Another commonality is that the instructions for both week-long feasts involve dwellings, and this is where the contrasts come in. Please turn to Exodus 12:
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 stability, if we allow it. Now, we could go to Matthew 7 and plug in the parable of the two builders and apply the houses there to our lives, and that does fit. But there is another way to apply the house symbolism, which we will see in Hebrews 3, if you would turn there:
As with so many things, the symbol of the house points us back to Christ as well. He has built and is building a spiritual house, and we are that house, as long as we hold fast the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm to the end. We are that house because we are in Him. Jesus promised that the gates of the grave would not prevail against the church - this house. The individual members die physically, but this house has continued for some 2,000 years. It has a sure foundation.
This does not mean that this house is always tranquil inside, because it consists of still-imperfect people, and the carnality that remains tends to cause friction. But in the long view, the house is far more stable than anything that spiritual Egypt can offer because it is founded on and upheld by the Son of God. The spiritual house is a shelter from the storms that rage outside. So, part of our duty is not to bring corruption, symbolized by leaven, into either our own homes or into this spiritual house, but to prioritize feeding on the Bread of Life and helping other members of the household do the same.
These are at the day’s end, so we go from the end of the 14th till the end of the 21st day, and we do not any leavened bread during this period, but as it says, you shall eat unleavened bread during this period.
Let us recap Exodus 12 and 13: We have from the 15th day as it begins to the very end of the 21st day, no leaven was to be eaten. It really was not even to be seen in all of our quarters. We could say that it could not be seen or be in any of the places over which a person has authority and responsibility. So, that would be his home, his car, his place of work, or wherever he is “boss,” there should be no leaven in that place.
I do not know if you picked it up, but this command was to be obeyed upon pain of death. Finding a leftover sandwich under the spare tire, or the seat of the car, that could be a death sentence according to what was originally taught.
Now there is some confusion because it says in 12:15, “On the first day you shall remove leaven . . . ” and it sounds like you start to remove leaven on the 15th from your house. But it is really very poorly translated. It should be more like, “Before the first day, you shall remove leaven,” or, “On the first day all leaven should have been removed.” There was supposed to be no leaven in the house, etc., starting with the end of the 14th. So, by the end of the 14th at evening it was all supposed to be out. It is very clear what is meant here, it is just badly translated.
To sum up, so that we know the timeline, just to get this straight, I know I have been ponderous about this in going over and over this again, I want you to understand that it is important for what we have coming up next.
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.
No leaven shall be found. Verse 18 said to eat unleavened bread. Verse 19 said no leavening shall be found, meaning do not eat anything leavened.
This reiteration of the command emphatically emphasizes these things about the Days of Unleavened Bread. It emphatically emphasizes the command regarding leavening. As we went through there we saw verse 18 was all about the positive aspects of eating unleavened bread. Verse 19 was all about the negative aspects of eating leavened products. And then, verse 20 hits them both, first the negative, and then the positive.
So you see, there is symmetry here: Positive negative; negative positive. God brackets the two negatives with the two positives. What we see here from just these three verses is that it is equally important not to eat leavened bread as it is to eat unleavened bread. We must do both of these things to fulfill God's command for this holy day season.
