James David Malm                                                        

                                      In Luke 7:36 it is written, “And one of the Pharisees desired him that he would eat with him. And he went into the Pharisee's house, and sat down to meat. And, behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster box of ointment, And stood at his feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment.

                                    Now when the Pharisee which had bidden him saw it, he spoke within himself, saying, This man, if he were a prophet, would have known who and what manner of woman this is that touches him: for she is a sinner. And Jesus answering said unto him, Simon, I have something to say unto thee. And he said, Master, say on. There was a certain creditor which had two debtors: the one owed five hundred pence, and the other fifty. And when they had nothing to pay, he frankly forgave them both. Tell me therefore, which of them will love him most? Simon answered and said, I suppose that he, to whom he forgave the most. And he said to him, you have rightly judged.

                                    And he turned to the woman, and said unto Simon, Seest thou this woman? I entered into thine house, and  you gave me no water for my feet: but she hath washed my feet with tears, and wiped them with the hairs of her head. Thou gavest me no kiss: but this woman since the time I came in hath not ceased to kiss my feet. My head with oil thou didst not anoint: but this woman hath anointed my feet with ointment. Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much: but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little. And he said unto her, Thy sins are forgiven.”

                                    In Ephesians 3:8 Paul writes, “Unto me who am lest than the least of all saints is this grace given that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ”. Paul who was previously named Saul in his early younger days persecuted the churched, caused some to be imprisoned, perhaps was involved in stonings, he was filled with a zeal but not with understanding or a correct knowledge of this way. He felt guilt. He felt that he was less than the least of all saints because he knew what kind of man he had been. He knew the sins he had committed. Much had been forgiven him and he knew it. Therefore he was filled with much love and dedicated himself for the rest of his life to loving God and to serving God by teaching all men to observe all the commandments of God.

                                    Now many have come after Paul and twisted his words. But it was Paul who wrote, “The law is holy, and just, and good”. Paul loved with all his being because he knew how much he owed, how much had been forgiven him. Passover is about forgiveness. It is about repentance. It is about turning away from sin; to go and sin no more. And the only way we can do that is through the power of God’s Holy Spirit in us, the power of Jesus Christ literally dwelling in us. As we eat the unleavened bread at Passover, we are eating a symbol of the body of Christ which was broken for us, so we break the bread. But we are taking into ourselves part of the body of Christ and we are symbolically saying, “I want Christ to dwell in me. I do not want to be my own man anymore. I want to be a Godly; Christ-like man or woman. I want Jesus Christ to literally dwell in me and do in me the things that He has always done.

                                    Keeping the Father’s commandments, loving the Father; you read these things at your Passover service last evening. Jesus Christ loved the Father. We are to love the Father if Christ is in us. If we love the Father we would keep His commandments because we love Him and we want to please Him. And we are only capable of loving Him, of wanting to please Him, of keeping His commandments; through the power of Christ dwelling in us. Passover is about repentance from sin and it is about making a commitment to please and love God through the power of Jesus Christ dwelling in us.

                                    Now we call this commitment, a formal commitment, at baptism. When we go and have ourselves baptized into the Father, the Son, and Holy Spirit through the name of, or by the authority of Jesus Christ, we show through baptism that we are washing away the sins of the past, fulfilling the law which was given to Moses which said, “If ye be unclean wash yourselves and you shall be clean when the sun is set”. Baptism is an outgrowth of that washing, and that pictures washing away sin, and it pictures in another sense a burial. A death and burial of the old person to rise up out of that water a new person in the faith of God and Jesus Christ.

                                    When we believe the gospel message about salvation and the means of entering God’s kingdom; and how we can enter into the kingdom of God, and we begin to turn from our past sin and to turn toward God, and to start loving God and keeping His commandments, and we make a formal commitment through baptism, then Jesus Christ will come and dwell in us. Then the Holy Spirit will be given to us. Then we take into ourselves the very nature of Jesus Christ who loved the Father and kept the Father’s commandments. The bread, the unleavened bread of Passover pictures the purity, and perfection, and freedom from sin which was Jesus Christ, and it pictures us taking that into our own selves. The wine we take is symbolic of His blood being poured out for our sins to pay the penalty which we have earned through our wickedness and our law breaking.

                                    Jesus Christ paid the penalty for us and died for us so that we could be forgiven. And so when we believe the word of God and we turn from our sins in repentance, we are not to build again that evil which we were, but we are to build something new upon coming out of the watery grave of baptism, a new being in Christ. And when we do these things, the Holy Spirit as Peter said at Pentecost, will be given to us. That is, the spirit of God and of Jesus Christ will come and dwell in us, and the sacrifice of Christ will be applied to us covering past sin, atoning for past sin, and allowing us to start over, to start anew, to start living in a Godly way, to start keeping God’s commandments. This is what Passover is all about.

                                    In Exodus 12:15 Moses writes, “Seven days shall ye eat unleavened bread; even the first day ye shall put away leaven out of your houses: for whosoever eats leavened bread from the first day until the seventh day, that soul shall be cut off from Israel”. This is speaking to the nation of Israel, physical as well as spiritual Israel. If we eat the leaven, we who are Israel in spirit shall be cut off from spiritual Israel. For leaven is a very important symbol of something. In verse 16, “And in the first day there shall be an holy convocation, and on the seventh day there shall be a holy convocation to you; no manner of work shall be done in them, save that which every man must eat, that only may be done of you”.

                                    You may eat. You should not go through the process of having a lot of baking or really heavy cooking. That can be done on the preparation day which is actually the Passover day itself. Prepare for the Holy day, the first day of unleavened bread which falls on the fifteenth day of the first month. Verse 17, “And you shall observe the feast of unleavened bread; for in this selfsame day have I brought your armies out of the land of Egypt: therefore shall you observe this day in your generations by an ordinance forever. In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at even,” at sunset, “you shall begin to eat unleavened bread, until the twenty-first day of the month at sunset. Seven days shall there be no leaven found in your houses: for whosoever eats that which is leavened, even that soul shall be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether he be a stranger, or born in the land. Ye shall eat nothing leavened; in all your dwellings shall ye eat unleavened bread”.

                                     In verse 29, “And it came to pass, that at midnight the Eternal smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the firstborn of the captive that was in the dungeon; and all the firstborn of cattle. And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he, and his servants, and all the Egyptians; and there was a great cry in Egypt; for there was not a house where there was not one dead. And he called for Moses and Aaron by night, and said, Rise up, and get you forth from among my people, both ye and the children of Israel; and go, serve the Eternal, as ye have said”.

                                    Passover was killed on the evening ending the thirteenth beginning the fourteenth day of the first month. The lambs were killed at the evening beginning the fourteenth day, the blood was put on their doorposts, the destroyer went through the land at midnight, and late after midnight Pharaoh said, “Get out. Get out”. So Moses went and he informed all Israel and they began to gather the people together and pack up their belongings to travel out of the land. Now the people had been forbidden to go out until the morning, and it would have been very difficult to gather everyone and everything together in the dark anyway.

                                    So they did so during the daylight period. And as the day began to end, the fourteenth day began to end, the sun began to set, Israel began to travel out of Egypt. And it in verse 40, “Now the sojourning of the children of Israel, who dwelt in Egypt, was four hundred and thirty years. And it came to pass at the end of the four hundred and thirty years, even on the selfsame day it came to pass, that all the hosts of the Lord went out from the land of Egypt. It is a night to be much observed unto the Lord for bringing them out from the land of Egypt: this is the night of the Eternal to be observed of all the children of Israel in their generations”.

                                    So we see that Israel came out of Egypt with a high hand as it says back in verse 18, in the first month on the fourteenth day of the month at evening, at the end of Passover. Passover pictured the passing over of the Destroyer, the deliverance of Israel from the destroyer, and the death of the Egyptians. The next evening, the end of Passover, the beginning of the Feast of the Unleavened Bread, showed Israel actually coming out of Egypt. And when they left Egypt they began to travel in the direction God led them, toward the land of Canaan. And Pharaoh repented that he had let the people go and he chased after them with his armies, and they became entrapped in the wilderness near the Red Sea.

                                    And we can pick up the story in Exodus 14 where it recounts how Pharaoh chased Israel, and then trapped them in the wilderness, and how they had their backs up against the Red Sea. And God delivered them by causing a great wind to blow all through the night, opening up a passage across the sea. Israel then walked through on dry land. And when the last Israelite had passed over and through the sea, then the Egyptians were drowned as the sea came back upon itself. In chapter 15, is recorded the song of Moses, and there was great rejoicing in the camp that they had been saved, and that they had been delivered across the sea. This was a great feast of rejoicing, and this festival was the seventh day of unleavened bread.

                                    Now we know that Israel came out of Egypt at the beginning of the first day of Unleavened Bread. They went through the process of travelling through the wilderness, crossing the Red Sea, on the sixth day of unleavened bread, and at sunset the great rejoicing of the last day of the festival, the feast of the seventh day of Unleavened Bread began. Now I know that there are some who will claim that Israel went through the Red Sea on the seventh day of the feast of Unleavened Bread. However there is absolutely nothing in Scripture to support that position. If anyone anywhere knows of any Scripture anywhere in the bible which says Israel crossed the Red Sea on the seventh day please communicate with me and let me know.

They did not do so. The seventh day was a High Holy Day. God would not have done that to the Egyptians on the High Holy Day. He delivered Israel and completed the process of bringing them out of Egypt in six days. And the seventh day was a day of rest and rejoicing over the successful deliverance and victory of God for Israel. Israel did none of these things by their own efforts. God accomplished it all from causing Pharaoh to force them out, to giving them ultimate victory over Pharaoh. It was all in the hands of God. God gave it to them, gave them the victory and they rejoiced over the victory.

For it is written in Genesis that God created all things in six days and completed the creation in six days, and on the seventh day, He rested. And He spent the seventh day with the man and the woman, and they rejoiced together, and learned together, and He taught them, and they spent time with their Creator. Even so, six days was the process of bringing Israel out of Egypt. And the seventh day was a day of rejoicing in a  peaceful harmonious relationship with their God, their Creator, who was leading them, and had completed the process of leading them out of Egypt.

Peter tells us that one day is just like a thousand years with God, and that one thousand years is like one day with Him. This is not just talking about being patient. This is a key to understanding the Scripture, and to understanding the prophesies, and understanding the festivals; the seven-day week. The seven days represent seven thousand years. Six thousand years of man, and the final seventh day, the seventh one thousand years, a millennium at peace with God, time with God, resting from human activity, time with God. There were six days of creation and the seventh day God rested, the man and the woman rested, and they spent time together. Even so, the feast of Unleavened Bread pictures a thousand years for a day. Six thousand years God is doing something and the seventh day, the seven thousand years, pictures that same millennium of rest.

Creation week and the Feast of Unleavened Bread are mirror images of each other. And we need to understand that the physical creation week in Genesis was about the physical creation and the bringing forth of Israel out of Egypt during the week of unleavened bread was about a spiritual creation which God is engaged in. Israel physically was a type of a spiritual Israel. Those things that happened to them were for our instruction and our example, to teach us things about spiritual Israel because the physical is a type of or a reflection of the spiritual. To understand the spiritual, we must look at the physical. We must look at the time that Israel came out of Egypt, the six days of unleavened bread, and then a day, or a millennium of rest.

This seventh day pictures a Sabbath of rest, a High Holy Day, and man at peace with God. So what is a leaven anyway? Leaven is yeast or an artificial product put into grain or wheat flour to cause it to puff up, to rise when it is baked. The addition of leaven to dough will cause it to, in many cases, double in size, yet there is no increase in substance. Increase in size is due to tiny bubbles of air or carbon dioxide produced by the leavening agent. The substance is still the same but it is swollen by the gasses trapped in the dough, gasses which have been produced by the leaven. Leaven swells something up. It makes it look much bigger than it really is.

It is a deceitful thing in the sense that you would look at it and think there’s a lot more to it than there really is. It is almost like a cotton candy. It looks beautiful but it is mostly air with very little substance. Now in the Garden of Eden, Satan said to Eve, “When you take of this fruit, when you decide for yourself what is right or wrong, you shall be as God. You shall become gods. What is the difference between you and God? God is the decider; He tells you what is right and wrong. If you decide for yourself what’s right and wrong, you become just like God. You become a god”.

So Eve took of that fruit and later gave some to her husband. She and he decided that they would decide for themselves what was right and wrong, and they would no longer listen to God. They would not obey Him, they would not keep His commandments, they would decide for themselves. This made them vain and arrogant. It puffs up the pride, the attitude, the minds of people, and makes them think that because they are the decider, they are something special, they are something great. They become filled with pride and their ego is inflated. Just like the leaven puffs up the dough, you get a much greater size of ego, a much greater size of dough, a much stronger attitude, but you're really no different than you were before.

You're just as dumb as you always were, and you don’t know right from wrong any more than you did before, in fact you know it less. Because right is doing what God says is right, and doing what you think is right is just being self-righteous. When men begin to think that they know better than God, or when they think that they know better than other men, and they have the right to dominate and control and bully other people, then they have become ignorant; having forgotten how evil they really are. For everyone, all men, every one of us, has fallen short of the glory of God. None of us can pass judgment on God’s commandments because none of us has the intelligence, or the wisdom, or the experience.

We just don’t have it, we can’t do it, we’re just not smart enough, or mature enough to do it. When we sin by relying on our own judgment or the words of men instead of the words of God, we sin. And the sin fills us with an empty pride, for truly none of us has much to be proud of. Leaven is symbolic of sin, and the pride, and selfishness that sin generates. At the Passover, the Destroyer passed over the houses of Israel because the blood of the lamb was on their door posts. And this was symbolic of the blood of the Lamb of God being placed on the doorpost of our heart so that we would not be destroyed in the judgment but that He would atone.

He the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, has atoned for our sins; therefore we are spared from destruction on the Day of Judgment. As what happened in Israel, was a type or a symbol of a deeper meaning, a spiritual thing, so the Feast of Unleavened Bread is a type of a deeper meaning, a spiritual thing. As Israel began to come out of Egypt on the beginning of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and therefore that day is a day to be much observed and remembered, and is a High Holy Day. Even so, some six thousand years ago, six days ago, our Creator began a plan to put the sin of man out of mankind. And He began to call various individuals such as Abel, Enoch, Noah, Elijah, Moses, Joseph, Daniel, Elisha, and so many others including David, and Jeremiah, and Isaiah.

So many others through that period of time between the Creation and expulsion from the garden and the days of Jesus Christ, hundreds and thousands of people were called out from this world so that God could work with them, and begin the process, and carry through with each individual the process of putting sin out of their lives and slowly making a special people for Himself. For thousands of years since the days of Abel, God has been calling individuals and perfecting them by putting out from them the leaven of sin, and filling them with the spirit of God. During the thousands of years before Christ, this was all done in the spirit of hope and faith in the sacrifice, the coming sacrifice of Christ, for He was the Lamb of God slain from the foundations of the world.

It was planned from the very beginning that He would sacrifice. He would be a sacrifice and atonement for sin because it was known from the beginning that surely someone somewhere would slip and fall into sin, and the means was provided to atone for sin. Even so, God began a spiritual creation when sin entered then, God called some out of that sin to perfect them for a part in His kingdom, and also to be an example to the rest of the world. As Israel began to come out of Egypt on the first day of Unleavened Bread, God began to bring man out of sin on the beginning of human history with the calling of righteous Abel.

As Israel journeyed in the wilderness for five days, and came up against the Red Sea, and was delivered through the sea on the sixth day completing their deliverance from Egypt. Even so, those that God had called out as His first fruits from righteous Abel until the very end, will be delivered at the end of six thousand years in a resurrection with the coming of Jesus Christ together with His angels and His saints to set up the kingdom of God. And then God, that is the Creator Jesus Christ, will dwell among men, and with men. God’s spirit will be poured out on all flesh and there will be peace and harmony between all men and God.

There will be a Sabbath of rest after the creation of the first fruits, a millennium, a thousand years Sabbath of rest after six thousand years of spiritual creativity. In conclusion, we have the physical creation week in Genesis where all things were made in six days, and on the seventh day God rested. Then we have the period of Israel in Egypt, when after Passover on the first day of unleavened bread, Israel came out of Egypt and went through a process of travelling out of Egypt, and to be completely and totally delivered from Egypt by God at the end of the sixth day. For we know that the wind blew all one night, and they crossed the sea during the day, and by that evening, the end of the sixth day, they were delivered by God.

And the seventh day became a Sabbath, a High Holy Day, a time of great joy and rejoicing completely out of Egypt. So we know the creation week and the week of unleavened bread are parallel. And they are both parallel to point to a spiritual parallel which is; God putting sin out of His first fruits from Abel to the resurrection, and then a Sabbath, a millennium of peace on this earth with God together with His creation. Six thousand years of tribulation in this world, of putting sin out of His first fruits, and then a thousand years of peace, a millennium of rest, a Sabbath of rest for God’s people and for all mankind who will become God’s people when His spirit is poured out on all flesh at the time of the establishment of God’s kingdom, Joel 2:28.

We have in Genesis the creation week of six days followed by a Sabbath of rest, which pictures six thousand years of man without God, and then one thousand years of man with God, a Sabbath of rest, a thousand years Sabbath of rest. We then have in parallel the Feast of Unleavened Bread, Israel coming out of Egypt for six days, struggling to get out of and go through the land of Egypt, delivered at the end of the sixth day, and a Sabbath of rest, a joyous day of rejoicing, a High Holy Day,  a seventh day.

This again pictures a spiritual event which is six thousand years of God putting sin out of His first fruits. And at the end of six thousand years, a resurrection to life, to eternal life, and a Sabbath of rest for those first fruits, a time of rejoicing. Even as Israel went through the Red Sea in a type of a burial and resurrection, a type of baptism in the Red Sea, even so, spiritual Israel, the first fruits, go through a type of burial and resurrection at baptism.

There will be a resurrection at the end of the sixth day of unleavened Bread. As Israel went through their burial and resurrection in the sea at the end of the sixth day, spiritual Israel will have their resurrection out of the grave on the end of the sixth day, the beginning of the millennium of rest.

Therefore we can conclude that it is highly likely that the real actual literal resurrection that changes the first fruits to spirit at the end of six thousand years will actually occur at the end of the sixth day of unleavened bread simply because of the symbolism of that day. Now we have been told in the past that the Feast of Unleavened Bread pictures the personal struggle of each convert, of each new person, called to be part of the first fruits, and their struggle to put sin out of their lives. And this is also true but it goes beyond the individual. It goes to what God is doing not so much to what we are doing.

We are working hard to try and overcome sin but it is not in our capability to do so. It is God Almighty, God the great king of the universe, who called Israel out of Egypt, who delivered them out of Egypt, and it is the great Eternal God who must put sin out of our lives. His Spirit, the spirit of Jesus Christ, must dwell in us, and through the power of that spirit, sin is put out of our lives. It is God who puts it out. All we can do is do our best to try and follow that Spirit and cooperate with it, but it is the power of God which puts sin out of our lives. We could never do it on our own.

Even so, the Feast of Unleavened Bread is about God working to put sin out of our lives. And we should not be concentrating on ourselves in a kind of a selfish way. God is putting sin out of all the lives of all of His called first fruits. And we can take a look at that bigger picture and realize that His first fruits began with Abel, and His first fruits include not just ourselves as individuals, but thousands of others. And we have to kind of see beyond ourselves and realize that this struggle to put sin out of our life is multiplied in the lives of millions of others through history.

Let us not take a short sighted view, a myopic view, of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Let us take the grander view. The Feast of Unleavened Bread, yes it’s about putting sin out of our lives, but it is about putting sin out of all first fruits. It is a truly grand plan. And the meaning of the Feast of Unleavened Bread is absolutely profound as is the meaning of the Passover itself.