The Feast of Unleavened Bread
Follow Along Below With Full Transcript….
As you recall last week my grandson Jonathan led us in a little chorus, and I thought there is a wonderful chorus that goes along with today’s study, and he has agreed to do it again. I’m going to have Jonathan sing it through first and then we’ll join with Him in “Things are Different Now”.
“Things are different now, something happened to me when I gave my heart to Jesus. Things are different now, I was changed it must be since I gave my heart to Him. Things I loved before have passed away. Things I love far more have come to stay. Things are different now, I was saved on that day when I gave my heart to Him.”
Revelations 5, “He who sits on the throne said, ‘Behold I am making all things new’” And the next part of that verse says, “These words are faithful and true.” We can’t separate newness of life from the One who sits on the throne, and it’s because of His Lordship that all things become new. With that in mind let’s bow together and then we’ll look in the word.
Heavenly Father, we thank You this morning that we can gather in this home, and we thank You for Janet and Pat and that they have opened this home for us. We pray, Lord, that by Your indwelling Holy Spirit we might again behold the Lord Jesus in a fresh way. We thank You for every part of the Bible, and especially for Exodus as we meditate and we just ask you to unveil Your Son to us and grace to appropriate Him as You reveal Him to us. We ask in Jesus’ name. Amen
Let me bring you quickly up to date on where we are. We are in the big section in Exodus and we’re meditating on the tenth plague. We call it the Passover and that was followed by a feast called “The Feast of Unleavened Bread”. The big picture we are talking about God’s salvation; that’s the whole book of Exodus. Everything about Exodus is talking about God’s salvation and emancipation and being set free. Deuteronomy 4:20, “The Lord has taken you and brought you out of the iron furnace from Egypt to be a people for His own possession as today.” When God delivers us, He delivers us from, and He delivers us unto. He delivers us from Egypt unto Himself, that we might be a people of His possession. We’re looking at the history of how God delivered God’s people from Egypt and all it pictures, the world and sin and Satan and the flesh and so on, and brings us into that wonderful salvation, that three gold salvation.
In our introduction to this section I laid great stress on the two parts of redemption. First we must be saved, not from Egypt, but from God. We need to be saved from God. He’s holy and we’ve sinned against Him. The whole Passover was a picture of being saved from the Lord, His anger and wrath and the fact that we had come against Him. Judgment on sin is a strict necessity of His holy character. He has to do it. After we saw salvation from God, then we could appreciate salvation from Egypt, but it has to be in that order.
We’ve been discussing these five historical facts that illustrate His salvation, and so far we’ve looked at the first three. There must be a perfect lamb selected, and then that perfect lamb must die and then the blood of that perfect lamb must be personally applied to the door of the one who needs to be redeemed. Those three facts have to do with security, have to do with safety. You’ve been delivered from God; from the wrath of God. Exodus 12:13, “The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live. When I see the blood I will pass over you. No plague will befall you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.”
I would like to begin to look at the fourth and fifth fact; the feast of unleavened bread and then next week we’ll look at the change of garment. I remind you that the last two facts don’t have as much to do with your security as with your assurance, as with your confidence, as with your peace, as with your sanity. I might be perfectly safe under the cover of the blood. I’m protected from the wrath of God. In other words I’m not going to hell. I’m going to heaven because I trusted Jesus and His death, but some people struggle with the assurance of that. These next two facts have to do with that.
The first three facts are based on His finished work. The next two are based on His faithful word concerning His finished work. We’ll be stressing that as we go along. On the handout the fourth fact is the Passover Feast and the emphasis there is feasting on the lamb, and then we get to the wardrobe. Verses 8-12, “They shall eat the flesh that same night roasted with fire. They shall eat it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. Do not eat any of it raw or boiled with rather, rather roasted in fire, both its head, its legs along with its entrails, and you shall not leave any of it until morning. Whatever is left until morning you shall burn with fire. You shall eat in in this manner, with your loins girded and your sandals on your feet, your staff in your hand, and eat it in haste. It is the Lord’s Passover.” What I’d like to do now is go to this fact; the feast of unleavened bread, feasting on the lamb. All the way through this when we talk about lamb, Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us. We’re talking about Jesus. Don’t get lost in the picture. This is all about our Lord Jesus, the Lamb of God. I’ve got to be redeemed by the blood of the lamb before I can feast on the lamb. God’s order is important.
There’s no question Passover and the Feast are blended together as one, but they are also together. They are blended together as one. For example, Luke 22:1, “Now the Feast of Unleavened bread which is called the Passover was approaching.” Do you see how God brings that together? The Feast of unleavened bread called the Passover. So, if you hear somebody say, “Are you going to celebrate Passover,” they would include in that the seven day feast that followed. They are both one. They are two events. Passover comes first and then the feast of unleavened bread.
This is the first of seven annual feasts that they were to celebrate every year. Chapter 12:24, “You shall celebrate this events,” that’s Passover, “as an ordinance for you and your children forever.” The same thing is true for unleavened bread. Verse 14, “This day will be a memorial to you. You shall celebrate it as a feast to the Lord throughout your generations. You are to celebrate it as permanent ordinance.” Verse 17, “You shall observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread because on this very day I brought your host out of the land of Egypt. Therefore you shall observe this day throughout your generations as a permanent ordinance.” You have the same thing in Exodus 13:10.
Although these two, Passover and the Feast, are vitally linked together and are connected as one, yet there are two. Passover is one thing, and we’re to celebrate it. The Feast is something altogether different, and we are to celebrate that. Passover celebrated a particular thing, and the Feast of Unleavened Bread something different. What is it? We’ve be discussing it. Passover celebrate salvation from God. The Feast of Unleavened Bread celebrated salvation from Egypt. Both need to be celebrated. Both need to be reminded year after year. We must keep that order; celebrate Passover first and then the feast. He saw the blood of the lamb; we’re saved from the wrath of God. Exodus 12:17, “You shall observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread because on this very day I brought your host out from the land of Egypt. Therefore, observe this day throughout your generations.” Verse 8, “You shall tell your son on that day, “It is because of what the Lord did for me when I came out of Egypt.” 16:3 the same thing; deliverance from Egypt.
Sometimes when we say, “I’m saved, I’ve been saved,” we’re talking about what theologians call justification; I’m saved from God, from His holiness. Sometimes we’re talking about the next part; sanctification and saved from Egypt. It’s all pictures here. I’ve got to be saved from the Lord and then I can be saved from Egypt and all that it pictures. But first I’ve got to be saved from the Lord. A lot of Christians have been saved from God, and they’ve never learned to feast on the Lamb. They’ve never learned what it is to be saved from indwelling sin. There’s no question that God set them free, but they are still living as victims of their indwelling sin.
My own life I came to the Lord in 1958. It’s a lot of years ago, and I was saved from God. I did not have a clue about what it meant to feed on the Lamb. Seven years I knew that I died I would go to heaven. The blood was on the door. I was saved. I was redeemed but this whole idea about feeding on the Lamb, I was a stranger. John 6:53, “So Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves.” I didn’t have life. I was saved but I did not know what it meant to live the Christian life.
This feast was to be celebrate for generations to come. They were redeemed in one night, and God set them free, but it had to be in this order. As you go through the Bible, I’m not going to do this now, it’s the first of seven feasts. Even this feast will be enlarged upon. Exodus tells that it’s seven days. As you go on you are going to see what took place on the first day, what took place on the second day, and as you go in it’s going to fill up. On one day there is two bullocks offered, one ram offered, seven lambs and one goat. And then to that they added the wave offering and that was on another day. To that they added the singing of what was called the Egyptian Hallel. The Psalms; Psalm 113 to 118. I can’t go through all of that now. I could but I’m not going to, and you should be happy about that.
Let me recommend if you are interested a book by Alfred Edersheim. He’s written quite a few books but he wrote one called “The Temple; it’s Ministry and Services”, and there he goes into great detail on what I was mentioning; all of the feasts and so on. He’s an interesting guy. His parents were Jewish, so he was born a Jew. But then he got saved at age 17 and the one who led him to the Lord happened to be Presbyterian, so he became a Presbyterian and for twenty nine years he enjoyed that. But then he thought it was a little stiff and he said, “I’m going to be more loose. So he joined the Church of England, which wasn’t exactly more loose, but back then it was a lot more Evangelical than it is today. If you want a good background he’ll give it to you.
I think we’re more familiar with the first part, being saved from God. When people say they’ve been saved that’s what they mean. Folks are less familiar with what we’re going to look at, the Feast of Unleavened Bread; salvation from Egypt. May God help us here! Passover again comes first. It would no good to search your home and throughout all the leaven if there was no blood on the door. You can’t do the feast before you celebrate the Lord.
In discussing the Feast of Unleavened, if you even go with a few facts in Exodus, you are going to say about my teaching, you are jumping over everything. There are certain things I’m going to leave out deliberately, not because they aren’t important and not because they aren’t instructive but because there are so many and you can get sidetracked from the main thing. Here’s what I’m leaving out; the fact that they had to eat the entire lamb, the fact that they had to roast eat and couldn’t eat it boiled or raw, the fact that no bone could be broken, the fact that three groups were disqualified from eating that feast, the fact that they added bitter herbs (I’ll talk a little bit about that), the fact that they had to search the house for leaven, the fact that once the blood was on the door they couldn’t leave the blood protected house, the fact that it was a seven day celebration beginning on the Sabbath and ending on the Sabbath. You say, “You are leaving all that out? You are leaving out everything.” No I’m not. I’ve set that aside so we can look at the main thing. I don’t want you to miss the main point of this unleavened bread feast.
I want to focus on two chief facts of this feast and around those facts will be the principles and hopefully we’ll see that this is God’s heart concerning this feast. The first we’ve already look at in a different aspect; the firstborn. I want to look again at the firstborn. And then the second, I don’t think we can look at the Feast of Unleavened Bread without looking at unleavened bread. We’ll look at that; the firstborn and the unleavened bread, and its contrast with leaven.
We looked at the firstborn when we were meditating on the foundational truth that Christ died for God. At that time the firstborn represented everybody. That’s the firstborn. You say that’s just the firstborn in the family. No, that represented everybody; the whole family and the whole community and represented the whole world; the whole world of sinners. That’s who Christ died for; the firstborn. That’s what it was picturing then. But now with the Feast of Unleavened Bread the firstborn represents everybody who has been redeemed by the blood. That’s different. Now we’re narrowing it down and it’s not just everybody but it’s everybody who has been saved, who has been redeemed by the blood. Exodus 13:1&2, watch the principle, “Then the Lord spoke to Moses saying, “Sanctify to Me every firstborn, the first offspring of every womb among the sons of Israel, both of man and beast; it belongs to Me.”
I want you to note those words please, and may God write them in your heart, “It belongs to Me.” After redemption you are not your own. After redemption I am not my own. We have been purchased and we are not our own property. I think in the main most people respect other’s people’s property. If it belongs to someone else you are most careful. If you borrow someone’s car or tools or something like that you want to be careful to return it the same way you got it. I have many friends who happen to be bookkeepers; they borrow books and that’s the end of that.
1 Corinthians 6:19, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God. You are not your own. You’ve been bought with a price. Therefore, glorify God in your body.” You are not your own; you are His property. I cannot, since I’ve been saved, decide what to do with my life. It’s not mine. It’s His. You cannot decide what to do with your life. I call her “my Lillian”. She’s not mine; she belongs to the Lord. She’s His Lillian. I’m still going to call her “my Lillian”, but you understand. The first thing emphasized in the Feast of Unleavened Bread is that now that you are redeemed, you belong to Him. I don’t want you to miss that by looking at why we should roast instead of boil, because then you are going to miss this main thing.
Luther had a maid and her name was Elizabeth. One day she just decided to leave the Luther home and go off and do her thing, and she got into all kinds of immorality. Then she got very sick, and Luther heard that she was sick, and went to visit her. When he went in there he said, “Elizabeth, what is wrong?” She began to cry and she said, “I sold my soul to the devil, and I got into a lot of problems.” He said, “When you were at my home, I have children at my home. Could you sell my children? She said, “Oh no, I couldn’t do that. They don’t belong to me. And then Luther said, “You can’t sell your soul to the devil, because that is an invalid transaction. You belong to the Lord. You can’t it to somebody else. So, repent now and let God have His property.” Dear Elizabeth came back to the Lord. Do you understand the point? The point is that the firstborn represents, as soon as you begin the feast, dedicate that firstborn; it belongs to Me. Everybody redeemed by the blood of the Lamb belongs exclusively to the Lord Jesus.
I suppose you’ve wondered about Exodus 13:13, “Every offspring of a donkey you shall redeem with a lamb. If you do not redeem it, you break its neck. Every firstborn of man of your sons you shall redeem.” Isn’t that interesting that only man and a donkey could be redeemed by the blood of the lamb? Why a donkey? I know what I used to think; it makes sense because they are stubborn animals. I can see parallels as I go through the record between man and the donkey. I study Ismael or Balaam, and even Palm Sunday when the Lord was carried in on a donkey (on us), but I don’t think that’s the main idea, that a donkey is stubborn and I’m stubborn, so I’m a donkey. I don’t think that’s the point.
It’s clearly explained in Numbers 18:15, “Every first issue of the womb of all flesh, whether man or animal, which they offer to the Lord, shall be yours; nevertheless the firstborn of man you shall surely redeem, and the firstborn of unclean animals you shall redeem.” The donkey was the top of the list of unclean animals, and the donkey represented all of the unclean animals. What God is saying, and I’m trying to show it to you, “You belong to the Lord, and all your donkeys belong to the Lord, and you have to redeem them. Everything unclean… We look at opposites. The opposite of up is down. The opposite of in is out. The opposite of light is dark. We know what opposites are, but when you come to the Bible God has some strange opposites. If you are in 1John:2 the opposite of the world is the will of God. You wouldn’t think that naturally. The opposite of holy is not sinful. In the Bible, the opposite of holy is common, or unclean. And the word “unclean” doesn’t necessarily mean polluted. It just means common. So, the donkey represented the common, and the unclean.
Peter had to learn that truth in Acts 11:9, Peter said, “What God has cleansed, do not call common,” or unclean. Redemption made a claim on you. You are redeemed by the blood. You are the firstborn and you belong to Him. The donkey represents everything common that belongs to you, and you’ve got to redeem that, too. That also belongs to the Lord. Everything you have; your car, your bank account, your closet, your locker, your tool box, all the collectibles you have everything, your furniture, and everything common. You might say, “That’s not dedicated to the service of the Lord.” It’s His. The feast begins, and everything belongs to Him. He’s washed you with His blood, and you are His, and everything in your charge is His. He says that you’ve got to redeem.
There’s two ways to belong to the Lord. One is by sacrifice, and the other is by redemption. Now in the Feast of Unleavened Bread, He’s not saying to kill the firstborn. You are not going to sacrifice them, but he’s got to be redeemed. Forget about the six shekels, but you had to pay a price, and that’s what redemption is. You’ve got to pay a price. God says, “From now on when you have a firstborn, pay a price because he was bought with a price. Redeem him, and redeem the donkey; everything you own belongs to the Lord. That’s the beginning of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and that everything belongs to the Lord. I’m not my own and my possessions are not my own. I’m a steward and I don’t own a thing.
It’s important at this point to realize because that which is redeemed belongs to the Lord. Slavery is not an option. You are either slaves of Egypt or you become slaves to the Lord, a bond slave to the Lord. You were created to be ruled, and we can’t be independent. This redemption is unto Him. He’s transferred us from the kingdom where Satan was king, of the devil, and now to the kingdom of His dear Son. This whole idea of the Feast of Unleavened Bread is to celebrate my new Master. I don’t belong to me, and everything I have does not belong to me.
The second great emphasis is this unleavened bread. The whole idea of leavened and unleavened, what does leaven picture? A vast majority of Bible teachers teach that leaven pictures evil; sin and corruption. They say that it always pictures that. I don’t know anything about leaven. I check with some window and find out that it’s yeast that you put into flour and it makes things rise, but I’ve read some pretty graphic descriptions about leaven as it’s used in the Bible. It’s rot, and it’s corruption, and it’s decay, and it’s the gases that rise up when something is going corrupt, and it ferments. The only reason the bread rise is that it’s fermenting gas. So, they say that it pictures evil.
Certainly sometimes leaven does picture that. Listen to 1 Corinthians 5:6, “Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump of doe? Clean out the old leaven so that you’ll be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened. 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.” There clearly it’s bad; leaven pictures something bad. And when Jesus was talking about the Pharisees and Sadducees and Herod in Matthew 16:6, “Jesus said, ‘Watch out and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” If you don’t know what He meant, look at verse 12, “Then they understood that He did not say to beware of the leaven of bread, but of the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” That what was bad; their teaching. Then again in Mark 8:15 He said, “Beware of the leaven of Herod.” Clearly is often used as something bad.
We know whatever God meant in Exodus for leaven, God is pretty serious about it. In Exodus 13:7 He said that you’ve got to go through the whole house and look in every corner. Another passage later on says to take a spotlight and go through everything and look for leaven. And then in Exodus 12:15 it says, “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.” It’s a capital offense to eat leaven. God is serious about it. So, what does it picture?
The feast of unleavened bread you could say it’s a holy God, and you get rid of leaven and that would be unholiness, but I’m not quite ready, and I don’t know if I’ll drag you into this or not, if leaven pictures evil. I’ll say that it sometimes does, and I might even say that it often does. I’m not ready to say it’s a picture of bad. If it were always bad why were they allowed to eat leaven between the feasts? If it were always bad wouldn’t you think God would say, “Never eat it again,” but yet they were able to go back. And then in the New Testament Jesus told a parable in Matthew 13:33, “He spoke another parable to them, ‘The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three pecks of flour until it was all leavened.” The kingdom of heaven is like leaven. Is that bad. Some people think it might be that mixture of the good and the bad in the church, and so on. But it could be describing the working of the leaven and not just the nature of it.
I know this about leaven, not on the leaven of you cooks, but I know this, it has to be brought in from the outside. I know that it works from the inside out. I know that it has a small beginning, “A little leaven leavens the whole loaf.” And I know it makes a radical change. I also know what happened to me when I gave my heart to Christ. Something was brought in from the outside called the gospel, and something began to work on the inside, and that was the Holy Spirit of God using the good news of the gospel, and it had a small beginning, and then it spread. This is where I am today.
Is leaven always evil? I think leaven pictures sometimes evil, but the same words are used differently in different places. When I say “lion” you say that Satan is a roaring lion, but Christ is a lion, too. It’s the same word but it’s used differently. Honey pictures the word of God, sweeter than honey. Proverbs says that too much honey is sickening; it makes you sick? Can you have too much of the word? Do you see what I’m saying. “You are the salt of the earth.” We read in the Old Testament that in the judgment they salted the ground so that their crops wouldn’t grow anymore. It was a picture of judgment. Fire, that’s bad, that’s fire, unless it’s Pentecost and there are tongues of fire on your head. Then it’s not so bad. Snow; the reason I give this because of the different ways. God uses it and says to look at this. For example in Psalm 147 it pictures abundance. God says that His word covers like the snow covers the ground. Then in Job 9:30 it was a cleansing agent. Job said, “Though I wash myself with snow, you guys, my miserable comforters, are still going to find something dirty.” Isaiah 55:10, snow is compared to a fertilizer, “Like the rain, and the snow comes down and waters the earth, and accomplishes the purpose for which God sent it.”
Perhaps you’ve heard the expression my step dad use to use, “Snow is the poor man’s fertilizer.” They say that it absorbs the nitrates from the atmosphere as it comes down, and it’s a protection on the ground so the ground doesn’t really freeze, otherwise all the earthworms and good bacteria would die. Snow has a lot of benefits. When you say that always this, it might be abundance, and it might be a cleansing agent, and it might be a fertilizer. I think when the average person thinks about snow in the Bible they think about the color of snow, and not the temperature. “And the leper was white as snow.” And when Jesus was transfigured His garments were like the snow. Psalm 51:7, “Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.” Snow is the whitest thing on the planet, and a cleansed heart is the whitest thing on the planet.
In the Feast of the Unleavened Bread I say that leaven might picture evil, but look at the emphasis that God gives it here. I think it’s good here. I don’t think it’s evil. Let me show you what it means. Exodus 12:33, “The Egyptians urged the people, to send them out of the land in haste, for they said, ‘We will all be dead.’” Verse 31, “Then he called for Moses and Aaron at night and said, ‘Rise up, get out from among my people, both you and the sons of Israel; and go, worship the Lord, as you have said.’” When his firstborn died shortly after midnight he came to Moses, “Get out now.” They had to leave without notice. Listen to Exodus 12:37, “Now the sons of Israel journeyed from Ramses to Succoth, about six hundred thousand men on foot, aside from children. A mixed multitude also went up with them, along with flock and herds, a very large number of livestock. They baked the dough which they had brought out of Egypt into cakes of unleavened bread, for it had not become leavened, since they were driven out of Egypt and could not delay, nor had they prepared any provision for themselves.”
Why was it unleavened? It’s because they were driven out and they didn’t have time. That’s what the Bible says. Exodus 12:17, “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 generation as a permanent ordinance.” Evil may picture corruption, but here in this story leaven represents the life they lived when they lived in Egypt. There they ate leavened bread, but suddenly their diet stopped, without warning, “Now leave; it’s over.” This sudden change of leaven bread to unleavened bread, I don’t think it’s a picture of moving from holiness to corruption. I don’t think that’s the idea. I think it’s picturing change; things are different now. Something happened to me when I gave my heart to Jesus. It was so sudden.
God says, “You Jews who have been redeemed, you will never forget the change that took place when you filled your mouth with the unleavened bread.” You think back about Egypt and remember that the bread tasted so good. It rises and tastes so good. God said, “I’m going to change that taste in your mouth, and it’s going to be a contrast; change.” Exodus 12:8, “They shall eat the flesh that same night, roasted with fire, and they shall eat it with the unleavened bread and bitter herbs.” The bitter herbs, God says is to remind you what the lamb went through. Every mouth of lamb was bitter, and that reminds you what Christ had to go through. In the Feast of Unleavened Bread when they gave you the bitter herbs it was to remind you about Egypt. Verse 14, “And it shall be when your son asks you in time to come, saying, ‘What is this?’ then you shall say to him, ‘With a powerful hand the Lord brought us out of Egypt, from the house of slavery.” As we quoted Deuteronomy 4:20 earlier, it’s for His own possession. He delivers us because He wants us and loves us, and He wants unions with use and relationship. So, at least for my understanding, this will picture change, a dramatic change.
I’m going to stand way back and take the whole history, and then bring it to our lives. They had lived a long time in slavery. In fact, the ones we’re talking about were born in slavery. They were born is slavery, and they lived in slavery, and they were years in slavery, and suddenly overnight everything was changed. I was born in sin, and I was born in slavery, and I lived many years in slavery, and suddenly for me, Jan. 29, 1958, overnight it’s different. I look back in my sinful days and sometimes I say, “I wish I was back there,” but then I remember that it’s bitter now. The taste I remember that was so good, everything about Egypt doesn’t taste that much anymore. Things are different now. I’m changed it must be since I gave my heart to Jesus. Things I loved before, are leavened bread and have passed away. Things I love far more have come to stay. Things are different now. I was saved on that day when I gave my heart to Him.
Exodus 12:1&2, “The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, ‘This month shall be the beginning of months for you; it is to be the first month of the year to you.’” Not only was their diet changed, let me show you the power of the verse we just read; God gave them a new calendar. The Jews at that time were an agricultural people, and according to Exodus 34:22, their crops came in the fall, so their year began in September. Passover night the blood was on the door to get them delivered. God said that from now on your year will not begin in September. This is the beginning of their year, and their whole calendar changed. We say the life begins at forty; no, life begins at Calvary, at the cross, at Passover. They were to change. Here you have the name Nisan, that’s the name of the month, this is early spring and is March when this Passover took place. We have that in our own society; two calendars. Our year begins in January, but out academic year begins in September. For them, from this day on, the Jews had two calendars; they had the calendar for the civil year, and then they had redemption’s calendar.
Everything was changed, not only a new diet and new calendar, next week we’ll look at verse 11, “You shall eat it in this manner, with your loins girded, and sandals on your feet, and staff in your hand.” They got a new wardrobe, as well. Did you notice verse 33, “The Egyptians urged the people, to send them out of the land in haste, for they said, ‘We will all be dead.’” We notice in Exodus 12:39 the same thing, they got kicked out and got driven out right away, “You are out of here.” Sometimes I hear people who stress separation from rather than separation unto, “You are saved now, and you’ve got to have new friends, and you’ve got to leave the old job, and you’ve got to leave the old church, and you’ve got to give up this habit, and give up that habit. Everything is changed, and you’ve got to surrender.” May I suggest that you don’t have to quit your old friends? They are going to kick you out. They don’t want you. Once you are redeemed it’s cut off, and they aren’t going to understand your world, and we need to understand theirs.
This is all separation unto Christ. They’ve got a new diet, a new calendar, a new wardrobe and a new society. Exodus 13:4&5, “On this day in the month of Abid, you are about to go forth. It shall be when the Lord brings you to the land of the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Amorite, the Hivite and the Jebusite, which He swore to your fathers to give you, a land flowing with milk and honey, that you shall observe this rite in this month.” Now they have a new destiny and direction. This is all a picture, all written out there. You are not your own. All you have does not belong to you. Everything is new, and everything is changed. The taste of the old has passed away. There’s a new wardrobe and new direction; everything is new. Passover is deliverance from God, but now this is deliverance from Egypt. After many years of slavery, the Lord changed you overnight. All at once, a glorious redemption. 2 Corinthians 5:17, “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old things passed away; behold, all things have become new.” Our values are changed, what we feasted on is changed, what was once delightful is now bitter and noxious to us.
Wouldn’t you think that Passover, salvation from God, is so wonderful that you would never forget the day you got saved? Wouldn’t you think that deliverance from Egypt, when God began to show you Christ as the exchanged life, and you began to feed upon the Lamb, and He delivered you from the power of sin and from addiction, wouldn’t you think you would never forget that? And yet, why in this feast, over and over again, Exodus 12:`14, “Now this day will be a memorial to you, and you shall celebrate it as a feast to the Lord; throughout your generations you are to celebrate it as a permanent ordinance.” Exodus 12:17, “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.” Verse 42 is the same. Exodus 13:8, the same thing.
As I get older, and I’m still a couple of paces ahead of my mortality, but I forget things, everything. Lillian’s great grandfather lived with us for five years. He died a hundred and six. He did not know us, and did not know anything. You walk in the door and he’d tell you about Christ and how the Lord died for you. He had perfect thinking on that. He couldn’t even speak in a sentence. He was German. I used to sit at this door and weep, because when he was talking to the Lord, it was fluent in German, and he would just praise the Lord, and never hesitate whatsoever.
We’re a forgetful people. 1 Corinthians 11:24-25, “And when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, ‘This is My body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of Me.’ In the same way He took the cup also after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in My blood; do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.” Why did he give that table as remembrance? It’s because He knew we were going to forget. As wonderful as that was that day when everything was changed, we get wrapped up in this old world, and we forget. 2 Peter 1:9, we not only forget Passover, and He gives us the feast to remember, but sometimes we forget about the deliverance from our sins and our habits and our old addictions. Here’s what Peter says, 2 Peter 1:9, “For he who lacks these qualities,” and it named a lot of the good qualities of the Christian, “is blind or short-sighted, having forgotten his purification from his former sins.” How could I forget the day that God set me free, my corrupt mind, that He changed, the habits I was in, the things I was doing, He set me free, how could I forget? And yet He know that we can forget, so He gives us this ordinance, and don’t forget the day you got saved, and don’t forget the day God brought you out of Egypt.
Next week, Lord willing, we’re going to look at that last fact; the clothing. It’s very instructive, so please pray for me as I prepare that. I would like, if you don’t mind for Jonathan to sing that song again, and get us back to the tune, and sing that chorus once more.
“Things are different now, something happened to me when I gave my heart to Jesus. Things are different now, I was changed it must be since I gave my heart to Him. Things I loved before have passed away. Things I love far more have come to stay. Things are different now, I was saved on that day when I gave my heart to Him.”
Father, we thank You that the One who sits on throne makes all things new. Receive our gratitude. In Jesus’ name. Amen
(Full transcript is available for download in Word document from www.biblestudyministriesinc.com)