The feast of unleavened bread

Throughout the scriptures, we see themes that speak of Yahshua woven into the fabric of the scriptures. The spring feasts show this very well as we see Yahshua as the true Passover LAMB OF GOD whose sacrificial love causes the death angel to pass over those who are His. The scriptures say of this in Revelations 5:12 ^"saying with a loud voice, "Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!" We also see the Messiah symbolized in the first fruits and in the waving of the Omer in His resurrection and ultimately in the resurrection of the Saints. So then, what can we say of the feast of unleavened bread? How does this feast relate to our Messiah, and what lessons can we find in this feast that teach us of Him?

The commonwealth of Israel has been commanded since the time of their sojourn in Egypt to keep the feast of unleavened bread. From the first day of Passover, and continuing until 7 days, they are commanded to eat only bread that is unleavened, and that has no "chametz." Deuteronomy 16:3 You shall eat no leavened bread with it. Seven days you shall eat it with unleavened bread, the bread of affliction—for you came out of the land of Egypt in haste—that all the days of your life you may remember the day when you came out of the land of Egypt. " "Now this day will be a memorial to you, and you shall celebrate it as a feast to the Lord; throughout your generations you are to celebrate it as a permanent ordinance. 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. And on the first day you shall have a holy assembly, and another holy assembly on the seventh day; no work at all shall be done on them, except what must be eaten by every person, that alone may be prepared by you. You shall also observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread, for on this very day I brought your hosts out of the land of Egypt; therefore you shall observe this day throughout your generations as a permanent ordinance" (Exodus [Shemot] 12:14-17 NAS). We are the commonwealth of Israel prepare our homes before the beginning of this feast by going throughout our homes and getting rid of any leavened bread or anything that is leavened. This is in accordance with the instructions given us in the Torah in Exodus 13:17 "Unleavened bread shall be eaten for seven days; no leavened bread shall be seen with you, and no leaven shall be seen with you in all your territory." and in Deuteronomy 16:4 where it says "No leaven shall be seen with you in all your territory for seven days, nor shall any of the flesh that you sacrifice on the evening of the first day remain all night until morning."

So why is it that YHWH wants us to remove leaven from our homes? Leaven is a symbol of death and decay. When dough rises, it is only possibly as the leaven is responsible for the natural processes of decay in the bread. Another way of thinking about this is to see leaven as the curse of death, with which we could have no leavened bread. The sages of the house of Judah identified leaven as compared to the evil impulses, OR YETZER HARA, that reside within each of us. ALSO Paul the Apostle speaks of these impulses when he says "I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do--this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me. For I delight in the TORAH of YHWH after the inward man: But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death. I thank YHWH through Yahshua Messiah our Master. So then with the mind I myself serve the Torah of Elohim; but with the flesh the law of sin. "(Romans 7:18-25, NIV and KJV) So when we purge the leaven from our homes, we are symbolically stating that we are in accordance with FATHER YHWH's desire that we get rid of the sin in our lives. That very sin that leads to death and decay, as the leavening agent of humanity.

How does Yahshua fit into this picture then? The example of Yahshua is symbolized in the UNleavened bread, which symbolically represents purity, holiness, and sinlessness. We know by the example of our Master Yahshua that he lived up to the standard of being "unleavened" without the taint of any curse of death. Additionally, after Yahshua died, his body did not suffer the natural processes of corruption, or decomposition of the body, as his body did not "return to dust," the very curse given to Adam and Eve. Rather through his death burial and resurrection, the power of death was killed by the putting away of the sin nature through the sacrifice of Himself. Hebrews 9:26 "for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. "

The Apostle Paul also encouraged the believers to get rid of the leaven in their lives. 1 Corinthians 5:7-8 "Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Messiah, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. ⁸Let us therefore celebrate the festival not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth." Our lives should reflect the holiness and purity symbolized in the unleavened bread since Yahshua sacrificed Himself for us. So if the leaven is something that is keeping us from attaining the spiritual goals that YHWH desires of us, we need to "lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely." Hebrews 12:1

Another aspect of unleavened bread is that it is frequently called the "bread of affliction," or Lechem Oni which can also mean bread of humiliation, or bread of humility. Partaking of this bread simply helps us to identify with the sufferings and afflictions that Messiah Yahshua performed on our behalf. As the prophet Isaiah says "Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed." These sufferings that we identify with help us stay humble and mindful that our sanctification is not through any outward effort of our own, but rather in trusting in the Masters ability to purify and refine us as we live out the rest of our days serving Him.

One of the 15 steps during the Passover Seder is a step called Yachatz. Yachatz is when the middle of the three matzot is broken into two. During the Passover Seder, there is a bag called the matzatosh which contains three pieces of matzot. The middle piece of matzot is removed, broken, wrapped in linen, and buried. This piece of matzah is the afikomen. During this part of the service, the afikomen was removed from sight (this represented Yeshua being buried) and it remained hidden until later in the service. Yeshua is the bread that was buried because He is the Bread of Life who came down from Heaven (John [Yochanan] 6:35). Yeshua was removed from between the two thieves who were crucified with Him (Matthew [Mattityahu] 27:38), wrapped in linen, and buried in the earth (Matthew 27:59-60).

Toward the end of the Passover Seder, the twelfth step to the service is called Tzafun. During Tzafun, the afikomen that was previously buried is redeemed and ransomed. At this point in the service, the matzah, previously characterized as the bread of affliction, is now transformed and redeemed. This is a perfect picture of Yeshua, who fulfilled the role of the suffering Messiah known as Messiah ben Yosef. He suffered affliction while dying on the tree, but was later redeemed when He was resurrected by G-d the Father. In the Passover Seder service, the afikomen is redeemed by the children. The children who find the buried afikomen receives a gift. This gift is known as "the promise of the father". Likewise, when G-d resurrected Yeshua after He was buried in the earth, those who believed upon Him by faith (emunah) are given gifts by G-d. When Yeshua ascended to Heaven, He gave gifts to men (Ephesians 4:7-8). These gifts included righteousness (Romans 5:17-18), eternal life (Romans 6:23), grace (Romans 5:12,14-15), faith (Ephesians 2:8-9), and other spiritual gifts (1 Corinthians 12:1,4). Some other gifts include wisdom, knowledge, healing, the working of miracles, prophecy, the discerning of spirits, tongues, and interpretation of tongues (1 Corinthians 12:8-11), in addition to the gifts of helps and administration (l Corinthians 12:28)." (taken from Eddie Chumney's discussion of unleavened bread )

Leavened bread is paralleled with our past since it takes an outside agency like Yeast to bring about the leavening. In ancient times they added a little sourdough to the batch to produce the leavened effect. Unleavened bread however is made with fresh flour and water which is then mixed and baked. This is paralleled to the new life in Yahshua, as we are cut off from the curse of sin that the first Adam fell into. Once we are in Yahshua, our lives are symbolically like the unleavened bread, that itself has no connection with past loaves or spiritually seeking, the past original sin, YHWH IS THE ONE WHO DOES the deliverance works which HE wrought on behalf of the Israelites and on behalf of those of us who are believers today. Any other kind of thinking such as religious notions of self righteousness before YHWH are classified as "leaven" by our Master Yahshua who opposed and rebuked the self righteous religionists of the first century when He was on the earth. The ego of mankind must be 'deflated' or "unleavened" if you will, before YHWH can work his salvation power on behalf of mankind. It is His finished work, and not ours.

Most of the examples of Leaven in the bible are negative, but leaven is sometimes used in the bible to show another spiritual lesson, such as the spreading of the kingdom of YHWH. Luke 13:20-21 And again he said, "To what shall I compare the kingdom of God? It is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, until it was all leavened." Finally, Yahshua was born in Bethlehem (Beyth Lechem "House of Bread" in Hebrew and Beit Lahm "House of Meat" in Arabic) a fitting location. since Bethlehem's soil was fruitful for both grain and fruit. Yeshua was the Word made flesh. And you could say HE was the meat of the Word.

Throughout the ages the commonwealth of Israel has had a problem with leavened teaching. The change of the "times and seasons" from the seventh day Sabbath to Sunday and the abolition of the Biblical Feasts in favor of Christmas and Easter is but the tip of the iceberg. Sunday observance indicates the authority of the pope, who thought "to change times and laws" (Daniel 7:25, KJV) and "who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called Elohim . . . so that he as the Almighty sitteth in the temple of Yahweh showing himself that he is the Mighty One" (II Thessalonians 2:3-4).

After the death of the last Apostle, namely Paul, the commonwealth of Israel fell away in large respect due to men like Justin Martyr who repudiated the seventh day Sabbath and the biblical feasts.

“And on the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then, when the reader has ceased, the overseer verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things. Then we all rise together and pray, and, as we before said, when our prayer is ended, bread and wine and water are brought, and the overseer in like manner offers prayers and thanksgivings, according to his ability, and the people assent, saying Amen; and there is a distribution to each, and a participation of that over which thanks have been given, and to those who are absent a portion is sent by the deacons. And they who are well to do, and willing, give what each thinks fit; and what is collected is deposited with the overseer, who provides for the orphans and widows and those who, through sickness or any other cause, are in want, and those who are in bonds and the strangers sojourning among us, and in a word takes care of all who are in need. But Sunday is the day on which we all hold our common assembly, because it is the first day on which God, having wrought a change in the darkness and matter, made the world; and Jesus Christ our Saviour on the same day rose from the dead.”

–Justin Martyr, 1 Apol. XIV in Ante-Nicene Fathers: The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, Vol. 1, Ed. A. Cleveland Coxe (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2001), 186.

The first Sunday law was passed by Emperor Constantine on March 7, A.D. 321. : “Let all the judges and town people, and the occupation of all trades, rest on the venerable day of the sun; but let those who are situated in the country, freely and at full liberty, attend to the business of agriculture because it often happens that no other day is so fit for sowing corn and planting vines, lest the critical moment being let slip, men should lose the commodities granted them by heaven” (Corpus Juries Civilis Cod. Liv. 3, Tit. 12:30).

Theodoret's Ecclesiastical History records The Epistle of the Emperor Constantine, concerning the matters transacted at the Council, addressed to those Bishops who were not present:

"It was, in the first place, declared improper to follow the custom of the Jews in the celebration of this holy festival, because, their hands having been stained with crime, the minds of these wretched men are necessarily blinded. ... Let us, then, have nothing in common with the Jews, who are our adversaries. ... Let us ... studiously avoiding all contact with that evil way. ... For how can they entertain right views on any point who, after having compassed the death of the Lord, being out of their minds, are guided not by sound reason, but by an unrestrained passion, wherever their innate madness carries them. ... lest your pure minds should appear to share in the customs of a people so utterly depraved. ... Therefore, this irregularity must be corrected, in order that we may no more have any thing in common with those parricides and the murderers of our Lord. ... no single point in common with the perjury of the Jews."[