The Feast of Unleavened Bread: The Lesson of Leaving Sin
Immediately after the Passover comes a festival that depicts the next
step in the fulfillment of God's master plan. After God, through Christ's
sacrifice, has forgiven us of our sins, how do we continue to avoid
sin, since we must go on living in newness of life? How do we live as
God's redeemed people? We find the answer in the remarkable symbolism
of the Feast of Unleavened Bread.
When God freed Israel from slavery in Egypt, He told His people that
for "seven days you shall eat unleavened bread" (Exodus 12:15).
Verse 39 further explains: "And they baked unleavened cakes of
the dough which they had brought out of Egypt; for it was not leavened,
because they were driven out of Egypt and could not wait, nor had they
prepared provisions for themselves."
The leavening process, which makes bread rise, takes time. The Israelites
had no time to spare when they left Egypt, so they baked and ate flat
bread. What started out as a necessity continued for a week. God appropriately
named this time the Feast of Unleavened Bread (Leviticus 23:6), or Days
of Unleavened Bread (Acts 12:3).
When Jesus came to earth as a human, He observed this seven-day festival-sometimes
called the Feast of Passover by the Jews because of the proximity of
the Passover to the Days of Unleavened Bread. Jesus kept it as a child
and later as an adult (Luke 2:41; Matthew 26:17). The early Church,
imitating Christ in His actions, kept it as well.
