The Feast of Unleavened Bread is to remember that the Lord
delivered the nation from Egypt. It begins
on Passover evening and they can eat only matzo during the next seven
days. Leaven from Egypt was something
that had to be gotten rid of by the people.
They were going to a land flowing with milk and honey and yet in that
land they were to keep this feast. Denial
of desire is an important discipline for us and yet we rarely keep such
disciplines today. The calendar of the Jews,
put in place by Yahweh, enforces that discipline several times a year, here,
for instance and in the feast of booths which commemorates the time they spent
living in the wilderness. The lesson of
denial is that we are able to say no to things of the world and yes to Him
alone. We were created as more than a
set of desires.
The Great Commission is our mandate to spread the Gospel
wherever we go. We have spent many years
making members and not disciples. We have
not taught people to obey all that Jesus commanded. The important thing is to teach obedience to
Jesus' commands and we have left off that very thing. We have been satisfied with a confession of
faith without measuring growth and fruit.
The ability to obey all that is commanded sets us apart from the rest of
creation. My dogs can do some simple
things like sit, lie down, and stay but they don't do those things absent my
presence and command. We are to be those
who hear, know and do the commands of God when appropriate. We can size up a situation and know what to
do because the Word dwells within us. Obedience
is to be second nature to us but only if we practice the discipline of both no
and yes.
We are not only bodies.
Adam may have come from dust and to dust he shall return but within him
was given the breath of life, the spirit, the "nephesh" in
Hebrew. Later commentators will see that
the life of mankind is different from the life of animals and will find
something they refer to as the "neshamah" in Hebrew, that part of the
spirit or soul which relates to intellect and awareness of God. This allows us to rise above natural instinct
and make informed choices, gives us the ability to say "no" to the
fulfillment of desire and "yes" to the command of God. Paul says these bodies will pass away as they
are, quite literally, of earth, but the life we have in Jesus, the soul of a
man infused with the Holy Spirit, will inherit eternity. All we need for life, both here and now, is a
gift of grace because of what Jesus has done for us.
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