Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread.

Thought for the Week

"Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, but on the first day you shall remove leaven from your houses; for whoever eats anything leavened from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel." (Exodus 12:15)

Commentary

The sacrifice of the Passover lambs in Egypt was like training for the Israelites. It prepared the children of Israel to better appreciate the Temple rituals that God would teach them later. It prepared them to understand the efficacy of Yeshua's suffering and death. If you have ever trained for an athletic event, you know that going through the exercise one time is not sufficient. Real training requires regular repetition.

The LORD instituted a regimen of repetition by commanding the Israelites to commemorate the Passover sacrifice every year. He commanded them to annually sacrifice a lamb in remembrance of the lambs they sacrificed in Egypt. The blood of that lamb was no longer to be applied to their doorposts--instead it was applied to the altar in God's Temple in Jerusalem.¹ So long as the Temple in Jerusalem was still standing, the Jewish people brought sacrificial lambs to God's altar on the anniversary of the day their ancestors sacrificed the lambs in Egypt.

Today, lamb is not served at Passover because sacrifices cannot be made without a Temple.² However, the other ritual foods are still eaten at the Passover meal. God commanded the Israelites to eat the lambs with bitter herbs and unleavened bread in memory of the meal in Egypt. The annual meal of lamb and bitter herbs was called the Passover seder. In the days of the apostles, the whole family reclined at the table to celebrate Passover and eat the ritual foods while they passed the story of their salvation to the next generation. The roasted lamb reminded the Jewish people of the Passover sacrifice in Egypt. The unleavened bread reminded the Jewish people that their ancestors had left Egypt in such haste that they did not have time to allow their bread to rise before baking it. The bitter herbs and the practice of dipping unleavened bread in sop reminded the Jewish people of the bitter lives their ancestors endured in Egypt.

In those days, the noblemen all reclined when eating while their slaves ate standing, ready to serve them. In the days of the apostles, the participants in the Passover seder reclined at the table to remind themselves that, thanks to Passover, they were now freemen and no longer slaves.

The Passover meal initiates an annual seven-day festival called the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Throughout the seven days of the festival, leavened grain products are completely forbidden. Instead the LORD commands us to eat unleavened bread throughout the seven days. The Hebrew word for unleavened bread is matzah (מצה). The first and last days of the festival are special holiday Sabbaths. The entire seven-day festival is called Hag HaMatzah (המצה הג), which means "The Festival of Unleavened Bread."

From First Fruits of Zion- http://www.ffoz.org