The Moedim – Unleavened Bread

Chag Hamatzot

Part of the Passover Festival described in Lev.23:4-11. In NT times and later, Passover covers the first three festivals, or sometimes referred to as ‘The Feast’ meaning Unleavened Bread which also covers the three festivals.

• Starts with the Passover meal
• Lasts 7 days with a holy convocation (miqra qodesh) on day 1 and day 7 – no work to be done except preparing food (Ex. 12:16, so not a proper Sabbath but a ‘high day’ John 19:31) and no leavened to be found in any of their dwellings for the whole period, with offerings each day
• Includes waving the Firstfruits on the day after the first Sabbath
• Purpose is remembrance of redemption Ex. 12:14; 13:8-9
• Meaning – Leaven puffs up and corrupts, like sin. Redeemed people (Ex. 12:13, 17) are to be holy people.

Chametz (leaven) forbidden for the whole 7 days

Chametzis any dough made from grain that is allowed to rise (Rabbinic rules – flour mixed with water and allowed to stand for more than 18 minutes!). The word chametz is found only 11 times in Scripture, and se’or (lump of starter dough) 5 times:

• Anyone who eats chametz during Chag Hamatzot shall be cut off from Israel (Exodus 12:15). Also Se’or (and v.19)
• Nothing chametz shall be eaten during the festival (Exodus 13:3). Se’or v. 7
• Nothing chametz shall be seen among you during the seven days of the festival (Exodus 13:7).
• The Passover lamb shall not be eaten with chametz (Deuteronomy 16:3). Se’or v.4
  
  
• The blood of sacrifices shall not be offered with chametz (Exodus 23:18, Exodus 34:25).
• No grain offerings shall be made with chametz (Leviticus 2:11 – inc. se’or, 6:17).
• Peace offerings for thanksgiving shall contain cakes of bread with chametz (Leviticus 7:13).
• Two loaves of bread with chametz shall be brought as the wave offering for first fruits Shavuot/Feast of Weeks (Leviticus 23:17).
  
  
• A leavened thank-offering is referenced in Amos 4:5, where the Lord rebukes Israel for their unfaithfulness – they love their idolatrous sacrifices and ceremonies! So Amos tells them to compound their errors by offering leaven.

NT refs to leaven:

• Matt. 16:11-12 the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees – hypocrisy (Mark 8:14 adds “and of Herod” – power)
• Gal. 5:9 false teaching and legalism
• 1 Cor. 5:6-7 pride over evil in the church
• Matt. 13:33 Sometimes when the Church is reaching its branches to the farthest, its heart is being corrupted by the slow spread of evil. See 1 Cor. 5:7-8.

The Festival Exodus 12:14-20, 34 & 39; 13:6-10

Passover lamb eaten in the evening of 14^th Abib/Nisan with unleavened bread (is the evening the start of the 15^th?)

At midnight, the Destroyer goes through the land of Egypt. The homes of the Israelites are covered by the Lord hovering over them where He sees the blood, so the firstborn are spared.

Pharaoh calls for Moses and Aaron and tells them to go. The Egyptians urge the Israelites to go and gave them everything they needed. The Israelites depart with their dough before it was leavened and camp at Succoth where they bake unleavened bread as they hadn’t had time to leaven it – suggesting extreme haste!

This day, the 15^th, is commemorated in the first day of Chag HaMatzot with a holy convocation and finished off on the 21^st with another. Most importantly, no food products containing leaven were to be consumed for the whole 7 days, as well as no leaven with the Passover meal.

Offerings Num. 28:16-25

Offerings were specified for each day of the Festival. The killing of the Passover lamb for each family (and eating it?) and the offerings were to be made at the Tabernacle (and later the Temple) Deut. 16:1-8.

• For seven days you shall present an “offering by fire” [אשּׁה, isheh] to the Lord (Leviticus 23:8).
• The “offering by fire” [isheh] includes the following:
  • Two bulls, one ram, and seven male lambs are one year old without defect (Numbers 28:19) – total 14 bulls, 7 rams and 49 lambs = 70 in total
  • A grain offering of fine flour mixed with oil; three-tenths of an ephah for the bull, two-tenths for the ram (Numbers 28:20), and one-tenth for each of the seven lambs (Numbers 28:21).
  • A male goat for a sin offering [חטאת, chata’at] to make atonement (Numbers 28:22).
• These sacrifices were brought in addition to the regular morning offering (Numbers 28:23).
• These were to be offered each day during the seven days of the festival (Numbers 28:24)

The Location Deut. 16:1-8

Regulations as to where the Passover was to be sacrificed and eaten when they were in the land and God has chosen a place to place His Name. Discuss implications for the Passover meal and celebration.

Application to New Covenant Believers

[Paul] remembered the sedulous hunting in every Jewish house for every scrap of leavened matter; the slaying of the Paschal Lamb, and the following feast. … a very deep and penetrating view of what the Christian life is, how it is sustained, and what it demands. ‘Wherefore,’ says he, ‘let us keep the feast . . . with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.’ That ‘wherefore’ takes us back to the words before it, and what are these? ‘Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us’; therefore-because of that sacrifice, to us is granted the power, and on us is laid imperatively the obligation, to make life a festival and to purge ourselves.

Feeding on Jesus Christ is absolutely impossible unless our leaven is cleansed away. Children spoil their appetites for wholesome food by eating sweetmeats. Men destroy their capacity for feeding on Christ by hungry desires, and gluttonous satisfying of those desires with the delusive sweets of this passing world. But, my brother, your experience, if you are a Christian man at all, will tell you that in the direct measure in which you have been drawn away into paltering with evil, your appetite for Christ and your capacity for gazing upon Him, contemplating Him, feeding on Him, has died out. There comes a kind of constriction in a man’s throat when he is hungering after lesser good, especially when there is a tinge of evil in the supposed good that he is hungering after, which incapacitates Him from eating the bread of God, which is Jesus Christ.

In the words immediately preceding my text, the Apostle bases his injunction to purge out the old leaven on the fact that ‘ye are unleavened.’ Ideally, in so far as the power possessed by them was concerned, these Corinthians were unleavened, even whilst they were bid to purge out the leaven. That is to say, be what you are; realise your ideal, utilise the power you possess, and since by your faith there has been given to you a new life that can conquer all corruption and sin, see that you use the life that is given. Purge out the old leaven because ye are unleavened.

Note the diabolical power of infection which Evil possesses. Either you must cast it out, or it will choke the better thing in you. It spreads and grows, and propagates itself, and works underground through and through the whole mass. If we do not eject Evil it will eject the good from us. (Alexander MacLaren)

Paul compares the Corinthian church to the Children of Israel, who, after sprinkling the blood, kept the feast of joy within closed doors-a careful search having been made for any atom of leaven that had hitherto escaped scrutiny. So we should put away from our lives, homes, and churches everything that would offend the gracious Paraclete. Since Christ has been slain for us, we must daily feed on Him with festal joy. Our loins must be girded as becomes those about to depart at a moment’s notice. We must be ever on the alert to detect the summons for an exodus out of this dark Egyptian world into the world that is to come. (F. B. Meyer)