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.
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.
This passage teaches that the primary reason for eating unleavened bread and for the feast in general is to remember God’s deliverance. If we were to gather all the instructions, we would find that there are eight references to God’s deliverance from bondage and the environment of sin as the reason for this feast.
There are a couple of phrases and ideas to take note of in this passage. The first is in verse 3, which mentions the house of bondage. The second is in verse 9, which teaches that the eating of unleavened bread and the avoidance of leavening are a sign and a memorial so that God’s law (meaning His instruction) may be in our mouths or on our lips.
We can connect this principle with that second phrase we took note of in Exodus 13 about having God’s law in our mouth through eating unleavened bread and avoiding leavening. God intends for our physical practice for this feast to bring His instructions to our minds and to our conversations. This feast reminds us of what we have been delivered from, but also of the way of life that guards against being enslaved again.
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.
The keeping of the first day of Unleavened Bread, along with the eating of unleavened bread for seven days, is intended by God to serve as a reminder of what He has done for us. I want you to think of that. That is what He said, right here. I did not make that up. Unleavened bread is to serve as a reminder to us of what He has done to bring us out. This is especially true of the first day of Unleavened Bread - because by that time, in our conversion, we have not overcome anything to speak of.
I want you to note that this is very personal. Notice in verse 8. "And you shall show your son in that day, saying, 'This is done because of that which the LORDdid unto me when I came forth out of Egypt.'" It is "me" and "I" at this point. It is not the Body (Israel). It is "me" and "I."
That kind of phraseology, especially that last phrase—"there shall no leavened bread be eaten," is tied to what the LORD did in order that we understand why we are to do what we do.
Over and over, Moses keeps reporting this very important piece of information. You eat unleavened bread because of what the LORD did.
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.
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.
