2002-01-01
Good Morning Faithful Ones,
For the last two days we have been looking at the significance of the sacrifice of a lamb without spot or blemish and the waving of an offering of the first fruits of the harvest as symbolic acts to commemorate the Passover. These ancient Jewish practices were a foreshadowing of Christ as the once-and-for-all and sufficient sacrifice which brings us forgiveness eternally when we endure in our faith in Him. Christ is our Passover Lamb and the First Fruit, the First among many brothers to be resurrected. There cannot be readiness for this eternal forgiveness and resurrection without repentance and the expunging of sin in our lives. This is the essential message that is behind God’s command to the people that they should celebrate the Festival of Unleavened Bread.
You will remember from LV 23: 5 that the Hebrews were commanded to commemorate the Passover each year on the fourteenth day of the first month on the Jewish calendar, which is Nisan (in either March or April on our calendar). That was the day the sacrifice of a perfect lamb was to be accomplished. LV 23: 6-8, “On the fifteenth day of the first month, the Festival of the Unleavened Bread begins and for seven days you must not eat any bread made with yeast. On the first of these days you shall gather for worship and do none of yours daily work. Offer your food offerings to the Lord for seven days. On the seventh day, you shall again gather for worship, but you shall do none of your daily work.” Later, we will look at the actual story of the first Passover in more detail, but for now we need to understand that the reasons for God’s order to bake bread without yeast were not explained in the spiritual terms we understand today. The reason for that is that God needed to give the Jews an opportunity to show that they would obey and take this order on faith. When they did obey, God was pleased by that. It’s the same today. When we obey God in acts of faith, He is pleased.
In the hindsight given to us by our study of the Scriptures, we have come to understand that yeast is often symbolic of sin. What God was doing here was to command that the Jews rid sin from their lives in preparation for the reception of blessings to come. In spite of all the time that goes by, God’s will regarding sin in our lives is exactly the same. That same command is still in place for us. As with the Passover observance and that of First Fruits, the Festival of Unleavened Bread is a foreshadowing Christ’s death on the cross.
When Christ died on the cross, sin’s power over those who have real faith in Him also died. As I have said in previous messages, that doesn’t mean that a believer will never commit a sin, but it means that he no long has to do that. He is now given the choice to be righteous, the ability to make that decision along with guidance against sinning from the Holy Spirit indwelt within him. 1 COR 5: 8, “Let us celebrate our Passover, then, not with bread having the old yeast of sin and wickedness, but with the bread that has no yeast, the bread of purity and truth.” RO 3: 23-25 , “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” But by the free gift of God’s grace all are put right with Him through Christ Jesus, Who sets them free. God offered Him, so that by His death He should become the means by which people’s sins are forgiven.” RO 6:6, “And we know that our old being has been put to death with Christ on His cross, in order that the power of the sinful self might be destroyed, so that we should no longer be the slaves of sin.”
There is another aspect built into the command In LV 23: 6-8 above. Notice that on the first day and again on the seventh, the Hebrews were commanded not to work, but to gather in worship observing a day of rest from their labors. God demonstrates His consistency regarding the Sabbath here. That is why I think it is quite appropriate for me to share two more citations that are the basis of this observance. GN 2: 2-3, “On the seventh day God finished what He had been doing [creation of the world] and stopped working. He blessed the seventh day and set it apart as a special day, because by that day He had completed His creation and had stopped working.” EX 20: 8-11, “Observe the Sabbath and keep it holy. You have six days in which to do your work. But the seventh day is a day of rest dedicated to Me. On this day no one is to work-neither you, your children, your slaves, your animals, nor the foreigners who live in your country. In six days, the Lord made the earth, the sky, the seas, and everything in them, but on the seventh day, rested. That is why I, the Lord, have blessed the Sabbath and made it holy.”
One note of interest: Seven is God’s number of perfection and completion. As we study the entire breadth of the Scriptures, we see this number coming up repeatedly. While I have no interest in emphasizing the numerology of the Bible, I do think this has some significance. Since the purging of sin from one’s life is the point behind celebrating the Festival of Unleavened Bread and understanding it as a foreshadowing of Christ’s death on the cross, the presence of this number should not be ignored. The Sabbath is celebrated every seventh day; there are seven deadly sins to be expunged from our lives; every seventh year in the ancient Jewish culture is to be a Sabbatical year in which crops are not planted LV 25: 1-7; the Tribulation still in our future will last seven years. Even the seventh section of PS 119 (which has a total of twenty-two sections, one for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet) deals with completion in God.
PRAYER: O Lord, in commanding the ancient Jews to celebrate the Festivals of Passover, First Fruits, and Unleavened Bread, You are directing them to put worship of You at the center of their lives. Your command remains the same for us today. These festivals foreshadowed the greatest gift of Your grace ever granted to us, Christ’s death and resurrection. Just as You told the Hebrews to purge sin from their lives, You ask us to do the same. Repentance and faith in Your Son releases us from sin’s power over us. You lead us to discover our spiritual completion in You, Dearest Father, and You bless our lives enormously when we obey that command. Our first and foremost duty on earth, as it will be in heaven, is worshipping You. In return for that, You grant us the hope of the resurrection as followers of the First among many brothers at Your appointed time. You will grant us eternal joy and close fellowship with You thereafter. For all these blessings, we offer You thanks, honor, adoration, reverence, loyalty, obedience, and diligence in our faith. To You belongs the glory! In Christ’s name, amen.
Tomorrow, we will begin looking at the story of the first Passover and at the Jewish observances of the Passover meal. These have great significance to us in our faith in Christ. Dear Ones, God is honored by our faith, obedience, and efforts to get rid of sin in our lives. It is His greatest joy to bring people to faith in Christ, thus seeing to their salvation. That joy is made even greater when He knows that we endure in that faith even in the face of persecution and opposition to it. We are blessed when we share of our faith with each other and understand it more profoundly by our study of the Scriptures. Peter and I feel blessed and loved, knowing that you are in our lives too.
Grace Be With You Always,
Lynn