Unleavened Bread

The parallels to Passover are so many and so clear in Scripture. Unleavened bread always seemed kind of lacking in the parallels, other than the spiritual aspect of removing the leaven from our homes. This is an integral part of observing the Feast of Unleavened Bread.

Leaven

"For seven days you must eat unleavened bread. On the first day you are to remove the leaven from your houses."
Exodus 12:15

I do want to talk about that aspect, since it's important. Leaven is connected to several negative things: hypocrisy, malice and wickedness, boasting. Paul uses leaven as an analogy to the doctrine of the circumcision party.

"Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy."
Luk 12:1

According to Thayer's Greek Lexicon, this word means the acting of a stage-player. Hypocrisy usually means that we're acting one way outwardly, when our actions in private or our inward self is not aligned that reality.

That can be sneaky. It takes looking for, because we can convince even our own selves. Sometimes leaven is hidden in the cracks, underneath, behind, or inside other things. Sometimes, it's hidden right in front of our faces.

Leaven is a good analogy because it works its way into the dough slowly and quietly but in the end the dough is completely changed.

"Your glorying is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Therefore purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened. For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us. Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth."
1Co 5:6-8 NKJV

That glorying, or pride, is like leaven. Pride puffs up our ego. Malice and wickedness encompass sin in general. Unleavened Bread is a yearly reminder that we need to be searching ourselves for these things and getting them out of our life.

Another connection

The removal of leaven is more about the lead-up to Unleavened Bread than it is about the festival itself.

As I said, that seemed to be about it as far as parallels go. Then I started looking at the Exodus story instead of just the feast and what it represents. Is there any connection between what happened then what happened when Messiah was in the tomb? Well, it starts out kind of opposite in one sense.

For the Israelites, the night of Passover was probably scary, hearing the cries of the Egyptians. Hoping that the blood was seen by the angel. Yet this was for them a victory. The day following must have been a spiritual and emotional high point. "God has set us free. We're leaving Egypt! He did what He promised!"

Sure, spiritually the blood of Messiah protects us from spiritual death just like the blood of the lamb protected them from the angel of death. Ultimately, we know that Christ's sacrifice was victory, but did the disciples know that at the time? No. They should have, but they didn't.

The fulfillment of Passover did not seem like a victory. It would have been a spiritual and emotional low point from their perspective. Their master, the one they thought was the one to restore the kingdom to Israel was dead and buried. They could not even go see his body.

When they awoke the next morning, they would be met with the harsh reality that no, it was not just a bad dream. Not only had their Lord been taken away, but they felt hunted and afraid.

Now here's where it starts to become parallel again. The joy of freedom and the excitement of going to a new land would soon wear off as Pharaoh and his army begins to pursue the fleeing Israelites and traitors who went with them.

They arrive at the red sea and see the army approaching at the rear. Caught between a rock and a hard place. Hunted and afraid.

Exodus 14:11,12
They said to Moses, “Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us in bringing us out of Egypt?
Is not this what we said to you in Egypt: ‘Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.”

Their emotional high quickly turned to discouragement and fear. They thought, "This is the end of the line." Just like the disciples would have. Judas hanged himself. Peter was not only morning the death of Yeshua, but guilty for having denied him. After years of amazing miracles, travels, stories, and time with the one they thought was the Son of God, they thought this was the end of the line.

For the Israelites, God was manifested through the power of the angel moving from in front of them to behind them. He protected them from harm all night long as the sea opened before them.

They didn't know it, but there would be no battle. God had won before a single arrow could be fired.

So too, the disciples did not understand it yet but Christ had won the spiritual battle. His prayer was protecting Peter from being shifted like wheat. The power of Christ over death and the way of salvation was soon to be revealed to them.

On the First day of Unleavened Bread, we find the Israelites and the disciples in a place of despair, but God isn't the least bit worried. He's about to show his mighty hand and lift them to the highest of emotional and spiritual highs.