⁹ And Moses said, “We will go with our young and our old; with our sons and our daughters, with our flocks and our herds we will go, for ^(A)we must hold a feast to the Lord.”

First Encounter with Pharaoh

5 Afterward Moses and Aaron went in and told Pharaoh, “Thus says the Lord God of Israel: ‘Let My people go, that they may ^[a]hold ^(A)a feast to Me in the wilderness.’ ”

¹⁸ Then ^(A)they will heed your voice; and ^(B)you shall come, you and the elders of Israel, to the king of Egypt; and you shall say to him, ‘The Lord God of the Hebrews has ^(C)met with us; and now, please, let us go three days’ journey into the wilderness, that we may sacrifice to the Lord our God.’

⁴ And ^(A)you, fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but ^(B)bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord.

⁷ Therefore ^[a]purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened. For indeed ^(A)Christ, our ^(B)Passover, was sacrificed ^[b]for us. ⁸ Therefore ^(C)let us keep the feast, ^(D)not with old leaven, nor ^(E)with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

Seek God in Early Life

¹⁵ And if it seems evil to you to serve the Lord, ^(A)choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether ^(B)the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of ^[a]the River, or ^(C)the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell. ^(D)But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”