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Exodus 13:3-10
Excerpted from: Unleavened Bread Basics

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.

Exodus 13:4-10
Excerpted from: Jesus in the Feasts (Part One): Unleavened Bread

Here he gives us a Part B of why we keep this particular festival. So he reiterates first with pretty strong language the bread of life aspect of this feast. You shall eat unleavened bread seven days. Unleavened bread shall be eaten seven days, and do not let any of the leavening appear anywhere among you. And then he says, this was done because of what the Lord did. So there is an additional meaning that we need to understand. It is about what the Lord did in bringing Israel out of Egypt.

Now the continued explanation in verse 9 includes the Israelites' obligation to keep God's law, that is, His covenant, because of God's redemption of them and freeing them from their bondage in Egypt. The obligation comes because God essentially bought them. We heard about that we are slaves, right? Martin talked about the only way we could be freed from our slavery was to be enslaved, if you will, to Jesus Christ. So we were slaves of unrighteousness. Now we are slaves of righteousness. But that came at a great cost for Israel. The great cost was borne by all those firstborn who died in Egypt. God paid a stiff price for their redemption. And they themselves were only delivered or passed over because the blood of the Lamb covered them. Talk about a type. Otherwise, without God's actions on their behalf, Israel would never have left Egypt.

Exodus 13:4-10
Excerpted from: Re-education (Part 1)

As we go through this please notice both the negative and the positive aspects of leavened and unleavened bread and the eating of them.

So here we have, very early in the course of things, the fundamental meaning of the Days of Unleavened Bread. For seven days beginning in the first month (Nisan or Abib), on the fifteenth day, we must not eat bread that is leavened. And conversely, we must eat unleavened bread.

Exodus 13:2-10
Excerpted from: The Pharisees (Part 3)

In Exodus 13 we will see the command. But, what we are going to see is that the sense of His commands is metaphorical. It is not actual. Notice how He phrases this:

This is just after He mentioned to them to tell their sons what has been done in Egypt and why. This eating of unleavened bread, then, was to be a sign to the Israelites for what God has done.

Articles

An Extraordinary Feast  
An Extraordinary Feast  
Countdown to Pentecost 2001  
How Do We Keep God's Festivals?  (2)

Sermons

Our Walk With God  
Principled Living (Part 3): Growing in Righteousness  
Why Are We Called To Overcome?  
Themes of I Corinthians (Part 4)  
Overcoming Is A Choice  
Corporate Faith  
Psalm 119 (Part Three)  
God's Law in Our Mouths  
Sincerity and Truth (Part One)  
Remaining Unleavened  
The Unleavened Life Is a Happy Life!  
Unleavened Bread and the Holy Spirit (Part One)  
Go Forward  

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