What was feast of unleavened bread

Passover however is only one 24 hour period while Feast of Unleavened Bread lasts for seven days. On the evening after Passover God told the Hebrew people exiting Egypt not to allow their bread to rise, but to grab everything and leave. The ancient peoples used to gather yeast on grape leaves to leaven their bread if they needed to speed up the process, but God said "Don't even let any leavening touch the dough. Just bake it and go.

God then told them that in the future they were to commemorate this feast by getting all yeast out of the house for seven days. On a normal Passover eve a family that celebrates the Biblical feasts will leave a bit of bread in their home in hidden places for the children to find.

The children will search out the yeasty creations till they "eradicate" the yeast from the house. The family then takes what is found and burns it outside. If you are trying to clean your house of all yeast you will realize just how tediously impossible that idea is, on your own. No matter how I sweep or dust, yeast is in the air , hence how it lands on grape leaves, it always finds it's way back into the home. When you put a little yeast in flour and water it grows — multiplies with each warm second they remain together.

For anyone who has worked with whole wheat, they can attest to the fact they once the yeast is added, there is no way to get it back out. Because of our ancestors, Adam and Eve, sin had the chance to enter the originally perfect world. We are now born into a sinful world and no matter what we do growing up, there isn't a thing we can do to get all of the sin out of us. We may be able to convince other humans we are "squeaky-clean", but not God. He knows our born-in-sin-nature, completely.

So as we clean out our homes of the yeast and eat Matzo, yeastless bread, we are reminded that it is a hopeless case. We need someone perfect to do it for us. Matzo has a special way it is made now. It has stripes that look like bruises and is pierced thru. The Rabbi's reason for this is to make the bread cook fast, from start to finish in 18 minutes actually.

Eighteen minutes is supposedly the amount of time it takes to prepare and cook it in a manor that will keep all yeast out. What they don't seem to realize is that they have created the perfect symbolism that God initiated long ago. Jesus was beaten and bruised and pierced for our sins. He was and is the only sinless person on this planet and His body is represented by the matzo. It is an image that is indelibly printed on your mind. My father was a marine, and I remember as an eleven year old being taken to Washington D.

And I remember how struck I was by this memorial; and it brought back a flood of thoughts into my mind. As an eleven year old boy, I wasn't even in existence when the Second World War occurred, but through my father's stories and through the presence of that monument, certain things were sealed in my mind.

So also these memorials that God has appointed to His children are designed to seal in our minds His work of redemption. The worship of God demands our preparation, consecration and full attention. Now secondly, if you will look at the verses , you will see the details of the feast. The feast is established in verse 14, and it is detailed in verses 15 through In fact, you will find ten instructions here.

Just like we saw at least sixteen specific instructions for Passover, we find ten instructions for the Feast of Unleavened Bread. And again, it strikes me as we read this passage that we are reminded that the worship of God demands our preparation, our consecration, and our full attention, and you will see in each of these instructions how our preparation, and our consecration and our full attention are evoked.

Look at verse You will see three things in verse 15 which are stressed. First, we are to eat only unleavened bread for seven days. Seven days, you shall eat unleavened bread. The seven days perhaps refers to a period of completeness. And the rabbis note that whereas some of the Passover regulations were temporary, for instance the spreading of the blood on the lentil and on the door posts, that was temporary.

That was a one time activity. That wasn't repeated in the later Passovers. But all of the instructions of unleavened bread were perpetual, they were essential to the observation. Whereas, there was only one Passover where the door posts and the lentil would have been painted, in all the feasts of unleavened bread, these particular commands were going to be kept.

They were essential and they were perpetual. The unleavened bread, the bread of haste is to be used. You will find out why this was called the bread of haste when you learn again that the later rabbis required that this bread be made from start to finish in under eighteen minutes or it be thrown out.

From the time that you begin kneading it, to the time that it was baked, eighteen minutes, total. Truly the bread, I don't know how much time bread normally takes, but eighteen minutes is pretty good. So it is the bread of haste that is to be used. The leaven, of course, in the Passover, referred to the haste of preparation for the Passover.

It reminded the children of Israel that they were going to have to get out of town quick. They had to make their preparations very quickly and be ready to move. And the leaven in the feast of unleavened bread seems to be related to the corruption that leaven often had with later associations in the Bible.

In the New Testament, leaven is regularly used as an emblem of a corrupting element, just like you just read in I Corinthians chapter 5. And so with regard to unleavened bread, the removal of leaven from the houses seems to be emblematic of cleansing of impure qualities and such. Of course, removal of, leaven from the houses would have also prevented any kind of an accidental use of the leaven in the process of preparation of the bread. As an added bonus, it would have practically also given you a new start for leaven.

Leaven was apparently used like this: it was a lump of dough left over from the last batch. It had already fermented. It would be scooped up when you were preparing your next batch and would be added into it to help the rising of the bread itself.

And it would have been utilized over and over. Anything left, would have been kept over. Well, you can imagine that after a year, you are bound to have some stuff that has been around for a while.

Now this actually hit me when I was in Scotland. I had a friend, who had very kindly invited me over to his apartment, and he was going to serve me some breakfast.

And he had the coffee and the tea going. He was very kind to have coffee going for a barbarian like myself since he was drinking tea. And he had some other things going for breakfast. And I noticed him open a drawer and remove and object that was solid. I said to him, what is that? He said, oh that is the porridge.

You have your porridge in a drawer? Oh yeah, you know we scoop it out of the pan, after the last use and we just put it in the drawer. And then we bring it out again, we add a little water, we stir it up, we put it on the stove and we use it again. Needless to say, I was not thrilled about eating that porridge. You can imagine that after a year some porridge would have some very old elements in it in that kind of a setting.

Well, the Feast of Unleavened Bread made sure that you cleaned out all the old leaven and at least you had a new start for the year to come. At any rate, very seriously, at the end of verse 15, we are told that anyone who eats the leaven is to be cut off. Whoever eats anything leaven from the first day, to the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel. This is of course, a reference to Old Testament church discipline.

The phrase, cut off from Israel , is used thirty-six times in the first five books of the Bible. It is mostly used in connection with violations of God's law, in connection with worship, and sexual immorality. Those two areas are considered so important that a gross offense in them requires that a person be cut off from Israel. It is a representation here of Old Testament church discipline.

And it shows how serious these ordinances are to be taken. Trifle with these ordinances, and you find yourself ostracized, perhaps even physically displaced from the people of God, but certainly put outside of the fellowship of God's people. Church discipline is something that is designed of course, to protect the purity of the body. But it also designed to be a warning and a protection to the hearts of men. Paul, when he speaks of church discipline being applied in I Corinthians, sees it as a way in which a brother might be won back from the wiles of Satan.

The Baptists, last century, as they wrote manuals of church discipline for their local churches had beautiful phraseology in this regard. When they had gone through the various steps of church discipline and had been unable to win a brother back, they said this. But this was not an act of spite or meanness or vengeance. He was to be considered a friend who might be won back into the brotherhood.

And so the cutting off of the new covenant always has in view a restoration of the offending party. In verse 16, we see two more instructions. The feast is to be observed on the first and seventh days through holy assemblies. On the first day, you are to have a holy assembly, and another holy assembly on the seventh day.

A holy convocation, a sacred assembly refers to a religious gathering on sacred days. This word is used seventeen times in the first five books of the Bible. It is used four times right here in Exodus, and it refers to that gathering of God's people on certain holy days. And they are to do that during the feast of unleavened bread.

In the second part of verse 16, we learn this: No work whatsoever is to be done except for work related to the preparation of the food for the feast of unleavened bread. No work at all shall be done on them except what must be eaten by every person. That alone may be prepared. Notice how similar this is to the Sabbath laws that you will later see set down in Exodus chapter 16, and Exodus chapter 20, and Exodus chapter 34 and other passages like that.

You see a similarity to the Sabbath laws. One thing: it is a little looser than the Sabbath laws. You remember in the later Sabbath laws, they are not even to cook on the Sabbath. Here they are allowed to cook. Now think, why? Because the purpose of the cooking is a celebration of the feast of the Lord. What is the principle? The Lord wants our full attention. I want it on Me. I want you to be thinking about Me. I want you to be thinking about what I have done.

I want you to be thinking about My grace. I want you to be thinking about My benefits. I want you to be holy and solely focused on Me. So those are the first five instructions. Let's look at the second five. Look at verse 17, you will see two more of them. You shall observe the feast of unleavened bread, because on this day, I brought your hosts out of the land of Egypt.

It is to be observed that day, because the Lord brought Israel out of Egypt. Notice two things about this. Notice that He is telling them this in Exodus chapter 12, verse Quick question: what has not yet happened? Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Therefore purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened. Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

We need to renew our minds from all 'wrong thinking'. This I say therefore, and testify in Elohim YaHuWaH, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles the world walk, in the futility of their mind, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of Abba, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart;" Ephesians , Leaven, strictly speaking, is an influence which can also represent the permeating of the Holy Spirit.

Luke But in this feast it indicates the adulteration of the Word of YaHuWaH, the souring of it from its original state of purity. We must put out of our lives all that corrupts and mars the image of Messiah in us.

Note that those who did not keep the feast were separated from His people Ex. Failure to keep the feast in its spiritual application will also result in separation for us and disqualification from the kingdom of YaHuWaH -- 2 Cor.

For the Exodus, they were to be packed, having their loins girded and be ready to leave the dominion of Pharaoh for the promised land. They had the promise of a good land to which they were going for which they had to leave everything of the old behind. They went on their pilgrim journey with only the Spirit to lead them, living in tents as sojourners until they reached their destination. During that whole journey they ate no leavened bread, but were fed with the pure manna from heaven until they came to the promised land.

We also must have the loins of our mind girded with truth 1 Peter leaving everything of the world behind us. We are called to be sojourners and pilgrims in this world with no permanent resting place to get settled in the things of this world. So in prohibiting leavened bread for seven days out of the year, YaHuWaH is reminding us that we need to set our priorities. We need to be packed and ready for our trip to the world to come.

As they prepared for the ordinance, they had a yearly 'spring clean' which we can apply as a yearly check-point, a time of soul-searching, allowing the light of the Spirit to search our 'house' and remove the old leaven of Egypt. The feasts of Israel are said to be a "shadow" of the good things to come in Messiah Colossians ; Hebrews They provide an "outline" of Him.

And though they are but shadows, still, shadows are cast by their reality and are not separated from their substance. And, while the work of Messiah's resurrection is complete, the glorious promise of our full resurrection is not. So let us 'rehearse', prepare for, and remember this time by restoring the ancient paths of the pure unfermented grain of His Word in our lives.

YaHuWshuwaH said, "I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate manna in the wilderness, and are dead. I am the living bread which came down from heaven. This is the bread which came down from Heaven.

This is one of the feasts which will be continued in the Millennium Ezekiel - it is declared to be a memorial forever - Exodus They are to be times of gathering together to praise YaHuWaH for His great redemptive plan and to celebrate our deliverance from the bondage of this world. As we go through the rehearsal of the past in His wondrous mercy and grace toward us in all He has done for us, we keep alive the memory of it and the anticipation of the future promises and the glory which is yet to come.