With the Feast of Unleavened Bread, God uses a teaching method I’ll call learning through doing. We can learn a lot through reading [personal bible study], we can learn a lot through listening [like a sermon], we can learn through discussion [prayer or fellowship]… we can also learn a lot by doing.

Learning by doing can be:

Application of what you have learned through reading, listening, or discussion. You can talk to a person all day long about how to fix plumbing or sew a quilt… but until they get their hands on the tools and start doing it they haven’t really learned.

Learning by doing can be:

Symbolic doing – an action that is not “the real thing” but focuses your mind and perhaps even provides habits of thought and behavior that help you accomplish the real thing [use example from Karate Kid]. The symbolic doing of the Feast of Unleavened Bread is:

Putting out leaven from our homes, and your diet for 7 days

Eating unleavened bread, putting this odd new thing into you home and diet for 7 days

Exodus 12:19-20, 1 Corinthians 5:7-8

Out With the Bad, In With The Good

This is the lesson the symbolic doing of the Feast of Unleavened Bread.

God wants you to get some stuff OUT OF YOUR LIFE… what is that stuff? [what is leaven]

God wants you to get some stuff INTO YOUR LIFE… what is that stuff? [what is unleavened bread]

Let’s make sure we give equal weight to the getting the good stuff in as getting the bad stuff out. Example: I once knew a person who didn’t like eating unleavened bread. She’d put the leaven out… she’d do the Passover… but she didn’t like eating unleavened bread… she kind of worked around it. And that question does come up “must I eat unleavened bread?”… it comes up often enough that UCG put out a doctrinal statement on the matter that basically says… yeah, that’s what the scriptures tell us.

The church isn’t going to force you to eat unleavened bread, we have no comment on issues like gluten allergies and such matters… we have no scriptural guidance on what sort of flour to use, wheat, barley, corn, etc. You are free to make such decisions… our scriptural guidance is: for 7 days get the leaven out of your home and eat unleavened bread.

Getting The Bad Stuff Out

The 1st place we tend to go when considering what to get out of our lives is to the 10 commandments… don’t lie, no idolatry, don’t steal, no adultery etc. If you have such stuff in your life… get it out. We also might look at God’s statutes and judgments [which are largely a more advanced application of the broad themes of the 10 commandments].

Going to the commands, statutes and judgments is a beginning of what to get out… but not the end.

In many ways the law of God establishes a floor/baseline of tolerable behavior. God gives us freedom to live our lives but warns us that if we break these baseline rules punishment follows.

Is it enough to simply avoid [or try to avoid] breaking God’s law?

Is it enough to simply avoid worshipping idols or other gods? What God really wants is that you learn to love Him with your whole heart, mind and strength… out with the bad… in with the good.

Is it enough to avoid adultery? What God really wants is for you to love, care for, and protect one another… out with the bad… in with the good.

Putting the good stuff into our lives is us imitating our parent… God the Father.

Exodus 20: 8-20 rest because I rest

Exodus 22:27-28 be compassionate because I am compassionate

Leviticus 11:45 be holy… because I am holy

Putting out the bad stuff  that’s the deleavening

Putting in the good stuff [learning and living the character of God]  that’s eating the unleavened bread

Psalm 25:8 His purpose is to teach us His ways

Living The Good Life

Exodus 34:6-7 the life of God is “the good life”.

There are lots of other virtues of godly living we learned from His word: courage, justice, family loyalty, generosity, toughness in the face of wrong, readiness to forgive. But virtues cannot be easily defined by law. How do you write a law that commands courage? One way we learn them is through the lives of the people of God as recorded in scripture… Abraham, Joseph, David etc.

That’s God’s purpose for recording personal details of the lives of patriarchs, judges and kings. We read about them practicing Godly virtues… we also see them learning some bitter hard lessons when they do not. There is victory & defeat, wisdom & folly, faithfulness & fickleness…

The scriptural record of their lives is complicated… the heroes of faith are not so idealized that we consider the Godly virtues out of our league, or impossible to attain. Their failures remind us that God keeps His promises. He is loyal despite the bad decisions, mistakes, and failures along the way.

Balancing Good & Bad

The spring holy days are a time for us to focus our attention on the bad stuff we need to get out [the de-leavening part of our lives]. Clean out your fridge, your cupboards, search through those unlikely places where leaven might be hiding. THINK ABOUT IT… Let it remind you of the stuff you need to get out of your life.

Don’t get stuck on the negative. Give plenty of attention to the good stuff you need to get into your life. Buy or prepare that unleavened bread, cook those special unleavened recipes, eat that unleavened bread. THINK ABOUT IT… Let it remind you of the good stuff you want to get into your life.

It’s a spiritual exercise of “symbolic doing”! … Out with the bad and in with the good.

Colossians 3:1-4 you are part of a group who have been given full access to the truth of God. You know who Christ is… you know where your calling is headed… most don’t. That knowledge is a valuable gift God has graciously given to you.

You have been baptized into the full knowledge of the truth and life of Christ… through baptism, you have committed yourself to a lifelong process… the old person you were dies away [actually is forcibly put to death by you]… the new person grows, matures to become like God. When Christ returns you will receive a glorious spirit composed body and are never again subject to death.

Out With The Bad Stuff

Colossians 3:5-9 here is a listing of bad stuff that you need to get out of your life… not only actions to avoid such as illicit sexual behavior… but also ways of thinking to get rid of. Out with any form of sexual activity outside the marriage of a man and a woman. But also get rid of the thought patterns of sexual craving, fantasies, the desire for more, more, more… whether entertainment, sex, or money, property, power, prestige. Which are forms of idolatry!

Other malicious thought patterns to seek out and remove from your life: do particular things tick you off? Do you let your emotions and thoughts grow into anger… do you let anger express itself with words of mockery, disdain, or insults, or gossip? God does not approve.

Your creator cares about what you do… what your say… and what you think. It's not that He’s a control freak… He has big plans for you. He wants you to assist Christ in a huge project. There is no place for all that bad stuff in what God has planned.

God wants you to live the “good life”. Meaning to live like Him. Grow up into the image of your creator!

Colossians 3:10-11

In With The Good Stuff

Colossians 3:12-14 clothe yourself… meaning put this stuff on… or in.

Paul writes in Galatians when he’s listing the good fruits of the Holy Spirit… “there is no law about this stuff”. As mentioned earlier, virtues are not easily defined by law. How do you write a law to be patient, gentle, or humble?

Eliminating actions in your life that violate God’s law [putting stuff out] does not thereby build humility. You could say getting the bad stuff out creates a clean empty space suitable to put the new good thing into. But remember… Jesus warned us about cleaning out the house and leaving it empty. He said beware that even worse stuff sees that nice empty space and comes back with even worse problems.

I have seen situation where folks are primarily focused on getting the bad stuff out of their lives. They want their house clean, neat, etc. But they end up being very judgmental of others who they don’t think are doing as good a job as them. That’s the leaven of the Pharisees… these people had gotten all the leaven out of their house. But they neglected to eat the unleavened bead of sincerity and truth. And God does not approve.

The good stuff… compassion, kindness, gentleness, patience, forgiveness… if we don’t learn these from the law… how do we learn them. How do we get this good stuff in our lives.

You could think of these Godly thought patterns as “reaction to circumstances”. For example mercy: mercy is a decision to not apply the punishment demanded by the law. We see God offer mercy so that the person might have an opportunity to reconsider their behavior and change for the better. He does not extend leniency because He unwilling to stand up for what is right.

Our understanding of these God-like thought patterns begin with Him. What He reveals about himself to us in the scriptural record… what He has done... how He reacts. We see it in the record of Jesus. His life and teachings. We also see it in the record we have of people like Abraham, Moses, David, Judges, Apostles etc. What He says about them, approving, disapproving.

This is why the word is so filled with stories… they are situational ethics.

To put the good stuff in is to learn to care about others, care that leads to action. It means to get a more realistic view of our importance/unimportance in the scheme of things, then use that more humble view of ourselves to treat others with dignity, respect, patience…. Seeing them as fellow children of our Creator.

To learn forgiveness, and love which allow us to get along in peace and unity. Balanced with firmness and resolve in the face of wrong-doing.

Colossians 3:15

Out With Bad Stuff – In With The Good Stuff

This year during the Days of Unleavened Bread lets use these 7 days of symbolic doing remind us and focus our minds not only on the bad stuff we have to get out of our lives… the leavening we remove… Let’s make sure to give thoughtful reflection to the good stuff our creator wants us to “get into” our lives.

Let’s all live the “good life”.