Herbert W Armstrong

   This morning Mr. David Albert addressed a very important question. That I would just like to remind you of again. How easy it is to find fault. With the way things are or in others. And to use small matters. That seemed great to be a source of stumbling.

   One of the principles we're learning here for the Days of Unleavened Bread is what constitutes sin. And it is important that we take a look at the meaning of this day on the beginning of the festival so that we have an understanding of what it is that we are to be reminded of and what it is that we should be doing. What God does for His people. For the simple reason that there are many people who talk about sin and the blood of Christ. But very few really understand what that means.

   Let's take a look at the question from another perspective. In a sense, most of you are here because I didn't say all, but most of you are here because of a general conviction. That the work that has been done both by Mr. Herbert Armstrong and by the church collectively around the world. It is unique and in some way reflects the biblical revelation as it has not been otherwise discoverable anywhere else. This does not mean, however, that we should take for granted everything that the church does. Or to assume that everything that your neighbor in the church does is what the Bible expects us to do. That is, we do not use someone else's mistake as an excuse for justifying our own mistakes. Or sin.

   What we learned, of course, is that the Passover which now the previous day reflects what God chose to do for us through His Son Jesus Christ. We presume that in the two congregations assembled here and or where the visitors were, that there was a general understanding in advance of that festival. Which is not an annual Sabbath. But this festival has the meaning of the paying for sins.

   So we start out with a Passover from the perspective of the Messiah, Jesus the Christ, the anointed, who pays for sin, which tells us something fundamental about the nature of how God deals with the material world and with the human family. God is not like many who today are judges. When God defined the way that man should go, he laid out in his own life, so to speak. That is the perfect example. And he expressed this in the person of Jesus Christ. Christ is the express image, both in appearance and in character of the Father in heaven.

   Now when Christ was on earth, he reflected the character of God. That character in a sense is the way people ought to live or the way beings ought to express themselves one to another. In defining that character, we shall come to the question of law. And we will note also the question of the transgression of that law, which is sin. But first we note that God does not start out the festival season with the 7 Days of Unleavened Bread, where we intellectually discover what sin is, and then we come to the Passover where we discover who paid the penalty. It is the reverse order.

   We start out with the Passover which was slain between the two evenings at the same time that the evening sacrifice was slain. You remember there was a morning and an evening sacrifice. That Passover lamb was the forerunner of the Messiah who paid a penalty in our stead. What we discover then is that God first reveals to us what he must do. We do not approach God by reason. Reason may be important, but this is not the manner in which we do. We approach God through faith in Jesus Christ, that is being creatures not governed by nature by the law of God except as parents have instructed children and children have read the Bible.

   Assuming in this case we're not addressing children, but we're addressing adults for the moment, most of you came into the church as adults from a world in which you were not growing up in the church but growing up in the various traditions and customs of the world. So the first thing that must be done is to place yourself in a connection with God or in a position, a relationship with Him. Which means that the guilty past, whatever it may have been and however dimly you perceive it, must be eradicated so that you stand before God with an attitude of faith and confidence in what God can do. You are not asked to stand before him on the basis of an intellectual grasp of law. You stand before him on the basis that everything that you once did or stood for or are is laid aside. And that the penalty for those past mistakes has been removed.

   I think it's important for us to grasp the starting point. We start with a recognition of what man cannot do for himself, except that God does expect us to have faith in what God can do. From the recognition that everything that we did or stood for has to be in some way reevaluated, revised, or expunged. The Passover is a picture then of the need first of all of the removal of the penalty that naturally comes on every human being.

   Now we all have different problems. For some of you, the problem may just simply be getting along with other people in the church. If you've grown up in the church, one of the biggest problems is you tend to copy what other people do, good, bad, or indifferent. I hope you realize this because it is a very common thing.

   I want to tell a little story that might help us understand. When we lived near the campus and our children went to Imperial Schools, which was our grammar and high school. Our children in general, not necessarily everyone, but our children in general found it much more difficult to say no to temptations put in their way by other children who went to school, who attended Sabbath services, who were here for the annual occasions, who were in that sense culturally and socially a part of the church. Only when we moved away, which was the primary reason for going west. Horace Greeley, remember, gave that advice long ago. Mr. Kanaima, we should read American history to perceive what I am saying. In Fiji, they always went east, young man, whereas in America, the address was to go west, young man.

   Now, the important thing is, having acquired contact with children in the public schools who did not attend the church. Our children in general immediately perceived the difference between what we were expected to do and what children in the world did. I'm saying this because one of the big problems of the 2nd and the 3rd generation is we just tend to drift along with what the group does. We tend to be influenced by what the group does, and the group may be made up of those who were born with parents already in the church or those who came in at age 14 whose parents were then being converted as an illustration. And you had 14 years of another way of life and you all attend the same public schools in the area or you attend the same congregations, and it is not always easy to distinguish what we should be doing.

   So what we have to recognize is that whether we were born into a family that was in the church, whether we attend a church regularly from the beginning of our lives, or whether we came in as teenagers or whether we came in at age 60. There are always temptations and influences that lead us in the direction wherever we wish to go. For some people, the temptation can be money, for others, the temptation is to lie. For others it may be alcohol, for others it may be drugs. For others it may be Sabbath breaking, you know, it might be food, whatever the problem. These are all later to be defined in the law. We won't come to that for the moment.

   But we have to recognize, and this is important, that whether we were reared in the church or not by nature. You were born with a mind that had no direction of itself. You are not governed fundamentally by instinct. You may be governed by instinct in the sense that you grasp or conurt. But apart from those fundamental instincts that are physiological, your mind was non-directional. It goes whichever way you as parents taught your children or whichever way you children were influenced by other children. And you learn things from other children in school, from neighbors in the block. From relatives. Your mind responds on the basis of the way you are reared before you are ever able to say, but why do I speak the language of my parents? You just started learning and mimicking. And language is the best illustration.

   You don't know why you speak the language you do when you're little. You're only speaking it because you hear it and it somehow registers on the other person's mind, and you're able to communicate. You can hatch two little chicks in a hatchery, and they can communicate with each other without ever having seen a hen. Little children are not like that. We influence little children as adults long before they have the capacity to decide whether they want to be influenced.

   I need to consider this because it means that all of you who are parents here or who are older in no way 100% would agree with every other parent in how to rear children. Well, that's why you don't agree with what they're doing, isn't that right? Because so often you see, well, if they were my children, I would treat them this way. And this clearly indicates that even in the church, much less the world and its confusion, each individual is reared and influenced slightly differently even in the same family as parents themselves change and as children who are older influence little children and bring other influences in.

   Now, this in mind. We become aware of the fact that the non-directional human mind that isn't programmed in a certain direction becomes programmed on the basis of influence. Happy is the child who is reared in the church. Provided the parents, of course, are doing what the Bible says and not departing widely from it. Far happier than some who were reared in the world in the drug cult with parents who were on drugs or alcohol or smoking. Mothers who may have been prostitutes or whatever the tragedies in the world it may be. And of course there are some very responsible families in the world. But it doesn't matter. Every single human being at some point has transgressed the law of God as it and is in need of the removal of the penalty of sin.

   Now, generally speaking, this is not comprehended by the intellect, fundamentally, though it is important, it is comprehended instead by an evaluation and an internal perspective of one's attitude. Sometimes children do not tell the truth. Oh yes, they did learn in school, you shall not bear false witness. But that doesn't mean that if you learn you shall not bear false witness that children have never told a little fib. Or the parents haven't done the same thing to cover up what they didn't want the children to know. And that reflects itself on the area of the conscience. The conscience becomes a kind of touchstone that tells us how close or how far we may be from the things that we have learned.

   Now, we may be learning wrong, and if you depart from wrong, you may be going in another wrong direction or you may be going in the right direction. Conscience doesn't define right from wrong, it only defines how you depart from what you were taught. But it does reflect you reflect to you your attitude. You discover that there's a little boy who punched you in the nose, you know, he was a neighbor who just didn't like your father. And your attitude is not perfect love anymore, toward him. These things you begin to note the scripture says you shall not kill. Then John says you shall not even hate. And Jesus also said you shall love your neighbor as yourself, and he also added, you're to love your enemy and do good to the little boy who punched you in the nose.

   Now you begin to see when you begin to look in the Bible or to reflect on your conscience that you are dealing with something in you that needs direction. And you notice that every other person differs a little in his makeup or in his thinking and his behavior. And we all have to come to recognize that these differences God can deal with through Jesus Christ, who paid the penalty of every one of the overt mistakes or every one of the bad attitudes that comes along when we don't like someone else or try to cover up something from someone else. I'm speaking here about the little things that we sometimes can look back on, you know, when we are in the primary grades or in high school.

   So the Passover is that day which tells us that in some way, in general, the past needs cleaning up. And what we are asked to do is to repent. Now, this is a biblical term. It is also used in literature, but primarily it is derived from religious literature. It means in this sense to regret past mistakes. And to set about to go in a direction that is right, as distinct from the direction that one has been going. In other words, the first festival of the Passover is a festival to bring to our attention that we can escape the penalties that we were under by whatever way we were going or thinking or living. Now we are asked, it's like the Israelites in the house covered by the blood on the lintel and on the side posts. You now are free from the consequences that could be yours which ultimately would lead to eternal death. Never living forever. Never having a chance, if you please, to visit Fiji. Which is the paradise in this world.

   And in the kingdom of God, we probably will all have interesting chances to visit other areas, but to be cut off from any hope, both in time and space of living forever is the consequence of going in whatever direction the non-directional human mind takes us. Now with instruction, we tend to go in one direction or another. We may be tempted in one direction or tempted in another, and we become directional as we mature. But that direction now while you are in the house that's covered with the blood has to be reoriented, so you start out with getting rid of the past. And focusing in on the direction you should now go, and this direction in ancient Egypt is typified by the departure from the land of Rameses or the site of Rameses which in Jewish tradition preserved by Josephus was old Cairo. And you moved east out of the land of Egypt. That is, there was now a direction you were to go.

   Now the Israelites were merely to do the physical thing of going in a particular direction under a particular leadership. They were to do it without leaven. What we learn from this is that once we start out with our guilty past removed, we now must all move in a particular direction. It's a direction that is without sin because leaven in this sense is used as a symbol of sin. Paul defines it clearly in I Corinthians. It is not so clearly defined in the law itself. Except the nature of leaven should have told us what we are dealing with. But since we are asked to have the law in our hearts and minds, we would automatically presume that leaven is the type of lawlessness. Leaven permeates everything. If you put a little leaven in one end of a large loaf, the leaven will finally permeate the whole thing.

   So the children of Israel physically were asked to move as a group in a singular direction. Now in the church, we learn that we also are asked to move as a group. They are of necessity, as Mr. Antion mentioned this morning, of necessity is the need for leadership to make certain basic decisions. The leader may be flawed because no human being other than Jesus Christ has ever been perfect. Moses was not perfect. Mr. Armstrong has said he is not perfect. You don't have to debate those issues. It is a question of the direction that God wants the church to go and that God asks and reveals to the leaders to go.

   Now, in this case, the children of Israel could have gone in any direction they wanted to. But they were asked to follow in a singular direction where the cloud led them by day and the light by night. Where Moses went, where God spoke to Moses. Now this is the root that is without sin, that is. We are to move out without leaven. So if the church has overall a responsibility collectively to achieve, we should pursue that effort through the various media that the church is asked to use today. And we also do all these things without sin, both on the job and in our own private lives, dealing with our neighbors and among employees, many are here with one another.

   Some is missing the mark. Not achieving the goal of God's character, falling short of the spiritual mental character aspect of the image of God. Now if we want to know what God's character is, we have to listen to what he instructs us, and he instructs us in the Bible as we have it here about right and wrong, both in terms of specific statements and examples. We have far more instruction about examples than most people realize. And we have many laws that people would like to get around. But the Bible then becomes the basic guide to enable us to perceive what God's character is or how he would behave in a particular way, and it is ultimately reflected in the way Christ behaved toward other human beings.

   The Days of Unleavened Bread follow the Passover in this sense. That once you are forgiven of your past, whichever direction you were then facing on the basis of how you were influenced by other people in society, now you are asked to move in a certain direction as the children of Israel left Egypt, Egypt being a type of sin. You must make the decision of more than staying in the house. For the blood protected you, you must now also make the decision to move on with the group when the group moves. Because those who did not leave after being saved from death would have stayed in slavery in Egypt. There is the need therefore, to move as a collective body. It wasn't enough for an Israelite to say, well, I have been spared, I believe I will head north. Somebody says, well, I will head south, somebody says I'll head west, we'll go to Libya. God was going east.

   And therefore, there is the need of the body that is the church as a whole, to move in the same direction in terms of the function of the group as well as doing so without sin, that is focusing on what our goals are. And achieving those goals with the character of God. And not human cleverness or intellectuality. The human cleverness, or wisdom and human intellect are important, but they must be made subject to the law of God. They must be made subject to the revelation of God that we call the Bible. The human mind and human reasoning must be brought into submission to Jesus Christ, who is our captain today as he was the captain of the children of Israel in the days of Moses.

   When the children of Israel moved along, they discovered there were problems along the way. Both while they were proceeding toward the Red Sea and afterward, I'm going to dwell on this point before I get to the question of the Red Sea, but you discover that wherever the group went, there were problems. Sometimes there was no water, sometimes there were enemies, sometimes there was no food, sometimes there were snakes. There were problems of all sorts. It was these problems that the children of Israel had to face up to, and every day didn't produce the same kind of problem. Sometimes it was an absolute delight. By the end of the day, just marvelous, and the next day it might have been just the opposite. You can never know what problems life would bring as each day goes by, but in every case, the children of Israel were expected to face those problems in accordance with the law of God, not in accordance with human reason, speculation, intellectuality. But with faith and confidence that God could deliver them. If they were willing to do what he said. Maybe they had to go hungry, maybe they had to be thirsty. But they needed sometimes to be patient and to wait for God to provide what they needed out with our minds and reasoning in the right way instead of the wrong way.

   So now let us go back not to the wilderness wandering in Sinai, but while they're still in Egypt, you see, this statement in the law seems rather plain. In the book of Exodus. So we mentioned 3 times a year. I read this this morning, you're to keep a feast to me, 23:14. Now there's the feast of Unleavened Bread. You shall keep 7 days, you shall eat unleavened bread as I commanded you at the time appointed in the month Abib or the first month of the year. For in it you came out from Egypt. Now, though this is a verse that is not that precise as a statement, it would be difficult to deny the implication but in this seven-day festival in the month of Abib, the children of Israel went out of Egypt. That is, it was a 7-day period before they left the final borders of Egypt proper. So let me illustrate just briefly.

   If you had decided to take the first step to be protected from the guilt of sin on the Passover. If you had decided to leave Egypt, to leave the land of sin, to go with the group that went with God, you could start out in the direction that was basically east. And you would be following God till you reach the area of the Suez. This is not the canal. The canal wasn't there at that time, but it's this general area. And at this time, you would have discovered if you were really smart that the way you would not want to go, if you had known a little bit of the geography, the way you would not want to go is south. Because you'd be trapped in the wilderness between mountains and sea, and you would have no other place to go. You'd be right along the shores of the Gulf of Suez, and you would never be able to get to the promised land that way.

   So God said, we're turning south. And at this point you decided another leader was necessary because Moses got his message wrong. I want you to bear that in mind. Moses clearly made a mistake because going south was not reasonable. And only those who had faith would have proceeded south. I just want you to think of how that might apply in January and February and March in 1979 in the Worldwide Church of God, the descendants of the children of Israel. And the mixed multitude. The truth is the Fijians have a tradition that they were there too. And also crossed the Red Sea. And they were there when Aaron was led to build the box that we call the Ark. But they never entered the promised land. And that's another story.

   Now, you could have decided that the way to go was east or the way to go was north or go back west and surrender to the Egyptians. You see, you discover interestingly that it's one thing to have unleavened bread. It's another thing to know the direction you're going with it. The people sometimes think that they can be unleavened and go in another direction from the church, but there are two things you learn. You have to move as a group and you also have to be unleavened. Is this clear? You don't say, Well, I'm going to be unleavened, and I'm going west or I'm going to be unleavened, and at this point I'm going north or east. Because you also realize that you have the question of the government of God as well as the question of sin.

   And so you learn that the God who delivered you because of the blood also asked you to go in a direction that at this point doesn't make sense unless it's a miracle working God. It doesn't make sense unless this God has special powers to do things for the church that would deliver the church and show His magnitude and so we now do move south by faith and we come to the shores of the Red Sea in the area of the Gulf of Aqaba that the Greeks later called cataclysa or klisma because an event happened there that the Egyptians thought was cataclysmic.

   Now, what you would have discovered is that you would have been in trouble on the 20th day of the month, because you would have seen in the distance the dust of the army. And horses and chariots of Pharaoh. He was coming south also, and that was a very reasonable thing to do. After all, the children of Israel were entangled in the wilderness. So you discovered at this point that there's reason again to question the government of God because God has got you now clearly in a position where there's no hope for you. So we, we, what can we do? You know, the children of Israel were at this point so frightened they didn't know what to do. There was no way to go east. That was where the sea was, and to go west was a mountain to climb up, and that got you nowhere. To go north, you would have been overrun by Pharaoh's horses and to go south were more mountains. You would have starved to death, so they had no choice.

   But at this point, they should have remembered that Moses carried an unusual stick. Now whether this was Moses' legal department I don't know. There are some people who think that our legal department may be compared to a snake. Let's assume that maybe it is and it's going to swallow the other thing. I won't argue that question any further. I just want you to think about it. You see, the children of Israel forgot that Moses had some special contact with God because God chose to have some special contact with him, and God gave Moses a unique stick. It was a miraculous thing that happened.

   At this point, quite unexpectedly a fog arose and settled north of the children of Israel and the Egyptians could proceed no further, but somehow there was a very significant amount of light to the south of the fog, and no light penetrated to the north. The Egyptians, of course, didn't perceive what was on the other side because they couldn't see the light. Now at this point, Moses was told to go east. And to go to the Red Sea.

   I want you to note that it's every bit as important to know what the children of Israel were doing as well as what they were eating. Because too often I think we have assumed that if we just put out sin and then do our own thing, we go our own ways, we're pleasing God, but it was both. The children of Israel were asked to put out sin, which made it possible for them to perceive how they ought to conduct themselves while they were walking with God in this wilderness that was still within the ultimate political confines of the state or empire of Egypt.

   Now you know the story from the Bible and from the movie. The Red Sea uniquely parted. And the children of Israel moved through. And suddenly there was a most remarkable deliverance such as they had never experienced before. It's one thing to be in the house while somebody dies over there and nobody here. It's another thing to suddenly see the waters stand up on both sides and you be asked to walk through like here. And the waters do nothing, and it's just as if it were dry land. And this was from every evidence that we would glean in terms of example and purpose, the night of the 7th day of Unleavened Bread. And then the fog lifted. And the Egyptians could see. And the Israelites were crossing over the Gulf of Suez. This was not some little reed place on the north near the Mediterranean. And for those of you who believe that the crossing was up there near the Mediterranean and I have my geography wrong, why don't you attend the lectures where that is explained correctly for you? Here the explanation is biblical and different.

   Now, it would be very difficult for me to perceive of the wall of water 6 inches high on each side in the little reed area. Overpoing the entire Egyptian army. that alone should tell you something of the story. But the Egyptians, as you know, perished in their attempt, and God delivered the children of Israel. Now we learn from this what is probably more important now than any other lesson. As the children of Israel went along, God gave them laws. He told them what sin is. They were asked to put it out. But we have to do something as a group.

   The festivals were given to God, sorry, by God, to the church as a group. Abraham was not commanded to keep these days. He was commanded to keep the Sabbath. That came in the days of Adam. The festivals were given to the church. Abraham was asked to in this sense to walk as a singular individual or a few members of the family. It was not a collective group. But once there is a collective group. This group is asked to enact certain things. And that particular thing that is most important is to remove sin like you remove leaven, but you are also do, you are also to do it as a group. You do it as a collective group.

   And you learn when you keep these days that you should repeat and discuss and examine what is written in the scripture. And when we do this about this day, we discover something remarkable. This is the only festival that I know of where in the beginning the children of Israel had to do something in addition to the unleavened bread, that is to walk in a certain direction during the entire period as a group. Which tells us that we must work together as a group to do the work we are called to accomplish. You were not asked to do this on a single day of Pentecost, a single day of Trumpets. You weren't asked to do it on Passover either are on the day of Atonement and at the Feast of Tabernacles, you're only asked to stay at a certain place.

   This is the one festival that at the beginning they were asked to do something very special, and that is to work together as a group and to stay in order and to go from one place to another till the job was done. Till they had in fact completed 7 days of leaving Egypt from the area of the Nile to the east shores of the Suez. And that was in actuality the real political Unleavened Bread the children of Israel marched through the land and escaped.

   If we were to apply this principle today, we would discover how important it is to work together as a group. Because if the children of Israel had said, Well, I think there's another way to get on the other side of this branch of the Red Sea. Those who would have assayed to do it another way would never have escaped. So let me now say something very plain. There is a way of escape for the Church of God today that is called the Worldwide Church of God, just as there was an escape for the children of Israel through the stick that Moses had in his hand that parted the waters of the Gulf of Suez and delivered them from the armies of Pharaoh.

   But there are those who are not of this fellowship and some who may not later be of this fellowship who are here, you have to make your decision, who don't believe that the church is going to escape in the crisis at the close. As it escaped from the armies of Pharaoh. And I will prophesy very plainly. He who does not believe there is a way of escape will not have one. And you will have to learn what it's like to go north. To be recaptured by Pharaoh's army and dealt with as someone who tried to leave the world and now is going back into it. Compromising and you'll discover the world someone who tried to leave the world and now is going back into it. Compromising and you will discover the world still doesn’t want you. You can compromise with it all you wish. And that's the tragedy. The congregation it is described in the last 3rd of the 3rd chapter of Revelation.

   So just remember that there is in the story of Unleavened Bread a day as well as a way to escape. And that there will be people in this generation who will reason and do things that not even the carnal minded children of Israel did in their day. They were too scared to think of any other explanation. And God did deliver them.

   Years later, after they had received the law, which helps to define sin as you read it, and examples which help you even more to evaluate what sin is and righteousness. The children of Israel were now east of Jordan and had received a repetition of the law, that is Deomos, the second giving of the law. Moses repeating it. In the 40th year after the children of Israel were out of Egypt. This was in the area that we would call Jordan, the Hashemite kingdom of Jordan, and he repeats to a new generation, the basic principles, add some things here, clarifies it because it's no longer a wilderness trek. You are now entering the promised land, and we come to the story of the death of Moses, and now we're in the days of Joshua. And we will now point up a very important facet of our story.

   So the children of Israel at this time are east of Jordan. And what we discover is the children of Israel were asked to cross over the Jordan River. And this river backed up on the north and so the children of Israel could cross over. And now after that event, we learn in verse 9 that the children of Israel were circumcised. And in verse 10, they encamped at Gilgal and they kept the Passover on the 14th day of the month at even in the plains of Jericho. Jericho is a now a tell, then a city that overlooks the area of the Jordan and the Dead Sea.

   Now what we have here is a very interesting account. Again, I will appeal to a statement in Josephus. That this event here is the story of the seven Days of Unleavened Bread. I have given a sermon specifically on that, so I will not quote Josephus here, but point out that in the Jewish tradition preserved by Josephus, a priest of the tribe of Levi and of the family of Aaron. He says that when the children of Israel encompassed the city of Jericho, this was during the seven Days of Unleavened Bread.

   Now note interestingly, another aspect of the festival, because if you are to look at events, you should begin to note that God did certain things at this time. Here we have the city surrounded and the people march around once each day for 6 days and on the 7th day. They march around 7 times. The trumpets blow, and the walls fell down flat. Reason would have told any Israelite that exercise was good, it was worth walking around, but to think that the walls would fall down flat was not reasonable. Nevertheless, this is what God did. He himself had to take down the bastions of those walls, which would have protected the people inside, and there was nothing that the children of Israel from the outside could do.

   So on the 7th day we have here the picture of the crumbling of sin. In this particular case, the children of Israel collectively had a responsibility. They had to do each day. It was not enough to eat unleavened bread. There was also something else to do, that is, they had to, in a sense, terrify the sinners within, so to speak, or to, shall we say, encircle sin. Jericho was the city of sin, if you please, in the land of Canaan among the Canaanite Arabs of that day. And of course the Arabs today use the term Canaanite Arab to refer to all these people because these, these were Semitic speaking people and Semitic speaking people in the Middle East are all Arabs. They may be Christian Arabs or they may be Muslim Arabs. And no Canaanite today who still lives in the land or maybe in Lebanon or maybe in Jordan or maybe in Syria thinks of himself as other than an Arab. This was an Arab Israeli confrontation. It is not something new. It is something very ancient. We know those people spoke a language that was Semitic because they could communicate back and forth, and the names of their cities are all Semitic.

   So the Canaanite Arabs and remember, brethren, an Ishmaelite is an Arab, not because all Arabs are Ishmaelites, but because Ishmaelites, among many other people are people who live in the area of the east. Where the Semitic language was spoken and the word Arab is clearly derived from a term that we associate with the word evening and it was the area where the darkness of evening first began for people who lived in this area and in the west, you know, it was still light. You know the word for evening that is between the two evenings when the Passover is slain is ultimately a word from the same basic root as the word Arab.

   From this in mind, we have a massive confrontation here between, if you please, the civilization of God, as expressed in his law and the Arab Canaanites who lived in the land of Palestine. And on the 7th day, after sin had in a sense been surrounded and kept in control by the children of Israel, God acted and obliterated the walls of defense. And the city was destroyed.

   Now the 7 days of Unleavened Bread pictured the 7000 years of human experience that God has set out. For 6 days, we have to tolerate the city. We have to tolerate sin. We have to try to encompass it as a group, not to let it escape. But on the 7th day, typical of the 1000 years, God chooses to see that the walls that defend sin that look so impregnable are totally removed. And that is the time when sin no longer reigns in the world. So as a church we have a responsibility. Just as the children of Israel there had a responsibility.

   Now among the Canaanite Arabs, was a woman who believed God. And among the children of Israel, was a man of Judah who coveted. Just so you know the rest of the story. There was an innkeeper who bedded men down in several ways. Who happened to have been called of God to see that her profession needed reorientation. Or is it expurgation? And she had faith. And she trusted God, and just that fragment of the wall under her house where her father and family lived didn't fall. And she was rescued. So out of the Gentiles there is a tiny group. That God did call. The very beginning. And God rescued her to show that any Gentile who by faith apprehends what God is going to do for His people may be saved from this destruction.

   But you have to learn to give up the city of sin, the ways of sin, the defenses of sin. And in the same way we have the lesson of a man of the house of Judah who, having walked over the rubble of the fallen walls saw some very nice cloth and precious metals that were to be dedicated to God and he decided to put them in his tent. You should know the rest of the story. If you've read the account in the book of Judges, book of Joshua chapter 7, the children of Israel committed a trespass concerning the devoted thing for Akan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zira of the tribe of Judah, took of the devoted thing.

   And here we have this remarkable contrast, someone of the family of Judah who reached out for what was the remnant of a culture that was to be laid aside and buried. And a woman who professionally was a sinner. Who comprehended by faith the promises of God, Akan and his family who fell under the heap of stones as a penalty of their sin when they were all stoned to death. And a former prostitute who became an ancestor of Jesus Christ, Rahab the harlot. That all who look at the Middle East contemplate the significance of this significant event recorded in the book of Joshua.

   Now many years later, we will close with another experience. And you can find this elsewhere. It's in the book of Isaiah, it's in the book of II Chronicles. Since you like to read Isaiah, we will turn to II Chronicles chapter 32. This is the story of Sennacherib, the king of Assyria, who encamped against Judah and its fortified cities. Now, in Jewish tradition this event occurred at the beginning of the Passover season. But we will briefly note that here is a man who represents those people we are part ultimately of the great Assyro-Babylonian culture and the final great realm that God deals with in the book of Revelation and in the prophecies of Isaiah and Jeremiah and some of the minor prophets, but you'll especially find it in Revelation.

   It's called Babylon or Babylon the Great. Because the events of ancient Assyria, Babylonia, and I linked them together for reasons that I don't need to explain here. The Babylonia ultimately as a city swallowed up the Assyrian Empire after it had overextended itself. The final realm has many parallels with the power of Nebuchadnezzar, but it also has parallels with the power of the kings of Assyria. And here was Sinacherib who besieged the king of Judah in the city of Jerusalem. And wrote a letter to verse 17 to taunt the Lord, the God of Israel, and to speak against him. As the gods of the nations, he wrote, which have not delivered their people out of my hand, so shall not the God of Hezekiah deliver his people out of my hand.

   And the children of Israel cried with a loud voice. No, sorry, in this case they did, the Assyrians in the Jews' language so that people would hear them in order to scare them, that is, they must have read this letter out loud that was being sent to the king himself, Hezekiahh. And they spoke of the god of Jerusalem, verse 19, as of the gods of the peoples of the earth, which are the works of men's hands. And so Hezekiah the king and Isaiah the prophet, the son of Amos, prayed because of this and cried to heaven, and the Lord sent an angel who cut off, all the mighty men of valor and the leaders and captains in the camp of the king of Assyria.

   Now this was after the house of Israel fell. So he returned with shame of face to his own land, and when he was come there into the house of his God some years later, his sons came who came forth of his own body, slew him with the sword. Now in Jewish tradition, this event occurred at the same time, this is also a symbol of what God is going to do to protect His church and if you please to protect the remnant of the house of Judah at Jerusalem that the crisis at the close.

   Mr. Begin may be a politician. He's a politician when he talks to Sadat. He's a politician when he talks to Carter. He's a politician when he talks to other Israelis. He's a religious zealot when he talks to God. He anticipates that God will deliver the children of Judah that we now call Israelis and that no matter what happens, though it is wise to have every defense possible, that in the end, his decisions are ultimately based on what God will do for Israel and he will do for no other people around. We have to bear that in mind every bit as much as we should have borne in mind, the Muslim revolution, the Islamic Revolution in Iran.

   And there was another contrast to this. In Jewish tradition, the birth of Isaac also occurred the Passover season. Here is the son of promise. Whereas Ishmael was the son of the flesh from the servant girl. And so if we were to look at these 4 events just pointing up the last one that God gave to Abraham, a son of promise. Just as here he delivers Judah, the tribe that is at Jerusalem. And the promise that is made to Abraham to deliver his children and to give them all for the good of the world is now being fulfilled in pictures that are laid out here for the Passover and Days of Unleavened Bread. You might wonder why these events might not have occurred with the Feast of Trumpets, what might not have occurred with some other event in the autumn, but there's a reason, because God's deliverance and protection of his people and his calling them out and choosing them, giving Isaac birth, delivering Rehab. All of this is associated with the need of putting away sin.