[Darris McNeely] Once we heard in the sermonette, we're very quick to approach the Passover. We're at that season of the year. And every year, we begin to prepare by examining ourselves and our deepest thoughts, way down deep where we really live, inside with ourselves. Mr. Rangel was talking about the first couple of years and really taken off with a good start, and then things catch up to him. Wait until you get to 50 years of Passover services and, you know, you have a whole different perspective here.

But what do you see every year when you examine yourself and how do you react? As I said, I don't always like what I see, especially when I see the same sins and the same problems that I might struggle with come back around every year and that tends to pop up as far as what I might list as a problem. I don't like to see that. And sometimes you think you've made some progress and then sometimes you realize you just haven't. But I don't beat myself up, and nor should you. You shouldn't beat yourself up either.

Turn, if you will, over to Hebrews 9. We ended the sermonette in Hebrews. We'll start this sermon in Hebrews 9, beginning in verse 7. I'm sorry, Hebrews 8, beginning in verse 7. "If that first covenant had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second. Because finding fault with them, He says, 'Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with house of Israel and with the house of Judah— not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand and led them out of the land of Egypt; because they did not continue with My covenant, and I disregarded them, says the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My laws in their mind and write them on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall teach… they shall be My people.’"

The essence of the New Covenant is why I don't beat myself up. Every year, as I examine myself for the past Passover, nor should you because God is in the process of writing His law upon our hearts, through His Spirit as an ongoing process. And that is a reality that is the anchor of our life. It's the anchor of a Christian. And that's what keeps me going. That's what helps me to go through the examination, not get discouraged, not want to give up, not think that there's no use to overcoming, that I can't, or whatever it might be because I know that I can and I know that I have. And what might be present or having been with me for some time, I know that by God's Spirit, I can overcome. And so can you.

Every one of us where God is working with us through His Spirit can do that. The Passover is a time to renew the fellowship of the heart, that this Scripture is really talking about, to redouble our efforts to overcome sin. With the help of Christ in us by His Spirit, it can be done. It can be done. The fact that we are here together after so many years, the fact that we are still a part of the Body of Christ, obeying God, keeping His Sabbaths, keeping His Holy Days is a sign of that, one of many signs, but it's an important sign. It can be done.

Today, I'd like to take all of us back to a story that I think will help us to understand this fellowship of the heart that I think is, again, at the essence of this new covenant experience that Hebrews tells us about. I'd like to take us back to a story from the Old Testament to the time of King Josiah and a reform and a renewal that Josiah instituted into Israel that resulted in a Passover to remember, a time when a king brought a renewal to a tired people who had forgotten who they were. And we'll examine Josiah and we'll draw encouragement that I think can help all of us prepare our hearts for this upcoming Passover.

The story of Josiah and his reforms are told back in two passages. One in 2 Kings 22 and 23 and the other in 2 Chronicles 34 and 35. There are a bit of differences in the way the same information is presented.

Go ahead and turn back to 2 Chronicles and we'll start with that particular part of the story in 2 Chronicles 34. Josiah is a story that I think so many of us are familiar with, but when we find the details here, there is a great deal of instruction for us to understand about our current world, and especially our life in the church and the Passover. Josiah, if you remember, was the grandson of another righteous king named Hezekiah. He was actually the great-grandson of Hezekiah. His father… Josiah’s father was named Amon.

Now, Hezekiah was a righteous king who was followed by his son Manasseh, who was a very wicked king, who in turn was followed by Amon, the father of Josiah. And Amon too was a wicked and unrighteous king. So you had Hezekiah who had his own reforms and then two kings in succession who took the nation, again, back into the sewer when it came to their coveted relationships with God. And then Amon was assassinated in his own house, the story tells us. And at eight years of age, his son Josiah becomes the king, eight-year-old king, a boy king.

Now we're told that his mother's name was Jedidah. That's all we're told about her. But I'd like to think that Jedidah steered this young boy at a very critical time. Can you imagine an eight-year-old boy becoming king? Knowing and… I wonder as I look at the story, did he hear the screams of his father when the assassins closed in on him? Did he come across the scene? How did he react when he was told? And then he becomes the king, and how did he sleep at night knowing that his father was killed, wondering, "Is someone going to come and kill me?" What would an eight-year-old think about? I think he'd think those thoughts. It would be a strange new world. His boyhood was over.

Obviously, from age eight, for a number of years, a king like that is going to be… the rulership of the kingdom is going to be in the hands of adults in the court. Maybe even his mother had some hand in that. We're not told. But one might think, in regard to that, decisions were made until he came of age.

Now, it's in chapter 34 beginning in verse 1 that the story begins to unfold where he was, at eight years of age in verse 1, when he became the king and he reigned for 31 years, quite a long time. "He did what was right in the sight of the Lord, and he walked in the ways of his father David; he did not turn aside to the right hand nor to the left.” A familiar phrase about a righteous king. So he had some training. And I'd like to think that he had it from his mother. And I truly think that she played a very important guiding part in his education, that he chose a different path than his father had chosen. He chose to steer the people back to a righteous path.

And it says then in verse 3, that, "In the eighth year of his reign, while he was still young," so that would be at age 16, "he began to seek the God of his father David. And in the twelfth year he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem of the high places, and the wooden images, the carved images, and the molded images." The account here begins to tell how he went through turning back idolatry. He “broke down the altars of the Baals in his presence, the incense altars which were above them he cut down and the wooden images, the carved images, the molded images, he broke in pieces. This was an original cancel culture going on for Josiah at this particular point. Truly, we'll talk more about that in a minute.

And he even broke in pieces and made dust of them and he scattered it on the graves of those who had sacrificed to them. The account in Kings even says that he went to the tombs of the false priests, drove their bones out, ground them to powder, and burned them to clean the land. That's pretty thorough. It says that here in verse 5, "And he cleansed Judah and Israel. And so he did in the cities of Manasseh and Ephraim went up even into the old land of Israel, and Simeon, as far as Naphtali and all around with axes.” The gangs were out.

And when he had broken down the altars and the wooden images, and beaten the carved images into powder and cut them down in incense throughout all the land of Israel, he returned to Jerusalem. Now, this was a thorough cleansing. When he begins to do this, he's no longer a boy. He's obviously engaging in adult actions as he begins to seek God and go through all of this cleansing. If you will hold your place here, let's turn back to the 2 Kings 23 account to pick up just a little bit more of this that is told there as he begins to do all of this, as he cuts down all of the images.

2 Kings 23, it says in verse 2, "They went to the house of the Lord with the men of Judah, and sent with them the inhabitants of Jerusalem— the priests and the prophets and all the people, both great and small. And he read in there hearing the words of the Book of the Covenant which had been found in the house of the Lord." Now the Chronicles account says that, at some point, at a point during this cleansing and purging through the years, frankly, from the time that he started to a number of years, by the time he was aged 26, he not only had purged all of this and it took some time to do it but they had gone into the temple and found the Book of the Covenant and the Words of the Book of the Law.

The verses here began to show exactly what he began to do in more detail of how he cleansed all the altars and the images that took place. I'm going to skip down to verse 19. He “took away the shrines of the high places that were in the cities of Samaria,” he even went up into the old nation of Israel to do that, that had provoked the Lord to anger, and according to all the deeds that he had done, he went to Bethel where Jeroboam II had set up one of the calves as an altar to keep Israel from going back to Jerusalem after he had led a rebellion that established the Northern nation.

And he spared only the bones of one righteous prophet that had come out to prophesy against Jeroboam. He left that man's bones intact, according to the Word of God that had been made at that time. And the account here goes down and brings it down to the time where he kept a Passover in verse 23. "In the eighteenth year of Josiah, a Passover was held before the Lord in Jerusalem.” They had “put away the mediums, and the spiritists…” and other abominations. In verse 25, "Before him, there was no king like him who turned to the Lord with all his heart… with all of his heart, with all of his soul, and with all of his might, according to the Law of Moses, nor after him did any arise like him.”

The Kings account tells us something about the heart of Josiah that led him to do this. And because he had that heart, he was not only angry in a righteous way against the idolatry and the shrines and all that had been there but he had a tender heart toward God, which, in a sense, stayed the hand of God's judgment upon the people during his reign. Now, let's talk for a moment about the idolatry that he turns back and think about that. In Ezekiel 20, we're told that the reasons… There were two reasons given by God through the prophet as to what led to the captivity of Israel. And God says, "Because of your idolatries and you did not keep My Sabbaths." Two things, their idolatry, which was endemic from almost the beginning. We all know that idolatry plagued Israel from the time of the golden calf at the foot of Mount Sinai through the years and through the generations. They had times when they didn't have idols, but then they had times when they had a lot of idols scattered throughout, even during the times of the good kings.

There were still shrines to the various idols that were going on. And God ultimately said the reason that you went into captivity to the prophet Ezekiel, after it was all said and done, was because of idolatry and Sabbath-breaking. To think about idolatry is very important. At one level, the idolatry that Israel engaged in, it licensed immorality because the rights and the practices of the pagan shrines involved sexual immorality as part of the worship of the particular god or goddess.

And it was pretty vile and it was very attractive. And, frankly, it attracted the Israelites and became, again, the plague among them. The idolatry was at its worst during the age just before Josiah, when Manasseh had brought in child sacrifice to the land, right in Jerusalem, the Valley of Hinnom. And that continued even with his successor Amon, Josiah's father. And so the idolatry was pretty bad, to begin with. Obviously, it violated the commandments, the first three specific commandments to not have any other gods or worship other gods before the true God. That was a violation but it led to an internal, spiritual corrupting of not only individual but the people and the culture as it remained there for so long that it would lead even to a king bringing in an altar to a Molech that people would sacrifice their children there.

It's unimaginable to think about. We still engage in child sacrifice today in a different period of idolatry. It's called abortion. It's a result of a self-deification that has become endemic in our society where we exalt the rights of the self above the law of God, the Word of God, even the nature of life itself. That's one of our forms of idolatry today that is still with us that was a part of what happened then. Idolatry also led the Israelites to essentially worship themselves and put themselves first. We continue to do that today. And all of the jargon that surrounds the issues points to self-deification.

Another impact of the idolatry in the time of Israel that Josiah was aroused against was that it led Israel and had brought them to a point where they forgot who they were. They forgot their history. They had become so drunk on the worship of a Baal, an Ashtoreth, and a Molech, and other gods and goddesses and all that went with it, that they forgot their history and the special unique people that they were. They forgot their story. And in fact, you have to understand that they very likely, through the generations, they rewrote their whole history and repudiated what was truth.

I can well imagine that they rewrote the story of Abraham to call him a slaveholder who mutilated the males in his family through this barbaric act of circumcision and waged war against the peoples of the land. And Jacob? Well, Jacob was a trickster. He cheated his brother out of his legitimate birthright, creating a whole nation of people that were dispossessed. Moses? Well, he was a hard legalist. And the legal code he put in place was outdated. There's no need to hold that to a strict construction. It doesn't fit today. It doesn't fit sixth century B.C. Israel. It's out of date.

And so they wanted and changed the laws. And that Joshua? Well, he was a mad warmonger who stole the lands of the peoples that were already there. The rewriting of story went on. Israel had appropriated the religions of the nations around them. And you have to understand that they brought in the ideas with them and considered the ideas of the other nations as equal to their teaching, equal to their story, equal to their history. They were no longer a special people endowed with a calling and a blessing. And Joshua comes on the scene and he turns it around for one brief shining moment with the thorough purge that he does.

We're living in a time… As I mentioned, Josiah had basically a cancel culture going on there. We're in a different type of canceling that's been going on as we cancel out the remaining remnants of the Abrahamic blessing that is a part of our world and a part of our nation here. And eventually what will be left will be a broken nation that will be open to a captivity by a nation that God will bring. And the lesson for all of us as the people of God is that we must now be smashing our own idols to be able to understand and discern what is happening in the larger world around us as we ourselves prepare ourselves to take the Passover. Because Josiah smashing of the idols at that time dealt with large cultural, religious, political, and spiritual issues of the time that parallel our own time. But at the heart of what Josiah did, for our understanding and where we are right now, is what he did next.

And that was when he learned about the Passover. Because at age 26, he has read to him the newly discovered Book of the Law brought out of the temple precincts, somehow forgotten, somehow neglected. And here in 2 Kings 22:10, it says that "Shaphan showed the king, saying, 'Hilkiah the priest has given me a book.' And Shaphan read it before the king. And it happened, when the king heard the words of the Book of the Law, that he tore his clothes." Now, this is at about age 26. For a number of years, he has been on a major spiritual journey of cleansing the land and removing all the idols. And finally, somehow this Book of the Law is brought out and it's read to him.

And at some point, in the hearing of the Words of the Book, look at verse 11, somewhere as he was having this big, long book of Deuteronomy read to him, he comes to a point and he begins to have an emotional reaction that is really a reaction of his heart. Because if you look at verse 19, the prophet says, "Because your heart was tender, and you humbled yourself before the Lord when you heard what I spoke against this place and against this inhabitance, this place, that they would become a desolation and a curse, and you tore your clothes and wept before Me, I also have heard you,' says the Lord." And this was communicated to Joshua.

His reign would have a righteous impact. His heart was tender and he humbled himself before God. Josiah had a reaction of the heart, at this point, deep and profound at the hearing of the Word of God. That's, I think, the critical takeaway. And it says in verse 25 of 2 Kings 23, as we've already read, that, no other king had that kind of reaction. “There was no king like him, who turned to the Lord with all his heart, and soul, and with all of his might, according to the Law of Moses; nor after him did any other arise." What part of the book of Deuteronomy do you think was read when Josiah had that emotional reaction and tore his clothes? I don't know. But here's my guess.

And it's purely mine. In Deuteronomy 30, Deuteronomy 30 this is the passage where Israel has the choice of life and death put before them before they cross over to Jordan into the Promised Land. And God tells the people through Moses that the commandment, in verse 11, that “I command you today is not too mysterious, nor far off. It's not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will ascend and bring it to us that you might hear it. It's not beyond the sea, that you would have to go over the sea and bring it to us." But in verse 14, "But the word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may do it." The Word of God, the Word of the Law is near. It's not hard to understand. It's not way off someplace. It is near in your mouth and in your heart.

Again, Josiah had an emotional reaction. I like to think that maybe it was at this point in the reading of it that it hit him that something else needed to be done. When you and I hear the Word of God read when we read the Word of God, what is our reaction? It should be a reaction different from anything else we hear, listen to, or read, and all that we engage ourselves with. The Word of God, through the Spirit of God, should engage us, should convict us, should encourage us, should inspire us, should teach us. It should be, as Hebrews says, written on your heart.

And because it is in the process of being written on our heart, we love to hear that Word. And it teaches us, and it nourishes us, and it brings us back. It corrects us. It helps us. And it helps us to remove the idols of our own life that we have when we hear the Word of God at the level of the heart. Josiah was moved by the reading of this at this point to prepare a Passover to remember. Go back to 2 Chronicles 35. We'll read that account of it there. When he heard these words, then he kicked into the next phase of his reforms to prepare “a Passover to the Lord,” verse 1, "in Jerusalem, where they slaughtered the Passover lambs on the fourteenth day of the first month. And he set the priests in their duties and encouraged them for their service of the house of the Lord.”

You read through this, Josiah prepared for a long period of time in advance to get everything just right with the priests, the sacrifices, the ark. He told them in verse 3, "Put the holy ark in the house that Solomon built. It will no longer be a burden. Serve the Lord your God with the people of Israel. Prepare yourselves," in verse 4. "according to your father's, according to your divisions," speaking to the priests. So he got all of the work of the priests lined up there and ready to go, told them to prepare yourselves. It was a busy preparation for the Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread. And the indications are, as you read through this, is that they had not done it with such care and thought even up to this point.

I would imagine that they had kept the Passover, but not with the care and the precision that this had. Down to verse 16, "So all the service of the Lord was prepared the same day, to keep the Passover, to offer burnt offerings on the altar of the Lord, according to the command of King Josiah." And you have to understand that this is specifically making a point, these sacrifices offered on the altar of the Lord. The altar of God was the only altar available in the land. All the others had been eliminated, finally. Not even Hezekiah had done that. There was only one altar, and it was the altar of the Lord in Jerusalem, it seems. And that's where their sacrifices were made.

"And the children of Israel" in verse 17, "who were present kept the Passover at that time, and the Feast of Unleavened Bread for seven days. And there had been no Passover kept in Israel like it since the days of Samuel the prophet." None of the kings of Israel had kept such a Passover. This was a Passover to remember. This was a Passover for the ages, with the priests and the Levites and all of Judah all present, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And in the 18th year of the reign of Josiah, this Passover was kept when he was 26 years of age, already having been working for a long period of time.

We've come to the Passover ourselves after having made a cleansing of our homes, putting out the leaven. We're ready to do that as we come to the Passover. Most importantly, we should be having examined ourselves and looked at the spiritual leaven, the spiritual sin of our lives, but we really do come to one altar ourselves when we come to take the Passover service because there's one sacrifice, the Lamb of God, that we come to remember when we take the symbols of bread and wine at the Passover service. And we cling to that sacrifice. We cling to that altar. We cling to that sacrifice in faith, in full faith and assurance.

Now, why do you think that it says here, in verse 18, that there had not been a Passover kept since the days of Samuel? Why Samuel? Why not Hezekiah? That was a pretty good time. Why not something during the time of David perhaps? Why Samuel? I've not found, you know, anything in Scripture to explicitly state this but what I surmise, Samuel was the last judge. Remember, they wanted a king during Samuel's time. "Make us a king like the other nations." God had been their King but God then said to Samuel, "Don't worry. They haven't rejected you and all you've done. They've rejected Me in wanting a monarchy.”

And He gave them a king and that entire system. And that monarchy, beginning with Saul, created another layer between God and His people, a layer that He didn't intend to be there but He allowed it. And if you look at the story of the Kings, you had a few good ones and you had a lot of bad ones that destroyed the nation ultimately. Josiah is the last good one. But they needed somebody that they wanted to see, a king. And that was a form of idolatry if you really break it down. The Passover and Days of Unleavened Bread events was the critical event of Israel's history. It was really the benchmark of God's instruction for Israel. He always said throughout the prophets, that He'd said, "Remember that I brought you out of the land of Egypt. I carried you out. You were in slavery, I brought you out." Every time God would take them back to that event, but they had forgotten it.

And now they remembered it in a unique way. That event of the actual Exodus, the original one, in Exodus 12 was the one event that tied their history, then even further back 430 years earlier to the covenant God made with Abraham of circumcision. And so, that was a benchmark timing and event. And all of that had been forgotten. This is why this was such a unique Passover, one to remember, during the time of Josiah. Unfortunately, the reform that he had didn't endure. A few years later, he died prematurely in battle at Megiddo when there was a tussle, a fight between Egypt and Syria. Josiah got himself involved in it against the Council, and he was killed.

And there was a great lamenting. Jeremiah lamented him. The nation reverted and slid into captivity. There were three more kings, all of them bad. And ultimately, they went into captivity to the Babylonians. The reform that Josiah did, didn't quite go to the heart of all the people. But there were some who did get it. Jeremiah got it. Jeremiah was a prophet, a young man during the time of Josiah's, reign. And we can pretty well piece together as well and realize that Daniel himself, Daniel the prophet, was born during the time of Josiah. And those two sterling examples of prophets, especially Jeremiah, illustrate that some people got it during the time of Josiah and it was not a total loss.

Jeremiah understood the reforms of Josiah. He understood them so strongly, so deeply to the heart, that he wrote what he did in Jeremiah 31. Turn over there. And let's read what Jeremiah wrote, who knew Josiah, who watched firsthand Josiah's reforms, Josiah's reforms of the heart. And in Jeremiah 31:33, here's what Jeremiah writes, "This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My law in their minds, and write it in their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.” What we read at the beginning in Hebrews, quoted from Jeremiah. You can't understand Jeremiah without understanding what happened with Josiah because Jeremiah was a first-hand eyewitness of it. And it even led him to this understanding with God's Spirit, to be able to… and was inspired him to write the essence of the New Covenant, relationship with God right here, which is the only one that counts.

And it is a relationship, an enduring relationship of the heart. The Covenant of the heart begins with the Lamb of God and the Passover. And every year, we get a chance to renew that Covenant. Every year, you and I get a chance to clear out the idols of our heart, the idols of our life, and to make a cleansing as we examine ourselves prior to the Passover. And every year, by the grace of God, we get a chance to get it right again, even when we might say, "Oh, I thought I got it right last year, or two years ago, or five years ago." Now, we get another chance. And thank God that we do. Thank God that we have another chance to cleanse the idols. What idols do we find? Where do you go to kind of examine?

Well, there's a number of places. There's one that is in Galatians 5 that we could go to. Galatians, the fifth chapter, that can be a starting point for us to break down some of the altars, and idols, and stones, and wooden images that might have crept into our lives that we have. In Galatians 5:19 are the works of the flesh described. “Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry.” The idolatry that we have today isn't so much… I mean, we don't have wooden images in our backyards or that we're hanging around our necks or hanging on our walls or bowing down to in any way, shape, or form, but we still have idols of self that are part of each of us to one degree or the other that we have to deal with. He goes on to mention “sorcery, hatred.” Who can't we get beyond in our thinking, in our relationships?

“Contentions, strife, contentions, arguments, anger, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambition, dissensions, heresies,” differing ideas that are outright wrong scripturally, but might persist in our mind, for whatever reason. Some people like to have different takes on the Bible or a church teaching or the fundamentals. Sometimes for perhaps just that legitimate lack of understanding. Sometimes it may be a point of pride. I've seen it both ways that people would have because, you know, they're smarter than the church. And they see it differently and perhaps even practice something different than… even maybe spread that. That can happen.

“Envy.” Well, you know, we can come in with an idol of envy, that as we look at others and each other. “Murders, drunkenness, rivalries, and the like; which I tell you” Paul writes, "beforehand, just as I also told you in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God." Each of us take a passage like this or something else that we might turn to that we haven't quite yet put off as part of the old man. And like a mirror, we have to hold it up to ourselves because when I read these, I'm looking into a mirror and I'm seeing certain things popping back at me. Do you? Probably do.

And those are the things that strike close to home and become my idol. And, you know, whatever it might be, we have to deal with these things. The great Passover lesson is to put the past behind and to let things go. What has happened has happened. We need to repent and acknowledge our sin, apologize when necessary, but be thankful and recognize Christ's blood covers everything. When we repent, God puts it all from His presence as far as the East is from the West, He says. There's no need to worry about the future and there's certainly not anything to worry about in the past if we've truly repented.

Two things occurred to us this week, Debbie and I. And in thinking about these two instances, they caused a moment of, what will the future bring? Moment of worry, what will the future bring? And you take that thought and you realize, "Well, I can't control that. So I'm not going to let it stay around and put it out. I can't control everything. I can't control everything about the future. I can control certain things that, by my actions and whatever. There are certain things I can't control. So I need to focus on that." Put the past away, let Christ's blood cover that. And don't over worry the future of the things that are beyond our control. Focus on today. Sufficient to the day is what Christ said. Work on the present. And there's enough for us to deal with.

In Romans 7, the apostle Paul… When you look into a mirror of Galatians 5 or maybe it's Colossians 3 that you might turn to or some other passage and some other story that has a spiritual point that speaks to us at any given time, that crashes in and we realize, "Hold on, that's me." What that sermon or this passage is about, that's me.

And that's my idol. And it's that mirror that's in front of us that we see. And we then become kind of like Paul in Romans 7 who says, "I don't want to be that way. But I find this law working within me that drags me into it." And he comes down to verse 24, I won't go through all the ins and outs here of what Paul says that he does. He says he wants to do what is right, and he can't at times because there's another part of his life boring down deep inside. And yet he struggles and Paul writes this after many, many years of conversion, using the Spirit of God, having that law written upon his heart, and he still deals with it. Then he comes down to verse 24 and he says, "O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?”

He sees his own idols that still crop up and still come up. Every year, I think Paul saw what he saw and he didn't like the mirror of God's Word that was held up. I don't always, and you probably don't as well. But the mirror of God's Word sees deep into the heart where we each live with ourselves. And that's where our thoughts take place. That's where, you know, those private little conversations that we get into with ourselves, that's where they happen, down deep in our heart, where we have those conversations, where we entertain those thoughts that aren't always good, of envy, or not letting go, or anger, or whatever, a mood, an impulse, something that's just a part of our character and our life, way down to the site that originates the thoughts, a real place where Jesus Himself said that defiles us when they come out in actions or whatever.

You know, Galatians 5 is speaking in part about certain addictions. Drunkenness for one. And there are several types of addictions to physical matters that a person can get caught up in. And there's something that has to be fed, something that has to be satiated. And therapy and other forms of treatment can help to begin to work out of it.

Ultimately, we have to use the Spirit of God, a Christian does, and all the other forms, and overcome. The addictions can be emotional as well. Sometimes, do you ever get to the point you just have to have a daily shot of anger? A daily fix of envy or jealousy about somebody, some situation, something done you wrong, some person, some situation that wasn't fair? And you got to have to have a daily fix of that. That's just as bad an addiction as some other substance or something else or action that a person could be addicted to.

Those are the things we need to help with. Those are the things I think that we see deep down that nobody else may know about, that we really need the deep help of God. That's what Paul's talking about here, "O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from the body of this death?" Never stop at verse 24. Keep reading. Keep reading. Always keep reading. Verse 25, "I thank God… I thank God— through Jesus Christ our Lord!” That's his answer. Who will deliver him? Jesus Christ, God, the Spirit of the Father, the Spirit of Christ living in us. He talks about that in the next chapter, chapter 8. That's what will deliver us. God will. "So then, with a mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin." In other words, he's always going to be subject to it as we are, but with his mind, he says, "I serve the Law of God." Paul knew that the Law of God was being written on his heart, day by day, year by year. He knew who would deliver him from the body of death. Jesus Christ.

And then you have to, as I say, you keep reading. Really, managed to put these chapter divisions here but chapter 8 verse 1, he says, “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit." God does not unplug us, or His Spirit, or His presence, or His love from us when we may sin, when we slip. If our heart, our orientation, our life is toward Him, that began with repentance, and faith, and baptism, then there is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who walk according to the Spirit, not according to the flesh. Because it's a relationship with the heart.

And God's writing His Word upon our heart. "For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus," verse 2, "has made me free from the law of sin and death." Some of those encouraging words. I mean, we can read the rest of the chapter but we don't have the time to do that. You do that because therein lies the answer and the key to the Passover, to the Days of Unleavened Bread, and how we overcome sin, and how we put it out of our lives, and how we are to live. Each year brings us to the mirror that sees into our hearts and we confront ourselves. Like Paul, we see the problem. And we may at times ask, "Well, who will deliver us? God, how will I overcome?" We will. We can.

Like Paul, we come to the solution. God, through Jesus Christ, through the Lord Jesus Christ, through that Spirit within us, will help us to overcome and it can be done. And so we can take the Passover with a clean heart, with a good conscience, not feeling condemned, not feeling wretched, in the sense that, you know, we're hopeless, and before God like that. Those are the thoughts that we deal with in our prayers and in our examination. And then we recognize that we have the help of God to deal with it. And we come to take a Passover that is a Passover to remember, a Passover that begins that process all over again, a Passover like that of Josiah, with the heart of a man like Josiah, who was passionate, who loved God, who kept God's Word and brought his nation back before God for a moment, for a renewal and for a revival.

That's an example for us to study and to understand of the renewal of the heart, that relationship of the heart. Let's keep a Passover to remember, like Josiah, like God wants us to. And let's come boldly to that throne of grace for the help that God gives us to live our lives.