Exodus 13:5 - Forerunner Commentary

Exodus 13:5

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Articles, Bible studies, and sermons that contain The Second Book of Moses Called Exodus 13:5:

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 13:4-9
Excerpted from: Unleavened Bread and Pentecost

This is the first mention of eating unleavened bread in context with the events of the day. It is not the first time that unleavened bread is mentioned in context of the days itself—that is, the Feast—because that first appears in Exodus 12. Here we find it in the context of the events of the day and Moses is inspired to write down that we are to eat unleavened bread because of what the Lord did.

I cannot say it any more convincingly than God did right there. We eat unleavened bread because of something the Lord did. Not because we came out of sin, but because of something God did. God released us from our bondage. That is going to be the theme of most of this sermon. Whether or not we understand that is going to determine a great deal about whether we are going to use His Holy Spirit in the right manner. We have to get the horse before the cart. In this case, the horse is God, it is God who did the work, it is God who got us out. The eating of unleavened bread is a memorial of that.

We will feed into this other things that have to do with coming out of sin and so I want to reassure you that there is a direct connection between the eating of unleavened bread and coming out of sin, but that is not the context in which it first appears. It first appears when it is introduced as being done because of what God did. Coming out of sin is something we do. The eating of unleavened bread in its first connection is something that is connected with what God does, not what we do, the eating of it is a memorial of that. We will see this develop as we go on.

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)
Pentecost Revisited (Part One): Counting Consistently

Sermons

God's Law in Our Mouths
Go Forward
The Wilderness Trek and Judgment Begins
The Unleavened Life Is a Happy Life!
James and Unleavened Bread (Part 1)
Unleavened Bread and the Holy Spirit (Part One)
Jesus in the Feasts (Part One): Unleavened Bread
Consequences of Resurrection and Ascension
Remaining Unleavened
Sincerity and Truth (Part One)
James and Unleavened Bread (Part 3)
Psalm 119 (Part Three)
Corporate Faith
Do You Recognize This Man? (Part 3)
Overcoming Is A Choice
Themes of I Corinthians (Part 4)
Why Are We Called To Overcome?
Principled Living (Part 3): Growing in Righteousness
Our Walk With God

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