Sermon: Unleavened Bread Basics
#1759
David C. Grabbe
Given 27-Apr-24; 67 minutes
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transcript:
God’s feasts are disruptive. Maybe you have never thought of them in that light. But each one, in some way, disrupts our normal course of life, and requires that we adjust and, hopefully, turn off the cruise control or auto-pilot. The weekly and annual Sabbaths are days without normal work, as well as days of convocation. Our normal activities are disrupted for the sake of more important things—spiritual things.
The Feast of Tabernacles disrupts our lives in a major way because we travel, and we stay in temporary dwellings. The Day of Atonement is disruptive because we are accustomed to eating and drinking on a very regular basis, and when we stop, it is all but impossible to ignore. The Feast of Trumpets is literally a Day of Shouting, and great noise always grabs our attention.
Regarding the Feast of Weeks, certainly not every Pentecost is as disruptive or dramatic as when Israel was at Mount Sinai or when the Holy Spirit was given in Acts 2, but it is still a day that interrupts our lives as the culmination of seven weeks of counting.
And Unleavened Bread is highly disruptive, not only because of the work involved in deleavening, but also because our diets are affected—which certainly gets our attention, as God intends. All these times are different enough from other days that we are prompted to think about the reasons for them.
Over the decades, it has become somewhat traditional to begin the Feast of Tabernacles with the question, “Why are we here?” Of course, we are keeping a different feast of God right now, but the question is still good to ask so we can have the right focus and conviction for our observance of it.
Without regular refreshing, our memories get a bit fuzzy. Not only that, but we also seem to find ourselves on auto-pilot more and more these days. Doing things out of habit can be a great feature in some instances, but in our spiritual walk, it can lead to stumbling or even taking the wrong path because our feet are moving but our focus is elsewhere. And so, it is necessary to remind ourselves why we do what we do so we can be fully present with God.
If you grew up in the church, as I did, there are certain phrases and responses that come to mind automatically. Over the years, when I have been asked about why we put out leaven and why we eat Matzos or other unusual bread for a week, I have said things like, “leaven is a symbol of sin, and the feast pictures putting sin out of our lives.” Another common one is that “these days picture our coming out of sin, just as Israel came out of Egypt.” Those are the basic explanations I heard while growing up and which I have repeated without much thought.
Now, those answers contain truth—please don’t misunderstand what I am getting at here. But those answers also give a different emphasis for this feast than God’s word does. There is no question that leavening symbolizes sin, and we are required to completely avoid leavening during the Feast of Unleavened Bread. In addition, striving against sin and getting rid of it in our lives is clearly required for all followers of Jesus Christ.
However, those are not the primary reason or explanation that God Himself gives for this Feast. When we go back to the basic instructions, which we will do today, we see that God’s reason for this feast gives us the proper context for putting sin out of our lives. But we have to start with what He says about this Feast if we want to be of the same mind and ensure that our automatic answers are in alignment with Scripture.
The Feast of Unleavened Bread is first mentioned by name in Exodus 12:
Exodus 12:15-20 Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. On [or, by] the first day you shall remove leaven from your houses. For whoever eats leavened bread from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel. On the first day there shall be a holy convocation, and on the seventh day there shall be a holy convocation for you. No manner of work shall be done on them; but that which everyone must eat—that only may be prepared by you. So you shall observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread, for on this same day I will have brought your armies out of the land of Egypt. Therefore you shall observe this day throughout your generations as an everlasting ordinance. In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at evening, you shall eat unleavened bread, until the twenty-first day of the month at evening. For seven days no leaven shall be found in your houses, since whoever eats what is leavened, that same person shall be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether he is a stranger or a native of the land. You shall eat nothing leavened; in all your dwellings you shall eat unleavened bread.'"
In verse 17, God gives the fundamental reason for this feast. It says, “for on this same day I will have brought your armies out of the land of Egypt.” In other words, it is a memorial of God’s deliverance. That’s why God commands this Feast to be observed—to continually remember His deliverance. That’s the foundation. All the other aspects of this Feast build on top of it. The eating of unleavened bread and avoiding leavening are things we do in response, but the reason God gives for the feast is to memorialize His deliverance.
These verses contain something else. Even though rejoicing is not directly mentioned in the instructions, it is still a feast, and so rejoicing is implied. Granted, the food we eat is somewhat unusual compared to what we normally associate with a festive occasion. We have to rejoice without pretzels or pizza or cookies. Instead, our rejoicing includes the bread of affliction, which we will look at later. But nevertheless, this feast is an appointed time for us to remember God’s deliverance, and rejoicing should be the result.
This is a sidenote, but it relates here. We commonly refer to this week as the “Days of Unleavened Bread.” That phrase is only used in two places, both in Acts (Acts 12:3; 20:6). It refers to the time or season in which unleavened bread is used, and that span of time began before the seven-day Feast. But the Bible consistently calls the seven-day observance itself the “Feast of Unleavened Bread,” which shows that it is a time to celebrate. Physical Israel kept this Feast as a memorial of God’s deliverance from Egypt. Spiritual Israel keeps this Feast as a memorial of an even greater, spiritual deliverance.
As another aside, Lot’s rescue from Sodom may have taken place during this feast as well. Lot made a feast for his angelic guests, and the account specifically notes that he baked unleavened bread. It is the first mention of unleavened bread, and it was for the meal before Lot and his family were delivered. So, there is a connection between unleavened bread and deliverance.
Now, we will move forward a chapter and read the next instructions for this feast:
Exodus 13:3-10 And Moses said to the people: "Remember this day in which you went out of Egypt, out of the house of bondage; for by strength of hand the Lord brought you out of this place. No leavened bread shall be eaten. On this day you are going out, in the month Abib. And it shall be, when the Lord brings you into the land of the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Amorites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, which He swore to your fathers to give you, a land flowing with milk and honey, that you shall keep this service in this month. Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, and on the seventh day there shall be a feast to the Lord. Unleavened bread shall be eaten seven days. And no leavened bread shall be seen among you, nor shall leaven be seen among you in all your quarters. And you shall tell your son in that day, saying, 'This is done because of what the Lord did for me when I came up from Egypt.' It shall be as a sign to you on your hand and as a memorial between your eyes, that the Lord's law may be in your mouth; for with a strong hand the Lord has brought you out of Egypt. You shall therefore keep this ordinance in its season from year to year.
Some among us like to count things in Scripture. Now, maybe you weren’t counting, but this passage contains three more references to God’s deliverance—in verses 3, 8, and 9.
In verse 3, God says to remember the day in which they went out, and verse 9 also calls this feast a memorial. Memorials cause God’s people to remember something foundational, and as we rehearse them, God’s lessons become imprinted into our being.
However, if we don’t get the memorials correct, the lessons that are reinforced will be skewed. As an example of this, when we attended the Feast of Tabernacles in Nashville, we toured The Hermitage, which was the home of Andrew Jackson, the seventh president of the United States. It is a memorial of a national leader. Someone who had been there years before said that it was worth seeing. However, in the intervening time, the presentation of Andrew Jackson had been re-engineered so it would fit with the prevailing attitudes of the times. As a result, many of us ended the tour with the impression that the overriding attribute of Andrew Jackson was that he owned slaves. All his accomplishments were barely whispered, but we were well aware of the fact that he had been a slave-owner.
Those of us who took history class in earlier times understand that the seventh president managed to do some other things as well that are worthy of note. But this memorial of his life skewed the focus to that one detracting reality. Those without exposure to other materials, such as the younger generation, will come away with that one fact as the main thing they remember. That’s the power a memorial can have, either for good or for ill.
Thus, it is essential for us to have the right perspective of the memorials that God commands so that we remember the things God wants us to remember, and not merely remember something that is true, but which misses the larger object that God intends.
Something similar happened in the histories of Israel and Judah. Under some of the kings, the feasts were observed, but the people didn’t remember the correct things. The books of Amos and Isaiah record that they had a good time and they paid lip-service to God, but the feasts did not produce anything lasting. The people did not tie their observance to the correct reasons, and so the feasts lost their effectiveness—their God-given power. Without the focus that God intends, the feasts became good times with a religious gloss, but they were not truly kept to God. They can even be times of debauchery, as we saw with the idolatrous Supernova Sukkot festival in Israel last fall. Over the centuries and millennia, Israel and Judah forgot what God said to remember, and it has all gone downhill.
This same downward slide has happened with the national holiday of Thanksgiving. It was originally instituted as a day to be deeply grateful to Almighty God for His providence and His blessing on this nation. Today, though, that original purpose is given a nod, but all too often, the day is just about food and alcohol and football. Whatever thanks might be given is often forgotten again the next day—Black Friday—as the national retail binge commences. Maybe some are thankful that they beat everyone else to the front of the line. But that memorial has lost its effectiveness because the nation has stopped remembering the original purpose of the day because they have forgotten God.
Now, just as we saw in chapter 12, this passage states the reason and the object of this feast, which is to remember that God brings His people out of slavery. God’s merciful deliverance undergirds everything else this feast entails.
Verse 9 here contains a critical detail. It says part of the reason we eat unleavened bread and avoid leavening is “that the Lord’s law may be in your mouth.” This is curious because what is physically in our mouths this week is unleavened bread. But here, God begins to show that the unleavened bread is symbolic. It is a token or a teaching vehicle to bring something more important to mind. We are not going to explore this just yet, but make a mental note for now, and we will come back to it.
Exodus 23:15 reiterates the basic reason for this Feast:
Exodus 23:15 You shall keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread (you shall eat unleavened bread seven days, as I commanded you, at the time appointed in the month of Abib, for in it you came out of Egypt; none shall appear before Me empty);
Again, God ties the command to observe this feast with His deliverance. This is the fifth reference. God keeps repeating for us why He wants us to observe this feast, and each time it has to do with His deliverance. How we keep it has to do with what is eaten and not eaten, but the reason we keep it is to remember God’s deliverance.
Now, if you look back to verse 14, there are two words that further underscore the real object of this and every feast. The pre-incarnate Christ says, “you shall keep a feast to Me . . ..” The feast is not a celebration of what we do, but a memorial of what He has done and continues to do, without which we couldn’t do anything of spiritual significance. Jesus Christ really is the object of the holy days, just as He is the object of all the offerings. In John 5:46, Jesus says that Moses wrote about Him. The instructions all point to Him in some way.
The next mention of this feast is found in Exodus 34:18:
Exodus 34:18 The Feast of Unleavened Bread you shall keep. Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, as I commanded you, in the appointed time of the month of Abib; for in the month of Abib you came out from Egypt.
This is the sixth reference to deliverance. Yet there is something with which to be careful in the wording, something that can influence the way we think about this feast.
This says, “in the month of Abib you came out from Egypt.” That is what happened, but we must keep in mind how it happened. It is sort of like when a child says, “the glass was dropped,” or “the ball accidentally went through the window.” That describes the action, but not who is responsible. The all-important matter of who caused these things to happen is in the background, and we can understand why a child might prefer that.
But for us, remembering who is responsible is essential. While the Israelites “came out from” Egypt, they did not just happen to come out, nor did they cause themselves to come out. Of course, they had to put forth the effort to walk, even as we must respond when God draws us from spiritual Egypt. But the Israelites came out of Egypt only because God made it possible for them to leave by decimating their captors, and then God Himself led them out of Egypt. The initiator and primary Actor in all of this was God, not God’s people. Israel “came out from Egypt” only because of God’s intervention.
Now, all the passages we have looked at so far mention Egypt, so we will explore that. We understand what Egypt meant for Israel, but we also need to understand Egypt as a symbol so we can fit ourselves and our walk with God into this.
One common interpretation is that Egypt is a type of sin. If you think about that, though, it is rather nebulous and hazy. It also breaks down quickly, because Israel was not delivered from sin. We’ll come back to that, but first I will give another way of looking at Egypt.
A second interpretation is that Egypt is a symbol of the environment of sin, where sin takes place with little thought or restraint. It is the realm of godlessness and slavery to a despotic ruler. In other words, Egypt is a symbol of the world, with Pharaoh as a type of Satan. For us, it is the environment from which we were delivered when God called us and liberated us from the authority of the prince of the power of the air. Egypt can be similar to Babylon, which is another symbol of the world, but whereas Babylon pictures the attractiveness of the world, Egypt pictures the hardship and affliction of slavery.
When we look at Israel’s exodus from Egypt, God delivered them from the house of bondage and from the power of Pharoah, but they were not delivered from sin itself. Ezekiel 20:5-10 indicates that the Israelites in Egypt refused to get rid of their idols. Joshua 24:14 and Amos 5 confirm that the Israelites carried their idols all throughout the wilderness journey and into the Promised Land. So, the Israelites were not delivered from sin, but from the power of Pharoah, from slavery, and the environment where they learned idolatry.
We can see the same thing with God’s deliverance of Lot. God had to deliver Lot and his family by means of angelic messengers because Lot and his family were so entrenched that they could not pull themselves away from that violent and depraved city. But even after they were freed, Lot’s wife longed so much for what she had that it cost her life. Then, Lot’s daughters came up with a solution to their dilemma of childlessness that fit perfectly with the immorality of the city from which they had been rescued. As with Israel, sin went with them on their way out. They were free to choose, and they chose sin. Nobody forced them. Even though they were free, they still acted according to what they had learned before. They were only delivered from the environment in which they learned sin, not from sin itself.
Now, maybe this seems like a distinction without a difference, but the difference between these two interpretations of Egypt is significant. If Egypt is taken as a symbol of sin, the next step in the explanation is that this feast pictures coming out of sin, and the emphasis moves to what we do. Again, there are things we absolutely must do. But as we have seen, God’s words concerning this feast emphasize what He did. It is a feast to Him because of what He makes possible, not a memorial of human works.
So, understanding Egypt as a symbol of the world puts the focus on what God did in delivering us from darkness, from the present evil age, and its ruler. What we do in response, then, is to eat unleavened bread and all it represents, while also putting away leaven and all that leaven represents. That’s how we memorialize His deliverance.
We will move on to the next set of Unleavened Bread instructions:
Deuteronomy 16:3-4 You shall eat no leavened bread with it; seven days you shall eat unleavened bread with it, that is, the bread of affliction (for you came out of the land of Egypt in haste), that you may remember the day in which you came out of the land of Egypt all the days of your life. And no leaven shall be seen among you in all your territory for seven days, nor shall any of the meat which you sacrifice the first day at twilight remain overnight until morning.
God continues to reinforce the purpose and meaning of this feast. Verse 3 commands the eating of unleavened bread to remember God’s deliverance. And if you are counting by now, this passage contains two more references to deliverance as the reason for the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Numerologists tell us that eight indicates super-abundance and a new beginning, which is an interesting detail. The unleavened bread is a token to remind God’s people each year of God’s liberation so they could have a new beginning. This disruption to our normal food reinforces our memory of His works.
Verse 3 mentions “the bread of affliction.” Various translations and paraphrases call it “hard-times bread,” “the bread of hardship,” “the bread of tribulation,” and “the bread of distress.” One paraphrase says it is “symbolic of affliction.” So, the theme of Egypt as a place of affliction or hardship enters the picture. Exodus 3 & 4, refer to Israel’s affliction and oppression in Egypt—same word. This theme begins back with Joseph’s naming of his son, Ephraim. Joseph says, “For God has caused me to be fruitful in the land of my affliction.” At that point, Joseph had been liberated from slavery and from prison and was now the second-in-command, but he still refers to Egypt as “the land of my affliction.”
So, each bite of unleavened bread includes with it a reminder of the former oppression and slavery under a hostile ruler. For us, it can recall the days before conversion when we believed we were free to do whatever we wanted, and probably didn’t recognize who we were serving or the ways in which we were enslaved. That is not the only meaning of unleavened bread, because the New Testament gives some additional themes that we will get to. But our former affliction and oppression before God’s intervention are principal parts of what the unleavened bread should call to mind as we eat it each day this week.
Now, we will move on to the New Testament to see even more how these things apply to us. Please turn with me to Romans 6:
Romans 6:6-7 knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. For he who has died has been freed from sin.
Paul says that we have been freed from sin, which is one type of deliverance. However, we need to understand what is in view here. The NKJV has a superscript next to the word “freed” in verse 7, and the marginal reference says, “cleared.” This Greek word is translated “justify” or “justified” everywhere else it is used (with one exception). The context here is our justification when we are baptized. We are freed from sin in the sense that sin’s penalty, the death penalty, is no longer hanging over us while we remain in Christ. When we symbolically died at baptism, we were cleared of sin. We were delivered from its claim over us, and we had a new beginning.
That deliverance was the start of a process, but it is not complete. That is why, just a few verses down, in verse 12, Paul also writes that we must not allow sin to reign in our bodies. He wouldn’t write that if sin no longer wielded any power in our lives. In the next chapter, at the end of his famous lament about still serving the law of sin and death, Paul rhetorically asks who will deliver him from his body of death. He was still awaiting a future deliverance. But those eight references to God’s deliverance draw our focus this week to what God has already delivered us from, and subsequently, how we should respond.
In Colossians 1, we will see another deliverance, if you would turn there:
Colossians 1:13 He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love . . .
Even as Israel was delivered from the power of Pharaoh, we have been delivered from the power of darkness. Darkness can be a symbol of a lack of understanding or an absence of truth. However, notice how the power of darkness is contrasted with Christ’s kingdom. It suggests that darkness here is not simply a state of being, but it is a populated realm that is in competition with Christ’s kingdom. This is further supported by the mention in verse 16 of thrones and dominions and principalities and powers, including invisible ones.
In other words, we have been delivered from the satanic or demonic realm. I John 5:19 tells us that the whole world lies under the wicked one, or under his sway. But we have been delivered from Satan and the wretchedness of his realm.
Galatians 1:4 says that Jesus Christ “gave Himself for our sins, that He might deliver us from this present evil age.” We have a new King, and a new lease on life. God purchased us, and took away Satan’s dominion over us, so now we can be slaves of righteousness instead.
This feast, then, reminds us of the difference God has made between us and those who are still under their spiritual Pharaoh, and still enslaved to sin and death. Our deliverance is an indescribable and rare blessing, and it opens avenues that this world can only dream of. But as with Israel, it is only because of what God did that we have this freedom.
As an illustration, our daughter, Charis, talked with me recently about the despair and hopelessness she sees in some of her fellow college students. Their despondency reminds her of what she read in the book, A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23, by Phillip Keller. He points out that David wrote Psalm 23 from the perspective of a sheep. The very first phrase in the psalm is like an exclamation of joyful contentment because the LORD is his Shepherd.
Of all the domesticated animals, sheep are the most dependent on humans to care for them, or they are doomed. A sheep’s well-being is directly tied to the watchfulness and thoughtfulness of his shepherd. And so, the sheep in Psalm 23 rejoices because of who he has as his shepherd, and because he knows that his life is in the very best hands possible. He knows he will be taken care of.
Using his long experience as a shepherd, Phillip Keller contrasts this with sheep he saw that belonged to negligent masters. This was what Charis remembered. Their pastures were barren and barely kept the sheep alive. Their water was polluted. The flocks were infested with parasites. The sheep were abused because their master had no regard for them except as a business interest.
Thus, the idyllic Psalm 23 serves as an unspoken contrast to the bleak and deplorable condition of those who don’t have the LORD as their Shepherd—those who are under the sway of a malignant master, a spiritual Pharoah. It shows what we have, and what those without God are missing. They will be in want—perhaps not materially, but eventually emotionally, and certainly spiritually. They won’t be cared for, or protected, or comforted. They might not feel the lack when times are good, but when the storms come and their circumstances outstrip their strength, they don’t have anyone to look after them.
Now, having the LORD as one’s shepherd is not a promise of paradise on earth, or of living on easy street. David the sheep needed his soul restored, too, because he experienced significant hardship. He had enemies. He walked through the valley of the shadow of death. However, he could walk there without fear because of his Shepherd. Even with what the LORD might require, life under His care is far better than life in this world, which may be attractive in some ways, but which also ends in futility and meaninglessness.
So, keeping this feast and being reminded of what we are delivered from should also cause us to reflect on whether we are remaining free. We must remain vigilant so we do not become ensnared again by the power of darkness or by the world. The Israelites tended to long for Egypt, even though it was the location of their oppression and hardship. They remembered Egypt with fondness and were willing to return to oppression because it was familiar and because they liked the food better.
Their example is given for our admonition, because the pressures can become so great that perhaps it seems like there would be relief if we weren’t constrained by the narrow way that leads to life. And indeed, there would be some relief. Or maybe you have grown up in the church, and it seems like everyone else is having a great time and you are being denied something. Maybe it feels like life would be better if you gave up this wilderness journey and headed for Egypt, where life appears to be good. But the latter end of rejecting the care of the Good Shepherd and seeking the embrace of Egypt would ultimately be far worse than whatever want or discomfort you may feel in the present.
Yet there is a road to back Egypt, back the world, and it seems to always have some traffic on it. Please turn with me to the book of Galatians:
Galatians 4:3 Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world.
Galatians 4:9 But now after you have known God, or rather are known by God, how is it that you turn again to the weak and beggarly elements, to which you desire again to be in bondage?
The Galatians were Gentile believers who heard the gospel but who were also listening to other teachers who were leading them astray. Those teachers were ensnaring them with a gnostic form of Judaism. I mentioned Galatians 1:4 earlier, which is about Christ’s deliverance from this present evil age. Well, the Galatians were reversing their deliverance. They were turning again to “weak and beggarly elements” and “elements of the world” that would enslave them. The “elements” in these verses refer to demonic principalities.
Notice, though, that their return to bondage was not simply renouncing religion altogether. That seems to be what happened to Paul’s companion, Demas, who loved the present age more than the deliverance God had given him. But the Galatians were different. They were returning to bondage, but it was a religious bondage. It probably felt like enlightenment, and undoubtedly it was exciting as their minds expanded with knowledge. But Paul warns them they would become enslaved again. They would be enslaved to a different set of beliefs than the enslaving ones in their pre-conversion days, so they didn’t see the chains.
Paul gave a similar warning to the Gentiles in Colossae regarding the basic principles or elements of the world. Paul warns the Colossians against being taken captive through a deceitful philosophy that is according to the traditions of men and the demonic principalities behind them (Colossians 2:8). So, they too were in danger of becoming enslaved in a different way from their former bondage, but it was enslaving nonetheless because it was leading them away from Jesus Christ (Colossians 2:20-23).
The lesson is to be cautious with the ideas that we entertain and accept. The simple fact is, there are some adventures, some side roads, that people don’t come back from, even though the path may look like the right one. The road back to Egypt probably won’t look like the one God brought us out on, so we may not realize where we are headed.
Now, we have seen the primary reason God gives for this feast, so we will move on to the other basic instructions. One is to eat unleavened bread each day for seven days, and the other is the flipside, which is not to eat anything leavened, or to have leavening in the environments over which we have control.
In all of God’s instructions for this feast, there are more references to eating unleavened bread than there are to putting out or avoiding leavening. The instructions are weighted toward the positive aspect of eating rather than the negative aspect of avoiding. Even the name of the feast reinforces this. God calls it the Feast Unleavened Bread, not the Feast of avoiding leavening.
Back in Exodus 13:9, we read that part of this feast is having God’s law in our mouths. The word translated “law” there is torah, which encompasses much more than the 10 Commandments, or even, say, the holiness code. In its broadest sense, it means “teaching” or “instruction.” Everything that is part of God’s revelation to mankind is part of His teaching, and therefore, what should be in our mouths this week.
The question, though, is what it means for God’s revelation to be “in our mouths” because the mouth can refer to speaking as well as to eating. Really, though, in the case of this feast, both applications fit.
The phrase, “in your mouth,” refers to speaking more often than to eating. In this way, God’s instructions should be a large part of what we speak about. This can challenge us. If we have been in the church for a number of years, perhaps the sheen has come off our calling. Maybe the truth, and the relationship with God, may not be as riveting or exhilarating as when our conversion process started, when we saw God dramatically change our lives, so we really don’t talk about it any longer. We talk about other things that fill our minds.
One of the natural laws we must continually fight against is entropy, of letting down, of leaving our primary love. And so, God, in His wisdom, instituted memorials to help us to remember Him and His work. And if we are reflecting on God’s work with us internally, it will come out, because “out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.” What we communicate gives evidence of what our minds and hearts are turned toward.
The other meaning of the mouth is as a symbol of eating. It indicates that taking in God’s word should be a significant part of this Feast, even more than usual. We can tie the eating aspect to what it says in Deuteronomy 8:3—that we do not live by bread alone, but by every word of God. Thus, what we eat is a symbol for what we take in and which then feeds our minds and fuels our lives. And to come full circle, if God’s word is what we feed on, it is also what will be what is on our minds, and thus, what we speak about.
So, let’s apply these symbols. Even as we physically eat unleavened bread this week, and avoid leavening, so also we should give more attention to God’s word during these seven days while leaving out material that is leavened. We have tended to focus on the physical aspect, the letter of the law, but we need to relate this to spiritual or mental food as well. This is an application that we may not have given much thought to. So, we will pick up a couple of principles, beginning with the words of our Creator:
Matthew 23:23-24 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. These you ought to have done, without leaving the others undone. Blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel!
Jesus teaches that there are greater and lesser applications of His law, but He does not do away with precision or carefulness. If you have ever had insects get into a beverage, that’s not something you just overlook. That’s something you’re going to want to do something about. What Jesus warns against is focusing on smaller things at the expense of larger things. But notice that, ultimately, He says to do both. If we neglect justice, mercy, and faithfulness, particularly in tithing, we miss the mark. But if we justify carelessness by saying it’s OK because we do the weightier matters, we also miss the mark.
When we look at God’s actions, whether in Scripture or His work in our own lives, we see that He does not neglect details for the sake of broad principles, but neither does He obsess over the details and lose the plot. His application is always complete and perfect, encompassing large and small, and that should be our goal as well.
In the same way, if our approach to leavening and unleavened bread only focuses on finding every last crumb, but we overlook the larger spiritual principles, we miss the mark. Both weightier things and little things matter.
Please turn with me to I Corinthians 9:
I Corinthians 9:8-10 Do I say these things as a mere man? Or does not the law say the same also? For it is written in the law of Moses, “You shall not muzzle an ox while it treads out the grain.” Is it oxen God is concerned about? Or does He say it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written . . .
Paul took a statute from God’s law regarding beasts of burden, and he applied it to people who labor for God. So, let’s borrow this page from Paul’s playbook and similarly ask ourselves, “Is it physical leavening or unleavened bread that God is concerned about?” And we will hasten to answer, YES, God is concerned about that, even as He is concerned about the animals. But Paul shows that God is concerned with things in the same category, and not just the words on the page. His laws contain principles that apply in more ways than just the literal one, and often in ways that are more important spiritually. So, our task is to pursue the weightier matters even as we don’t leave the smaller matters undone.
We are skilled at scanning the list of ingredients on food packages for leavening, but what we feed our minds with during this appointed time is even more important. That can be a real challenge in this Information Age because of the appetites for various media we have developed. But I believe it is a necessary challenge to take up because what goes into our minds has far more bearing on our connection with God, our spiritual health and vitality, and our course of life than what does or does not go into our stomachs. Is it physical food or mental/spiritual food God is concerned with? Well, both. Which is more important?
To bring it back around, if we struggle with having our mental diets disrupted for one week, there may be some addiction, some slavery that we are not aware of. It’s something to evaluate—whether we are truly free, or whether we have allowed ourselves to be brought under the power of something that we cannot let go of.
Even though we have been delivered from this world, we can still easily go back to following its course and imbibing its spirit through what we take in. This feast is a memorial of God’s deliverance, but within that, it is also an opportunity to evaluate how free we have remained. It is a time to think about the ways we may still be conformed to this world and whether the world is squeezing us into its mold, as J.B. Phillips put it.
Physical Israel was given freedom, and they appreciated it to a degree, but their freedom meant less to them than their comfort. They were unwilling to sacrifice to remain free. After their deliverance, they looked back with longing for the food they were accustomed to, even though it would mean going back to slavery.
Their example should cause us to consider how much we have adapted to the food of this world, such that we struggle with giving it up. We are inundated with things that feed our minds and are pleasant, but which also tend back toward slavery, back under a power other than God’s Spirit.
This feast is more than just seven days of Matzos. We can eat unleavened bread each day on autopilot and miss God’s intent. Remember that leavening and unleavened bread are symbols that point to larger and more important things. This does not mean we spiritualize away the letter of the law, but rather that we look to the weightier matters while not leaving the physical application undone. If we just do the bare minimum of the letter of the law, the memorial loses its effectiveness.
Please turn back a few pages to I Corinthians 5:
I Corinthians 5:6-8 Your glorying is not good. 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. For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us. 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.
Leavening is an agent that causes change, typically through fermentation. The ingredients break down in a biochemical reaction that produces carbon dioxide, which causes expansion. The original ingredients are changed from what they were through a reaction that will keep going as long as there are ingredients that can fuel it. So, leaven spreads.
In its broadest sense, leaven is a symbol of corruption. It includes sin, but it is not limited to sin because it also includes the ideas, philosophies, and approaches that lead to sin. This connects with what we saw in Galatians. The Galatians (and Colossians) were being influenced by philosophies and doctrines that would lead them into bondage. Leavening was corrupting them, and a new slavery would be the result if they didn’t return to Christ.
Here, Paul says a little leaven leavens the whole lump. He uses the same phrase in Galatians 5:9. In the verse that comes right before that, Paul calls the heresy that was corrupting the Galatians a “persuasion.” Paul says, “This persuasion does not come from Him who calls you.” So, leavening can be an idea that persuades us to deviate from the truth, even as our minds may feel like they are expanding.
This fits with the various warnings Jesus gave about leavening. He warned about the leaven of the Pharisees, the leaven of the Sadduccess, and the leaven of Herod. In each case, leavening is a symbol for corrupted ideas that lead to a wrong application.
In Matthew 16:12, we find that part of the leaven of the Pharisees was their doctrines, which elevated tradition above the word of God. Another part of their leaven was hypocrisy. They focused more on appearing righteous than being righteous. Jesus said of the Pharisees, “they say, and do not do” (Matthew 23:3). They exempted themselves from the standard they held others to. While they looked good, their self-centeredness and self-generated standard of righteousness made life very difficult for those caught in their orbit.
The leaven of the Sadducees was their corrupted teachings and attitudes, like skepticism, that undermined the essential doctrines of faith. As two examples, the Sadducees denied the resurrection and they denied the existence of angels. That is a significant corruption.
The leaven of Herod is interesting because of the politics of our day. It is not clearly defined, so we have to read between the lines. But from what we know of Herod, his leaven seems to be a worldly pragmatism, and an overall disregard for spiritual truth in favor of power. His corruption seems to include the use of religion for political ends. Herod wouldn’t stop his adoring crowd from likening him to God, and God struck him dead.
In recent decades in this country, we have witnessed the political parties on both sides of the aisle referring to their candidates in Messianic terms, and some candidates have used such terms to describe themselves. Mixing politics and religion is a type of leaven. It will corrupt those caught up in it because God is no longer the focus.
Here in I Corinthians 5, Paul uses malice and wickedness as additional types of leaven. Malice is an internal disposition, while wickedness is an outward manifestation. We can tell from the rest of the epistle that these corruptions were affecting the congregation, which is why Paul brought attention to them.
Paul contrasts those with sincerity and truth. Sincerity indicates purity. It means something is not a mixture. Truth here goes beyond simply being factual. It carries the implication of what is genuine and what is real. In the context, it indicates truth that is lived and not simply acknowledged.
Consider, though, that sincerity and truth epitomize the life lived by God in the flesh. He is the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth, the bread of life, the bread that fills us with spiritual life and which contains no malice, wickedness, or other corruption. We cannot generate that sincerity and truth from within—it must come from Him. It is through Jesus living His life in us that we can keep this feast with sincerity and truth.
Verse 7 says the Corinthians are truly unleavened. Paul says it is because Christ is our Passover and was sacrificed for us. Given what the rest of the letter is about, this is mind-boggling unless we understand how Passover imparts unleavenedness. It goes beyond simple forgiveness.
If you think about it, if our being truly unleavened was just a function of forgiveness, then our spiritual state would continually fluctuate between being “leavened” and “unleavened” as we sinned, sought forgiveness, sinned again, and so on. What’s really interesting is that Paul calls the Corinthians “truly unleavened” even though they were displaying improper glorying, malice, and wickedness—and those are just the sins mentioned in this passage. In chapter 3, Paul says they were still carnal. They were carnal, and they had many unresolved sins, and yet they were still truly unleavened, and Paul ties this to Passover. So, Passover must mean much more than just a payment for sin.
Remember that the Passover sacrifice was not a sin offering. Rather, it resembles the peace offering with only a slight variation. In the peace offering, a life is given up to provide a meal. But it isn’t just about food. It is a special occasion for man, the priest, and God to come together and share abundance on good terms.
That’s what Jesus did—He gave His life, and He then becomes the feast. He provides the occasion for God and mankind to fellowship in peace, with a sense of security and well-being because God and man are on good terms. In the peace offering, the matters of sin and forgiveness are in the background because any controversies have either already been resolved or they are overlooked for the sake of fellowship.
During the Passover in Egypt, Israel was still sinning with her idols. God almost destroyed them in Egypt, but He restrained Himself for His own name’s sake. That Passover was about God’s overlooking Israel’s sins, not providing a payment. The Hebrew word for Passover means, “an exemption.” It was simply grace, a gift, rather than satisfying the legal demand of the law. The dominant theme of the Passover is the relationship, graciously initiated by God, and the peace and fellowship that results from God’s unmerited acceptance as part of His redemption process.
The New Testament reiterates this theme by showing that Passover commemorates a covenantal relationship. The covenant includes forgiveness, but it also includes knowing God, belonging to Him, and having His laws written into our very being.
Christ’s blood does more than provide payment for sin. In covenant terms, His blood is also a pledge by the Father and Son to make us perfect and not just impute perfection. The bread symbolizes the eternal, sustaining life of Christ that is available to us. The wine represents His blood of the covenant that guarantees that spiritual life, in addition to covering sins.
Thus, the Passover is a memorial of our unique and undeserved standing with God. It is about the redemption process He is faithful to complete as long as we continue to feast on Christ and maintain the fellowship. Because of Christ’s overwhelming dedication to the point of death, we can now have peace with God.
So, putting this all together, God does not consider us to be unleavened simply because He forgave our sins at baptism. Rather, we are unleavened because we are in Christ. We are unleavened because He is unleavened. He is the bread we must consume by inviting Him into each day, and living by His every word. Being truly unleavened comes from the continued relationship that Passover symbolizes. That’s what Paul means here. But it is conditional on remaining in Him. If we fall away from Him and we count the blood of the covenant as a common thing, then we become leavened again and enslaved again.
Thus, Paul is telling the Corinthians that because of their unleavened status in Christ, they need to act like it. They need to behave in a manner that is befitting of life and fellowship with the Most High God. That includes purity and living according to the spiritual reality, not living with corrupted and corrupting things like malice and wickedness, or any other form of darkness from which they had been delivered.
In the leavening analogy, once dough has been leavened, we cannot take the leavening back out. We can’t pick it out or sift it out. We can’t bake it out. We can stop the leavening process by baking it, but that doesn’t deleaven it. It is still leavened. God would not accept any leavening, on His altar, baked or not.
The only solution is to get rid of what has been leavened and replace it completely with bread that has never been leavened. Our old nature was leavened, and it must be completely discarded and replaced with the life of Jesus Christ. We resist this, but we must surrender ourselves to a complete replacement. A total replacement is massively disruptive because of all it entails, especially because it does not take place in an instant but progresses over the remainder of our days.
So, we can bring this back to where we started with what the Feast of Unleavened Bread is, and why God says to keep it. It is a feast to the LORD. It is a memorial of His works, and especially His deliverance. Our works are possible only because of what He did first. He passed over our sins for the sake of initiating a covenantal relationship and offering forgiveness. He delivered us from this world and its ways, and from spiritual death. He has provided the bread of life, meaning His perfectly lived life and all His words. These help us remain free from the world, from its master, and from slavery to sin.
This is why the Feast of Unleavened Bread is a feast to the LORD. In the Feast of the Passover, He is the Passover. In the Feast of Unleavened Bread, He is the Unleavened Bread.
Avoiding leavening in all its spiritual forms is dependent on taking in the unleavened bread of Christ and His words, so that they are within our mouths. If we are filled with those things, it will be extremely difficult for the spirit of the world to draw us back. The world will continue to lose its luster because what we have been given spiritually is worth so much more to us.
The spiritual strength for overcoming does not spring from within. It develops from feasting on the bread of life. Without Christ, we can do nothing. Unleavened Bread is about Him. When we truly grasp and appreciate that, we will then submit to making His unleavened state a reality in our lives.
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