Celebrating The Feast

Introduction

Have you ever struggled in trying to describe or explain something to someone else? Let me illustrate that. Let me think of someone to pick on. On more than one occasion, Greg has tried to explain Star Wars to me. And he’s struggled. And there’s three possible reasons that we struggle explaining or describing something to someone. One possibility is you just don’t have the adequate words, or you can’t formulate with your vocabulary a way to describe something to get that other person to understand that.

Maybe the person to whom you’re speaking can’t understand what you’re saying.

You’re trying to win somebody over to your cause.

Are the value of that thing in which you’re trying to describe? How would you to a non-believer, someone who knows little or nothing about God and his holy scriptures? How would you describe the Christian life? Would you be able to adequately form the words out of your vocabulary to adequately describe to that person who doesn’t know God, who doesn’t know his son Jesus Christ, who doesn’t know the life of forgiveness in his kingdom? Would you be able to describe that? Would they be able to understand it? And maybe more importantly, would they be able to truly appreciate what you’re trying to enthusiastically describe the Christian life is all about. Well, I guess maybe the first place we would need to begin and trying to get better at describing these things is how do the scriptures describe Christianity?

What are the words or the descriptions that the New Testament gives to the Christian life? There are many.

1 Corinthians chapter 5, you’ll immediately recognize as that chapter of church discipline. Where the church in Corinth had someone in their midst who was guilty of an egregious sexual sin, and they were not just ignoring it, they seemed to be almost embracing it or celebrating it. And the apostle by inspiration says that’s not so. It needs to be eradicated from your midst. And in the midst of that discussion about dealing with sin in the camp, he describes the Christian life as a feast. Look with me in 1 Corinthians chapter 5. Let’s begin our reading in verse 6. Your glorying is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Therefore, purge out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened.

For indeed Christ, our Passover was sacrificed for us. Therefore, let us keep the feast. Not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

1. The Christian Life Is a Celebration

And let’s talk about it this morning. As we, if you’re a child of God, as we celebrate the feast. What does it mean to celebrate that feast? What does it mean to describe the Christian life as a feast? First of all, we understand that one of the points that the apostle is making here is that the Christian life is to be a celebration. Let us celebrate the feast, because Christ is our Passover. Now it do us well to pause here and to think about what Paul is talking about when he uses the word Passover, celebrate, and feast. And so if you’ll put your finger or a bookmark there in 1 Corinthians 5. And let’s go now to the Old Testament, to the passage of Scripture that Paul is referencing to Exodus chapter 12.

Paul is drawing an inspired comparison between the Christian life and the Passover feast. And so let’s spend a little bit of time in background talking about the Passover feast. Bible students remember that the children of Israel, God’s people, had gone into Egypt to sojourn for a period of time. They were brought there by the famine. And because of the providence of God through Joseph, they were in Egypt where they could be fed and taken care of. They were there for hundreds of years. And they became under the thumb of the ever-increasing oppression of the Pharaoh of Egypt. Until finally their existence in Egypt could be described only as slavery. Not just a slavery, but the most oppressive form of slavery.

Certainly an unthinkable task. But because of the paranoia of the ruler of Egypt, that egregious task was diminished by the horror of having their own children slaughtered by the ruler that they served. God heard their cries, you remember. And he sent Moses as a deliverer of those people. Pharaoh was not willing to release this free laborer, and so he needed some convincing, and so God sent the ten plagues. You remember this story? Water to blood, frog, lice, flies, disease of cattle, bulls, hells, locusts, darkness. Until finally the tenth plague. In fact, you could almost, instead of describing it as ten plagues, you could almost describe them as nine plagues plus the last one. Because it almost stood alone, didn’t it? In this last plague, God said, I’m going to send death throughout Egypt.

All of the firstborn, human and animal alike, will die.

And God says, Here’s what I want you to do. So that you will be spared of this plague. Here’s what you do. Are you in Exodus chapter 12? He says in verse 3, speak to the congregation of Israel, saying, On the tenth day of this month, every man shall take for himself a lamb. According to the house of his father, a lamb for his household. They were then to kill that lamb, and as that lamb was killed, they were to take its blood. Pick up the reading in verse 5. Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year, you shall take it from the sheep or from the goats. Now you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month. Then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it at twilight, and they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and upon the lintel of the house where they eat it.

And so you take this lamb on the prescribed day, you kill that lamb, you take its blood, and you smear it upon the doorframe of your house. Now, what’s the point of all of this? Well, he says in verse 12, for I will pass, still in Exodus 12, verse 12, I will pass through the land of Egypt on that night, and will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast. And against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment. I am the Lord. Now the blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you are, and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. And the plague shall not be on you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.

And so the blood would be a symbol that they had submitted to the will of God, and therefore death would pass over their household. That’s the Passover. That’s the feast that Paul references in 1 Corinthians chapter 5, when he says, Christ is our Passover. You can’t miss the illusion, can you? Christ is our lamb. It is his blood that is applied to us, and it is his blood that escapes us from the death that sin otherwise would bring. They didn’t just do that in Egypt before they exited there. God, through Moses, would say, You’re to do that every year. Every year you’re to kill a lamb. Every year to you’re to remember this event when I took you out of Egypt. Another thing that he tells him, so the Passover feast became connected to what was called the feast of the unleavened bread, that they were also, prior to this feast, to remove any leaven from their houses.

Bread was a staple in the Israelite household. And the way they did two things that you and I probably don’t do. Number one is they made their own bread. They didn’t go to publics and buy it. They made their own bread, and they did so not through some store-bought leavening agent, but they would keep back a portion of the last bread that they made that had been fermenting into this leavening agent, and they would add that to the new batch of bread that would cause it to rise. But they were to go throughout their house and remove all of the leaven that was in their house before they partook of this feast. The leaven symbolized two things. It symbolized the haste of their exodus. They didn’t have time to wait for the bread to rise.

And so you can’t eat any leaven because we’re about to leave. But it also symbolized corruption or sin. And that analogy is carried throughout the New Testament when Jesus would warn, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees. And so it’s this feast, it’s this celebration that Paul says is like the Christian life. Now imagine for the Israelite, years after the Exodus, living in the promised land, free from the bondage and death of Egypt, now living in the land flowing with milk and honey, as they remembered the time in which God saved them. Of that feast and of that celebration. And Paul says, Christ is our Passover. Therefore, let us celebrate the feast. The first point I want us to understand from Paul’s point here is, is like that Passover feast of old, the Christian life is a celebration.

This feast, this holy convocation, it had centered around sacrifice, it’s centered around symbolism, it’s centered around prayers and singing and worshiping God. But at its very core, it was a feast, it was a celebration. And Paul says that’s the Christian experience.

And as a celebration.

And correctly, in so doing.

But do we stop and say that although this is a solemn feast, it’s still a celebration.

That we, upon all people of all the earth, I would argue, of all the earth, of all history, are to be the most envied because we get to live. Not that we’re forced, but we get to live the Christian life. It’s a celebration. In John chapter 10. Our Lord wanted us to know that along with the commandments, along with the sacrifices, that there was certainly occasion for rejoicing for the child of God. John chapter 10 and verse 10, he says, the thief does not come except to steal and to kill and destroy. But I have come. I have come that they may have life and that they may have it more abundantly. Jesus is not talking just, it certainly includes, he’s not just talking about the glories of heaven.

He’s not saying, if you want to be one of my disciples, then you have to give up every joy, every scintilla of happiness in this life. Just live the austere, miserable life of a Christian. But know this that when you die you get to go to heaven, and that’ll make up for it. That’s not a true biblical picture of Christianity. Are there sacrifices? Again, yes. Is there pleasure found in sin that we will avoid? Yes. But the Christian life is described as a celebration.

That we’ll have life and we’ll have it more abundantly, and that life begins now. Turn over to Mark chapter 10. And so this life and this more abundant life certainly is going to be culminated and finally fulfilled in heaven, but it also includes the here and the now. Jesus says in Mark chapter 10, verse 29, Jesus said, Assuredly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or land for my sake or for the gospels. Let’s pause there. There’s the sacrifice. But, he goes on to say, verse 30, who shall not receive a hundredfold now in this time. Houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands with persecutions and in the age to come eternal life.

Now Jesus doesn’t sugarcoat it. He lists the sacrifices. He lists the persecutions. But he also says in the midst of that, in this time you shall receive the blessings of God. As well as the glory that will be revealed to us afterward’s high time that we, as children of God, that we accept, that we embrace, and that we exude the joy that we have in being a Christian. That we’re living the life of a celebration. That we’re in the midst of the feast now. Can I look at my life? Can you look at your life and see reason for complaint? Reason for sorrow and grief. Sure. But if you’re in Christ Jesus, can you also look at your life and see reasons for celebration? For joy, for comfort, for what Paul would describe, the peace of God that surpasses all understanding.

We have joy in the here and now. That’s just in the things of being a Christian. But we also have the joy in the here and now because here and now we understand the bigger picture. You see, as a child of God, we’ve read the last chapter in the book. We know how this story ends. And we know and we take solace in the fact that God would say, for all things work for good to those who love the Lord. So Paul says the Christian life is a celebration. But let’s go back to 1 Corinthians chapter 5.

2. Remove the Old Leaven From Our Lives

He said in verse 8, therefore let us keep the feast. But he says to do so not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness. So in that old Passover, in that feast of the unleavened bread, they had to go throughout the house and scour and sweep that house and remove all of the leaven from it before they could partake of this feast. And so Paul said, let’s celebrate the feast. Not with the old leaven, but with the new leaven.

We understand the point that he’s making is that this is a feast, this is a celebration, but it’s a feast and a celebration that must be undertaken after we remove sin from our lives. Now here he’s speaking in a congregational sense. He could also make the application, I think maybe even in this context, he does so to us individually, that we have to remove the leaven from our lives if we’re to share in the Passover of Jesus Christ. In a word, this is repentance.

A constant endeavor that we’re always going through our spiritual houses and removing the old leaven from our lives.

Repentance. We understand that becoming a child of God, of being born anew, is more than just a change of status. It’s to be a change of being. And a change of character of who we are. Before partaking of the Lord’s Supper this morning, we looked in Romans chapter 6. Let’s go back there.

Why we don’t just sin? Why we don’t just do the things that we used to do? Because now we’ve got to get out of jail free card. We can sin and just come back and ask Christ to forgive us. And wipe the slate clean again and go sin some more and wipe the slate clean again with forgiveness and sin some more. Paul’s trying to show the inconsistency.

That’s not, as he would say the Corinthians, that’s not celebrating the feast, having removed the old leaven. And we would argue that’s making a very mockery of the sacrifice of the Lamb who came to take away our sins. And so he says we don’t do that. Romans chapter 6 again, shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? He begins in verse 1. Can we just continue in sin and then ask God for forgiveness so that we can go out and do it again? Certainly not, verse 2 begins. How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? He says, something took place when you were baptized.

Yes, you were forgiven of your sins. Yes, you were made anew in the sense of a status. You were lost, now you are found. You were dead now that you’re alive. But something else took place, he says. You died. And that old man is to be put away. But something else happened. You arose, he goes on to say, to walk a new life. You see, we might illustrate it this way. Many times the scriptures speak of sin as a debt. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. But it’s also described as a debt in which we could not pay. And so let’s take that illustration. Think of a debt, a financial debt that you might owe today that you wouldn’t be able to pay, whatever that number is.

Let’s just make it a million dollars. I think for most of us, that’s probably if we owed a million dollars, we would have no hope of ever repaying it. And imagine the burden. Have you ever been in debt that you couldn’t pay or overwhelmed with debt? Then you understand the burden of how that affects not just your checking account, but that affects everything. Even affects you mentally, emotionally, and sometimes physically, the burden that’s on you in that regard. In the first century time, it affects you even greater. You could be made a slave for the rest of your life and your children and your grandchildren’s life. Your whole family could be subjected to slavery to pay off that debt. But now imagine someone comes along and pays that debt.

One million dollars. And it’s paid. Your slate is clean. That burden, that oppression, everything that goes with it has been lifted. You’ve got two choices now. How do you live your life going forward? One approach would be, and this is not the one that God would prescribe upon you, but one approach would be my credit card was maxed out, but now it’s got a zero balance. Let’s go shopping. Let’s run it all up again. The other approach is to say, I don’t want to be there again.

3. Keep the Feast in Sincerity and Truth

I brought that on myself. I’m not going back there. And I’m not going to spit upon that benefactor who paid off that debt by living recklessly and getting myself back in that same situation. And so a change, not just the change from in debt and out of debt, but a change of person should take place. We can celebrate. Celebrate because we’re now free from the bondage of sin and slavery. But celebrate by doing away with the things that put us into bondage and slavery and death. And then lastly, the apostle says in 1 Corinthians chapter 5, the end of verse 8, let us keep the feast not with the old leaven of malice and wickedness, but in sincerity and truth. This is how the feast should be observed.

Sincerely and genuinely.

Conclusion

God will not let us observe the feast with the old man, the old sinful life still with us. God wants us to celebrate. But conditions have been placed upon that. And God would not allow us to observe and to celebrate this feast outwardly when we’re full of corruption from within. What about you? Can you describe your life as a celebration as a feast? That’s what the Christian life is to be. Can you say you’ve put to death the old man? That you live this life of righteousness and godliness in full appreciation of your Passover Lamb that has been sacrificed so that you might be set free. And do you do so genuinely and sincerely? Can you honestly say I’m just kind of going through the motions?

I put on a good face when I get dressed up and come to church. But I’m not really living the life.

Because it becomes a burden. A burden of trying to fake the righteous life. And to fake the celebration and the joy when you’re not truly free. Because you’re not sincerely celebrating the feast by having the old leaven removed. Would you remove the leaven in your life, the sin in your life this morning? Would you come because the Passover Lamb has died for you? Would you come and be a part of this feast? Jesus told the parable of going out into the streets and inviting those to come to the feast of God to celebrate. Would you do that this morning? Would you believe, repent, confess, and be baptized this very morning for the forgiveness of your sins, having those sins washed away, living a new life, having swept your house of the leaven of sin.

And experience the joy, the celebration of what a true Christian life is. Maybe you’ve done that, but sin has crept back in. It’s time to clean up again. It’s time to remove the leaven and come back to Christ while there’s still opportunity and while there’s breath. If we can help you in any spiritual way this morning as you answer the gospel call, do so right now as together we stand and sing.