Moses obeys God and instructs them how they should observe the Passover. Take the blood from the Passover lamb and cover the sides and top of the door with the blood of the Lamb and when God descends on Egypt and kills the first born male, human and animal, HE will Passover those covered in the blood of the lamb.
As you read you begin to notice this strange fixation concerning unleavened bread...it shows up about 60 times in God's Word. Below are a few in Exodus.
Exodus 12:15--‘Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, but on the first day you shall remove leaven from your houses; for whoever eats anything leavened from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel.
Exod 12:18--You are to eat unleavened bread in the first ⌊month⌋, from the evening of the fourteenth day of the month until the evening of the twenty-first day.
Exod 12:20--Do not eat anything leavened; eat unleavened bread in all your homes.”
Exod 12:39--The people baked the dough they had brought out of Egypt into unleavened loaves, since it had no yeast; for when they had been driven out of Egypt they could not delay and had not prepared any provisions for themselves.
Exod 13:6--For seven days you must eat unleavened bread, and on the seventh day there is to be a festival to the Lord.
Exod 13:7--Unleavened bread is to be eaten for those seven days. Nothing leavened may be found among you, and no yeast may be found among you in all your territory.
Punishment for consuming leavened bread is severe, you are CUT OFF from the community, put outside the camp, isolated. Before Jesus crucifixion we see that unleavened bread was still a part of observing Passover.
Matt 26:17--Now on the first day of Unleavened Bread the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Where do You want us to prepare for You to eat the Passover?”
Paul sheds some light on unleavened bread and what leaven represents...with this light God's fixation and passion make sense.
1 Co 5:6-8 Your boasting is not good. Don’t you know that a little yeast [leaven] permeates the whole batch of dough? 7 Clean out the old yeast so that you may be a new batch, since you are unleavened. For Christ our Passover has been sacrificed. 8 Therefore, let us observe the feast, not with old yeast, or with the yeast of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
If you recall from our reading in Matthew a few days ago Jesus had something to say about the yeast or leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.
Mt 16:6--Then Jesus told them, “Watch out and beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees.”
Mt 16:11-12--Why is it you don’t understand that when I told you, ‘Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees,’ it wasn’t about bread?” 12 Then they understood that He did not tell them to beware of the yeast in bread, but of the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees.
The Prince of the Puritan Divines, John Owen, probed the issue of sin deeply, in his popular and widely read classic the Mortification of Sin in Believers. I am teasing on the widely read part. "Mortify" means "kill" in 17th century English. Today it means "embarrass" or "shame," an emotional devastation. But Owen was talking about Romans 8:13...if you live according to the flesh, you are going to die. But if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. He put it like this: "Be killing sin or it will be killing you."
Consider most of your prayers, what do you pray for? Herb Hodges, known disciple maker, asked a young man, if all of your recent prayers were answered how would the world be different? When Jesus asks you...“What do you want Me to do for you?” ...be careful how you answer! I confess, I love it when I hear that our LORD if filled with compassion.
Mt 20:32-33--Jesus stopped, called them, and said, “What do you want Me to do for you?” 33 “Lord,” they said to Him, “open our eyes!”
Before we look at Jesus Words in the temple take a look at Exodus 34:14. We looked at this last night in the Truth Project..."whose name is Jealous." One of God's names is Jealous. What is HE jealous for?
Ex 34:14 —for you shall not worship any other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God—
Mt 21:12-13--Jesus went into the temple complex and drove out all those buying and selling in the temple. He overturned the money changers’ tables and the chairs of those selling doves. 13 And He said to them, “It is written, My house will be called a house of prayer. But you are making it a den of thieves!”
Is Jesus jealous for a building or for HIS own? Listen to Peter, "so rid yourselves of all wickedness..." Be killing sin, or sin will be killing you!
1 Pe 2:1-6 --So rid yourselves of all wickedness, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all slander. 2 Like newborn infants, desire the unadulterated spiritual milk, so that you may grow by it in ⌊your⌋ salvation, 3 since you have tasted that the Lord is good. 4 Coming to Him, a living stone—rejected by men but chosen and valuable to God— 5 you yourselves, as living stones, are being built into a spiritual house for a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. 6 For it stands in Scripture:
Look! I lay a stone in Zion, a chosen and valuable cornerstone, and the one who believes in Him will never be put to shame!
Mt 21:21-22--Jesus answered them, “I assure you: If you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what was done to the fig tree, but even if you tell this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ it will be done. 22 And if you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.”
I don't know about you, what I long for Jesus to do for me is to create in me a clean heart, an undivided heart, a singleness of heart for HIM and HIM alone and then to use me however HE pleases for HIS glory and my joy...this I ask in faith in the one who began a good work in me and in you and we believe will bring it to completion...by HIS grace and for HIS glory!
love,
m