Sermon Central
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Spring Cleaning Series
Contributed by Jeff Strite on Nov 28, 2017 (message contributor)
Summary: The Passover was the first and most important feast day of the Jewish people... but it was only the first feast day of "The Feast of Unleavened Bread". There was a reason for that. Do you know what it was?
* We all know the damage gambling could do in their lives, so why would I want anything like that around my family?
We’ve got to make up our minds that ANYTHING would hurt our family shouldn’t be let in the front door, or the back door, or thru an open window.
ILLUS: Now, there is a thought pattern that can undermine every effort you make to keep the world from influencing your family. Recently, there’s been a TV commercial put out by “concerned” TV executives. They “know” how concerned you are with the influence of certain kinds of TV programs and so they’ve put out this commercial to remind you to pay attention to their ratings: Y… PG… MA and so on.
But in the midst of their “public service” announcement they show little squares above everybody’s heads. The kids have a “Y” or a “PG”. BUT above the parents heads - when the kids leave the room - there is this little square that shows an “MA” (mature).
It’s their way of saying… we put on these “mature programs” for your benefit.
You’re a grown up…
You can handle it
What they’re saying is: its ok to watch “mature programs” when the kids leave the room. They’re trying to convince you that what you watch won’t influence your children.
Now that’s about as stupid a thing as I’ve ever heard.
One person noted: "Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them."
By giving the impression that certain kinds of TV programs, or activities, or beverages, or drugs, or behavior – whatever… if we give the impression that ONLY GROWNUPS should do these things we teach our children the LIE that this is what mature people do. And those children will desire that maturity. And they will pursue that maturity as early in their lives as possible… because they all desire to be like grownups.
The moment we buy into the heresy of this dichotomy - that our morality is somehow different than the morality we expect from them - the lock on the door is broken and the world will walk right on in.
That’s why God didn’t teach his people to remove the leaven only from their children’s lives.
He taught them to get those things completely out of the house, out of every room and out of the lives of everyone in the home.
Essentially, that means that: if it’s bad for your kids… it’s bad for you.
Or as Paul said “…a little yeast works through the whole batch of dough” 1 Corinthians 5:6
All it takes is a simple opening of the door for sin to enter your home and it will effect the lives of everyone you love.
That’s what God is teaching us here.
IV. And there’s something else I believe God’s teaching us here
As I thought about this passage in Exodus 12, I noticed something intriguing
The FEAST OF UNLEAVENED BREAD was only done once a year. They removed the leaven from their homes roughly in the month of April.
Does that sound like something we do?
Yes, this was literally a “Spring cleaning”
Practically everybody does an occasional “Spring Cleaning” in their homes. Things have laid around and collected that clutter up the attic, the basement, the garage, and so on.
