Knowing Him

But I'd like to read in Exodus chapter 13 and verse 1. And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Sanctify unto me all the firstborn. Whosoever openeth the womb among the children of Israel, both a man and a beast, it is mine. And Moses said, Unto the people remember this day, in which ye came out from Egypt, out of the house of bondage, for by strength of hand the Lord brought you out from this place.

There shall no leavened bread be eaten. This day came ye out of the month of Abib. And it shall be, when the Lord shall bring thee into the land of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Hittites, and the Jebusites, which he swore unto thy fathers to give thee, a land flowing with milk and honey, that thou shalt keep this service in this month.

Seven days thou shalt eat unleavened bread, and in the seventh day there shall be a feast to the Lord. Unleavened bread shall be eaten seven days, and there shall no leavened bread be seen with thee, neither shall the leavened be seen with thee at all by quarters. I'd like to read in Matthew chapter 16.

Matthew 16, we will read from verse 6. Then Jesus said unto them, that is the disciples, take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees. Verse 11. How is it that ye do not understand that I speak it not to you concerning bread, but that ye should beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees? Then understood they how that he bade them not beware of the leaven of bread, but of the doctrine of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees.

When Jesus came to the coast of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I, the Son of Man, am? And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist, some Elias, and others Jeremiah, or one of the prophets. He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am? And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjola, for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.

And we'll stop at that point. It was a great work that God did when he brought his people out of Egypt. Perhaps a deliverance that is outstanding above all others in the Old Testament.

For the mighty power of the nation of Egypt was broken, and God brought his people out with a high hand and a mighty deliverance. It was a deliverance that magnified God in the sight of the people. It was a deliverance that destroyed the capacity, or the supposed capacity, of the idols of Egypt because God showed his power over all the idols and all the objects of worship in Egypt.

It was a mighty deliverance because Egypt was the strongest, greatest nation in the world at that time, and God brought them out. What a deliverance it was, and what a deliverance it was when God reached into your life and mine. And in fact, a greater deliverance by far than you and I have experienced by the grace of God.

Not a demonstration in such a way of outstanding physical power, but a mighty spiritual deliverance that has been accomplished by the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. But typically, that Passover, that deliverance is a typical picture of the salvation that you and I have received. The blood of the Lamb applied it to the individual doorposts, brought deliverance to not only the firstborn, but also the entire nation.

They were redeemed by the blood, and they were brought out. And now, subsequent to that, we find that it is a beyond the journey through the wilderness, but of the Lamb that God had promised to give them. We have God saying, essentially, that you've been redeemed, and now I claim the firstborn for myself.

And not only does he claim the firstborn for himself, but he claims the entire nation, because the entire nation was to remember, and to keep the feasts that were subsequent to it, the Feast of Unleavened Bread. When I look at that first expression in chapter 13, I want to say to every one of us this afternoon, God did not save you and me to live for ourselves. He didn't save us to go our own way and enjoy our life in this world.

He saved us to claim us. He claims the redeemed for his own. He says, you're not your own.

You've been bought with a price. Therefore, glorify God in your body and your spirit, which are God's. He says, you're not your own.

And, brethren and sisters, we need to always remember, we belong to one who paid the great price for us, and who brought us out from bondage, and delivered us from death. We owe a great debt, and the only way that we can respond to that debt is to acknowledge that he has divine claims that are expected that we should respond to them. And I ask myself more than once, sometimes almost every day, how well am I responding to the claims of Christ upon me? How much am I seeking just to do what is pleasing to me, and what really is satisfying to my heart? The greatest blessing that a Christian can have is to live with determination, with devotion, with a heart to please and honor the Lord Jesus Christ and to live for him.

Anything less is really a failure to appreciate from the depths of our souls the great depth of his love expressed toward us. He says, you belong to me. And he says, it was the firstborn specifically that would be separated unto the Lord, sanctified unto me, the firstborn.

Those were the ones that were under the sentence of death, and those were the ones should have the greatest appreciation for the great work that was accomplished for them, and delivered them from that death. So, Moses says, remember this day, a day never to be forgotten, a day to be appreciated in the annals of the history of Israel. But he says, not only do I claim the persons, but I'm claiming the pattern of your life.

I'm claiming the pathway. I'm claiming the principle that is exhibited in your life. He says, at the feast of unleavened bread, there's to be an expression of the purity of life that should result from the redemption that he brought for them.

You know, there were seven feasts of Jehovah in the Old Testament in the history of the nation. They were scattered throughout the period of time from the fifteenth day of the first month until the seventh month. And there you have them beginning with the Passover, then the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and so on, until you come to the Feast of Tabernacles.

And the one-day feasts in the history of Israel were feasts that commemorated the work that God had done for them. It was a recognition of God's power exercised toward them in some particular way. But the seven-day feasts were an expression of their response to Him.

The seven-day feasts are that which typifies the entire lifetime of a child of God. The entire span from one week was that which marks the life of a believer. Now, he says, from the first day after Passover, he says, you shall eat no leavened bread, unleavened bread every day for seven days.

You know, in the Scripture, the thought of leaven always has an indication of evil. Some influence of evil is connected with it. I don't go along with those who would try to tell us that the exception is in Matthew chapter 13, verse 33, where you have the parable of the leaven that the woman inserted into the three measures of meal, until the whole was leavened.

There were those who would try to tell us that that is an influence of the gospel, that would penetrate and have an effect upon the entire world. I think they fail to realize what the Lord has bring before us in that parable of the kingdom of heaven that shows the effect of the evil that is penetrated, not only the fellowship and the practices, but also the doctrine of sadly what is called Christendom today. But here we have the thought of the presence of leaven had to be expelled from their houses.

Now, I'm not really very interested in going on into the modern practices of Judaism, but the Lord here very clearly tells them that they are not to eat any leaven, anything with leaven in it. They're not even to have it in their houses. They're not to have it with them.

In other words, they're not to have it assimilated into their person. They're not to be identified by association. They're not to be occupied with it in any way whatsoever.

Leaven was to be totally, 100% eradicated for that entire week. And we find in the New Testament that the Lord Jesus speaks of a number of different kinds of leaven. And it's always a picture of the influence of something that is evil.

Leaven, you know, has an interesting effect on a lump of dough. As you want to say in Spanish, you'd call it masa. But leaven has that influence.

It has an effect, first of all, to change its appearance because it makes it much larger. There's an inflation that takes place. And you know what inflates is simply air.

It's not a value whatsoever. It just makes it bigger. There's something about things that get bigger that seem to be attractive, don't they? They seem to increase.

They must be very important. So the leaven is that which inflates. It may inflate the person to make him feel more important and great than he really is.

It would be the opposite of humiliation. It would also inflate a system and make it not what it ever intended to be. It would also have the effect of changing that dough to make it more palatable and more enjoyable to the taste of the natural person.

You know, I don't think I'd like to eat unleavened bread very long. It may be all right for a period of time. That's what they had to eat when they first came out of Egypt because the dough was unleavened.

They took it in their kneading troughs. But unleavened bread just doesn't have the taste of it. Not as enjoyable to eat.

I'm not a bread maker. I tried making gluten-free bread at one time in the early days. I decided it's a lot easier to buy it.

Saved myself the trouble. But those who make bread, you know that what really is not very tasty at all to start with becomes a lot more appealing. And it becomes more interesting and enjoyable to eat.

You know, there's something about leaven that changes the entire character of what it is introduced into. It may be doctrine. It may be teaching.

It may be suggestive practices. It may be different characters. Because the Lord speaks about the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees.

He spoke about the leaven of the Pharisees and the Herodians. He spoke about the leaven of the Herodians. He spoke about the leaven of different kinds of leaven.

And you remember that Paul speaks about the leaven in 1 Corinthians chapter 5, purge out the leaven, which of course was the allowance and permissiveness of immoral practices. And so the leaven really has an influence upon the character of what we are intaking, what we feed upon. And that's why I want to go to Matthew chapter 16.

Because in Matthew chapter 16, you notice that the Lord Jesus says to his disciples, beware. Because there's a danger, he says, that's associated with it. Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees.

Well now, who were the Pharisees? You know, the Pharisees were the ones that you might have called fundamentalists in terms of the Jewish religion. They were the ones that were very orthodox in their handling of the Scripture. They were very careful.

You know, they were the ones that wanted to see the Word of God carried out exactly. They not only studied the Scriptures, nothing wrong with that, that's good. But they analyzed them, and they divided them, and they added to them, and they manipulated them, and they made them much more, I was going to say they made them much larger than they really were.

Because they had made the law of God so extreme in its requirements, they became a bondage to the people. They had made God's law in such a way that it became almost impossible to bear it. But they were the orthodox.

They were the ones who were very careful in their handling of the Scripture. They had a deep reverence for it. And there was nothing wrong with that.

But the Pharisees were also identified by the Lord Jesus as the ones who were marked by hypocrisy. You remember in Luke chapter 18, it's a Pharisee and a publican that went up in a synagogue to pray. And there you have the Pharisees standing all by himself in a very prominent way and praying.

And the Lord is very careful to say he prayed with himself. And he was praying like the Lord Jesus speaks about in Matthew chapter 7, standing on this corner in this synagogue to be seen of man. And he was presenting himself as a very religious person that was very careful in the observance of the law of God.

But the Lord makes it very clear that he went down to his house having received nothing because he didn't think he ever needed anything. He was a man that was marked by not only orthodoxy, but also hypocrisy. And you look at the Sadducee along with him here, and the Lord Jesus says, beware of that one also, that if the Pharisee was a man that was marked by ritualism, the Pharisee was marked by rationalism.

He was a man that not only wanted power, they enjoyed the place of occupying the priesthood. All the priests were Sadducees. But there were men that didn't believe in spirits, and they didn't believe in angels.

They say, as it were, if you can't see it, it ain't real. They didn't believe it. And so they ignored the reality of what was unseen, and they denied the reality of the effectiveness of God introducing and moving the affairs of man in a supernatural marvelous way.

They were like modernists, like people today, men today in different high circles religiously, and they deny the resurrection of Christ. They deny the miracles of Christ. They deny everything of that nature that's out of the ordinary, so therefore it can't be believed.

Now the Lord says, beware of the teaching of the Pharisee and the Sadducee. Notice what follows. He's in the course of Caesarea Philippi over the northeast, and he takes his disciples, and he says to them now, whom do men say? What's the common opinion of the Son of Man? What do they say about me in the common circles of life? Now those men that he is speaking about, I want to suggest to you they were the men that were being influenced and had been influenced by the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees.

These were the men that they received their teaching from. They had been imbibing the teaching of Pharisees and Sadducees, and here's what they say. The disciples respond to the Lord Jesus, and they say that you're possibly John the Baptist.

Possibly you're Elijah, or maybe even Jeremiah or one of the prophets. You know, Pharisees and Sadducees can give the Lord Jesus a very good place. They were honoring him, weren't they? To think that they would put him on a level with John the Baptist, the one that the Lord Jesus said he's the greatest of all prophets, and to say that he's like John the Baptist.

Well, he preached the same message. Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. So perhaps it was based on the message, and they were honoring Christ.

And there are those that said, well maybe he's Elijah. Maybe you're Elijah. Think of all the miracles that he performed, and the power that he displayed in his ministry, as he reproved the nation of Israel.

And they thought they were giving him a high place, because Elijah was a great prophet. One of the great prophets in the Old Testament. And they said, well perhaps it's Jeremiah, because Jeremiah stood firm in his convictions, and he reproved the nation, and he was a compassionate man.

A man that showed his heart like the Lord Jesus did. Or maybe just one of the prophets. You know, the Pharisees and the Sadducees can give Christ a high place.

They can give him honor, but it's not good enough. Because if these disciples would have been listening to the multitude that had been influenced by the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees, that's what they would have thought. But the Lord was looking for something different.

And brethren and sisters, you and I are surrounded by those who have a very high estimation of the Lord Jesus, but their estimation is too low. Because religion can never give Christ a high enough position. He deserves and he must have far more than that.

Now the Lord asked his disciples that question, and of course they've been with him for two years. So what have you learned in two years of time concerning the person of Christ? That's a good question for you and me to ask. How much have we learned about the Lord Jesus in two years, or five years, or 20 years, or 65 years in my case? How much have we really learned? Well you say, I know quite a bit about him, but that's not good enough.

You need more than just knowing something about Christ. It's a matter of knowing him. And growing in grace is a growth in grace and in the knowledge of who? Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

And many of us as God's people are satisfied just to have orthodoxy. Now listen, adherence to the Word of God is right. It's always important to seek to obey the Word of God.

Maybe not like the Pharisees did. The Lord Jesus said to them in John 6 and verse 39, You search the scriptures, for in them you think that you have eternal life. And they are they which testify of me, and you would not come unto me that you might have life.

So Phariseeism in various forms, whether it be legalism, or whether it be a form of hypocrisy, will never give a person a proper estimation of the Lord Jesus. You can go all the religious schools of the world and never learn the truth concerning Christ. You can be very orthodox, very sure of what you believe about him, but never really knowing.

You know what the Lord Jesus says to the church in Ephesus? He speaks about their faithfulness. They've tried them that are not, claiming to be apostles. They've been so careful in their holding to the truth of God's Word, but he says there's something vital that's lacking.

You've left your first love. And when our first love has been left, it's love for Christ first, and then resulted in love for others. Here they were, and they were doing everything right outwardly, but there was something inward that was finally missing.

And I asked myself after years of salvation, enjoying salvation, how much do I really know and appreciate the Lord Jesus? And I'm ashamed to say I don't know very much. We can know everything we want to know and have to know to maintain outward character and to go on in the right practices, and I'm not condemning that. I'm just saying there's something more important that God wants.

You remember what Paul says when he first responded to the Lord Jesus in Acts chapter 9? Who art thou Lord? And you find him toward the end of his life, not totally at the end of his life, but in Philippians chapter 3, but I may know him and the power of his resurrection. That, brethren and sisters, should be the burning ambition of our life, that we might know him, and know him in a vital, real way that is not brought in by what we learn from the Pharisees, or the legend of the Pharisees, or what we learn as Peter, he says, he's received it from God. Those things that Peter says to him, he says, thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.

You know, the Jews would recognize that there was an expected Messiah, but they'd come to the point where they expected two messiahs. One was Ben Joseph, and one was going to be Ben David, right? They couldn't reconcile a suffering savior and a reigning, a suffering messiah and a reigning messiah in one person. But when Peter made his great pronouncement in this verse, he says there's only one person, he's a suffering messiah, and he's also the reigning messiah, and it's the Lord Jesus.

He didn't arrive at that from what the Jews believed. He didn't arrive at that from what so-and-so preacher said. He arrived at that by a direct revelation from God himself, the Father.

And that's where you and I really get the most truth that will stick in our hearts, and result in genuine convictions that Peter demonstrated in his life later. You know, they didn't get it from the Sadducees either, because the Sadducees were the ones who were occupied with religious service. They were glad to be occupied with offering the sacrifices, and the officiating in the temple, and maintaining the lights, and so on.

They were the ones who were very religiously occupied in service for God. You know, the Lord Jesus says something about that in the letter to the Ephesian assembly. He says about their works, he says you've labored, labored to the point of exhaustion, and they still were missing something.

So it's more than that kind of labor religiously that really makes all the difference. It's important. Just like knowing the Word of God is important, service is important, but most important is to have a deep, genuine understanding.

This is my Lord. This is the one who is the Christ, the Son of the living God. He's the Messiah because of his humanity.

He's the Son of the living God in his deity. The unique person that has a right to demand that we seek to know him, and to love him, and to serve him with all our heart. And so the Lord says to him, blessed art thou, Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood have not revealed the Son of thee.

It wasn't from the Pharisees, it wasn't from the Sadducees, it wasn't from the religious leaders of that day. No, you got this from my Father. That's a precious thing to go in for, brothers and sisters.

That's what's on my heart at this conference. I believe with all my heart that the greatest need we have is to have hearts that are so devoted to Christ. That obedience to his Word is not difficult.

That a desire to be faithful in a life of testimony is easy. And the desire to serve him with all our heart simply is a response to the fact I know him whom I have believed. And I'm resting in relationship to him.

And I've learned something from the Father that I could not learn anywhere else. And I ask myself how much leaven is in my heart to contaminate the blessed truth concerning the Lord Jesus. How much leaven is in my associations.

There were more of true appreciations I should have that gives Christ the place that the Father wants him to have. May God help us to have a deeper desire to know him.