Unleavened Bread

 

Feast of Unleavened Bread

Paul is referring to the feast of Unleavened Bread described in Exodus 12 and Leviticus 23. It is the second annual festival the Lord, the Eternal God, described to Moses as one of “my feasts” (Leviticus 23:2). God instructed Moses that this festival was to be kept forever (Exodus 12:17). All people claiming to be true Christians are duty-bound to keep this feast.

Unfortunately, most Christian churches teach that the festivals and associated holy days listed in Leviticus 23 were abolished with the Old Covenant. This is false doctrine and teaching that wrecks people’s spiritual lives. Let’s understand what Paul teaches us to do.

Jesus Christ, Paul and the original 12 apostles faithfully observed all of God’s feasts. However, they kept the feasts with a new emphasis, built on the foundation that was established in the Old Testament. For example, Jesus Christ changed the symbols of the Old Testament Passover (which had been sacrificing and eating a young unblemished lamb as a sin offering, along with unleavened bread). He instituted the foot-washing ceremony, plus eating a small piece of unleavened bread and drinking a small amount of red wine (John 13:3-17; Matthew 26:26-29).

The new symbols showed that He was God’s Passover Lamb to deliver all humanity from their enslavement to sin (John 1:29). Jesus Christ also taught Paul and the other disciples that there was a spiritual dimension to all the feasts, a dimension that all Christians should learn and apply to their spiritual lives.

Passover—The First Step

One cannot properly keep the Passover without also keeping the Days of Unleavened Bread. In Exodus 12, God instructed Moses that the Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread had to be kept one right after the other. Traditionally, the two festivals were often called simply the Passover (Luke 22:1).

God commanded Moses to teach the people how to keep the whole time period (Exodus 12:1). “And this day shall be unto you for a memorial; and ye shall keep it a feast to the Lordthroughout your generations; ye shall keep it a feast by an ordinance for ever. Seven days shall ye eat unleavened bread; even the first day ye shall put away leaven out of your houses: for whosoever eateth leavened bread from the first day until the seventh day, that soul shall be cut off from Israel. And in the first day there shall be an holy convocation, and in the seventh day there shall be an holy convocation to you; no manner of work shall be done in them, save that which every man must eat, that only may be done of you,” instructed Moses (verses 14-16). What are the important points of these verses?

God established the Days of Unleavened Bread as a memorial of the time God brought them out from Egypt (verse 17). Keeping the Passover ceremony proved to be an incredibly miraculous event for them. They were spared from the plague of the firstborn that came upon Egypt (verse 29).

But the Passover was only the first step in God’s plan to deliver them.

The children of Israel had become severely weakened culturally, physically and spiritually while enslaved in Egypt. Israel had become a degenerate people (Deuteronomy 7:7-8). The Israelites were surrounded by it; God looks on Egypt as a type of sin (Hebrews 11:24-27), and they had been saturated in it for centuries.

To fully come out of Egypt, the children of Israel needed to change internally—to come out of their filthy way of living not only by leaving the borders of Egypt behind, but also by changing their human nature. They had to literally unlearn what they had learned in Egypt.

To teach them that lesson, God required three things of them. Two of the seven days of Unleavened Bread (the first and seventh) were established high Sabbaths where the people gathered together to be instructed in God’s way of life. They were also required to put all leaven out of their houses and then to eat only unleavened bread for the whole festival period. Why?

Leaven—Type of Sin

In the Bible, leaven pictures sin. However, unleavened bread pictures the sinless life that Jesus Christ lived as a human being on Earth (Hebrews 4:14-16). Paul understood this clearly. Living a life of sin (or in Egypt) puffs human beings up like yeast puffs up dough (1 Corinthians 5:2). Sin causes human beings to arrogantly rebel against God and His Ten Commandments.

Paul got the news that a man in the Corinthian congregation was regularly committing extremely sordid fornication. His lifestyle was well known and accepted by fellow members in the Church. In fact, they were proud of themselves for being so “understanding” of this man’s sin.

“Your glorying is not good. Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump,” warned Paul. The man’s sin was spreading sin throughout the congregation. Had the Corinthians been on target spiritually, they would have put that sinning member out of their midst until he repented of such heinous actions. Because they did not, they also became infected with sin. This is such a simple lesson to understand. Sin spreads in our lives like yeast in flour. When we do not stop sin, it stops us.

Purge Out Leaven

Paul loved the Corinthians. He wanted to make sure that they qualified to receive eternal life. “Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened,” he admonished them (1 Corinthians 5:7, first part). True Christians can never be casual about any sins, even the seemingly small ones. When we see sin in our lives, we must put it out quickly! Why? Sins spread rapidly and separate us from God (Isaiah 59:1-2). Separation from God leads to eternal death!

Even more, we must have deep respect for Jesus Christ’s huge personal sacrifice for us. He was God prior to His human birth. He was our direct Creator (Ephesians 3:9). The Passover ceremony shows us what great lengths Christ had to endure so our sins could be washed away (Revelation 1:5). Jesus Christ’s sacrifice made us unleavened spiritually. All true Christians have the duty to remain unleavened.

God requires us to keep the Days of Unleavened Bread because “Christ our passover is sacrificed for us” (1 Corinthians 5:7, last part.) Every year during the Days of Unleavened Bread, we are reminded of our part in our own salvation. Christ deleavened us from our past sins with His death (Romans 5:8-10). It is our job to keep sin out—to stay unleavened. The Christian who does not keep this wonderful festival is confused about how to handle sin in his personal life. His eternal life is in serious jeopardy.

“Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth,” encouraged Paul (verse 8). The festival of Unleavened Bread truly is a celebration. Great joy comes into our lives when we face the truth about the destructiveness of sin. Our sins destroyed the very life of our own Creator. It will destroy our lives as well. God wants to save us from that—and that is cause for celebration!

Jesus Christ died so we can live for eternity. He desires that we live the same righteous life that He did. He is alive and doing everything He can do to help us. We must never forget that we are saved by His life. Christ will not do it all for us—as some mistakenly believe. We must put sin out by putting His righteousness in. Honest, sincere study and full obedience to God’s Word is the unleavened bread we must be eating. Let’s be fully aware of not only the price Christ paid for us—let’s all celebrate the festival of Unleavened Bread.

The Feasts of Passover and Unleavened Bread

To make this point, Paul draws on the old covenant festivals of Passover and Unleavened Bread. Here is a brief overview of the meaning and observance of these festivals:

• At the original Passover feast, God passed through Egypt to strike down every firstborn in their midst, but he passed over his people when he saw the blood of the Passover sacrifice on their doorframes (Ex. 12:1–20). For this reason, Israel remembered Passover as a day of God's great redemption and deliverance for their people, when they ate unleavened bread in their haste to leave Egypt (Deut. 16:3).

• Every year after that, Israel commemorated the original Passover on the twilight on the 14th day of the first month, beginning with the sacrifice of the Passover lamb (Lev. 23:5). For the next seven days, Israel could only eat unleavened bread (Ex. 12:18–19).

• The Passover, then, transitioned seamlessly into the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which began officially on the 15th day of the first month (Lev. 23:6). During this time, Israel could neither eat anything leavened nor even keep any leaven in their homes.

In 1 Corinthians 5:6–8, Paul demonstrates how these festivals point forward to Christ:

• Christ is our ultimate Passover lamb who was sacrificed for us (1 Cor. 5:7). He has sanctified us by his blood, so that the wrath of God passes over us.

• We are now living, then, in an ongoing Feast of Unleavened Bread, where we must purge any spiritual leaven (that is, corrupting sin) from our midst to live holy lives: "Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth" (1 Cor. 5:8).

It is not that we purge evil from our lives in order to become holy, for only Christ can make us holy as our ultimate Passover sacrifice. Instead, as Gordon Fee points out, we must become what we already are:

The death of Christ makes them new; yet they must get rid of the old in order to be new, precisely because in Christ they already are new! Thus no “do in order to be,” but “do because you are.” (Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, rev. ed., 236.)

Christ our Passover Lamb has been sacrificed—let us keep the feast!

Becoming What You Are: Pursuing our Calling

By seeking to become what we are, we hold two principles in tension. First, we affirm that Christ has died to sanctify us as holy. By his blood, he has not only protected us from the wrath of God and justified us as righteous in God's sight. More than that, he has cleansed us and set us apart as holy and sanctified.

Second, we acknowledge that we have much more sanctification left to go. While justification completelyand perfectly pardons us of our sin and imputes to us Christ's righteousness, so that we may never fall into condemnation, sanctification graduallyand increasingly subdues sin and infuses in us Christ's holiness so that we grow toward perfection—even though we will not reach that goal in this life (WLC 77). 

Sanctification as Identity and Calling

Paul gets at these two ideas in the second verse of 1 Corinthians: "To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours" (1 Cor. 1:2).

As an identity, the church of Jesus Christ is already sanctified in Christ Jesus. They have been rendered sacred and consecrated to the service of God through faith in Christ Jesus (Hodge, A Commentary on 1 & 2 Corinthians, 3). That is, by Christ's sacrificed, they have already been made into a new, unleavened lump of dough: "as you really are unleavened" (1 Cor. 5:7).

As a calling, the church of Jesus Christ must grow in their sanctification. The Westminster Larger Catechism defines this ongoing process of sanctification in this way:

Sanctification is a work of God's grace, whereby they whom God hath, before the foundation of the world, chosen to be holy, are in time, through the powerful operation of his Spirit applying the death and resurrection of Christ unto them, renewed in their whole man after the image of God; having the seeds of repentance unto life, and all other saving graces, put into their hearts, and those graces so stirred up, increased, and strengthened, as that they more and more die unto sin, and rise unto newness of life. (WLC 75)

Pursuing our Calling

On the basis of our identity, Paul urges us in 1 Corinthians 5:6–8 to pursue our calling. We have been sanctified in Christ Jesus; how, then, can we neglect living out our calling to be saints?

By the grace of God, we must increasingly die to sin by purging our old sin patterns from our lives. Furthermore, we must pray for the Holy Spirit to give us the fruit of lives shaped by his influence:

[22] But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, [23] gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. [24] And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. (Gal. 5:22–24)

The old covenant festivals were shadows of a much greater spiritual reality. In the new covenant, we celebrate the Feast of Unleavened Bread by growing in the holiness purchased for us by the sacrifice of Christ, our Passover lamb.

Remaining What You Were: Presuming upon our Identity

The chief alternative to becoming what we are, then, is to remain what we were. When we remain what we were, we do not pursue the calling given to us. Rather, we presume upon the identity we have received as the sanctified people of God. 

The Works of the Flesh

So, instead of thoroughly removing every remaining vestige of the spiritual leaven of malice and evil, we continue to live according to the unholy works of the flesh:

[16] But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. [17] For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. [18] But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. [19] Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, [20] idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, [21] envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. (Gal. 5:16–21)

How We Justify Remaining What We Were

We might use many different excuses for remaining what we were, rather than pursuing our calling to live as saints. For example:

"That's just how I am."

Certainly, your sin characterizes the way that you were, but Christ has made you new by his sacrifice. Cleanse out the old leaven so that you do not remain what you were.

"That's an area where I 'struggle.'"

When we say this, we aren't usually describing an active struggle, but a passive struggle. That is, we are not really struggling to put our sin to death in order to live our new life in the power of the Holy Spirit. Rather, our consciences are struggling with guilt over our lack of effort.

"I don't want to be legalistic."

Legalism and obedience are entirely different things. Legalism means making and enforcing rules that go beyond what God has commanded in his word. Ultimately, Satan uses legalism to lead us into disobedience. On the other hand, Jesus insists that if you love him, you will do what he commands (John 14:15). 

Let Us Celebrate the Festival!

How about you, then? Do you depend entirely on the sacrifice of Jesus Christ to cleanse you of your sin? If so, then do you also pursue the calling to which he has consecrated you, to live as a saint?

Cleanse out whatever remains of the spiritual leaven in your life, leading you back into old patterns of sin. Do you know that Christ created you to be a fresh, holy, new lump of dough for his holy use?

If so, then let us celebrate the festival!

One of the statutes that God ordained for His people was that they would keep feasts unto God three times a year. In total there were seven feasts, but in Exo. 23:14-19 God ordained three main feasts for His people to keep: the feast of the unleavened bread, the feast of the harvest, and the feast of the tabernacles.

When Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh to ask him to let God’s people go they said, Thus says Jehovah the God of Israel, Let My people go that they may hold a feast to Me in the wilderness (Exo. 5:1).

The sole purpose of God telling Pharaoh to release His people was that they would come to the wilderness and hold a feast unto Him; it is almost as if nothing else matters. The same in Exo. 10:9, where Moses told Pharaoh that him and all his people with all their cattle and possessions will go out from Egypt to hold a feast unto Jehovah.

These appointed feasts are important to God; they are not just some “holidays”, some Old Testament types, but they are essential and central in God’s desire and plan concerning His people. This week we will dive deeper into the intrinsic meaning of the three feasts God ordained His people to keep, and we will see how they typify the full enjoyment of the Triune God in Christ.

The Meaning and the Implications of Keeping a Feast to the Lord

In Exo. 23:14 Jehovah ordained that “three times a year you shall hold a feast to Me”; these times were the Feast of Unleavened Bread (Deut. 16:1-8); the Feast of the Harvest, that is, the Feast of Weeks (vv. 9-12), or the Feast of Pentecost; and the Feast of Ingathering, that is, the Feast of Tabernacles (Lev. 23:34; Deut. 16:13-15).

What does it mean to hold a feast unto the Lord? To hold a feast to the Lord is to worship Him; God desires worshippers, and the worship He desires is by His people enjoying Him in His presence. God doesn’t want us to prostrate before Him or perform some religious duties (according to our natural mentality); He wants us to enjoy God in His presence.

The worship of God involves offering sacrifices of all that we have labored on, possess, and are; this worship is what God desires. In worshipping God according to His way we enjoy God as our provision through His dispensing of Himself into us.

Holding a feast to the Lord is a time to celebrate, enjoy ourselves, participate in God’s joy for Him becoming our provision and dispensing Himself into us through these provisions.

To hold a feast to the Lord means that we rest: we stop all our doing and daily affairs, and just rest with God, with what we have enjoyed of Him. God’s intention is that His people would enjoy Him, feast with Him, and rest in Him. The feast is the rest and enjoyment with God and also with one another; a feast is a “party”, a “celebration” between God and His people.

However, these feasts are not just so that “we may feel good in God’s presence” but they are UNTO Jehovah; they are for us to participate in His joy. These feasts are holy convocations, special gatherings, particular assemblies called for a special purpose by God; they are not common but godly, holy, special unto God.

The feasts are appointed by God – we have no right to start a feast, but we should just join the feast He has appointed. In feasting with God we should do no work and no labor, but we should rest and enjoy God in the principle of the Sabbath.

God wants us to rest with Him, feast with Him, and worship Him, and so we need to stop our doing, speaking, and even serving God so that we may feast on God! These feasts are full of sacrifices: we need to offer Christ as the fruit of our lips and the praise of our mouth, enjoying grace in our heart and praising the Lord.

Also, many of these feasts are of remembrance, causing us to remember what God wants us to remember, that is, realize what God has done in us and with us. Keeping these feasts unto God three times a year typifies the full enjoyment of the Triune God in Christ (2 Cor. 13:14); the reality of all these feasts is Christ, and when we enjoy Christ we keep the feast!

Lord, thank You for delivering us from Satan’s usurpation so that we may keep a feast unto You! Lord, we stop our doing, our struggle, and our labor and we just come to You in Your appointed time so that we may enjoy You, feast with You, and offer Christ as the reality of all the sacrifices! Lord, we want to offer You the worship You desire by enjoying You in Your presence day by day. May we enter into Your rest, feast on You and with You, and enjoy You both personally and with the saints as Your people for Your satisfaction!

Keeping the Feast of Unleavened Bread by Purging Away all the Sinful Things

The first feast that God ordained for His people to keep was the feast of Unleavened bread, which is a continuation of the feast of the Passover; the feast of passover lasted for one night (typifying God’s redemption by passing over them in His judgement over Egypt when He sees the blood), but the feast of unleavened bread lasted for seven days (typifying the enjoyment of Christ as the unleavened bread for all the days of our Christian life).

Keeping the feast of Unleavened Bread (Deut. 16:1-8) typifies the purging away of all sinful things through the enjoyment of Christ as the sinless life supply (Exo. 23:15). The children of Israel were to observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread for seven days as a continuation of the Feast of the Passover; actually, the Feast of the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread are one (12:15-20; 13:6-7; Matt. 26:17).

God’s redemption and salvation from the world is not the end; there must be a continuation of a daily enjoying God in Christ as the unleavened bread.

Exodus 13:7 says that no leaven was to be seen with the children of Israel. In our Christian life no leaven should be seen. It is impossible for us to have no leaven at all, but it is possible for the leaven not to be seen. Although it is not possible for us to be without sin, we must deal with any sin that is manifested, with any sin that is seen. This means that we are responsible to deal with the sin of which we are conscious. Whenever we discover something sinful in our lives, we must eliminate it. This, however, does not mean that we shall have no sin. There may be much sin in our lives or in our environment, but we may not be conscious of it. However, as soon as we become conscious of it, we must deal with it. We must forsake the sin of which we are conscious. We should not tolerate any manifestation of sin. (Witness Lee, Life-study of Exodus, pp. 850)

There are certain sins we have and are in our environment that we may not be conscious of, and in a sense we may not be responsible to deal with; but the sins that God has exposed, have come to light, and we are aware of we need to deal with immediately, since they are offensive to God, being against God’s holiness.

When we speak of a feast we think of “happy time” and “celebration”, but in our Christian life we need to realize that our real enjoyment is of God in Christ, and sin causes us to lose this enjoyment; therefore, the first thing we need to do if we mean business to enjoy God is to deal with any sins that the Lord exposes.

If we want to enjoy God in Christ and feast on Him day by day, rest in Him, and be satisfied with Him, we need to deal with the sins that God points out in our life and remove any sin that is exposed. The more we deal with sin, the more enjoyment of God we have; sin is an obstacle to enjoying God, and tolerating sin causes loss of the enjoyment of God.

If we do not deal with the sins that God points out, the Spirit shines on, and the word of God clearly disagrees with, we will lose both the enjoyment of God and of the fellowship of God’s people (Exo. 12:19; 1 Cor. 5:13).

As the church, we are a new lump which is unleavened; we should keep the feast not with the leaven of malice, evil, and sin, but in sincerity and truth (both of which refer to the sinless life of Christ, which has become our supply).

God hates sin; a country may legislate certain sins as a law or a way of living, but our highest standard is the word of God in the Bible. We respect the law of the land but we never compromise with God’s holiness and righteousness.

The world is going down in a spiral faster and faster, the mystery of lawlessness is rampant, but we are not here to “reform the society” or for a “political agenda” but we hold the word of God, we are His loving seekers, we worship Him, and we are one with Him in His nature and desire.

We are a new breed of people, those who hate sin and deal with sin so that we may be a new lump, a loaf of unleavened bread.

Lord Jesus, keep us feasting on You as our sinless life supply so that we may be able to deal with any sin that Your light exposes. Lord, we want to keep the feast of unleavened bread by dealing with any sin that You point out, the Spirit shines on, the word of God disagrees with, and it is clearly manifested. We just want to enjoy You more in purity, sincerity, and genuineness. Let us keep the feast of the unleavened bread in sincerity and truth. Oh, God, we worship You and we are one with You in Your holiness and righteousness!