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.
