Sermon: Jesus in the Feasts (Part One): Unleavened Bread

The Bread of Life
#1813-PM
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Given 13-Apr-25; 84 minutes 2025-04-13

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There are various ways to study Scripture, and granted some ways are better than others. Scholars call the interpretation or explanation of a text, especially religious texts, exegesis. It is just a scholarly word, you do not have to use it. But it is a good word to know that what you are doing in studying and interpreting what you read in the Scripture is called exegesis.

The various kinds of exegesis differ because the interpreters emphasize different aspects of a text. Some interpreters or exegetes are big on word meanings and syntax. Some people highlight internal context to guide the way they think about a text. Others like to compare it to similar texts elsewhere, see how they differ or how the same they are, and compare their contexts from there. Some rely on historical or cultural context. This is what it meant back then in the context of what they were going through. Others explore things like metaphors and symbolism or from the lens of prophecy. And various others; I failed to mention a lot of them. A good exegete should in fact use all of these and others that I failed to mention.

Of course, we understand that one of the basic foundational bricks in the study of the Bible is that the Bible interprets itself. Peter writes in II Peter 1:20 that no text of the Bible is of any private interpretation, but depends on the inspiration and revelation of God through the Holy Spirit.

Now, Christ demonstrates this function in Luke 24. Please turn there with me. We will be reading verses 44 and 45, and then we will skip down to verse 49. He has already been raised from the dead. He is speaking to His disciples.

Luke 24:44-45 Then He said to them, "These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which are written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning Me." And He opened their understanding that they might comprehend the Scriptures.

Luke 24:49 [He says] "Behold, I send the Promise of My Father upon you [He is talking about the Holy Spirit]; but tarry in the city of Jerusalem until you are endued with power from on high."

We know from other related texts here that He breathed on them and gave them the Holy Spirit for them to understand things and of course there was the great demonstration of that that was given on the Day of Pentecost which we read about in Acts 2. This is why He said, "Tarry in city of Jerusalem until that power comes from on high," and they were given the Holy Spirit in its fullness.

But notice here that Jesus shows that the mind of His disciples must be opened. They must be opened to the true meaning of God's Word. Now we know from elsewhere in the Bible, specifically Isaiah 6, where this concept is put originally, and also Matthew 13, where Jesus Christ quotes this, but those texts say that people see and hear, they read what God says, but do not understand. It is gobbledygook to them in many cases. Isaiah 28:9-13 says, To those without spiritual help to understand, God seems to speak with a stammer or in a foreign language. They cannot understand what He is saying. And He guides us there by saying that the bits of knowledge we need to understand, those things that God has revealed to us are scattered here a little, there a little, and must be built precept upon precept, line upon line.

So the Bible does interpret itself. But the true meaning is scattered here, there, and everywhere. It is like a big puzzle that you have to put together. It is only the revelation through the Holy Spirit that these things can be put together and understood by His people. The apostle Paul, of course, writes in I Corinthians 2:10-16, that God's Spirit helps us understand spiritual things. These spiritual things the human mind cannot fathom. A person with just the human spirit using the human mind can look at God's Word and read it for a lifetime and never really come to understand what it is all about and where it is all leading. These people normally just take the word of their preacher that this is what things mean and this is the way things are going to go, but they themselves do not understand it very deeply.

But a person with God's Spirit, who may not have a very long experience with God's Word, can understand what these people who have been reading the Bible for decades cannot understand. It is that application of the Holy Spirit that makes their understanding suddenly brighten and everything starts making sense.

In His final Passover message in John 14:26, Jesus says that He gives us, His disciples, His Spirit to teach us all things and to bring the things that He said into our remembrance. So, as you realize, God's people can see things in the text and make connections that others cannot. The difference is the Holy Spirit, a gift of God that He of His own accord gives us. It is all part of the grace of God that works to bring us toward His Kingdom, His great providence.

But let us go back to verse 44 and notice two little words here, an important detail.

Luke 24:44 "These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which are written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning Me."

It is those last two words that are of import today for this message. He opened their understanding of the Old Testament about all the things there that were about Him, that were about Jesus Christ. Now we know this is true from the standpoint of the 300 or so prophecies of the Old Testament that He fulfilled in His lifetime. And He did fulfill them all, and there are many others that He will fulfill when He comes back and in the time thereafter. And we also in the Old Testament find many pre-incarnate appearances by Him. Oftentimes, He is not even identified necessarily as the God of the Old Testament. He is just called the Angel of the Lord. Or you know, it just said that God was there talking to people like Abraham and Moses and Joshua and Daniel. To those men He appeared, they had visions of Him, or they saw Him. Abraham ate with him. And how long was He there talking to Abraham over that time when He was telling him about that he would have a son? He met with Moses face to face. He appeared as the Angel of the Lord to Joshua. And to Daniel, He appeared in the visions that he saw—and I just ran out of time to investigate any of the others.

But there are a lot of things in the Old Testament about Christ. Let us go back to verse 25 and read through verse 27. Jesus is speaking, He is on the road to Emmaus, and so He is talking to these two He was walking with.

Luke 24:25-27 Then He said to them, "O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory?" And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.

And of course, all the Scriptures at that time was the Old Testament. He is basically saying, the Old Testament is chockful of information about Me and I have to open your mind and show you all these things that Moses and all the prophets wrote about Him.

Let us go into the book of John in chapter 5, verse 46.

John 5:46 "For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me, for he wrote about Me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?"

An "I got you" to the Pharisees there or those who were questioning Him.

Now these verses that we have read, Luke 24:25-27 and John 5:46, can be read to imply far more than what they say on the surface. What they really imply is that the whole Old Testament is about Him. Moses and all the prophets, all those writers, they just wrote all kinds of stuff concerning the Christ, the Messiah. They did not necessarily call Him that in every scripture, but really, when you look at it, that is exactly what occurred. He is not only in specific prophecies, but He is the central figure in the whole Book. And not just the Old Testament, but the New as well.

And as God of the Old Testament, He is everywhere. Everywhere that Yahweh appears. Well, I should not say everywhere, there are one or two occasions where it refers to the Father. But in all those times that God is mentioned, it is almost always Christ that is being talked about or who is talking to the prophets and telling them about Israel is at it again and I, because of their sins, am going to have to do this, this, and this. That is Jesus Christ talking. That is His character coming out. That is how He deals with carnal man. And there is a lot of good stuff in there on how He deals with people to whom He has given His Spirit. But it is all the same Being, the Son or the One who became the Son, the Word, the Logos.

And we have seen in other sermons that it is not just His words and His personal appearances, and His speaking and interaction with the prophets, but He is also, as we have seen, the object of the sacrifices. Those are all about Him. And I went through all that long series about the furnishings of the Tabernacle. That is all about Him.

Various Old Testament actors that we read about are also types of Christ. I mean, we have Isaac, who is a type of Christ. We have Joseph and Moses and Joshua and David and others who are in one or more ways, by the things that they did in their life, how their character was, they show us in type something about Jesus Christ. And it is these types that I am interested in today.

Now, biblically, a type is a person or thing in the Old Testament that foreshadows a person or thing in the New. Just generally, there is more that we can add to that definition if we wanted to, but that will do for what we need now. So a person or thing in the Old Testament foreshadows a person or thing in the New Testament. Let me give you a few of these just so we recognize them.

God called on Abraham in Genesis 22 to offer Isaac as a sacrifice. And responding to Isaac's question, "Hey, where's the lamb? We have to go home and get a lamb," Abraham said prophetically, "God Himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son." That is in verse 8. So that is obviously a type of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and Isaac is the type of Christ who laid down His life in this offering.

Then we can move on to Egypt and the death of the firstborn, and the passing over of God's people by the blood of the Lamb is another obvious type. The bronze serpent was lifted up in the wilderness. There is another type. Jesus Himself said that He would be lifted up like that bronze serpent. That is in Numbers 21 if you want to search that out. The defeat of Pharaoh is another obvious type. (I think David mentioned that in his prayer today, or at some point.) Crossing the Red Sea, that is another type. Manna coming down from heaven. We have heard about that a little bit today. Water from the rock, and many more. All of these are types of things in the Old Testament that later were fulfilled directly by Christ or by His agency.

Now, the sermon is going to get a little controversial here at this point. I am going to get a little critical. This is the First Day of Unleavened Bread. It is a commanded holy day on God's sacred calendar, if you will, one of seven throughout the year. We keep seven holy convocations throughout the year. We have just observed Passover. That was Friday night and Passover is a festival that God commands. It is a commemoration, a remembrance. And for most of a century, the church of God has kept these days. We have had some problems with a few of them, mostly it was timing on the calendar, but the church of God has done a fairly good job of keeping these days. And we have seen them as types. Nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with seeing them as types.

But we specifically have seen them as types that reveal the Plan of God for the salvation of mankind. Again, this is not wrong. It is not wrong to look at them as an outline of what God is doing. But I do not believe that is the primary meaning of the holy days. (Emphasis on primary there.) It is not the primary meaning. Looking at them in the whole or even in their parts, I think this idea that the holy days are the Plan of God or show us the Plan of God has come from the fixation in the church of God on Bible prophecy. So it made the viewing of the holy days through this lens to be the one thing, the one way that we looked at the holy days. That is, we looked at them to give us the prophetic timing of these events that will happen throughout mankind's history, ultimately culminating in what we call the White Throne Judgment and eternity beyond that when the Plan of God will be fulfilled.

Like I said, there is nothing wrong with that looking at it that way, but I think we need to step back and look at the holy days from a different angle, a different perspective, which we have just kind of relegated it to the side and made this other one about the Plan of God the primary one. But I think the one we shoved aside is the higher, the better of the two and the Plan of God and their timing is less relevant. The church's fixation on Bible prophecy has made the timing of the holy days in history more dominant than it should be and we gave short shrift then to other more spiritually important points of view. And I think you will recognize this once we move forward on this.

And I think we have been actually, in this church, highlighting this other one for quite some time. But we have not necessarily spoken on it specifically like I am today. I will be giving a similar sermon for each of the holy days this year on this specific subject.

What it is really, is the church has been involved in a "cart before the horse" situation on this. We have gotten the cart—all this vast expanse of time when things that are prophesied to happen have become really important. And it is not unimportant, but it does not help us right now. We like to know about these things and seeing the Bible interpreting and showing that God is going to finish His plan and do all these things in a good time on time is wonderful. That is why I am saying it is not wrong to look at it through that lens of the timing of prophecy. But the more important spiritual view is how do they help us now? How do they help us spiritually now? How do they help us grow now? And God puts us through these things every year, not so that we know when Atonement is going to be fulfilled or the Last Great Day or the Eighth Day. He is giving us these things every year so that it will spur growth now.

So the most important view of the holy days, just to put it all out there at once, is their incisive focus on Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. As I said, they are indeed types of the specific works Christ will accomplish in enacting God's Plan. That is the old way we look at it. But our focus, as I said, have been too low, more concerned about the succession of the holy days fitting the exact timing of their fulfillments rather than their more important spiritual revelation of the character and work of the Son of God—our Redeemer, our High Priest, and our King.

You notice when Jesus opened the minds of the disciples, He did not go back and tell them this is how prophecy is going to be fulfilled. He went back into the Old Testament and showed them, instructed them about all those things concerning Him. What was most important at that time? Understanding the Son of God and what He is doing and how He is helping.

Let us go to I Corinthians 5. (Martin was here this morning and I was going, "oh no." I figured that he would go off in his own direction and I would go mine and that is what happened. He went and talked about liberty and here I am going to use the same base but talk about what unleavened bread is all about.) Let us start in verse 6.

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.

This is actually a really obvious example of this. Paul lays out in very plain language, the type: the Passover, the one in Exodus, and the anti-type, which is Christ's sacrificial death. So we have very clear from Paul's pen that Passover is all about Christ. Because He is the Passover. It is simply put, it is something everybody knows. Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us. Very simple. Anybody can understand it, even a caveman.

But there is more here than meets the eye because he does not stop with Passover. He not only tells us the Passover type, but he also hints very strongly at the Unleavened Bread type. He states that we are unleavened. That was something that the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the Passover accomplished. We were cleaned up, our sins were forgiven, and they were carried away, not to be heard from again. So we have been forgiven and cleansed or purged of the corruption that was in us.

Then he tells us how to keep the feast. After letting us know that the blood of Christ secured our redemption and justification and forgiveness by grace, he tells us to keep the feast with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. Let us think about this for a while by going to other scriptures and figuring this out. Let us start in Exodus 12. Martin already gave you the answer this morning, but we are going to do it again.

Exodus 12:14-20 "So this day shall be to you a memorial; and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord throughout your generations. You shall keep it as a feast by an everlasting ordinance. [This was the Passover.] Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. On 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 habitations you shall eat unleavened bread."

Let us flip over to the 23rd chapter of Exodus, verses 14 and 15. I want you to notice the emphases that are put on what occurs in this feast.

Exodus 23:14-15 "Three times you shall keep a feast to Me in the year: 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)."

Let us go to Leviticus 23 and read verses 4 through 8.

Leviticus 23:4-8 "These are the feasts of the Lord, holy convocations which you shall proclaim at their appointed times. On the fourteenth day of the first month at twilight is the Lord's Passover. [That was Friday evening.] And on the fifteenth day of the same month [beginning last night with the Night to be Much Observed] is the Feast of Unleavened Bread to the Lord; seven days you must eat unleavened bread. [The other place that was shall, here it is must.] On the first day you shall have a holy convocation; you shall do no customary work on it. But you shall offer an offering made by fire to the Lord for seven days. The seventh day shall be a holy convocation. You shall do no customary work on it."

Where was God's emphasis in every one of these instructions on keeping this week, the Feast of Unleavened Bread? The emphasis, of course, is on eating unleavened bread for all seven days of the feast. I think that those that say that we should eat unleavened bread every day of the feast are right. You have got to do it every day. It is not just whenever you would eat bread, eat unleavened bread, whether that was the first day, the third day, and the 6th day, or whatever. This is, you must eat unleavened bread every day of the feast. It is the central instruction of this feast. He says it over and over and over again. You have to eat unleavened bread. He also says, make sure you do not eat any leavened bread. That is also there. It is kind of the negative, but the emphasis is on eating unleavened bread.

And so the apostle Paul in I Corinthians 5:8 refers to this type. We keep the feast focused on eating unleavened, that is, uncorrupted or pure bread, which is a symbol of what we feed our minds. Eating, taking something into the mouth and digesting it, is the same as reading or hearing, seeing something that goes into our mind. And we then ingest it and digest it through the faculties of our mind. They are parallel, one is a physical thing and the other one is a spiritual thing. And so he tells us we should eat unleavened bread. And Paul describes that unleavened bread as sincerity and truth back in I Corinthians 5:8.

Now what is sincerity and truth? We will take a few minutes to define them. Sincerity is the inward quality—and that is an important point—of tested purity. That is actually what the word means in Greek. It means to take a piece of cloth and hold it up to the sun. By that you test its quality. And if you can look at a piece of cloth with the sun behind it, it will point out any flaws that are in that cloth. If there are any knots or whatever they will show up. You could see the weave when you have the sun behind that piece of cloth. So it is an inward quality of tested purity. And so it suggests a spotless mind or a spotless heart. It implies flawless integrity, transparency. You obviously get that when you look at like a piece of white cloth toward the sun, it is somewhat transparent. At least it is translucent.

It also implies honesty and having no ulterior motives. Lexicographers have defined it as unalloyed virtue. So it is pure, it does not have any alloys in it. And they have also called it unsullied, uncontaminated, and genuine Christian character. So we are to keep the feast with unsullied, uncontaminated, genuine Christian character.

Let us go on to truth. Truth stands for the outward exterior quality of being a real or genuine actor. Kind of interesting. You do not think of actors as doing something real. But in this case, this is the outward quality of being a real or genuine actor. To God what is real is what is eternal. Because real things are those things that last all the way into eternity. So truth is true and it is lasting because it has eternal qualities. It is what produces eternal life. So truth, as Paul uses it in I Corinthians 5:8, encompasses the doing or the living out of that pure mind or heart. In a word, to make it really easy to understand, it stands for God's righteousness. Active right doing. The manifestation, the outworking of genuine Christian character.

Remember, sincerity is the inward unsullied, uncontaminated, and genuine Christian character. Truth is the outward manifestation of genuine Christian character. So they are both essentially the same thing, but one is inward, inside your heart and mind, and the other is how it manifests in the way you live.

So keeping the feast with sincerity and truth covers inward holiness. That inward purity that we have been sanctified by God and been given His righteousness and that we are, inside, trying to do what is right and good. We are working on our character. And then the other part of it is the outward display of that inward character. We have read the verse today where Jesus says all of these bad things come out of the heart and they display themselves as sins. Well, it works the other way too. If your inward man is pure, what comes out as manifestations of character are doing good things, good works.

Do we know anyone who is perfectly holy and righteous? I bet you do. He is here. He is in us. All who have His Spirit know this Person. Jesus Christ.

So what was Paul saying was the type, the anti-type, of unleavened bread? Jesus Christ. He is the model of sincerity and truth, inward purity and outward goodness all the time.

Let us go to John 6. We are going to start in verse 26 and go through 29.

John 6:26 Jesus answered them and said, "Most assuredly, I say to you, you seek Me, not because you saw the signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled."

He is talking to the multitude. He had just done the miracle of feeding the 5,000 and they were tramping behind Him because they wanted to see more miracles. They wanted to get fed again. "Hey, free food! Who's against that?" But He says, you did not really want to see the signs. You did not want to see what I was teaching. All you wanted was the free food, and He tells them,

John 6:27-29 "Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you, because God the Father has set His seal on Him." Then they said to Him, "What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?" Jesus answered and said to them, "This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent."

He is saying, "I'm the priority here. You have to have faith in Me first." That is the greatest work you could do, is believe in Jesus Christ. And of course with that comes believing what He said. And with that also comes not only believing it, but doing it. So we have the two halves here. We have the inward and the outward as we think this through. Let us go down to verse 32.

John 6:32-36 Then Jesus said to them, "Most assuredly, I say to you, Moses did not give you the bread from heaven, but My Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is He [a Person] who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world." Then they said to Him, "Lord, give us this bread always." And Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst. But I said to you that you have seen Me and yet do not believe."

They did not have what it took because they were still thinking that it was the physical food that interested them the most. They were not in the right frame of mind for this, not yet, not the hoi polloi that was following Him, the great multitudes. His disciples on the other hand, were of a different mind. At least the Twelve were, as we saw earlier. Many of the ones who were following Him around, supposedly His disciples, left Him after He said what He said.

Let us go down to verse 48. He repeats,

John 6:48-58 "I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and are dead. This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is My flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world." The Jews therefore quarreled among themselves saying, "How can this Man give us His flesh to eat?" And Jesus said to them, "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed. He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me, and I in him. As the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so he who feeds on Me will live because of Me. This is the bread which came down from heaven, not as your fathers ate the manna and are dead. He who eats this bread will live forever [probably pointing to Himself, this bread]."

John 6:63 "It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life."

He explains a bit of what He meant so that His disciples would understand. This is a very long metaphor and Jesus squeezes that sponge to get every last drop of meaning out of it. And the Jews could not understand the metaphor. They did not make the connection. They did not believe. They could not make the connection. They did not believe He was the Logos. They did not believe He was the Son of God. They did not believe anything that He said. All they believed was that He could somehow make tons of food out of fishes and bread loaves, and they could eat. I mean, that is maybe an exaggeration, but that is what it really comes down to. They could not understand this metaphor about Him being the true bread and that they needed to consume Him to have life. It just went right over their heads. They could not figure it out.

By the way, this was right in the Passover season. I would not be surprised that He gave this on the First Day of Unleavened Bread, but I do not know for sure. It was just "the following day" in verse 22, but it was in the season.

But He is focusing on unleavened bread. So we have here an intimation that the focus of the Feast of Unleavened Bread is eating unleavened bread every day. It is an easy conclusion to reach, to say it is a type of the bread of life that came down from heaven as real or true food for us to eat. So in a way, Christ is saying, "What you read back there in Exodus 12, and Exodus 23, and Leviticus 23 about the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and you must eat unleavened bread seven days during this feast. Here, I'll explain it to you. I am the true bread that came down from heaven and you must eat My flesh and drink My blood."

When we eat, like I said, we consume, we take food into ourselves for nourishment so we can be sustained and energized and repaired and healed and grow. Taking in Christ, His character, His teachings, His examples, all the things that He did in both the Old and the New Testaments, does all these same things for us spiritually. That is the extended type. What food does for the body, the bread of life does for us spiritually, for our mind and for our Christian walk. So without Christ in us, as Jesus says, we have no life in us. We may have physical life but not spiritual life.

So we must be diligent to feed on Him. You must eat unleavened bread every day. That is part of the diligence. And doing so develops the sincerity and the truth that we need to exhibit. That is, consuming Christ in this way, through diligent study, helps us to become holy and righteous. To have the inner purity that we desire as well as the outward manifestation of goodness toward others. And you know what that leads to? Growing into His image, or put another way, having the mind of Christ, which He is developing in us.

This feast, then, reminds us annually of this ongoing practice that we need to focus on ingesting, incorporating, integrating, assimilating, the bread of life into ourselves daily. It does not do us much good when we skip a day. And then we think, "oh that wasn't too bad," and then we skip two or three days, and then we skip a week, and then it becomes a bad habit. He wants us to be in the habit of ingesting Christ in some form, some way every day till it becomes a habit. So God provides us a training mechanism in this feast that includes both spiritual study and thought, contemplation, communication, that sort of thing, and physical practice through living out what we learn in doing good works. And He puts before us the perfect Model to do all that on, which is Christ.

Let us go to I John 2, verses 3 through 6 to begin. Now notice this. The apostle John introduces the fact that the life of the Son of God was manifested and that he and the other apostles had borne witness to this. They had seen Him, they have touched Him, they have done all these things with Him, and so he is writing this to us so that we can have some of that experience that they had with Him to help them grow as Christians. So he tells us at the end of chapter 1 all about what we call the Passover. It is the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. He is the propitiation for our sins. He is the One that was sacrificed and by His blood, then, we are forgiven when we sin. Then we get to verse 3 in I John 2, and he is moving forward from that.

I John 2:2 And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world.

Ultimately, His sacrifice will be used by most of the people who have ever lived on the face of the earth. They will claim that sacrifice and be able to become part of God's Family. Now he is done with that subject. He goes on in verse 3.

I John 2:3-6 Now by this we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments. He who says, "I know Him," [How do we come to know Him? Through God's calling, of course, and being drawn to Christ.] and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps His word, truly the love of God is perfected in him. By this we know that we are in Him. [there is a relationship happening here] He who says he abides in Him ought himself also to walk just as He walked.

What is he doing here? He is laying down unleavened bread to us. The idea behind unleavened bread is to know Him, to feed on Him. So we know we have taken Him inside, but then the reaction to that or the next obvious step, is to walk as He walked. So we take in what He has revealed to us as His character, the way He lives, and we walk the walk.

I John 2:15-17 Do not love the world or the things of the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world is passing away. . .

Now we have a link to reality and truth. It is not truth if it does not last. It is not really working toward eternal life. So he is saying, do not eat leavened bread. Right?

I John 2:17 . . . but he who does the will of God abides forever.

You want to keep on track? Keep consuming the bread of life, digesting the bread of life, and imitating the bread of life in our outward actions.

I John 2:28-29 And now, little children, abide in Him, that when He appears, we may have confidence and not be ashamed before Him at His coming. If you know that He is righteous [obviously we know that He is righteous], you know that everyone who practices righteousness is born of Him.

I John 3:1 Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called [the] children of God! Therefore the world does not know us, because it did not know Him.

He is talking about the way the crowd was in John 6. They had no idea who He was. They did not believe Him, but we do believe Him.

I John 3:2 Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, . . .

How in the world will we be like Him? Because we have been ingesting the bread of life and using that bread of life to power our active outward manifestation of that life in righteousness.

I John 3:3 Everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.

So everybody who knows the Son and wants to be like the Son, wants to be raised in that first resurrection, will go through this process of purification where the leavened bread is thrown out, and the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth is eaten every day.

Now, this all starts with God's drawing of us to Christ. Let us go to John 6:44. We all know this one. Many of us could probably say it by rote. This is also in that same chapter about the bread of life. And He is showing why those people who are in the audience just wanted to eat the physical bread and the fish that He could make, you know, "Voila, here it is." Why they had such a hard time.

John 6:44 "No one [No one!] can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day."

We know this scripture quite well. We say it a lot because it helps us to understand why Jesus has such a little flock. Because God is only calling certain ones to Him at this time. But how well do we know verse 45?

John 6:45 "It is written in the prophets [This was spurred by what He said in verse 44.], 'And they shall all be taught by God.' Therefore everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to Me."

Ultra significant words. God calls us and He sends us to Christ to be taught by God, to be taught by the Son of God. And the teaching that we get from the Son of God is a rigorous life course in eating the bread of life. That is what He goes into immediately. "I am the bread of life." He says that in verse 48, just three verses away. So, the teaching that He gives us is a rigorous life course of eating the bread of life and practicing it in real life. And that equals keeping the feast with sincerity and truth.

The focus of these holy days is on Christ and the food that He supplies so we can be taught by God Himself. That is, Christ. That is why God called each one of us. So He could give us to Christ to be taught by God. That is His job. As the Head of the church, His main job is to teach you how to be like Him. And we get a reminder every year in the springtime that that is what we are doing. And it starts at our calling.

Do you realize the timing of this festival? They were freed from Egypt on the first day. They did not get baptized in the Red Sea until the last day. So when God calls people to Him, it starts immediately. We learn about Christ as soon as God gives us enough belief, enough faith to understand what He is saying. And then we take the bull by the horns in a way and we decide that we are going to be baptized. But all along the line, we are learning the basic truths and finally we commit to it in the baptism, but it does not stop there.

Do you realize they went from Goshen to across the Red Sea in seven days. Cool, right? They went 40 years from the other side of the Red Sea to the Jordan River. And who led them the whole way and fed them the whole way? It is the same as our time when we are called to our baptism, relatively short. It is usually like months, maybe a year or so for those who take longer to decide or commit. But after that, there is usually decades of walking with God that He uses for the best benefit to teach us how to live as He does. To think as He does. So these holy days, all the holy days, not just the Feast of Unleavened Bread but all the holy days, focus on something Christ does.

Let us go back to Exodus 13. We are going to go into second gear. We will read verses 4 through 10. This is the second instructions on the Feast of Unleavened Bread.

Exodus 13:4-10 "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. [Here again] 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. [This is where I was headed.] And you shall tell your son in that day, saying, 'This is done [this is the reason why] because of what the Lord [the Lord!] did for me when I came out of 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."

Here he gives us a Part B of why we keep this particular festival. So he reiterates first with pretty strong language the bread of life aspect of this feast. You shall eat unleavened bread seven days. Unleavened bread shall be eaten seven days, and do not let any of the leavening appear anywhere among you. And then he says, this was done because of what the Lord did. So there is an additional meaning that we need to understand. It is about what the Lord did in bringing Israel out of Egypt.

Now the continued explanation in verse 9 includes the Israelites' obligation to keep God's law, that is, His covenant, because of God's redemption of them and freeing them from their bondage in Egypt. The obligation comes because God essentially bought them. We heard about that we are slaves, right? Martin talked about the only way we could be freed from our slavery was to be enslaved, if you will, to Jesus Christ. So we were slaves of unrighteousness. Now we are slaves of righteousness. But that came at a great cost for Israel. The great cost was borne by all those firstborn who died in Egypt. God paid a stiff price for their redemption. And they themselves were only delivered or passed over because the blood of the Lamb covered them. Talk about a type. Otherwise, without God's actions on their behalf, Israel would never have left Egypt.

Let us go to Hosea 11, just quickly.

Hosea 11:1-4 "When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called My son. As they called them, so they went from them; they sacrificed to the Baals, and burned incense to carved images. [Well, that was Israel.] I taught [notice this] Ephraim to walk [meaning Israel], taking them by their arms; but they did not know that I healed them. [They were a little dense.] I drew them with gentle cords, with bands of love, and I was to them as those who take the yoke from the neck. I stooped and fed them."

Notice God's agency here.

Let us move on to Matthew 2. It has a much bigger type.

Matthew 2:13-15 Now when they had departed [these are the magi], behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying, "Arise, take the young Child and His mother, flee to Egypt, and stay there until I bring you word; for Herod will seek the young Child to destroy Him." When he arose, he took the young Child and His mother by night and departed for Egypt, and was there until the death of Herod, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying, "Out of Egypt I called My Son."

So, God here through Matthew is showing us, bringing us that prophecy up to date, showing us that the type that occurred in Egypt way back when was coming to the time of its fulfillment and the release from bondage would soon occur, but under New Testament conditions. Now, this also reflects John 6:44 and the calling of God's people, the calling of us, specifically, to Christ. He calls us out of the world and our slavery to sin and to its ruler, Satan the Devil, just as He called Israel out of Egypt and their physical slavery to its ruler, Pharaoh. And he tells us in so many words that there was no other way for us to be separated from spiritual evil except through the strong hand and outstretched arm of God.

Let us go back to Exodus, chapter 6. This is when He is announcing to the children of Israel, specifically to the elders, what was going to happen now that Moses was back. Notice the language here. We will start in verse 1.

Exodus 6:1-8 The Lord said to Moses, "Now you shall see what I will do to Pharaoh. For with a strong hand he will let them go, and with a strong hand he will drive them out of his land." And God spoke to Moses and said to him: "I am the Lord. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as God Almighty, but by My name, Lord, I was not known to them [or the I AM, Yahweh]. I have also established My covenant with them, to give them the land of Canaan, the land of their pilgrimage, in which they were strangers. And I have also heard the groaning of the children of Israel whom the Egyptians keep in bondage, and I have remembered My covenant. Therefore say to the children of Israel: 'I am the Lord; I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, I will rescue you from their bondage, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great judgments. I will take you as My people, and I will be your God. Then you shall know that I am the Lord your God who brings you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. And I will bring you into the land which I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and I will give it to you as a heritage: I am the Lord.'"

Did you notice God's agency? I tried to emphasize it. Hearing the cries of the patriarchs' descendants, God Himself takes the initiative to rescue them, to free them and redeem them. He chooses to take them as His people and He does not just leave them defend for themselves once they are free. He then visibly leads them as we know by the pillar of cloud and fire to the Promised Land and just gives it to them as their inheritance. He does not mention it here, but He also gave them water, He fed them, He protected them from the sun, He made their shoes and their clothes last, and He promised to fight all their battles. As we are fond of saying, all the Israelites had to do was walk.

Let us go to Deuteronomy 7, starting in verse 6. He says,

Deuteronomy 7:6-11 "For you are a holy people to the Lord your God [They are a separated people. He looks on them differently.]; the Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for Himself, a special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth. The Lord did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any other people, for you were the least of all peoples; but because the Lord loves you, and because He would keep the oath which He swore to your fathers, the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of bondage, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. Therefore know that the Lord your God, He is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and mercy for a thousand generations with those who love Him and keep His commandments; and He repays those who hate Him to their face to destroy them. He will not be slack with him who hates Him; He will repay him to his face. Therefore you shall keep the commandments, the statutes, and the judgments which I command you today to observe them."

So what was God's motivation for doing all these things for the Israelites? It was His love for them. He loved them and wanted to bring them into the Promised Land, give them everything that He had promised—and that is a big thing. He wanted to show them that He keeps His promises. Or we could put it another way: He sticks to His plans. Or to put it another way, as we saw here in verse 9, He is a faithful God. You can trust Him. He does what He says He will do.

So the plan, notice this, this is very important, the plan was to build a nation of those who resembled Abraham. And He decided to do this in two steps. First, He called Abraham's physical descendants and made them a nation, Israel, and gave them to us as a type and an example. Part Two of the plan is that He called Abraham's spiritual descendants, those who have the faith of Abraham, or who would have the faith of Abraham. We call those people the elect, the members of God's church, the bride of Christ.

Let us go to Colossians 1, verse 9. We have only got 15 more scriptures here. Trying to put all this together here.

Colossians 1:9-13 For this reason we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; that you may have a walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power, for all patience and long suffering with joy; giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light. He has delivered us from the power of darkness and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, . . .

This is part of the special people promise that He takes us out of spiritual Egypt, as it were, out from under the power of Satan the Devil, and He puts us into an entirely different category, as those who have been translated or conveyed into God's Kingdom. The Kingdom He calls of the Son of His love.

Colossians 1:14-16 . . . in whom [in His Son] we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers.

What he is doing here is telling us that the One we eat, the One we follow, the One who is doing all these things for us is almighty. He is absolutely trustworthy. He keeps all His promises. He can create spiritually, just as well as He created physically.

Colossians 1:16-26 All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things and in Him all things consist. [This is the ultimate Person that we have been called to.] And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence. [And He must have the preeminence in our minds always. He comes first. He is our priority.] For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell, and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross.

And you, who once were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now He has reconciled in the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy and blameless and irreproachable in His sight—if indeed you can continue in the faith, grounded and steadfast, and are not moved away from the hope of the gospel which you heard, which was preached to every creature under heaven, of which I, Paul, became a minister. I now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ, for the sake of His body, which is the church, of which I became a minister according to the stewardship from God which is given to me for you, to fulfill the word of God, the mystery which has been hidden from ages and generations, but now has been revealed to his saints [to the elect].

So even though this is not a strict parallel to what we read in Exodus 6 and Deuteronomy 7, it is near enough to show how the Father called, qualified, and drew us to Christ for redemption and forgiveness to become part of His Kingdom, His church, His body. And it is Christ's job then to lead us to holiness and to righteousness that we may have a walk worthy of Him, that is, to walk as He walked and be fully pleasing to God. And that walk ends in glory in the resurrection from the dead as God's spiritual children in the Kingdom of God.

Once the Father hands us off to Christ, the Son does most of the work to prepare us for the Kingdom. Yes, we do our part. But it is just an infinitesimal submission to the great One who brings us into the Kingdom through His teaching.

So as Christ is our Passover, He is also our unleavened bread. He is the bread of life. He is the one, the Archegos, who in love does all the heavy lifting, brings us and leads us in our walk of faith and righteousness to the Kingdom of God. He is the focus of this feast, not us, not our sins. It is His agency, His mercy, His love, His blessings, His providence that makes everything possible for us.

Let us close in Hebrews 13 just to put a cap on this.

Hebrews 13:20-21 Now may the God of peace who brought up the Lord Jesus from the dead, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you complete in every good work to do His will, working in you what is well pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.

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