Praise the Lord, church!

We’ve spent the last six weeks going through Passover Doctrine, talking about how Passover started, the instructions on how to celebrate it, who can celebrate and who couldn’t, as well as the divine prohibitions against leavened bread, etc. We’ve seen our Lord institute the Lord’s Supper at the Passover meal He shared with His disciples. We’ve seen that, prior to that, the Lord God pardons the Jews who eat the Passover but are not ceremonially cleansed. There in 2 Chronicles 30, we see the teaching of the heart that would come to dominate the relationship between God and His people. It was always about the heart, but rituals made it easy to prioritize the external above the internal.

In today’s “Why We Don’t Celebrate Easter, Part 1G: Jesus Christ, Our Passover,” we discuss how the Passover should influence our lives as believers. Paul calls Christ “Our Passover,” telling us to “keep the feast” (1 Corinthians 5:8), reminding us that Passover is not just a past event (Exodus 12), not just a present meal to remember Jesus’ Second Advent, and not just a future meal in Heaven, but also a present reality to live out. “Don’t just eat the Passover,” Paul tells the Corinthians, “BE THE PASSOVER!” You can find the entire text of 1 Corinthians 5 below for your reading and edification as you listen to the audio teaching above.

This is Part 1G of the Why We Don’t Celebrate Easter series. You can find the rest of the series, Parts 1A through 1F, on our Audio Sermons and Bible Studies page and below:

Part 1A

Part 1B

Part 1C

Part 1D

Part 1E

Part 1F

I pray this doctrine teaching finds you well. Continue to pray for us, that The Essential Church would continue to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

We ask for special prayer for Beatrice, one of The Essential Church‘s beloved members, who lost her daughter this past week. Please pray for her, that the Lord would be her comfort in this difficult time.

In our rejoicing and our mourning, let us remember to give God glory.

Pastor D.M.

 

1 Corinthians 5:1-13

It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and such sexual immorality as is not even named among the Gentiles—that a man has his father’s wife! ² And you are puffed up, and have not rather mourned, that he who has done this deed might be taken away from among you. ³ For I indeed, as absent in body but present in spirit, have already judged (as though I were present) him who has so done this deed. ⁴ In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, when you are gathered together, along with my spirit, with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, ⁵ deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.

⁶ Your glorying is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? ⁷ Therefore purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened. For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us. ⁸ Therefore let us keep 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 to you in my epistle not to keep company with sexually immoral people. ¹⁰ Yet I certainly did not mean with the sexually immoral people of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. ¹¹ But now I have written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother, who is sexually immoral, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner—not even to eat with such a person.

¹² For what have I to do with judging those also who are outside? Do you not judge those who are inside? ¹³ But those who are outside God judges. Therefore “put away from yourselves the evil person.”

 

Passover Doctrine Songs

Opening Selection: “Worthy is the Lamb” (Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir)

Second Selection: “Behold the Lamb (Communion Hymn)” by Keith and Kristyn Getty

Pre-Teaching Selection: “Now Behold the Lamb” (Kirk Franklin)

Closing Selection: “Just As I Am, Without One Plea” (O Lamb of God, I Come”)