Passover - Antidote for Self-Reliance

In I Corinthians 11:27 we read regarding the Passover observance that many of us are soon to partake, "Therefore whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup."

Self-examination. It's a solemn exercise in which we, as members of His body, are to be engaged in preparation for taking the symbols of the Passover.

But just what are we to examine?

Paul, in II Corinthians 13, provides the answer. He writes, " Examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not know yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you are disqualified."

So we are to examine ourselves whether we are in the faith, whether Jesus Christ is in us.

How do we do that? What does it mean to be "in the faith?"

Gal. 3:26 tells us "For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ."

In Phil 3:9 Paul writes, "Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith;"

Some key phrases jump out of these passages related to faith: "...sons of God through faith..." and "...righteousness which is from God by faith..."

So being "in the faith" refers, then, to being in a state of complete trust and dependence on the righteousness of Christ Jesus applied to me by my acceptance of his broken body and spilled blood upon the cross.

There's a key principle woven throughout all of this self-examination we are to be doing this season. It's a principle of reliance on His righteousness, not my own. In short, self-examination should draw my attention upward, not further inward.

It's simply a matter of focus.

Perhaps the greatest weakness we have as humans is self-reliance. That was the sin that got Satan cast out of God's presence; it's the reason Adam and Eve were banned from the garden and cut off from a relationship with God; and it's the reason so many of God's children become discouraged, hopeless and defeated in their Christian walks, the inevitable result of a fruitless dependence upon the self.

God gave us this season, in a sense, as a yearly booster shot, an antidote for self-reliance.

Self-examination is the syringe, if you will, that delivers that needed medicine. Self-examination should bring each of us into remembrance of our reliance, not on our own righteousness, but upon His righteousness applied to us, by our complete acceptance of His spilled blood and broken body on the cross for our sins. It's the degree to which we acknowledge our need and dependence on Him which determines whether or not we are "in the faith."

Only by having examined ourselves, having been reminded and convicted of our need for Him and complete reliance on His sacrifice, can you and I take of the symbols of this Passover in a worthy manner. Only in recognizing our need for Him do we find the antidote for self-reliance.

It's Not About the Toaster

The Days of Unleavened Bread. A toaster's day in the sun. Only during these days does a normally mundane appliance get thrust center stage in the relentless endeavor to purge out the leaven, aka, sin, from every corner of our homes.

It's a ritual re-enacted every Spring by those of us who take seriously the command to keep the annual High Sabbaths, given by our Lord in the Old Testament and observed by Him, and His Church, in the New, reminding us of His sacrifice and the covenant relationship we have entered with Him.

Our toaster is of course not the only item in our home that gets the attention of our vacuum cleaner. In our valiant effort to eradicate every vestige of the symbol of sin from our dwelling no appliance, no couch cushion, no cupboard is left untouched. But our toaster, being perhaps the greatest potential carrier of the sin virus, has typically commanded the top spot. We've fretted about it, inspecting it with the intensity of police dog sniffing for narcotics, meticulously scouring every last nook and cranny where a wayward crumb or runaway piece of crust might linger, no matter how minuscule or incinerated it might be.

In short, for a brief period every spring, our toaster became a rock star.

If our family toaster could speak it would probably tell you that the last few years in our house it's begun to suffer from an identity crisis. It just hasn't been treated like the rock star that it once was. Oh, it's gotten some attention, but its commanded nowhere near the spotlight it held back in the glory days.

Why?

Well, our family simply came to the realization that these days of Unleavened Bread, for lack of a better way of putting it, are not about the toaster.

In Colossians 1:26 - 28 we read, "...the mystery which has been hidden from ages and from generations, but now has been revealed to His saints. To them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles: which is Christ in you, the hope of glory."

Above all things this season is to teach us is that it is His life, living within us, that is the hope we have of salvation. While Passover reminds us that we are justified by His blood, Unleavened Bread reminds us that we are saved by His life, the "Unleavened Bread of Sincerity and Truth" living within us, continually covering our sin.

There is a reason these are called the Days of Unleavened Bread rather than the Days of De-leavening. The primary focus is on the putting in, not the taking out. We take in of Jesus Christ, the Unleavened Bread of Sincerity and Truth, for seven days. In the Bible the number seven represents completion. The symbol of taking in of His life, His nature, for seven days pictures the completeness of the work He is doing in His people.

De-leavening in this context becomes, then, a symbol, not of my efforts to become sinless, but of my becoming de-leavened, sinless through the cleansing sacrifice of our Lord. I put the leaven out, not to symbolize my struggle to overcome sin, but to symbolize what He has done through His sacrifice for me.

Don't get me wrong. I am not among those who believe Christ has done it all so there is no need to obey. We do need to overcome. We do need to strive to become like our elder Brother. We do need to struggle against sin. But the season of our overcoming, of growing up in Him in all things, is more appropriately pictured after, not before, the Feast of Pentecost, picturing the giving of the Holy Spirit which helps us in that process. The period between the Spring and Fall harvests represents a time of growth. Just as the crops, having been planted in the Spring, are allowed to grow to maturity and produce their fruit, so you and I grow to spiritual maturity and produce spiritual fruit prior to the return of our Master, Jesus Christ.

These Spring Harvest festivals, Passover, Unleavened Bread and Pentecost, are awesome pictures of the love He has showered on those He has called to be the first fruits of His harvest. It is right that our focus this season be on Him, not on ourselves. He gets all the glory.

The truth is that no matter how clean I get my toaster, or anything else in my home for that matter, no matter how determined my effort to make myself spiritually clean, I fall miserably short of God's standard. My righteousness before God is as filthy rags. It's His life continuing to live in me that makes me worthy, that allows me to be in relationship with the Father. "We who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Jesus." That's the awesome lesson of these days.

Yeah, my toaster might be feeling a little more lonely this Spring but it will just have to get over it. It's not as if it's getting completely ignored, it's just not the rock star it once was. That spotlight is shining elsewhere, off of the toaster, and onto the Master.