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Page 5 of 5
This Month Shall Be Your Beginning...
Ex 12:1-2
The LORD said to Moses and Aaron in Egypt, "This month is to be for you the first month, the first month of your year. NIV
This is not just a spring house cleaning for the "select" believers to use as a beneficial "add-on" to our regular
Christian lives. Keeping leaven (sin) out of our lives, and remembering just how, when, and where we were delivered from Egypt (sin) are LIFE and DEATH matters. These times are important; they are God's ideas, and His provision for us. To decide on our own that they are not particularly necessary for us is arrogant and dangerous. The particulars of what we do to keep the Feast are significant as well; the Lord has His own purposes in mind. I know from experience that He speaks to our hearts during these times in ways that are not available in other times or seasons.
Also, no matter what behaviors and traditions you do, if you do not bring your heart open and humble before Him, you will find the Feast hollow and legalistic. Before the feast of Passover begins, we are instructed to "get the leaven out of your house". This is an operation of co-operation, inspection, and confession with the Spirit of God.
1 John 1:6-9
If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.
If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. New International Version
Without the power of God in our lives this would be utterly impossible to rid ourselves of sin, we cannot clean ourselves up enough to be sin free (leaven free), but AFTER we are delivered we can...and we must do this.
Speaking to the issue of tolerating immorality in the church at Corinth, Paul exhorts,
1 Corinthians 5:6-8
Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough?
Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened. For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed.
Therefore let us celebrate the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. New American Standard Updated
We are given this Feast to remind us and teach us, and encourage us, and demonstrate the need for constantly keeping the leaven (fermentation, corruption, sin) out of our houses (don't you kow that YOU are the temple of the living God - 1 Corinthians 3:16)
We need to remind ourselves about how our relationship with God started...
Ex 3:7-10
I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey--the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt."
New International Version
So let's remember the day when the Lord invaded our Egypt and join with Him once again at this appointed time of refreshment and remembrance.
For more on Passover see:
How to Celebrate Passover and
"The Feast of Unleavened Bread"... ...Coming soon
Thanks for your interest in our website.
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