Exodus 13:6-7

Another commonality with these feasts is that they are both kept for seven days. That may sound obvious, and it is, but it is worth reviewing God's commands so we don't forget. Back in verse 6, it says, …seven days you must eat unleavened bread. You don't have to turn to these, but I will read to you the same command in other places:

Seven times, God says to eat unleavened bread for seven days. He is very clear.

It is commonly held that Unleavened Bread is about putting sin out of our lives. And while that is an aspect, if we were to go through all of God's instructions for Unleavened Bread, we would see that His reason and emphasis are different. What God overwhelmingly emphasizes is His deliverance, not our work of avoiding leavening and thus sin (Exodus 12:17; Exodus 13:3, 8-9; 23:15; 34:18; Deuteronomy 16:3).

The overarching reason for that feast, and the reason we eat unleavened bread for seven days, is to remember God's deliverance. When we get to the New Testament, Jesus identifies Himself as the bread of God - the bread of life. He was entirely unleavened.

Further, Paul tells us in I Corinthians 5:8, Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. Christ is the embodiment of sincerity and truth. He is the One who delivered us from this present, evil age, from spiritual bondage, from the power of darkness. And it is through the strength that He supplies that we have the means to overcome sin. And that strength comes from ingesting His word and beseeching Him to live His life in us every day.

The unleavened bread that God says we must eat for seven days represents Christ Himself. To miss eating the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth is to miss out on the divine connection with our Savior. Our minds should rebel at the thought of skipping that.

It is similar with Passover. The bread and wine are the symbols of Passover. It wouldn't be Passover without them. These things may just be symbols, but these symbols signal to God our intent and our desire to fulfill all righteousness, even in the symbols.

In the same way, we keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread for seven days by eating unleavened bread each day and not merely avoiding leavening. Consider what neglecting to eat the unleavened bread of life every day would signal to God. The symbols matter.

Faithful and righteous Daniel chose to spend the night in a cave of lions rather than give up his bread of life for a single day. That's how important his connection with God, and being strengthened by God, was to Daniel. It is those who know their God who will be strong and carry out great exploits, but that strength and knowledge of God come from continually partaking of what, or of Whom the unleavened bread represents.

Exodus 13:4-9

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

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 13:6-10

When the Israelites left Egypt, they did not leave sin. They left the place of their bondage. They came out of their place of bondage. The Exodus is an analogy of a person's spiritual conversion, especially the earliest stages of that conversion.

God intended the keeping of the last Day of Unleavened Bread, along with the eating of unleavened bread, for the entire seven days, to serve as a reminder of what He has done for us. Unleavened bread is to serve as a reminder to us of what He has done to bring us out of bondage.

Verse 8, shows that what the Lord did was for each of us individually and personally, "what the Lord did for me when I came up from Egypt"—when I came out of bondage. It is not speaking of the whole physical nation of Israel, nor is it speaking of the whole spiritual congregation of Israel, (that is the entire church); it is not speaking of either of these things as a group. But specifically, in verse 8, it is speaking to individuals, and personalizing it. In other areas, as we see, it does include the whole nation of Israel, and the church.

Exodus 13:4-10

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

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.

Exodus 13:6-7

I think that we are learning that the Days of Unleavened Bread are a two-way street. That is, there are both positive and negative aspects to it: On the one hand we are to get rid of leaven and on the other hand we are to eat something that is unleavened. There is a negative aspect; there is a positive aspect to it.