Feats of Unleavened Bread

Feast of Unleavened Bread

Exodus 12:14 NKJV

‘So this day shall be to you a memorial; and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord throughout your generations. You shall keep it as a feast by an everlasting ordinance.

Exodus 12:34 NKJV

So the people took their dough before it was leavened, having their kneading bowls bound up in their clothes on their shoulders.

What Happened During the Feast of Unleavened Bread?

God had heard the cries of hurting people and met them in their need. Now, liberation lay within their grasp. Forced into labor for more than four hundred years, God promised the Israelites freedom if they covered their doorframes with the blood of a lamb. Offering words of praise and thanksgiving from the Torah, men, and women held trembling children in their arms as screams erupted across the city.

Pharoah, unwilling to release those who contributed to his comfort, finally relented at the passing of his own child, and God’s chosen escaped with “their dough before it was leavened.” (Exodus 12:34)

Later, Old Testament law required a weeklong celebration that focused on eating unleavened bread. Leaven even had to be removed from the home, and if a person ate leavened bread, he or she was excommunicated. On either side of the feast, people gathered for worship. In recognition of the feast, people were not allowed to work on the first or final day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread.

What Did People Do For the Feast of Unleavened Bread?

Several scriptures record these instructions: “On the first day you shall have a holy convocation; you shall do no customary work on it.” (Leviticus 23:17, Numbers 28:25, Deuteronomy 16:8)

There were also particular offerings and sacrifices to give. Numbers 28:24 instructs, “In this manner, you shall offer the food of the offering made by fire daily for seven days, as a sweet aroma to the Lord.” Each day of the feast, the priest prepared special temple sacrifices of unblemished rams, goats, and lambs. Sacrifices foreshadowed Christ’s ability to continually cover our sins as the holy and blameless Son of God.

Rams, first offered as a sacrifice in Genesis when God provided a substitution for Isaac as a picture of Jesus’ eventual death on the cross, were required as guilt offerings for unintentional sin.Goat, used in their typical sacrifices, represented sin and the need to have sin carried away by a scapegoat. At the same time, an unblemished lamb portrayed the importance of the pure and innocent dying so that the guilty might receive mercy.

Messy and disturbing, animal sacrifice demonstrated that the Israelites could not meet God’s holy standard and reminded them of their need for the Messiah.

While Orthodox Jews still celebrate the Feast of Unleavened Bread, it was neglected for many years. This can be inferred from Bible verses such as 2 Kings 22:8 in which Hilkiah the priest, a man who should have known and studied the word of God, announced, “I have found the Book of the Law in the temple of the Lord…”

Does the New Testament Mention the Feast of Unleavened Bread?

As a result, they crucified Him and fulfilled the beautiful imagery of the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. The night of the first Passover, God’s people ate roasted lamb prepared with bitter herbs. None of the lamb’s bones were broken. The meal also included unleavened bread. Each of the items illustrates how Jesus fulfilled prophecy through His death:

Not one of Christ’s bones was broken. Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament prophecies (Psalm 34:20) and completed the picture created before the Exodus. The Lamb, in agony on the cross, tasted gall—or bitter herbs mixed with wine. After tasting what the Romans offered as a pain killer, Jesus refused it and fulfilled the words of Psalm 69:21, “They gave me also gall for my meat; and in my thirst, they gave me vinegar to drink.”As Isaiah 53:9 declares, “there was no deceit in his mouth.” As a holy and perfect sacrifice, Jesus appropriated freedom for people under the yoke of bondage to sin.

While Moses was a deliverer, Christ is the Deliverer. Anyone suffering under the weight of bondage to sin—pride, hatred, unforgiveness, sexual immorality, witchcraft, or any other wrongdoing—can find freedom in Jesus. The final sacrifice and the Bread of Life.

"He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so He opened not His mouth." (Isaiah 53:7)