This morning I came across a scripture that seems very appropriate for this weeks’s Minister’s Commentary. I will paraphrase it for you here. It is found in Psalms 131:1:
“Lord, my heart is not proud, nor my eyes haughty, neither do I exercise my mind in matters too great for me” (or are none of my business).
During my sermon last Sabbath I asked that when we go through this week of Unleavened Bread, each time you take a bite of an unleavened cracker or bread and hear the crunch that comes from biting into something hard, you think about being puffed up. My intention was to get you to use this exercise to focus on the difference between our own human nature that is “puffed up” and the “unleavened” nature of Christ typified by humility and summed up as sincerity and truth. Eating the unleavened bread reminds us we need to strive for humility, because we know that pride and arrogance only lead to sin.
The Bible states there are some benefits that come from putting humility in and thus forcing arrogance out. Here are a few:
Those scriptures offer up some very significant things that we, as humans, greatly desire. But doesn’t it strike you as strange these are the very things that bring out the worst in people. Yes, the desire for wealth, honor and even the good life motivate people to do the worst of things to others, even crushing them, in order to obtain for ourselves. Yet, God offers them to us freely if we only “hear that crunch” when we bite into our unleavened cracker and remember we are to strive for humility in our lives. What a world of difference God’s ways are from the ways of this present evil world.
On the last day of this festival we will once again picture ourselves with toes dangling over the edge of the Red Sea, contemplating our need for deliverance from the Pharaoh of this world who is forever riding down on our backs. God’s people often feel that need very strongly this time of year, as it seems the ruler of this world delights in bringing problems into our lives that make the lessons of this week very real. Our tendency may be to take matters into our own hands and rid ourselves of these situations we find so troublesome. Yet God wants us to turn to him with a humble heart and seek his deliverance. He wants to open the way to us that takes us in the right direction, out of our troubles.
So let’s learn the lesson of unleavened bread. Forsake arrogance and pride and let Christ’s mind be in you as you seek more of his humble spirit, reaping the benefits God wants to give to each and every one of us.
C-R-U-N-C-H!