The Exodus and Remembrance

The Lord impressed it upon my heart to understand more about the Feasts of the Lord this Holy Week. Today, as I taught the Feast of Unleavened Bread to my students at school. I was stunned, overwhelmed, and amazed once again by something in Scripture that I had failed to see before.

The Feast of Unleavened Bread was a time to remember how the Lord had set the Israelites free from the slavery of Pharoah in Egypt. Their flight from Egypt was so abrupt that the Lord commanded them to take with them unleavened bread. There was no time to make leaven bread because of the hasty departure. The meaning of this was deeper than that. The feast also represented the cleansing from their sin and corruption.  
A small amount of yeast goes a long way. It reminded me of a bread making experience that I had in Zambia. I was making a batch of bread and had measured out the yeast (leaven), oil and warm water. After the yeast became frothy, I added the dry ingredients and covered the dough in order for it to rise. Not too long after I walked away from the dough, it was running over the sides of the bowl! I had used too much yeast and it had made a great amount of bread! Yeast, although it is small, becomes something great in size.

In the Old Testament, leaven or yeast, is likened unto sin. Sin starts so small but when it is fed just a small amount of temptation and rebellion it grows into a beast that sometimes is hard to tame. The Lord gave specific instructions to during the Feast of Unleavened Bread.

"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. ‘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. ‘In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at evening, you shall eat unleavened bread, until the twenty-first day of the month at evening. ‘Seven days there shall be no leaven found in your houses; for whoever eats what is leavened, that person shall be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether he is an alien or a native of the land. ‘You shall not eat anything leavened; in all your dwellings you shall eat unleavened bread.’”  Exodus 12:15-20

The Old Testament was the Law. It was rules set forth for the Israelites. The New Testament was the new covenant. The Old Testament was rules. The New Testament was a challenge to believers to live holy lives because they were no longer slaves to sin because of the freedom found in Jesus Christ.

"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."  1 Corinthians 5:6-8

 Then the new glimpse of the way I viewed Scripture hit me between the eyes. The Feast of Unleavened Bread was a time for the Israelites to commemorate, remember, and praise God for what He had done in setting them free from slavery. How HE broke their chains and how they were cleansed from the Egyptian bondage. BUT WAIT....there is an exodus in the New Testament as well. That exodus was Jesus Christ, the perfect Lamb of God, sacrificing Himself in order that we would be freed from sin and eternal separation from God.

"Therefore, prepare your minds for action, keep sober in spirit, fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lusts which were yoursin your ignorance, but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior; because it is written, “YOU SHALL BE HOLY, FOR I AM HOLY.”  
1 Peter 1:13-16

Our exodus is Jesus Christ. In order to demonstrate, glorify, and strive to live a holy life, we have to remove the leaven from our life on a daily basis and look to our Savior. Because of HIS sacrifice we are free, we are no longer slaves, we have had our own exodus from the life of flesh and entered into life eternal with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. God's Word is so rich, may we all choose to remove the old lumps of leaven in order to live a holy life and never forget who has set us free!