Living An Unleavened Life

Church historian Clair Davis describes the Christian life as “a combination of amnesia and déja vu.” He says, “I know I’ve forgotten this before.” In other words, as we follow Christ we keep needing to learn the same lessons over and over because we keep forgetting them. And each time it happens, we suddenly remember that we have had to relearn these very same lessons before.

When we first come to God, we confess that we cannot save ourselves—only Jesus can save us, and only by His cross. But as time goes by, as we follow God, we sometimes try to serve Him in our own strength. We suffer from a kind of spiritual amnesia, forgetting that it is only by God’s grace that we can do anything good. And when we forget, we fail. But then in His mercy God reminds us that we can do all things by the strength of His grace. All of a sudden we remember that this has happened to us before. We say, “Oh yes, I remember now! I can’t make it on my own. Only Jesus can save me.” So sometimes the Christian life is like a combination of amnesia and déja vu, in which we keep learning what we keep forgetting.

1. We need a reminder of God’s glorious salvation from sin, 14-17

To make sure that His people would never forget their salvation, God gave them a special memory aid: Passover, or the Feast of Unleavened Bread.

On the Israelite calendar this was a very special day, for on this day the Israelites were delivered from the cruel Egyptians.

God wanted Israel to remember this day of deliverance, so He gave orders for a “memorial” (Exodus 12:14) for this event. This memorial is known as the Passover. Some of the instructions given here in this text will be repeated in later texts, just as there is repetition in this chapter. The reason is that the orders and information were extremely important.

A “feast” is a joyous occasion. This memorial of celebration was to be a happy occasion. God’s deliverance always brings joy

Note that God said that when He saw the blood He would pass over the Jews (v. 13). He did not say when they saw it. The ground of their security was propitiation. The blood satisfied God. Therefore the Israelites could rest. The reason we can have peace with God is that Jesus Christ’s blood satisfied God. Many Christians have no peace because the blood of the Lamb of God does not satisfy them. They think something more has to supplement His work (i.e., human good works). However, God says the blood of the sacrifice He provided is enough (cf. 1 John 2:1).

The truth is that God gave His people this feast when He brought them out of Egypt: “It is the LORD’S Passover” (v. 11). Furthermore, Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread go together. They are not two separate holidays but one week-long celebration. In the rest of the Old Testament this festival is sometimes called Passover and sometimes the Feast of Unleavened Bread, but either term can be used to refer to the whole celebration.

This memorial (Passover) was to be a week long with the week beginning with a special sabbath and ending the same way.

Exodus 12:16 NASB95

‘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.

Seven days and two special sabbaths would give Israel opportunity to concentrate on the commemorating of the great day of emancipation.

For believers, Jesus has also given us a gospel feast when He celebrated Passover with His disciples for the last time. However, when Jesus kept the feast He did something more than celebrate Passover—He inaugurated a whole new memorial. When He gave His disciples bread, saying, “This is My body,” then when He gave them the cup, saying, “This is My blood of the covenant,” Jesus was announcing that He was the Lamb sacrificed to take away their sins. We remember His sacrifice every time we celebrate Communion. It helps make sure that we never forget that we are sinners saved by the body and blood of Christ.

When we consider how the Feast of Unleavened Bread is connected to Passover, we discover a very important truth about salvation—namely, that we are saved in order to be sanctified.

Passover is about getting saved. It reminds us that we have been delivered from death by a perfect substitute whose blood was shed as a sacrifice for our sins.

The Feast of Unleavened Bread reminds us what God wants us to do once we’ve been saved, and that is to live a sanctified life, becoming more and more free from sin.

2. We need to make a clean sweep of sin, 18-27.

Not only were these instructions specific, but they were also strict. Four times the Israelites were told not to eat anything with yeast, and twice they were told that if they did, they would be “cut off from Israel”—in other words, they would be banished from the covenant community of God’s people. Sin will remove one from the position of privilege and blessing in life.

The Israelites were not even allowed to have any yeast in their homes. Why not? Was it simply a matter of public hygiene? What was so important about yeast?

For one thing, as we have already seen, unleavened bread reminded the Israelites of their hasty departure. But getting rid of the yeast had another purpose. Although it is not explicitly stated in Exodus 12, Jewish teachers have always understood yeast to represent the corrupting power of sin. Unleavened bread symbolizes holiness. What makes this comparison suitable is that unleavened bread is made of pure wheat untouched by yeast. When God’s people ate unleavened bread, therefore, they were reminded to keep themselves pure from sin, and especially from the evils of Egypt. To this day, when devout Jewish families celebrate Passover they search their homes for leaven and then sweep it out the door. This symbolic act shows that they have a commitment to lead a life free from sin.

As yeast ferments, it works its way all through the dough. Sin works the same way, which is why the Bible makes this comparison. Sin is always trying to extend its corrupting influence through a person’s entire life. But God had something better in mind for his people.

“Unleavened bread was a symbol of discontinuity. Leaven was a bit of dough kept unbaked from the previous day’s baking and added to the next day’s batch of dough so that it would start the fermentation process there also. It was used in much the same way as yeast would be now. When a batch of bread was being baked a relatively small quantity of leaven or yeast is added, and it works its way through the dough and causes it to rise. The instruction to banish leaven from their houses and to take none of it with them from Egypt was a gesture that symbolized leaving behind all Egyptian influences that might work their way through their lives and corrupt them.”

God wanted to do something more than get his people out of Egypt; he wanted to get Egypt out of his people. He was saving them with a view to their sanctification; so he told them to make a clean sweep. He commanded them to get rid of every last bit of yeast, the old yeast of Egyptian idolatry. To further show that they were making a fresh start, God gave his people a new calendar. He said, “This month is to be for you the first month, the first month of your year” (v. 2). It was a new year to mark a new spiritual beginning.

Every Christian needs to apply this personally. Is there a sin that you have decided to tolerate? Are you nursing a private grudge or indulging a secret lust? Is there something you have decided that it is all right for you to take, even though it does not actually belong to you? Do you think that worry and impatience are not really sins but just bad habits? Is there some area of your personal life where you have decided that it is okay to be undisciplined?

Perhaps you think that it is only a small sin. Perhaps from time to time you tell yourself that you will start to do something about it once it starts to get out of control. If that is what you are doing, then you are in great spiritual danger because sin is like yeast: Once it gets into your life, it will keep growing and spreading until it corrupts everything. Before that happens, God’s Word has something very simple and very straightforward to say about that sin: “Get rid of it!”

Even a small sin is dangerous because, like yeast, it wants to spread. This is why God has a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to sin. Anyone who thinks that some sins can be tolerated misunderstands the whole meaning of salvation. God delivered us from our bondage so that we would make a clean sweep.

We know this because it is what the New Testament teaches. When the New Testament comments on something from the Old Testament, it generally gives us the key to understanding it, especially as it relates to salvation in Christ. In the case of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the New Testament teaching is perfectly clear. The Apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians,

1 Corinthians 5:6–8 NASB95

Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough? Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened. For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed. Therefore let us celebrate the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

These verses from the New Testament endorse the traditional interpretation of leaven. In them Paul is plainly referring to the Feast of Unleavened Bread, for he identifies Christ as the Passover lamb and speaks of “celebrate[ing] the Feast.” When he talks about “clean[ing] out” the old yeast, he is thinking of a ritual that no doubt went back to his childhood, when every year at Passover his family would sweep their home, searching for every last trace of yeast. Here the apostle explains that the old yeast represents the sins of the old life, sins like hatred, anger, and deceit. Jesus said something similar when he warned his disciples, “Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy” (Luke 12:1). Both Jesus and Paul used yeast as a symbol for sin.

Another phrase that occurs in the New Testament speaks to this. We are told to “put off” earthly things and “put on” our new self because we have been raised up with Christ , and are being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created us (Colossians 3:1-16).

God wants us to remember that we are saved in order to be sanctified. It is good to remember our salvation, but we must also remember that we have been saved for God’s glory, and that means getting rid of the sin in our lives. The Bible teaches that God “has saved us and called us with a holy calling,” or as another translation puts it, “called us to a holy life” (2 Tim. 1:9). Part of what it means to lead a holy life is to sweep away sin before it has a chance to grow.

3. We need to respond in worship and obedience, v. 28.

The Bible records what the Israelites did when they first received God’s instructions for Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread: “Then the people bowed down and worshiped. The Israelites did just what the LORD commanded Moses and Aaron” (Exod. 12:27b, 28). The people worshiped and obeyed. First they got down on their hands and knees to praise God, and then they got back up and did exactly what God told them to do, down to the last detail.

God’s purpose in bringing Israel out of Egypt was to save a people for His glory, a people who would give Him all the praise. And finally, His people were starting to do that.

He said, “You shall also observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread, for on this very day that I brought your hosts out of the land of Egypt” (Exod. 12:17). A grammarian might call this a “perfect of confidence” or “prophetic perfect.” God was so absolutely confident of his power to save that as far as he was concerned, Israel was as good as saved already. And because God’s people believed this too, they started to give him the glory.

Their response is also significant because it shows us what to do whenever we recover from our spiritual amnesia. We are prone to forget. We forget the sinfulness of our sin and the grace of God in Christ. We forget that god wants us to stop sinning. Then we have another one of our deja vu experiences. We say, “ Oh yes, I remember now. It’s all coming back to me. The thing I need to remember about myself is that I am a sinner in need of salvation. And the thing I need to remember about God is that He has given me a glorious salvation in Jesus Christ.” When we remember all that, the proper way to respond is the way the Israelites responded—bowing low to worship God. Then when we get back on our feet, we need to remember what comes next. We are saved to be sanctified; so we should do whatever God tells us to do.