If you would, go ahead and turn
with me to Exodus chapter 23, please. I have a lot to cover tonight,
so I'll try to move along. at a little quicker pace. In
verse 14, God says in the giving of His law, He said three times,
Thou shalt keep a feast unto Me in the year. Now there were
three annual feasts that the men of Israel were commanded
to go to. These annual feasts took place
in the seven month period. according to their agricultural
calendar. So, within seven months, they
had these three feasts. The first feast, as we'll see,
was the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and it was kept in the month
of March. Secondly, there was the Feast
of the Pentecost, called the Feast of Harvest, and the Feast
of Weeks, and it began on the 50th day after the Passo. And then thirdly, there was the
Feast of Tabernacles, also called the Feast of the Ungathering,
which commemorated the Israelites dwelling in tents for 40 years.
And the Feast of the Tabernacles pictures our sojourning in this
world, pilgrims in this world. It's not our home, we're just
passing through. And that's what that picture.
Now verse 17 confirms what verse 14 says, that three times in
the years, all the males must appear before the Lord God. And
when all the men left to go to these feasts, it left the women
and the children somewhat vulnerable. Yet, we are reminded here that
if God be for you, who can be against you? Turn over a few
pages to Exodus chapter 34. Hold your place here and look
at verse 23 of Exodus 34. Exodus 34 verse 23 it says thrice
in the year shall all your men Children appear before the Lord
God the God of Israel For I will cast out the nations before thee
and enlarge thy borders And neither shall any man desire thy land
when thou shall go up to appear before the Lord thy God thrice
in the year When these men did as the Lord commanded, going
to the appointed place, at the appointed time, God protected
their wives, God protected their children, He kept and increased
their borders, He defended and He guarded their possessions
and their land. We'll never serve God for naught.
But we do not serve Him for gain, nor do we serve Him for profit. We serve Him out of love and
devotion and appreciation for what He's done for us in the
Lord Jesus. But it's always profitable to
serve God. It just is. And it's in these
three feasts that Israel observed every year that we again see
the who and the how and the what and the when of our salvation. We see who our salvation is in. It's in the Lord Jesus Christ.
He's our Passover lamb. He's the lamb slain before the
foundation of the world. We see how we are saved. It's
by His mercy and by His grace. And we see exactly what it was
that Christ did for God's elect. He died the just for the unjust. And we know when God purposed
to do it. It was before the foundation
of the world. So first we have the Feast of
the Unleavened Bread. And look at verse 15. Thou shalt
keep the feast of unleavened bread. Thou shalt eat unleavened
bread seven days as I commanded thee in the time appointed of
the month Abed. For in it thou camest out from
Egypt, and none shall appear before me empty." Now this is
talking about the Passover. As you remember in our study,
I think it was of Exodus 12, as a memorial of the Passover,
the people of Israel were to purge their homes of leavened
bread and eat unleavened bread for seven days. Leavened bread
was not even to be seen. Don't even let it be seen in
your house. There was a consequence if it was. And when God sent
the tenth plague upon Egypt, the death of the firstborn, God
said, I'm going to pass through the land of Egypt, and I'm going
to smite the firstborn from the house of Pharaoh upon his throne
all the way to the maidservant that's behind the mill. You remember
that in Exodus 12? And I was thinking today, God
means what He says, and He says what He means. And what God said
He was going to do, that's exactly what He did. And Moses and Aaron,
they weren't ordered by God on this tenth plague to summon this
plague. God said, I'll go out. I will
go out in the midst of Egypt. Oh my. It's a fearful thing to
fall into the hands of the living God. God commanded the people
of Israel to take a lamb without blemish, without spot, representing
the spotless lamb of God, the Lord Jesus. And God said, you
take that lamb and you kill it, and you strike the lintel and
the two side posts with the blood from your homemade brush made
of hyssop. And the blood represented, as
we know, the precious blood of the Lord Jesus Christ that was
shed for His people to put away their sin. And God said, when
I see the blood, I'll pass over you. That's the gospel. When
God sees the blood, He'll pass over His people, those that have
the blood of Christ as a covering. He didn't say, not when you see
the blood. Not when you see the sacrifice that you've made. Not
when I see your faith, or you see my faith, or we see one another's
sincerity. No. That's not what this is talking
about. God said, when I see the blood.
Without the shedding of blood, there's no remission of sin. When I see the blood. I'll pass
over you. And it's not just any blood.
It's the blood of that sinless, spotless sacrifice. It's the
blood of God. The perfect blood that God will
accept is the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lamb slain
before the world ever was. And there's only one thing God's
looking for. And there's only one thing that
God will accept. And it's got to be perfect to
be accepted, and that's the precious blood of the Lord Jesus. It's
just that. He was a perfect sacrifice. He was without spot, without
blemish. He was the holy substitute because
He was God Himself. And this was the feast of the
unleavened bread. Unleavened bread, as you know,
is bread without yeast. We talked about this. Not long
ago, metaphorically speaking, the word leaven means to taint.
It means to corrupt or to infect. To be leavened means to swell
or to rise. That's what leavened bread did. They put yeast in it so that
it would rise. To be puffed up is what it means.
Leaven is said to be anything that influences or causes a change
in things, opinions and attitudes that differ from God's. Leaven
represents sin. It represents man's pride. It pictures that which is within
man. The rising of self, being puffed
up with self-righteousness. Do you know what to be self-righteous
really is when you get right down to it? Self-righteousness
really is to actually think and believe that you can by a righteousness
of your own, that you can be perfect enough, that you can
be holy enough to stand before God perfectly in and by and through
the works of your own hands. That's what the ultimate definition
of self-righteousness is. And you can't see leaven and
you can't see your sin. But just a little of both corrupts
and infects and puffs its way up through the whole lump. Levin
also represents the false teaching that a sinner can be saved by
the works and the keeping of the law. It can't be done. It's
weak through the flesh and that's our flesh. We can't keep the
law. It's vain for a man to think that he can be saved by his own
work of righteousness. It proves that man thinks way
too highly of himself. To think you can provide that
perfection that God requires proves you have a vain religion
as we talked about Sunday. You put just a little bit of
works in with salvation at all, in any degree, and you make the
whole thing salvation by works. That's what Paul said in Galatians
chapter 5 verse 4. He said, Christ is become of
no effect unto you, whosoever of you who are justified by the
law. You've fallen from grace. Levin
represents false doctrine. Levin represents hypocrisy. The
Lord Jesus in the Gospel of Luke chapter 12 verse 1 said, Beware
of the leaven of the Pharisees. And then He said, Which is hypocrisy?
The word hypocrisy actually means to be an actor. To act righteous
when you're really full of sin and deceit. And that's exactly
what the Pharisees did. They acted all holy and righteous. You know, 11 is a great evil,
and God said, be purged out. Don't let it be found among you.
Turn, hold, stick your marker in Exodus 24. Turn with me to
1 Corinthians chapter five, if you would. 1 Corinthians chapter
five. I want you to see this. 1 Corinthians chapter five, verse
six. Paul says through the church
at Corinth in verse six, he said, your glorying is not good. And
it's not. Anytime we glory in a work that
we do, it's not good. Your glorying is not good. Know
ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump? Purge out therefore
the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened,
for even Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us. That's
how we become unleavened. Therefore let us keep the feast,
not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and
wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. What is it to eat unleavened
bread? It's the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. Christ
is that bread. Our Lord said, I'm the living
bread that came down from heaven. Christ is that unleavened bread
from which we must eat and never hunger again. Isn't that what
He said? He that eats the bread that came down from heaven and
never hunger again. Sincerity and truth. What is
sincerity? Well, the word here means pure.
Again, I refer to what we talked about Sunday. There's a religion
that is pure and undefiled. A religion that's not mixed with
any corrupt influences. You see, unleavened bread simply
means that there were no additives. The yeast wasn't added. Nothing
added by us. Salvation is Christ plus nothing. We look to Christ alone. We look
to the Word of God alone. Christ is the Word. What does
God say? What did Christ do? That's the
issue. We don't look to Christ plus
anything. We read verses like John chapter
3 where it says, As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,
even so must the Son of Man be lifted up. Why? That whosoever
believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. That's
why we preach Christ and Him crucified. Sinners are going
to have to see Him. He's going to have to be lifted
up, even so He must be lifted up. He must be lifted up in the
truth of this book. Why? In order for you to believe
in Him, to please God by the foolishness of preaching to save
them that believe. Preaching is foolishness because
the world thinks it's so. It's not at all. It's the means
by which God saves His people. We look to Christ alone. We look
to Christ only. And anyone who looks anywhere
but to Christ is insincere. They've got another motive altogether. You see, we rely on the grace
of God alone. We attribute the whole of our
salvation to the mercy and grace of God. We know apart from God's
divine intervention that we would never trust in the Lord Jesus.
We would never come to Him. It's in God giving us life. By grace we're saved through
faith. It's not of ourselves. It's God's gift to us. We tribute
the whole of our salvation to His mercy and grace. Any other
motive than the glory of God is insincere. True unleavened
bread is the unleavened bread of sincerity and of truth. And I was thinking about that.
Our Lord in John chapter 17 verse 17, He said, sanctify them through
thy truth. Now we've talked a lot lately
about sanctification. It means to be made holy. It
means to be made perfect. It means to be set apart unto
God. Sanctify them, set them apart,
make them holy through thy truth. Thy word is truth. Then in Hebrews
chapter 10 verse 10 it says that we're sanctified Once for all
through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ So we're sanctified
by truth by the Word of God, and we're sanctified. We're made
perfect We're set apart by the Word of God, and then we're also
sanctified by by the offering of the body of the Lord Jesus,
which was perfect. It was a perfect sacrifice. So it sounds to me like the truth,
the word of God and the cross of our Lord Jesus are one and
the same in that sense. The cross of Christ is the truth. Have you ever thought about that? It's the truth about God. You'll
never know anything about the true character of God apart from
the cross. It's all at the cross that we
learn something of God's holiness and something of God's divine
justice. We say it all the time. When
sin was found on His Son, His perfect Son, who knew no sin,
whom He made sin, God so holy that He had to kill His own Son. where we learn something of God's
holiness and divine justice. And every single attribute of
God is seen and displayed in the cross of the Lord Jesus.
Not in the wood. There's no efficacy there. But
in the Christ of the cross and what He did there. That's where
our salvation lies. You don't want to know the truth
about God? Look at the cross. God so holy, when sin was found
on His Son, He killed Him. You want to know the truth about
yourself? Look at the cross. It was there that we see how
evil we are by nature. If God take His hand off of us
for a second, we with wicked hands murder the Son of God. That's the truth about us. And
then what about the truth of salvation? Look to the cross. It's by Christ's work of righteousness
done there on that curse tree that redeems the elect of God. Unleavened bread is the sincerity
and truth of Christ Jesus. Christ has made unto me all that
God requires. Wisdom, righteousness, sanctification,
and redemption. So let's partake of Christ, our
Passover, the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Christ is the Passover
and it's in Him and because of Him that God passes over us. That God doesn't send us to hell. Now back in Exodus chapter 23,
I want you to look at verse 15 again. Did you save your place? Exodus 23 verse 15 look what
God says toward the end of the verse there I just loved this
when I read it it's God who said all who keep this feast of Unleavened
bread at that feast upon Christ as they're all he says none shall
appear before me empty now At first glance that may not mean
much to you, but that word empty there means ineffectual. It means undeserving. It means
without a cause. All who keep this feast, the
feast of unleavened bread, none, now listen, this is good news,
none shall appear before their sovereign judge empty or undeserving,
not a single one. The Feast of the Unleavened Bread
makes us worthy. It makes us deserving. It does
the same for all who are in the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, I know
it doesn't sound possible and doesn't seem possible, because
with men it is impossible. But with God, it's not. Because
with God, all things are possible. So in Christ, I am worthy and
I am deserving. I'm deserving and worthy of God's
love, God's mercy, God's grace, God's forgiveness. Let me ask
you this. Is Christ worthy? Of course He
is. Is Christ deserving? Absolutely. Then by virtue of our union with
Him, so are we. We're worthy and deserving. Christ
purges me of my leaven, my sin, and He conforms me to His perfect
image. It's called substitution. Christ
has made unto God's elect everything that they need and everything
that God requires. They're made the very righteousness
of God, but it's in Him. It's in Christ, nowhere else.
They're made worthy and deserving by the perfect work of righteousness
that Christ did for them. We quote Colossians 2 verse 9
often, for in him, speaking of Christ, dwelleth all the fullness
of the Godhead bodily or in a body of flesh. In Christ's body dwelt
all the fullness of God. But we shouldn't stop reading
and quoting there. Paul, barely taking a breath,
goes on to say there in Colossians 2, and you are complete in Him. That's the Gospel. We're complete
in Christ. We need no additives. We need
to add nothing. The word complete means furnished. Furnished with everything that
we need. Everything that God requires.
Everything that we could not furnish for ourselves, Christ
furnished for us. You know, if you're full of Christ,
there's not room for anything else. You can't be full of Christ
and put anything else in. Like the unleavened bread, nothing
can be added to you if you're full of Christ. Complete in Him. You're complete in Christ. There's
room for nothing else. Look at verse 16 here in Exodus
23. It says, In the feast of harvest, the first fruits of thy labors,
which thou hast sown in the field, and the feast of ingathering,
which is the end of the year, when thou hast gathered in thy
labors out of the field. Look down at verse 19. Of the
first fruits of thy land thou shalt bring into the house of
the Lord thy God. Now this is speaking of the second
feast, the Feast of Pentecost, which took place seven weeks
or 50 days after the Feast of the Unleavened Bread. Now, stay
with me if you can on these details and stuff because they mean something.
You see, when the first fruits of the crops came up, came in,
they brought it unto the Lord in a celebration. That's what
a feast was. It was a celebration. And by
doing so, it showed that they trusted in God alone for the
rest of the crop to be fruitful. Now you think about that. Faith
in Christ is trusting Him for what you don't yet see. Isn't
that right? We walk by faith and not by sight.
Faith is the substance of things hoped for. Faith is the evidence
of things what? Not seen. God, through faith
and through grace, brings to fruition the things that we hope
for. We can't see that we're perfectly just before God. We
can't see it. But we know that we are, because
God says that we are. We're trusting the Lord to take
care of that for us. I don't see that perfect state
of holiness and perfection that the Lord Jesus has made me, but
I know that in Christ, I'm perfectly holy. I can't see my acceptance
in Christ now, and I won't, I don't suppose, as long as I am in this
body of flesh, but I know that I already have it. Faith in Christ
is trusting Him for what I cannot see. We're accepting in the Beloved. I don't see my acceptance, but
I believe that I'm accepted with all my heart, because Christ
is the Beloved, and I'm trusting alone in Him. We're to give the
Lord the firstfruits. That means our best. Not our
leftovers. I've been guilty of that. But
by God's grace, no more. Leftovers are not first fruits. And it's not really giving. God
deserves and demands our first and our best. You see, giving
has something to do with faith. Have you thought about that? Giving has something to do with
believing and trusting God to take care of you. and provide
Him for you everything that you need. And the child of God throws
caution to the wind when it comes to giving God what belongs to
Him, for they know that God has always and will always provide
for them all they need. David said, I've been young and
now I'm old, and yet I've not seen the righteous forsaken or
his seed begging bread. And you won't. You won't. Deuteronomy
chapter 16, if you would, verse 9. Deuteronomy 16 verse nine. Deuteronomy 16 verse 9, seven
weeks shalt thou number unto thee. Begin to number the seven
weeks from such time as thou beginnest to put the sickle to
the corn. And thou shalt keep the feast
of weeks unto the Lord thy God with a tribute of a freewill
offering of thine hand, which thou shalt give unto the Lord
thy God. Now look at this, according as
the Lord thy God hath blessed thee. We cheerfully and we willfully
give because God gave it all to us anyway. It all belongs
to Him and we're just giving back what He gave to us. I'm
convinced that God's given some men more for the simple reason
that they cheerfully and they willfully help folks. And that's
giving back to God too, isn't it? To give of your first fruits,
I believe, is proof that you trust God to provide your every
need. Our giving proves the sincerity
of our love to Christ. It proves how much we love His
gospel, and it reveals how much we trust Him to keep and to provide
for us by His power. Can't out-give God. Giving is
not a work, friends. Giving is a grace. Our Lord did
say that it's more blessed to give than to receive, and it
is. But the real blessing here, I think, is found in the spiritual
application of this Feast of Pictures. It's called the Feast
of Pentecost. Because it was to commence and
be observed on the 50th day after the Passover. That's what Pentecost
means. It means 50th. And it was a feast
celebrated 50 days after the Passover to commemorate the giving
of the law at Mount Sinai. It was the gathering of the first
ripe, first fruits to give God. And how beautifully this pictures
Christ's first gathering of His elect. Now Christ, our Passover,
the Lord Jesus, was sacrificed for us. And 50 days later when
Pentecost was fully come, you remember that found in the book
of Acts? God poured out His Spirit and immediately Christ began
gathering in His people. Peter stood on that day of Pentecost,
and he preached, and Christ sent His Spirit, and God saved 3,000
souls the very first day. And the believer is the Lord's
first fruit, the firstfruits of Christ. That's what James
said. He said, of His own will beget
He us with the word of truth, that, here's the reason, that
we should be a kind of firstfruits of His creature. We're Christ's
first fruits. First we give ourselves to Him,
to His work, and we do so with confidence. Why? Because we know
that Christ will finish the work, that He'll bring all of God's
sheep into the fold. Every single one. We can and
do commit ourselves to supporting and preaching the gospel. That's
why you're here tonight. And we have great assurance of
success when we do so. Why? Because we know that our
Savior is and will always be successful. He cannot fail. Why? He's God. With Him all things
are possible. Do you remember what the Lord
said? Do you remember His certainty of God's purpose? He said, All
that the Father giveth Me shall come to Me, and him that cometh
to Me I will in no wise cast out. Oh, what certainty, what
assurance we have in that statement. God shall give, His people shall
come, and Christ will in no wise cast them out. Why, other sheep
He has. He said, them He must also bring. There's going to be one foal,
there's going to be one shepherd. And the first thing our Lord
did when He arose from the dead, and He ascended to His throne
on high, was to send His Spirit. He said, I must go away in order
to send you a comforter. And He sent His Spirit, and He
started calling out His sheep. That's what we have in Pentecost.
Again, verse 16, and the feast of Pentecost, are you in Exodus?
I may still have you in Deuteronomy, but in verse 16 of Exodus 23,
and the feast of harvest, the first fruits of thy labors, which
thou hast sown in the field. And I was thinking about that.
We sow the word and some falls on good ground and brings forth
fruit. And then he says here in verse
16, in the feast of ingathering, this is the third feast, the
feast of the tabernacles, which is the end of the year, he says,
when thou hast gathered in thy labors out of the field. This
feast of ingathering came at the end and it took place after
all the crops had come in and been harvested. This feast was
celebrated when all the work was done. The Feast of the Tabernacles
or the Feast of the In-Gathering was giving thanks to God for
what He'd already done. We've been completely justified
in Christ. The work's already done. We've
been completely sanctified. We can't get any holier than
we are in Christ. People talk about progressive
sanctification. I can't get more holy than what
I am in Him. I can't be more set apart. The holiness that I possess right
now will never change. Yes, one day I'm going to receive
a glorified body in which no sin dwells, but my state of holiness
and my perfection in Christ is right now, this very minute,
what it will be forever. That's so difficult for us to
get a hold of because of the old man that still dwells in
battles within. You remember what Paul said in
Romans 8. There is therefore now, right now, no condemnation
to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh,
but after the Spirit. Right now. No condemnation. God doesn't condemn me. God is
no longer angry with me. Because right now, no condemnation. For whom? Them which are in Christ
Jesus. Are you in Christ? If you are,
then there is no condemnation. I won't get any holier than I
am right now. I won't be any more sanctified
than I am right this minute. How do you improve upon perfection? I won't be any more accepted
in heaven than I am right now on earth, because I'm accepted
in Christ, the beloved. I'm rejoicing in this feast,
God, I make you love being a nobody and make you love Christ being
your everything. The word feast means celebration. It means a party. I don't mean
that in a disrespectful way. It means a time of dancing. A
time of rejoicing. A wonderful time of joy. That's
what these feasts were. The Feast of the Passover is
the Feast of the Unleavened Bread. That was the first one as we
saw. That's my salvation. Christ is my unleavened bread
of life. The Feast of Pentecost, the gathering
of the first fruits, pictures Christ giving us life and providing
for us what we can't see and what we can't provide for ourselves.
Christ doing for us what we cannot do. That's my salvation. Making us His first fruits unto
God. And then the feast of the tabernacles,
the feast of in-gathering, we simply rejoice and we rest and
we have peace in what God has already done. Faith doesn't only
believe what God will do, friends. True faith believes what Christ
has already done. I believe that He's made me the
wisdom, righteousness, and sanctification in Christ. And I'm as holy as
I'll ever be. And we know by what Christ has
already done that He'll also do what He's promised to do.
That's what Paul said, Philippians, he said, being confident of this
very thing that He which hath begun of good work in you will
perform it into the day of Jesus Christ. God finishes what He
starts. Me, sometimes not so much, but
God does. Like Abraham, we're dwelling
in tabernacles. We're dwelling in tents. We're
dwelling in temporary dwelling places. That's what these bodies
of flesh are. They're getting a little ragged.
They're showing a little tear and use, aren't they? Yes, they
are. But that's okay, because we're
looking for a city which has foundations, whose maker and
builder is God. And we found that place. That's
what Abraham did. He looked for a city whose builder
and maker was God. And so do we. Like Israel, we're
just passing through on our way to the land that God promised
us. And it won't be too long, and
I'm glad about that. Those that endure until the end
shall be saved. But we have great confidence
that we will endure to the end. Why? Because Christ having loved
His own which were in the world, He loved them to the end. See,
I'm kept by the power of God. If Christ loved me and keeps
me, I can't be lost. I can't be lost. I suppose the
only spiritual feast that we have yet to celebrate is this
feast of the un-gathering in a spiritual sense, the feast
of the tabernacle. The work is finished. God's gathering
all His people out of every kindred, out of every tongue, every people,
and every nation. And all that He chose before
the foundation of the world, and all that He called, and all
that He justified in the Lord Jesus Christ They're all going
to come. They're all going to come to
Him. They're going to trust in Him. And they know the work's
finished. And this corruptible, this temporary
dwelling place is one day very soon going to put on incorruption. And this mortality, we've been
dying since we were born. Did you know that? Ever since
we were born, we started dying. But we shall put on immortality. We're mortal beings, but we're
going to put on immortality. And then we'll be perfectly conformed
to the image of Christ our Savior. What a day. The old hymn says
it's a glorious day that'll be. And won't it be? No more sin. My, my. Can't imagine. Can't
imagine what that'll be like. So I wanted tonight to show you
these three feasts and how they pictured our salvation in the
Lord Jesus. That's what this book is about.
Old Testament and new. I think God gives us eyes to
see. We can see Christ in every verse. May God be pleased to do so.