The third point was, then, that Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread are two separate memorials - of two distinctly separate though closely occurring events; and they are to be kept on two separate days.
That is so clear! It is undeniable. (Well, I should not say that. There are still people who will deny.) But God says (God's Word says), Passover is on the fourteenth and the first day of Unleavened Bread is on the fifteenth!
Is that so? What about roasting the lamb? What about eating the lamb? What about staying in the house? What about burning the remains of the lamb? What about not going out of your house until morning? Is the killing of the lamb the only thing that God was interested in?
Now, if we make a spiritual parallel of that, the killing of the lamb represents the death of our Savior, does it not? Is that the end of salvation? Is that all one has to do is accept the blood of our Passover Sacrifice, that then that is all there is to it? You mean we do not have to obey God, and follow His instructions regarding anything else? I think you know better than that! That is only the beginning. Are we to say that God never tests us to see if we will follow His instruction?
There is the first thing that they had to do. What if they never selected the lamb? They would never have a lamb to kill on the fourteenth! So, if they did not follow that instruction, boy, they were up a creek.
Oh, what if they had killed the lamb, but they did not put the blood on the doorposts, or the lintel? Were they really keeping Passover?
There is another one. It was not allowed to be boiled. That is part of the instruction. Nor were they allowed to eat it raw. It also had to be burned in fire - the bones, the fat, the skin, and the guts. And verse 11 tells us that they had to eat it, as it were, in haste.
So, no one could eat [of the Passover] unless he was circumcised.
The lamb had to be eaten at the house where it was slain. These instructions are fairly detailed. You can understand (if you know God) that there is something involved in each step here that is important to His purpose. There is teaching here.
Finally, they were not allowed to carry it out until the morning.
If you go through those nine separate steps that those people had to go through, more than half of them had to be done before the Death Angel went though. And then, even after the Death Angel went through, there were other things that had to be done in order to complete the keeping of it.
Is that plain, brethren? Just because they were out of Egypt and the Death Angel was not literally going to go through, God changed nothing! So now we have all of those things that they did, following the sacrifice of the lamb - now they are called statutes and ordinances.
Also, in this chapter, appear the instructions regarding the keeping of the second Passover. That is, if a person was defiled because of touching a dead body or were traveling on a journey so that they could not keep the Passover when it rightfully came, God permitted them to keep it one month later. Now, one month later, were they excused from doing all of the other things? All they had to do was kill a lamb? No. Let us look at what it says.
Nothing changed for the keeping of the second Passover. There are no instructions in the Old Testament scriptures that modify the original instructions, and there is nothing in the New Testament modified, except for the symbols. And even as there is no example, or command, in the New Testament regarding the [changing] of the Sabbath, neither is there any example, or command, in the New Testament changing Passover.
In the clearest of terms, the apostles record for us when Jesus kept that last Passover, when He changed the symbols. He did it at the time that God has always commanded it to be done. Regardless of what the other Jews were doing, He did it when God commanded in Exodus 12 and Numbers 9 - at the beginning of the fourteenth.
… . . .
These are the first two feasts of the year. For now, just notice their structure or their arrangement. There is a one-day feast (Passover), followed by a seven-day feast.
So, we saw that the first two feasts were a one-day feast followed by a seven-day feast, and here we see that same pattern, but in reverse, like a mirror. The last feasts of the year are a seven-day feast, followed by a one-day feast. That is not an accident. As we will see, what we observe later in the year relates to what we observe at the beginning.
Knowing what we do of God, both as the Creator and as the One who inspired these things, we should know that this is not happenstance. In everything God does, there is a purpose and precision, and His written word is no exception. His feasts and holy days are no exception. And this arrangement of one day plus seven days, and then seven days plus one, is also no exception. This pattern invites us to explore these feasts together, which will help us to get just a little more into the mind of their Author.
And that's what we will be doing today. We will compare and contrast Unleavened Bread and Tabernacles. We will look at what is the same and what is different, so that we might uncover connections that we may not have seen before.
And for our topic today, the eight feast days are also arranged in a chiasm. Passover relates to the 8th Day. The First Day of Unleavened Bread - and, really, most of Unleavened Bread - relates to Tabernacles. The Last Day of Unleavened Bread relates to Atonement. And Pentecost and Trumpets are linked as well. We have tended to look at them just as a sequence, but when we identify the commonalities between the pairs, it helps us to better understand what God is teaching us with these times that He has set apart.
As we read, the reason that we stay in temporary dwellings is because God made the Israelites stay in booths when He delivered them from slavery in Egypt. Now, maybe it seems unusual that the instructions for this feast mention the exodus, which we associate with the Unleavened Bread. We have tended to think of Tabernacles in terms of looking ahead. But by God's command, Israel had to look back to and remember the exodus journey, and this applies to us as well.
This passage is all about the First Day of Unleavened Bread, beginning with the night of solemn observance, just after sunset. Unleavened Bread pictures God's deliverance from the environment of sin. It is about what God did and does for us - it is a memorial of His deliverance. But notice where this took place: Verse 37 puts the beginning of the exodus at Succoth. That was the first place they camped after leaving Ramses in Egypt proper.
So, this is a commonality with Tabernacles, because the place the Israelites camped for the First Day of Unleavened Bread is what this feast is named after. The Jews call this Feast Sukkot, which is the Hebrew word for tabernacle, tent, or booth. And the name of the first place the Israelites camped is Succoth, which is the same word, except that it is plural. So, the Israelites stayed in booths in Succoth. This is curious because they stayed in booths in the place that had already been named booths. It was already named Succoth when they got there and made their camp. The backstory to this is found in Genesis 33:17:
So, the place the Israelites camped for the First Day of Unleavened Bread was named after the dwellings Jacob made for his animals, and those dwellings are what this current feast is named after. It's one of those understated connections in God's word. But it shows a linkage between these feasts. They have a common origin.
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 … . . .
The day and the sacrifice are named after the event that God performed when He passed over the children of Israel. It does not memorialize, it does not commemorate, the going out of Egypt. It memorializes, it commemorates, God passing over (sparing) the Israelites.
The Passover is established to commemorate God's passing over. Nothing could be plainer - to anybody who is of a mind to believe God! We are dealing with two different events, two different days, and two different festivals - one on the fourteenth, and one on the fifteenth.
