Some among us like to count things in Scripture. Now, maybe you weren’t counting, but this passage contains three more references to God’s deliverance—in verses 3, 8, and 9.
In verse 3, God says to remember the day in which they went out, and verse 9 also calls this feast a memorial. Memorials cause God’s people to remember something foundational, and as we rehearse them, God’s lessons become imprinted into our being.
Thus, it is essential for us to have the right perspective of the memorials that God commands so that we remember the things God wants us to remember, and not merely remember something that is true, but which misses the larger object that God intends.
Something similar happened in the histories of Israel and Judah. Under some of the kings, the feasts were observed, but the people didn’t remember the correct things. The books of Amos and Isaiah record that they had a good time and they paid lip-service to God, but the feasts did not produce anything lasting. The people did not tie their observance to the correct reasons, and so the feasts lost their effectiveness—their God-given power. Without the focus that God intends, the feasts became good times with a religious gloss, but they were not truly kept to God. They can even be times of debauchery, as we saw with the idolatrous Supernova Sukkot festival in Israel last fall. Over the centuries and millennia, Israel and Judah forgot what God said to remember, and it has all gone downhill.
Now, just as we saw in chapter 12, this passage states the reason and the object of this feast, which is to remember that God brings His people out of slavery. God’s merciful deliverance undergirds everything else this feast entails.
Verse 9 here contains a critical detail. It says part of the reason we eat unleavened bread and avoid leavening is “that the Lord’s law may be in your mouth.” This is curious because what is physically in our mouths this week is unleavened bread. But here, God begins to show that the unleavened bread is symbolic. It is a token or a teaching vehicle to bring something more important to mind. We are not going to explore this just yet, but make a mental note for now, and we will come back to it.
