Sermon Outline Mar 2, 2008 Morning Service

Topic: Spring Cleaning 

Text:   Exodus 12:1-28 

Introduction

I.        Exodus 12 describes the celebration of the Passover.

A.       From the time of Exodus until today, every year God-fearing Jewish families have partaken of the Passover meal as closely as possible.

B.       Their Passover meal celebrates the love of their God who freed their ancestors from slavery.

II.       Passover was the first feast in a week-long festival called “The Feast of Unleavened Bread”.

Text

I.        The Passover symbolized the freedom God wanted to give His people.

A.       That feast was followed by six more days that focused on the fact that God’s kind of freedom required His people to remove things from their lives and their homes.

B.       Yeast was used by God to symbolize the power of sin.

II.       Sin acts in our lives much like yeast works in a loaf of bread.

A.       Bread with yeast in it tastes better.

1.       Matzos is rather lacking in flavor (that’s why we prefer leavened bread).

2.       Likewise, sin tastes good (if it didn’t taste good, nobody would be tempted to do it).

B.       It doesn’t take much yeast to change the shape of the flour.

1.       It warps the shape of the dough.

2.       Similarly, when sin enters your life it doesn’t take much to change who you are, to warp your character.

C.      The yeast make the bread look like it contains more flour than it actually does.

1.       The loaf and the “cracker” have the same amount of flour.

2.       Sin can make us believe we have more in our lives than we do.

3.       Sin always looks like it has more to offer than it really does.

D.      Yeast causes bread to mold and decay from the inside out.

1.       If you leave a loaf of bread out too long it gets moldy but crackers will last practically forever.

2.       Sin has the power to cause our lives to decay and to rot.

3.       That’s why God hates sin; because it destroys us.

Conclusion

I.        The Feast Of Unleavened Bread was done once a year.

II.       We need to take a spiritual assessment of our lives from time-to-time and do some cleaning.

A.       Preparation for the Passover included an entire week scouring the house for every small crumb of yeast they can find (Exodus 12:19).

B.       That’s what we need to do with our lives and homes.

III.      But for a quick moment let’s go one step farther.

A.       Simply removing sinful influences from your home will not fully protect your family.

B.       We must move away from sin but we must also move toward God.

C.      Too often people will say that they don’t want to become Christians until they clean out their lives (Spring Cleaning).