 He will swallow up death forever; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken.
The reference in Isaiah 25:8 is very interesting, especially when you consider the definition of “wipe away.” The Greek word mean to erase, smear out, obliterate; figuratively, it means to pardon!
Think about this! If there is no more death, then there’s no more sin because Romans 6:23 says the wages of sin is death! If there’s no more sin and no more death, then God truly will have wiped away, for the last time, all of our sin debt. We will be fully, completely, for all time, pardoned.
Look at the language here: Revelation 21:3: And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. We’re speaking of a time when the battles have been fought, death has been conquered forever, Satan has been forever dealt with, and God is dwelling with us. This is huge! Remember, God cannot look on sin. God is holy and righteous. He will have no part of anything else!
So think again about Exodus 13:9: And it shall be to you as a sign on your hand and as a memorial between your eyes, that the law of the Lord may be in your mouth. For with a strong hand the Lord has brought you out of Egypt. We eat unleavened bread during the week of Unleavened Bread so that the law of the Lord may be in our mouths. Why? Because God wants to bring us to Christ. He is working to purify for Himself a people. Titus 2:14, speaking of Jesus, says, he gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.
The Days of Unleavened Bread picture Jesus putting sin out of our lives through His blood. But we also have to make that choice daily to distinguish between the holy and the common, the unclean and the clean. Remember, the unleavened bread should remind us not to hang around sin any more! Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God. 2 Corinthians 7:1
If we cannot do the physical, putting leaven out of our lives for seven days and only eating the unleavened bread for seven days, how will we ever make the harder spiritual and mental and physical choices of distinguishing between the holy and the common, the clean and the unclean. How will we ever become wholly devoted to God?
Make no mistake: there is coming a day when death, mourning, crying and pain are no more. Sin will be gone. Death will be swallowed up in victory. Tears will be wiped away and all sins pardoned forever for those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.
It’s important to remember that God, in His great mercy, gave us the bread of affliction, the bread of tears, to eat that we might ultimately be in His kingdom! But we can’t mix unleavened and leavened. There’s no communion between holy and common, clean and unclean. You’re either all in or you’re all out. You can’t sit in the middle.
So - have you eaten your bread of affliction yet today?
