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Redeemer Bible Church

Unreserved Accountability to Christ. Undeserved Acceptance from Christ.

Preparing for the Feast of Unleavened Bread

Exodus 11:1-13:16

Introduction
By now you are all intimately acquainted with the events recorded in Exodus 11-13.
In these chapters we witness the Lord’s final act of judgment against Egypt that results in
Israel’s release from captivity to journey to the Promised Land.

God promises to exact vengeance against Egypt for its cruel oppression of his people
by killing Egypt’s firstborn. Not a family in Egypt would be without the grief of the death of
a loved one. And at the same time, while God brings the judgment of death upon Israel’s
enemy, he protects his firstborn beloved son in the land of Goshen. He wants Pharaoh and
all the Egyptians to know that he makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel. He wants
Egypt to know that he is on Israel’s side, that the millions of children of Israel belong solely
to him.

So at midnight, on the tenth day of what would become Israel’s first month, the Lord
struck all the firstborn in the land of Egypt. The result was a great and unprecedented cry in
Egypt. No home was without a dead person.

And when Pharaoh and his courtiers and the rest of the people of Egypt saw what
Yahweh had done, what Israel’s God had done, they begged Israel to leave without any
delay.

So at the end of four hundred and thirty years, to the very day, all the people of
Israel, a number around two million—along with their livestock and Egyptian articles of
silver and gold and clothing—an enriched people of Yahweh went out from the land of
Egypt. God made good on his promise in the most vivid way. No one could plausibly deny
that the Lord made a distinction between Egypt and Israel in favor of Israel.

Yet in spite of the dramatic nature of the events leading up to their departure, God
knew the tendency of man. He is mindful of our frame that we are but dust. He knew that
without significant reminders, his people would quickly forget all that he had done on their
behalf. So he instituted three commemorative rituals to etch the events of that night
indelibly in the minds of his people from generation to generation. You know them: the
Passover, the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and the consecration of the firstborn sons.

On the night the destroyer went through the land of Egypt seeking to devour all the
firstborn, the Lord called his people to slaughter an unblemished lamb and to paint their
doorways with its blood. Whenever the destroyer encountered a home smeared with the

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blood of the lamb, that home would be spared Yahweh’s devastating judgment. With this
in mind, the Lord created an annual liturgy during which the sons of Israel would carefully
select and protect and ultimately sacrifice a spotless lamb, apply its blood to their doorposts
and lintels, and eat the entire animal after having roasted it whole.

That same night, since Israel was called to leave Egypt post haste, the people of God
were unable to leaven their bread. So the Lord instituted the Feast of Unleavened Bread—a
seven-day festival in which the only bread that could be lawfully consumed was bread made
without yeast.

And finally, since the death of the firstborn sons functioned to show that God owns
all the firstborn, Egyptian and Israeli, the Lord established a ritual whereby his people
would offer their firstborn sons as a sacrifice to him. Nevertheless, he would not require
their deaths. Sons could be redeemed, substituted with suitable replacements.

Have I conveyed anything new? I didn’t think so. Hopefully, this narrative has been
etched indelibly in your minds as well. I say “hopefully” because as we have seen the text
and all it communicates is rich with Christology. The theological lessons that God meant
for Israel find their fulfillment in the person and work of Jesus of Nazareth. Therefore our
Old Testaments are worthy of our careful reflection that we may uncover yet another gem in
the diadem that is the Lord Jesus Christ.

To engage in such reflection is a wonderful practice and not without precedent in the
history of the church; indeed, it is the apostles themselves who bar none engaged in such
reflection at every turn of their ministry of the word. Not only is the New Testament full of
direct quotations from the Old Testament, but it is loaded with allusions and echoes and
hints of the Hebrew Scriptures as well. After all, it was Jesus himself who said, “These are
My words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things which are written
about Me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled” (Luke
24:44). And, “If you believed Moses, you would believe Me, for he wrote about Me” (John
5:46).

The questions that the apostles asked of the Lord upon every reading of the Law and
Prophets and Psalms were: How does this anticipate the person and work of Christ? Where
is Jesus in the passage I am reading?

In this connection, do not misunderstand the nature of biblical inspiration. When

God inspired the writing of his word, he did not circumvent the personality and intellect and
style of the human instrument. On the contrary (and this is the mystery of the inspiration of
Scripture), it was through the individual personalities and intellects and styles of the various
authors that the Lord worked the miracle of biblical inspiration.

So we can say that the Gospel of John was written by John as much as it was written
by the Lord. We can say that Paul’s letters are just that—Paul’s letters—just as much as we
can say that they are the Lord’s very word to the churches and individuals to which Paul
wrote. So the teaching of the New Testament is the product of human beings under the

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inspiration of the Holy Spirit. As the children’s catechism says, “Holy men who were
taught by the Holy Spirit wrote the Bible.”

All this is to say that what we learn in the New Testament about Christ in the Old
Testament is a product of careful reflection on the part of the New Testament authors just as
much as it is a product of Christ’s work of explanation, say, on the road to Emmaus. And
so, we are wise to follow the apostles’ lead and engage in such reflection ourselves. The
payoffs, as I trust you have seen, are huge!

In addition to seeing Christ himself in the pages of the Old Testament, the New
Testament authors looked to the Hebrew Bible for instruction on how to live now that
Christ has come. Christ fulfills the Law. But this does not mean that it has absolutely no
relevance for how we live as Christians. It is simply that whatever prescriptive force it
enjoys must be understood through the lens of Christ and him crucified. Without the risen
Christ at the center, we run the risk of moving backward in time to a bygone era in
redemption history. So the Old Testament provides us with a word of exhortation about
how to and how not to live in the age of the Spirit.

How to and How Not to Live

Turn with me in your Bibles to 1 Cor 10:1-11.

For I do not want you to be unaware, brethren, that our fathers were all
under the cloud and all passed through the sea; 2 and all were baptized into Moses in
the cloud and in the sea; 3 and all ate the same spiritual food; 4 and all drank the same
spiritual drink, for they were drinking from a spiritual rock which followed them;
and the rock was Christ. 5 Nevertheless, with most of them God was not well-pleased;
for they were laid low in the wilderness. 6 Now these things happened as examples for
us, so that we would not crave evil things as they also craved. 7 Do not be idolaters,
as some of them were; as it is written, "THE PEOPLE SAT DOWN TO EAT AND
DRINK, AND STOOD UP TO PLAY." 8 Nor let us act immorally, as some of them
did, and twenty-three thousand fell in one day. 9 Nor let us try the Lord, as some of
them did, and were destroyed by the serpents. 10 Nor grumble, as some of them did,
and were destroyed by the destroyer. 11 Now these things happened to them as an
example, and they were written for our instruction, upon whom the ends of the ages
have come.

Note especially v 6: Now these things happened as examples for us, so that we
would not crave evil things as they also craved. After recounting Israel’s past with God,
the Apostle Paul says, “Do not overlook what happened to our people of the old covenant.
The discipline that they experienced was not only for them. It was for us. It happened so
that we would not crave evil things as they also craved. They are examples of how not to
behave.” The sons of Abraham are still the sons of Abraham whether that sonship is by
ancestry or by faith. We are all susceptible to our evil desires.

Verse 11 says essentially the same: Now these things happened to them as an
example, and they were written for our instruction, upon whom the ends of the ages

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have come. Paul is telling us that the Old Testament was written for our instruction, to
instruct us concerning righteousness that we may honor the Lord by our behavior.

And he repeats this teaching to the Roman Christians as well: “For whatever was
written in earlier times was written for our instruction, so that through perseverance and the
encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope” (Rom 15:4). The Hebrew Bible was
intended by the Lord ultimately to give Christians instruction so that we might persevere
and be encouraged to run the race marked out for us.

So then, there are two things about the Old Testament that make it indispensable for
Christian living.

First, it confronts us with Christ in ways that only now, after the fact, make perfect
sense. This is indispensable for Christian living because if our behavior is not rooted in the
person and ministry of Jesus Christ, then our behavior is no different from the unbeliever
who reforms him- or herself. Christianity without Christ is meaningless irrespective of
behavior.

Second, when we read the Old Testament in light of the Christ event, we find an
unparalleled source of instruction for righteous behavior. Notice that the person of Christ
comes first and the ethics come second. Truly Christian ethics spring out of and point us
toward the person and work of Jesus.

Now then, what does this all have to do with Exod 11:1-13:16? The answer is that it
has everything to do with it. God has given us his word because he is interested in
accomplishing one thing in us and one thing only: the magnification of his name through
our conformity to the image of his son. Therefore we need to see every glimpse of Christ in
the pages of the Old Testament and every example of righteous and unrighteous behavior in
the light of our sanctification. The burden on Christian readers of Exod 11:1-13:16 is to
unearth all we can about the glorious person of Christ and to unearth all the implications for
our behavior as those who have had the veil removed in Christ.

Now the wonderful thing about Exod 11:1-13:16 is that we are not left entirely on
our own. The Apostle Paul himself reflects on the passage, particularly in light of the
Passover and Feast of Unleavened Bread in his epistle to the Corinthians. Turn with me to
1 Cor 5:1-13.

It is actually reported that there is immorality among you, and immorality of

such a kind as does not exist even among the Gentiles, that someone has his father's
wife. 2 You have become arrogant and have not mourned instead, so that the one
who had done this deed would be removed from your midst. 3 For I, on my part,
though absent in body but present in spirit, have already judged him who has so
committed this, as though I were present. 4 In the name of our Lord Jesus, when you
are assembled, and I with you in spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus, 5 I have
decided to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, so that his spirit
may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. 6 Your boasting is not good. Do you not
know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough? 7 Clean out the old leaven

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so that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened. For Christ our
Passover also has been sacrificed. 8 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. 9 I wrote you in my letter not to associate with immoral people;
10
I did not at all mean with the immoral people of this world, or with the covetous
and swindlers, or with idolaters, for then you would have to go out of the world. 11
But actually, I wrote to you not to associate with any so-called brother if he is an
immoral person, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or a
swindler-- not even to eat with such a one. 12 For what have I to do with judging
outsiders? Do you not judge those who are within the church? 13 But those who are
outside, God judges. REMOVE THE WICKED MAN FROM AMONG
YOURSELVES.

Isn’t this amazing? Do you think that if you confronted the sin of incest in the
church that you would have seen the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread as having
any bearing whatsoever on addressing the problem? Me, either! But Paul does. And I am
convinced that we need to see why not only so that we might follow the teaching of this
passage from 1 Corinthians, but also so that we would look at all of life’s circumstances in
light of the entire Bible.

What Sin Is It?

As we read this passage we see immediately in v 1 that Paul has come to find out
something that was apparently known widely; namely, that someone in the church has his
father’s wife. It is important that you understand that the phrase his father’s wife does not
refer to the man’s natural mother, but his step-mother. Nevertheless, this does not make the
man’s behavior any the less reprehensible.

Two things are noteworthy. First, Paul says that such behavior does not exist even
among the Gentiles. This, of course, does not mean that unbelieving men never have
affairs with their step-mothers, but it is simply a reference to the fact that Roman law
forbade such relationships. Paul is saying, “You are professing Christians and yet Gentiles
know better than you do that this immorality is unacceptable!”

Second, the behavior is forbidden in God’s Law: “You shall not uncover the
nakedness of your father's wife; it is your father’s nakedness” (Lev 18:8). So what Paul is
conveying here in v 1 is simply his outrage that there was a man in the Corinthian church
who would violate the ethics of Leviticus 18 (apparently still in force to some degree) and as
if that were not enough, would violate even the sensibilities of Gentiles.

Now you might be tempted to think that on the basis of v 1, the problem Paul is
addressing in 1 Corinthians 5 is the problem of incest in the church. After all, his
indignation cannot be missed. This, however, would be to misunderstand the real sin in
Corinth with respect to this man. In fact, vv 2-13 (the rest of the chapter) are devoted to
addressing a far more grievous sin, a sin that brings to the apostle’s mind the teaching of
Exod 11:1-13:16. It is the sin of failing to practice church discipline.

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Verse 2 states the problem in no uncertain terms: You have become arrogant and
have not mourned instead, so that the one who had done this deed would be removed
from your midst. Unrepentant sin in the community of the believing should bring on
profound grief by the members aware of it. Paul describes his own sadness with respect to
the sin of the Corinthians in 2 Cor 12:21: “I am afraid that when I come again my God may
humiliate me before you, and I may mourn over many of those who have sinned in the past
and not repented of the impurity, immorality and sensuality which they have practiced.”

And not only were the Corinthians not characterized by mourning, their attitude
concerning the sin in the community was nothing less than cavalier. Paul says you have
become arrogant, haughty, proud, and content to look the other way. For Paul, this is
absolutely wicked. What should have happened is that the man should have been removed
from the church. Unrepentant sin in the believing community should bring about such grief
that the rest of the church would be moved to excommunicate this willfully sinning
member. The church should practice Matthew 18:

If your brother sins, go and show him his fault in private; if he listens to you,
you have won your brother. But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more
with you, so that BY THE MOUTH OF TWO OR THREE WITNESSES EVERY
FACT MAY BE CONFIRMED. If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church;
and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax
collector (Matt 18:15-17).

Paul addresses the same issue from a slightly different angle in vv 9-13. Apparently
some Corinthians were thinking that Paul’s instruction in a previous piece of
correspondence was that they should not associate with any wicked people. “No,” says
Paul in v 11, “actually, I wrote to you not to associate with any so-called brother if he is
an immoral person, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or a
swindler—not even to eat with such a one.”

“What I wrote was that you should judge believers, not unbelievers. God will judge
them. You are responsible for your own.” So Paul commands the Corinthians on the basis
of various passages from Deuteronomy to do now what they should have done in the first
place (v 13b): REMOVE THE WICKED MAN FROM AMONG YOURSELVES.

Paul had already done this. Notice again vv 3-5: For I, on my part, though absent
in body but present in spirit, have already judged him who has so committed this, as
though I were present. In the name of our Lord Jesus, when you are assembled, and I
with you in spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus, I have decided to deliver such a one
to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the
Lord Jesus. Now it was the Corinthians’ turn.

So then, the real issue is not incest per se, the real issue is a failure to take sin seriously
by practicing church discipline. I bet you never put the sin of failing to practice church
discipline even in the same quadrant as incest. For Paul such a thing is demonstrably worse
than any isolated act of unrepentant sin. Why is this? Because the church is a community,

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a body of believers, sin in one member is sin in the body. It affects all of us when you or I
refuse to repent, even if no one knows about it. Our connection to one another is that
organic.

I cannot leave this point with calling each of you seriously to consider yourself. You
need to stop monkeying around with sin. You need to make no provision for the flesh in
regard to its lusts (Rom 13:14). If you are using internet porn, you need to stop for the sake
of all of us. If you are flirting with men or women who are not your spouse, you need to
stop for the sake of the community. If you are grumbling and complaining about the church
leadership, you need to stop for the sake of the community. If you are getting drunk or
addicted to cigarettes, you need to stop for the sake of the community.

But most of all, if there is someone you know who is refusing to turn from his or her
sin to the outstretched arms of the Savior of sinners, you need to confront them in love.
You need to begin the process of Matthew 18. You need to call them to repentance. You
cannot sit idly by while a brother or sister in the Lord persists in sin.

This is the point of Paul’s call to the Corinthians here in Ch 5, especially in vv 6-8.
And it is here that Paul sees a connection to Exod 11:1-13:16.

Applying Exodus 11:1-13:16

I love the simple statement at the beginning of v 6: Your boasting is not good. It is
so simple and yet so profound, a wonderfully loving appeal to these sinning brethren. It is
not good that you have such a cavalier attitude toward sin in your community. You know,
don’t you, that the sin of this one man affects all of you? Notice the rest of v 6: Do you not
know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough?

Sin in the church is like leaven in a lump of dough. Leaven refers to a small piece of
dough into which yeast had been worked. And in the New Testament with rare exception
leaven symbolizes sin. It symbolizes the process by which an evil spreads insidiously until
the whole has been affected. Take Mark 8:15 for example: “Watch out! Beware of the
leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.”

In the case of the Corinthians situation, the leaven that had infected the community
was the leaven of the incestuous man. The answer for the church is found in v 7a: Clean
out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened.
Here is what the church needs to do. The believing community needs to clean out the old
leaven; it needs to remove the wicked man from its ranks, so that they (the you is part of a
second person plural verb) may be a new lump.

The answer to the problem of sin in the believing community is to purge the
community of the evildoer. This will restore the church to its pristine state. Clean out the
old leaven so that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened. I say
pristine not in the sense of sinless, but in the sense of repentant. We are the community of
forgiven sinners and “if we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth
is not in us” (1 John 1:8).

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But our forgiveness is predicated upon our repentance. Luke 24:46-47 says, “Thus it
is written, that the Christ would suffer and rise again from the dead the third day, and that
repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name to all the nations,
beginning from Jerusalem.” Repentance is always the issue.

So then, what is the answer to unrepentant sin in the community? It must be

eradicated. And it is eradicated either through the repentance of the one sinning or by the
removal of the one sinning. In this case, Paul calls on the Corinthians to clean out the leaven
in their lump by removing the incestuous man from the assembly.

And it is at this point that the Apostle Paul is reminded of the teaching of Exod 11:1-
13:16. Look at vv 7-8: 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.

Now then, what is it about his illustration of cleaning out leaven from the church
that brings to mind the Passover and the feast? Turn to Exod 12:15-20; 13:3, 6-7.

Exodus 12:15 'Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, but on the first
day you shall remove leaven from your houses; for whoever eats anything leavened
from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel. 16 'On
the first day you shall have a holy assembly, and another holy assembly on the
seventh day; no work at all shall be done on them, except what must be eaten by
every person, that alone may be prepared by you. 17 'You shall also observe the Feast
of Unleavened Bread, for on this very day I brought your hosts out of the land of
Egypt; therefore you shall observe this day throughout your generations as a
permanent ordinance. 18 'In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at
evening, you shall eat unleavened bread, until the twenty-first day of the month at
evening. 19 'Seven days there shall be no leaven found in your houses; for whoever
eats what is leavened, that person shall be cut off from the congregation of Israel,
whether he is an alien or a native of the land. 20 'You shall not eat anything leavened;
in all your dwellings you shall eat unleavened bread.'"

Exodus 13:3 Moses said to the people, "Remember this day in which you
went out from Egypt, from the house of slavery; for by a powerful hand the LORD
brought you out from this place. And nothing leavened shall be eaten.

Exodus 13:6 "For seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, and on the
seventh day there shall be a feast to the LORD. 7 "Unleavened bread shall be eaten
throughout the seven days; and nothing leavened shall be seen among you, nor shall
any leaven be seen among you in all your borders.

The Feast of Unleavened Bread involved purging their homes and the land of all
yeast. In the same way that the people of God purged their community of leaven to
celebrate the Feast of Unleavened Bread, so too the people of God at Corinth must purge
their community of the leaven of unrepentant sinners.

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But that’s not all. Turn back to 1 Corinthians 5.

Notice the word for in v 7. The statement that Christ our Passover has been
sacrificed represents the reason for the command and statement of the first half of the verse.
You are unleavened. As the community of God’s people you have been cleansed from your
sins. This is who you are. And v 7b explains why: For Christ our Passover also has been
sacrificed.

Christ is the Lamb of God who has been sacrificed to be the propitiation for our sins.
Without the shedding of blood there is no remission. In Christ Jesus, by the application of
his blood to the doorposts and lintels of our lives, we have been spared the judgment and
counted righteous for Christ’s sake. The sacrifice of our Passover lamb as opposed to the
sacrifice of Israel’s Passover lamb is that it accomplishes what the shadow could not. Our
Passover lamb completely separates us from the dominion of sin and the penalty of God’s
final judgment.

And it is this that provides the ground for a new covenant celebration of the Feast of
Unleavened Bread. Notice v 8: Therefore let us celebrate the feast. Christ our Passover
also has been sacrificed; therefore we celebrate the feast. This is an extremely important
connection. You need to see this!

Now then, celebrating the Feast of Unleavened Bread both then and now involves
living in a leaven-less house. We celebrate the feast not with old leaven; that is, not with an
unrepentant sinner in our midst. Nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness; that is,
not with anything evil or filthy. We celebrate the Feast in a leaven-less house, eating
instead the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

Here in Minnesota it is customary to remove our shoes upon entering the house. We
do not want to bring mud and dirt and unclean things into a house that has been so
diligently kept. How much more then should we strive to celebrate the Feast of Unleavened
Bread in Christ by putting off malice and wickedness (all defilement of flesh) and by putting
on sincerity and truth.

But the point of this text is that the celebration is only possible by the sacrifice of the
Passover lamb. If there is no Passover there is no Feast. The Passover means God’s people
have been spared the judgment of the death of the firstborn and Egypt has suffered the death
of theirs. And it is because of the mighty act of judgment on the night of the Passover that
Israel was implored to leave the land of Egypt so fast that their dough couldn’t be leavened.
Under the old covenant, without the Passover there is no feast to celebrate.

Under the new covenant the same is true. Without the sacrifice of Christ our
Passover cleansing us from our sins and protecting us from the wrath of God, there is no
feast to celebrate, there is no life of repentance to live. Thus the purging of all sin from the
community is only possible because of what Christ has accomplished for us.

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Therefore it is from gratitude over the sacrifice of Christ our Passover that we should
be diligent to expel the sinning brother. Moreover, our interest in keeping the believing
community free from unrepentant sin and instead full of sincerity and truth should be our
desire not to defile the purging work that Christ has accomplished in us by the sacrifice of
himself on the cross.

This, then, is the connection you can’t miss. You cannot miss the connection
between the person of Christ himself and Paul’s demand to remove sin from the church; for
there would be no reason and no possibility of such an endeavor without the shed blood of
our crucified lamb.

Conclusion
One commentator in a pastoral comment on this passage offers this remark:

In an age in which ethics is too often modified to fit one’s present cultural
existence…these words need once more to be heard distinctly in the church. Christ
has died for us not simply to give us passage to heaven but to re-create us in his own
image, so that both individually and corporately we may express the character of
God by the way we live in a world whose behavior is “polished nice” but which
lacks the purity and truth of the gospel. It is extremely unfortunate when God’s own
people, as in this case, look more like their surroundings than they do their Lord
himself.1

Now I think that this is good as far as it goes. Christ has died for us for more than
simply giving us passage to heaven. He has died to re-create us in his own image so that as
the church we may express the character of God by the way we live in a world that lacks the
purity and truth of the gospel. And it is extremely unfortunate when God’s own people look
more like their surroundings than they do their Lord himself. Certainly all this is true.

But I’m afraid it really misses the point of what Paul is communicating. Based on
Exod 11:1-13:16, Paul is suggesting that our interest in a pure community ought to be
rooted in and directed toward the gospel. On the surface it may seem as if a chapter that
begins with an illicit and ongoing sexual relationship between a professing Christian and his
step-mother and ends with a call to remove the wicked man from the church does not have
much positive to say. But this is not at all the case.

Seeing Christ and his work in the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread has
given Paul the foundation for this very difficult exhortation. He is not simply saying, “Get
your act together you foolish, wicked people!” He is saying, “Because Christ has been
sacrificed for you, you are the saints of the living God. Not only must you live as the
Passover people by purging for and celebrating the Feast of Unleavened Bread, but because
of Christ, you can purge the community and celebrate the feast of unleavened bread. And
not only for seven days, but for ever and ever.”

1
Gordon D Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1987), 219-20.

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You can say no to porn and flirtation and grumbling and complaining and
drunkenness and addictions and all manner of sin because Christ our Passover has been
sacrificed. And we can also say no to the fear of man, the pride that keeps us from
confronting our sinning brethren—all because Christ our Passover has been sacrificed!

So underneath the language of sin and sorrow in 1 Corinthians 5 is the language of

triumph and glory in Jesus Christ. For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed.
Therefore let us celebrate the feast. Amen!

Redeemer Bible Church

16205 Highway 7
Minnetonka, MN 55345
Office: 952.935.2425
Fax: 952.938.8299
info@redeemerbiblechurch.com
www.redeemerbiblechurch.com

Exod 11:1-13-16: Preparing for the Feast of Unleavened Bread © 2004 by R W Glenn