Seven times, God says to eat unleavened bread for seven days. He is very clear.
It is commonly held that Unleavened Bread is about putting sin out of our lives. And while that is an aspect, if we were to go through all of God's instructions for Unleavened Bread, we would see that His reason and emphasis are different. What God overwhelmingly emphasizes is His deliverance, not our work of avoiding leavening and thus sin (Exodus 12:17; Exodus 13:3, 8-9; 23:15; 34:18; Deuteronomy 16:3).
The overarching reason for that feast, and the reason we eat unleavened bread for seven days, is to remember God's deliverance. When we get to the New Testament, Jesus identifies Himself as the bread of God - the bread of life. He was entirely unleavened.
Further, Paul tells us in I Corinthians 5:8, 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. Christ is the embodiment of sincerity and truth. He is the One who delivered us from this present, evil age, from spiritual bondage, from the power of darkness. And it is through the strength that He supplies that we have the means to overcome sin. And that strength comes from ingesting His word and beseeching Him to live His life in us every day.
The unleavened bread that God says we must eat for seven days represents Christ Himself. To miss eating the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth is to miss out on the divine connection with our Savior. Our minds should rebel at the thought of skipping that.
It is similar with Passover. The bread and wine are the symbols of Passover. It wouldn't be Passover without them. These things may just be symbols, but these symbols signal to God our intent and our desire to fulfill all righteousness, even in the symbols.
In the same way, we keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread for seven days by eating unleavened bread each day and not merely avoiding leavening. Consider what neglecting to eat the unleavened bread of life every day would signal to God. The symbols matter.
Faithful and righteous Daniel chose to spend the night in a cave of lions rather than give up his bread of life for a single day. That's how important his connection with God, and being strengthened by God, was to Daniel. It is those who know their God who will be strong and carry out great exploits, but that strength and knowledge of God come from continually partaking of what, or of Whom the unleavened bread represents.
Maybe you have never caught this, but the instructions here are not just about our food for the week, but God includes multiple mentions of our dwellings - our houses, our quarters, or those areas that are under our authority. Again, that is not by chance. Every word matters. By the First Day of Unleavened Bread, all the leavening must be removed from our houses, and then we must be vigilant about not letting anything leavened into our houses. In all our dwellings, we eat unleavened bread.
Houses are dwellings that are made to last. They have foundations. They represent being settled and having a more-or-less permanent place of one's own. Of course, nothing physical is truly permanent, but there is greater and longer-term stability in houses compared to booths. Houses give a measure of certainty. They become a base from which we operate and return to. Under normal circumstances, we aren't concerned that they will be blown or washed away. They have foundations, and they become foundational to us.
We can apply that to the lessons of Unleavened Bread. God says repeatedly that the reason we keep that feast and eat unleavened bread is because of what He did. He delivered Israel from Egypt and the power of the Pharaoh. Likewise, He delivered us from this present evil age and its adversarial ruler. He delivered us from spiritual Egypt and has given us a new home.
The Israelites only had physical houses, but we have a spiritual house that can give us far greater … . . .
In every Scripture in the Old Testament referring to the Passover itself, the Passover day is a memorial feast. It commemorates God's passing over—not Israel leaving Egypt! They are two distinct events.
Remember Leviticus 23:27 and 32. Ba erev ends and begins a day. Therefore, the fifteenth day begins when ba erev occurs at the end of the fourteenth. Brethren, we are talking about two different feasts. Passing over on the fourteenth, and coming out on the fifteenth. That is so clear.
Now look at some more differences, which we will not cover in any detail. With Passover there is no command not to work. The reason is that there is a lot of work associated with Passover—killing a lamb, roasting a lamb, burning a lamb, and those kinds of things. Passover is the preparation day for Unleavened Bread. There is a lot of preparation that takes place before one really begins to come out of sin. That is what God is teaching us. A lot of groundwork has to be laid before one can really begin to come out of sin. So it is the preparation for the holy day.
Passover memorializes the preparations necessary to seriously come out of sin. Unleavened Bread memorializes actually coming out! And so what kind of preparation has to be laid spiritually? We have to come to a knowledge of the plan and purpose of God. We have to come to a knowledge of our Savior, Jesus Christ and an understanding of a knowledge and a belief in His blood. And we have to begin to turn around. We have to repent. This is all preparation for actually beginning to come out. Then we begin to come out; and that is covered by what Unleavened Bread memorializes. That is, actually coming out—directly moving out from sin.
Notice the language in Exodus 12:17, again. "For on this same day I will have brought your armies out of the land of Egypt." Look again at another place:
So we see the same language here. They went out on the fifteenth. And verse 22, of this chapter, proves that none of these verses (17, 41, or 51) could refer to Passover day because (in verse 22) they had to stay in their houses until morning. They were still in their houses when daylight of the fourteenth came, and they had not even gone to Rameses yet.
So, they had to remain in their houses until boqer. When they left their houses, the morning portion of the fourteenth was beginning. The fifteenth would not begin until ba erev. So, the only time that they could have assembled in Rameses was during the day portion of the fourteenth. Thus during the fourteenth, brethren, what did they do? During this "day's delay," they continued their preparations for leaving. But what did they specifically do? They walked from their houses to Rameses! And they spoiled the Egyptians along the way. There was NO DELAY!
They went out, but they did not go out in a disorganized way. Everybody was not just tramping, tramping, tramping—running things over, or whatever. They were all lined up. And, because of Scriptures like this, I do not believe that Moses merely assembled everybody in one huge mass, like a huge crowd attending a rock concert, in some open area of Rameses. It would not have worked that way. The indication, from these Scriptures, is that he had them lined up as in a parade—according to their tribes, according to their families. It was not a milling mass of people, just running in every direction. Rather, he had them lined up—like a parade.
In verse 17, God gives the fundamental reason for this feast. It says, “for on this same day I will have brought your armies out of the land of Egypt.” In other words, it is a memorial of God’s deliverance. That’s why God commands this Feast to be observed—to continually remember His deliverance. That’s the foundation. All the other aspects of this Feast build on top of it. The eating of unleavened bread and avoiding leavening are things we do in response, but the reason God gives for the feast is to memorialize His deliverance.
These verses contain something else. Even though rejoicing is not directly mentioned in the instructions, it is still a feast, and so rejoicing is implied. Granted, the food we eat is somewhat unusual compared to what we normally associate with a festive occasion. We have to rejoice without pretzels or pizza or cookies. Instead, our rejoicing includes the bread of affliction, which we will look at later. But nevertheless, this feast is an appointed time for us to remember God’s deliverance, and rejoicing should be the result.
This is a sidenote, but it relates here. We commonly refer to this week as the “Days of Unleavened Bread.” That phrase is only used in two places, both in Acts (Acts 12:3; 20:6). It refers to the time or season in which unleavened bread is used, and that span of time began before the seven-day Feast. But the Bible consistently calls the seven-day observance itself the “Feast of Unleavened Bread,” which shows that it is a time to celebrate. Physical Israel kept this Feast as a memorial of God’s deliverance from Egypt. Spiritual Israel keeps this Feast as a memorial of an even greater, spiritual deliverance.
