Unleavened Bread
Aim: To expound on the Passover and show how Christ is our Passover
Text: Leviticus 23:6; Exodus 12:15-17
Introduction: We come now to the second of Israel’s seven feasts. You will recall that the first four, Passover, Unleavened Bread, First Fruits and Pentecost are Springtime feasts, and these relate to Christ’s first coming, to His death, burial, resurrection and Pentecost, the sending of the Holy Ghost. The last three are autumn feasts, Trumpets, Atonement, and tabernacles and they relate to the regathering, and restoration of Israel followed by the Millennial Reign of Christ. These are all tied in to Christ’s second coming.
Now the feast of Unleavened Bread began on the 15th day of Nisan, that is the day after Passover, it is so intrinsically linked with Passover that it is now seen as part and parcel of the same festival. Now the last time we discussed these matters we saw that Passover pictures the death of Christ, and therein lies our salvation, but Unleavened Bread relates to our sanctification. It pictures Christ’s burial, and shows us the consequences to our lives when we believe upon Jesus as our Saviour.
After the Passover night, the Egyptians pressed upon the Jewish people to get out of their land, and the only provision the Hebrews were able to take was dough which had no time to rise, it was without leaven, so that when they baked it the next day it was unleavened bread.
See Exodus 12:30-31 & 34 & 39
This bread is call matzah in the Hebrew, and it is a wonderful symbol of the Lord Jesus Christ, as we shall see.
But before we do anything else there are two vitally important truths we must get a hold of as we consider this feast:
1. First of all, Egypt in Scripture is always regarded as a type of the world. It is associated with faithlessness and a dependence upon human resource instead of God. See Isaiah 31:1; Heb 11:26-27; Jude 1:5; Revelation 11:8.
So Passover, or salvation in Christ, brings us out of Egypt, it separates us from the world.
2. Secondly, Leaven is a type of sin. It always speaks to us of corruption, it is a symbol of all that is unclean and evil – See 1 Corinthians 5:7-8
This shows us that when Christ enters our lives there is a cleansing that takes place, that everything unholy and unclean must go, sanctification takes place and we now live lives that are pleasing to God.
Now I want to begin our study by considering
I. The Requirement of the Feast of Unleavened Bread
A. First of all, according to Exodus 12:15 all leaven was to be removed from the home.
1. Did you ever wonder why it is people clean their houses in spring?
2. Well, here it is – Spring-cleaning is rooted in the Feast of Unleavened Bread
3. The Jewish people go through their homes with a fine tooth come and ensure that not one drop of leaven remains.
B. Secondly, for seven days they are to eat unleavened bread.
1. This is a vital truth – you see Passover was one day – one day and it is done, it is a type of Christ’s death – at Calvary the work of redemption was complete.
2. But these feasts of longer duration, and there are two of them, point to the outcome of what Christ has done.
3. Unleavened Bread presents us with a picture of the character of the Believer’s life after he has received Christ.
C. Thirdly this feast was defined as a “High Sabbath”, (verse 16) that is a Sabbath extra to the weekly seventh day Sabbath.
1. No work (except for food preparation) was to be done on the first or seventh day.
D. This feast was declared a perpetual memorial to be kept by the Jewish people forever – verse 17.
II. The Ritual of the Feast of Unleavened Bread
A. Now what do the Jewish people do to celebrate this feast?
1. In the first place the women start thirty days ahead of time removing all leavens from their homes.
2. Then as night falls on the 14th Nisan, that is the Passover, a symbolic ritual cleansing of the house begins.
3. All the leaven has been removed, except for ten small pieces, which the mother and children hide around the home.
4. Then the father of the household begins a search.
5. He takes with him a candle, a feather, a wooden spoon and a paper bag.
a. In the modern Jewish homes all electric lighting is switched off and the candle used so as to concentrate the mind.
6. When the father finds a piece of leaven, he uses the feather to sweep it onto the wooden spoon and then places it in the bag.
7. Then, when all ten pieces have been found the bread is taken outside and burned.
8. Then he offers a prayer saying “Any chametz (leaven) which is in my possession which I did not see, and remove, nor know about, shall be nullified and become ownerless, like the dust of the earth.”
III. The Relationship of the Feast of Unleavened Bread
A. Now we have made the point that all of this is pictorial – it is teaching us something about Christ.
B. In Psalm 16:10, we read “For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.”
1. In this context the word “hell” means “underworld, grave, hell, pit” – it does not necessarily mean the place of everlasting punishment, of hell fire.
2. Here in this Messianic prophecy Jesus is heard to proclaim that his body would not see corruption – what is a symbol of corruption? Leaven.
3. We could say His body was unleavened.
a. According to Jewish tradition, corruption of the flesh sets in on the third day after death – of course Jesus arose on that day – He did not see corruption.
4. When was Jesus’ body in the grave? – you got it, whilst the Jews were celebrating the Feast of Unleavened Bread.
5. So unleavened bread is pictorial of His burial.
a. Remember, that Jesus portrayed Himself as the bread of life.
b. In the first place He was born in Bethlehem – “house of bread.
c. See John 6:31-35
d. On the night of the Passover He chose bread to symbolize His body – “And he took bread, and gave thanks, and brake [it], and gave unto them, saying, This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me.” Luke 22:19
(i) Now when he said that Jesus was holding in His hand matzah, and do you know what is significant about matzah bread, in its appearance it is striped, pierced and bruised.
(ii) The Bible says Jesus was “bruised for our iniquities” and that by His “stripes we are healed.”
C. But all of this has tremendous significance for us as believers.
1. Our lives are to mirror His life, when He died, we died, and when He was buried we were buried with Him, just as He was free from corruption, we too are to be free from corruption, from everything that is considered unclean or evil.
2. We are to rid our lives of leaven.
a. And this leaven takes different forms.
D. There is the leaven of hypocritical deceit – see Luke 12:1.
1. Hypocrisy = “hupokrisis” = “the acting of a stage player”.
2. In Bible times in the days before electrical amplification Greek & Roman actors would appear on stage wearing masks, underneath which there was a mechanical device for controlling the volume and intonation of the voice.
a. That’s what Jesus was referring to when he described the leaven of Pharisaism as “hypocrisy”
b. It is the wearing of a mask, looking like and sounding like something you are not.
c. Hypocrisy is profession of Christ without possession of Christ.
d. It is about putting on a brave face, a show before others, notice how Jesus detailed it:
(i) See Matthew 6:1-6 & 16-18
(ii) See Matthew 15:7-8
3. Sometimes we feel like hypocrites when we sin – but hypocrisy is not about sinning, its not about failing to live up to a standard, its about pretending to live up to a standard when I know I am not.
a. Hypocrisy is always about pretence.
b. It is the sin that keeps us from “the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.” (1 Cor 5:8).
E. There is the leaven of worldly desire – see Mark 8:15.
1. What did Jesus mean by the leaven of Herod?
a. Was he referring to one of the Herod’s in particular or the Herodian house as a whole?
(i) You see there were several Herods, Herod the Great, Herod Archaelaus, Herod Antipas, Herod Philip II (Philip the Tetrarch), Herod Agrippa I & Herod Agrippa II – all of them equally bad.
2. We know that Herod the Great was an insecure ruler, a ruthless politician who would stop at nothing to hold on to power, even sinking so low as to slaughter all the children of Bethlehem who were two years old and under.
3. Luke wrote of “all the evils which Herod had done.”
4. Herod Antipas Jesus called “that fox” a fitting name given that history records him as being a “wily sneak”. This is the same man who beheaded John the Baptist to satisfy the blood lust of his mistress, Herodias.
5. Herod Agrippa I was the king who “vexed the church” and martyred the apostle James in Acts 12.
6. Herod Agrippa was the man who tried the apostle Paul before sending him to Rome to stand before Caesar.
a. What then is the leaven of Herod?
b. In the context of Mark 8 the Pharisees “came forth, and began to question with him, seeking of him a sign from heaven, tempting him”.
c. Commenting on this Jesus connects their worldly spirit with the spirit of the Herod’s.
d. You see the Herods were hedonists, and like all hedonists all they wanted out of life was a good time – See Luke 23:8-10
e. Why did Herod want to see Jesus? So that he might be entertained and amused.
(i) He was so wrapped up in his company, in playing to the gallery that he took little thought for Jesus
f. The word ‘amuse’ lit means “without thought”, and that is where so many people are in the world today, glued to their TV, Playstation, their bar stool, their football game, they think nothing of God, or of eternity – life is about just having a good time – and Jesus cautioned us about buying into that lie.
F. There is the leaven of moral defilement – 1 Corinthians 5:1-7
1. Here is a sin, which was the talk of Corinth, both in the church and out of it.
a. It was a public sin, and not a private matter.
b. In this text we do not find a Christian who is privately struggling with some besetting sin, but a believer who is openly flaunting an immoral lifestyle.
2. The sin in question is fornication.
a. “Fornication” = “porneia’ = “pornography”, it is conveys the idea of selling bodies, male or female, for lustful purposes.
b. The Roman world of course was not unacquainted with sexual immorality, but we read that this particular sin was such that even the Gentiles were shocked by it - it was a sin “not so much as named among the Gentiles.”
3. But what did the church do about it? They gloried in it and gossiped about it.
a. They should have disciplined this man, they should have expelled him from their number, but they harboured him knowing all that was going on.
b. For the church to take even tolerate a little sin put it in danger of infecting the whole church. Paul describes it as having a leavening effect.
4. Friends, we must no more tolerate sin in the body of Christ than in our own flesh.
a. We must not allow any activity that brings reproach upon the name of Christ.
G. There is the leaven of flawed doctrine – See Matthew 16:6 & 11-12.
1. The Pharisees believed that righteousness before God could be achieved by human effort, by obedience to the law – they were wrong; their doctrine was fatally flawed.
2. The Sadducees denied the resurrection, they were what theologians sometimes call existentialists, believing that there was no after life, that this is it – they were wrong, their doctrine was fatally flawed.
3. But interestingly Jesus described all false doctrine as leaven.
a. You see, we live in a day when many say doctrine doesn’t matter – but that is not what Jesus said, to Him doctrine was vitally important.
4. We must rightly divide the word of truth, for only truly Biblical doctrine has approval from God.
a. “Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” (2 Tim 2:15)
5. In the book of Galatians we read of false doctrine entering the church.
a. Many believers had fallen foul of the doctrine of legalism, having been saved by grace they were subjecting themselves unto the law – Paul describes their folly as “leaven”
b. See Galatians 5:1-9
Conclusion: So we find much to benefit us in this feast of the unleavened bread. Primarily it reminded the Israelites of their flight out of Egypt, and of the sweet taste of freedom. But prophetically it pointed to Christ, who is without sin, who in his burial experienced no corruption, and who not only saved those who believe upon him but sanctifies us to live lives that are pleasing unto God.
And then practically it addresses some issues in our own lives. Are we living hypocritically? – We need to get that leaven out. Are we surrendering to worldly desires? – That leaven has to go. Are we guilty of glorying in sin – even the sins of others? May God forgive us; we must never tolerate sin in our midst.
Are we careless in our handling of the Word of God, are we accepting of beliefs which are not true, which are contrary to the Word of God? How careful we must be to remove the leaven from our l
