Removing the “Hametz” from Your House

5 It is actually reported that among you there is sexual immorality, and such immorality as is not even among the pagans—that someone has his father’s wife. ² And you are puffed up! Shouldn’t you have mourned instead, so that the one who did this deed might be removed from among you? ³ For even though I am absent in body, I am present in spirit—I have already passed judgment on the one who has done this thing, as though I were present. ⁴ When you are gathered together in the name of our Lord Yeshua, I am with you in spirit. With the power of our Lord Yeshua, ⁵ you are to turn such a fellow over to satan for the destruction of his fleshly nature,^[a] so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Yeshua.

⁶ Your boasting is no good. Don’t you know that a little hametz leavens the whole batch of dough? ⁷ Get rid of the old hametz,^[b] so you may be a new batch, just as you are unleavened—for Messiah, our Passover Lamb, has been sacrificed. ⁸ Therefore let us celebrate the feast not with old hametz,^[c] the hametz of malice and wickedness, but with unleavened bread—the matzah of sincerity and truth.

⁹ I wrote to you in my letter not to mix together^[d] with sexually immoral people— ¹⁰ not at all meaning the sexually immoral people of this world or the greedy or swindlers or idolaters, for then you would have to exit the world. ¹¹ But now I am writing to you not to mix together with anyone who is being called a brother if he is sexually immoral or greedy or an idolater or a slanderer or a drunkard or a swindler—not even to eat with such a fellow. ¹² For what business do I have judging outsiders? Don’t you judge those who are inside? ¹³ But those who are outside, God judges. Put away the wicked fellow from among yourselves.^[e]

144,000 Marked with a Seal

7 After this, I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth^[a] so that no wind would blow on the earth or on the sea or against any tree. ² Then I saw another angel coming up from the east,^[b] having the seal of the living God. He cried out with a loud voice to the four angels who were permitted to harm the earth and the sea, ³ saying, “Do no harm to the earth or the sea or the trees, until we have put a seal on the foreheads of the servants of our God.”^[c]

⁴ Now I heard the number of those marked with the seal:

144,000 from every tribe of Bnei-Yisrael—

⁵ 12,000 from the tribe of Judah;

12,000 from the tribe of Reuben;

12,000 from the tribe of Gad;

⁶ 12,000 from the tribe of Asher;

12,000 from the tribe of Naphtali;

12,000 from the tribe of Manasseh;

⁷ 12,000 from the tribe of Simeon;

12,000 from the tribe of Levi;

12,000 from the tribe of Issachar;

⁸ 12,000 from the tribe of Zebulun;

12,000 from the tribe of Joseph;

12,000 from the tribe of Benjamin.

Countless Worshipers Before the Throne

⁹ After these things I looked, and behold, a vast multitude that no one could count—from every nation and all tribes and peoples and tongues—was standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were clothed in white robes, with palm branches^[d] in their hands ¹⁰ and crying out with a loud voice, saying,

¹¹ And all the angels were standing around the throne, along with the elders and the four living creatures; and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, ¹² saying,