Unleavened Bread or Die

Building on the momentum from the sermonette where we heard about Joshua 5, I want to talk today about the timeline of events. We can say the 48 hours from the time of Passover, that first Passover, on to when the Israelites actually left Egypt. On Friday evening, March 26th, just under three weeks from now, God's people around the world are going to celebrate the New Testament Passover. And we're going to take unleavened bread and wine, and 24 hours later, we're going to celebrate the night too much observed, and the first day of unleavened bread. And as we physically and spiritually prepare for these events, I think it's important that we're grounded in the biblical basis for why we observe these events on these days. And from this understanding of this timeline, we can draw us, I think, some important lessons, spiritual lessons, as we go through this preparation. Now, many of us might think that we understand these things, you know. We've been in the church for many years, but I guess as I begin, I just want to ask, you know, can you explain from your Bible, somebody just handed you a Bible and said, turn to a scripture and tell me why God's church doesn't observe the Passover on the same night as the majority of the Jewish people in the world.

Could you do that? Do you know why unleavened bread was the symbol of the deliverance from Egypt?

You know, we talk about unleavened bread being a symbol of sin, but, you know, what was the significance of unleavened bread to the deliverance of Egypt? Why, you know, why were those things put together so powerfully in the Old Testament?

Do we understand how that Old Testament symbolism then becomes New Testament symbolism when we get to putting 11 out of our homes as a symbol of sin?

And the message today we're going to go through, as I said, this 48-hour timeline.

From Passover to when people left Egypt.

We're going to draw two critical lessons from that after we go through that timeline.

And as we go through this timeline, we're going to address some controversies that maybe you knew were there, maybe you forgot were there, or maybe you never knew were there.

And someone might come up to you and say, well, what do you think about this? You know, how do you explain that? And I think it's important, as I said before, that we understand as much the questions as we understand the answers.

So the title of today's message is, Unleavened Bread or Die.

And that's kind of an extreme title, I know, but I think as we go through it, we'll realize that really that was the choice of our spiritual ancestors. It was, Unleavened Bread or Be Dead.

And we'll see why that unleavened bread becomes so important in the narrative of the story. So let's begin by turning to Exodus 12.

And we're going to spend a lot of time in Exodus 12. In fact, we're going to realize most of what we need to know can be found in Exodus 12 in regard to this 48-hour timeline.

But we in our modern Western culture tend to expect things to be laid out in chronological order for us. But that actually wasn't as important in ancient Eastern thinking, Asian or African, in this case, where the Middle East, as much as the concepts were conveyed.

And so what we're going to see is that Exodus 12 does not necessarily have things in the chronological order that you expect, but it has all the elements that are in there. So let's start with Exodus 12 and verse 3. And we're going to begin this 48-hour timeline here through Exodus 12. It says, speak to all the congregation of Israel saying, on the tenth day of this month, every man shall take for himself a lamb according to the house of his father, a lamb for a household. This is the tenth day of Nisan or Abib. It's sometimes called AB, IB, or Av-IV. We'll call it the fourteenth of Nisan for our discussion today.

And it says in verse 6, now, now you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month, then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it at twilight. So on the fourteenth of Nisan, according to the standard Jewish calendar, we are to observe this ceremony called the Passover. This is when the lamb would be slain. And we observe it on the same night of the year that Jesus and his disciples observed this ceremony. But here in Exodus 12 or 6, we have the first great controversy that we'll discuss. And it's the controversy of what does it mean, twilight? What does it mean, twilight? And this is important because this is a significant reason why we do not keep the Passover on the same night as the majority of the Jewish people. The word twilight here in verse 6 is the Hebrew word ben ha-ar-ba'im, and that's spelled B-E-I-N.

And then there's a space, H-A, another space, A-R-B-A-Y-I-M. Ben ha-ar-ba'im. And it is roughly translated as evening, or evenings plural, or between the two evenings. And you can note, Exodus 29.39, it also uses the same word, but it's used quite a bit through Scripture.

We understand that a biblical day begins at sundown. I think most of us know that, but we may not know why we believe that or where that says that. But the idea is that in the Hebrew calendar, the day follows the night. And we don't tend to think about that in our terms, because we think about midnight as the beginning of the day. So, you know, today is March 6th, and at midnight it's going to become March 7th. And, you know, I have my little Apple Watch, and I see the 6th, and at midnight it's going to turn to the 7th. And so we tend to think about, you know, March 7th begins at midnight, but we tend to think about the day and then the night. We don't tend to think about the night and then the day. And we know that, for example, from Genesis 1 verse 8, if you want a biblical reference for that, we know that in the Genesis account of the creation, it always says, and the night, right, the evening and the morning of the first day. So the day was always described with the evening part beginning and then the morning. It was the evening and the morning of the first day. It was the evening and the morning of the second day. It was the evening and the morning of the third day. This is how the Hebrew calendar and the Jewish people, or at that time the Israelites, thought about it. Another biblical reference is Leviticus 23 verse 32. In discussing the Day of Atonement, it makes it very clear there that the Day of Atonement was on the tenth day of the seventh month. And it says in Leviticus 23-39, we won't turn there, but it says, you shall begin this day at the evening of the ninth.

It literally calls it out until the sunset the next day. So literally, the beginning of the tenth day is when the sun goes down on the ninth, and that is the beginning of the tenth day, and that's when you would begin your fast. We also know from Nehemiah 13 verse 9 that they shut the gate at the beginning of the Sabbath, which was at sunset. So they said, you know, as the Sabbath began, they closed the gates as it began to get dark. So this concept that the day begins, quote unquote, the day begins at night is a little odd for us, but that's how these people thought about it. And so when it says the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it at twilight, that means then the beginning of that 14th. So we understand that they kept that lamp up until that sunset period, which was the beginning of the 14th, and then they killed the lamb right there at right after sunset. And this concept of, in Hebrew, is a concept of between the two evenings. That is, from the time of sunset until it was completely dark. There's not a lot of time, but that's what we call twilight. That's when they killed those those lamps, as the 14th was beginning, as the beginning of the two evenings. Now, that is how the Passover was celebrated for a very, very long time, all the way up until you get into the Babylonian captivity, and then into the first century when Jesus kept it. But there was a controversy about that, because some of the Jews believed that you would keep it from 3 p.m. until sunset at the end of the 14th.

And so there were some prominent scholars within Judaism that supported that, and we're going to show a scripture of that in a moment. But when Jesus asked his disciples to go prepare the Passover for him, and they observed the Passover at the beginning of the 14th, nobody said, well, what are you talking about? You know, why are you going to observe it a day early? You know, none of the 12 disciples looked at Jesus and said, what are we doing? We're celebrating this a day early. No, they celebrated it at the beginning of the 14th, just as it's described here. Now, in the second century A.D., after the death of Christ and the death of the apostles, there arose a great controversy within Christianity as to what day the Passover should be celebrated on. And there was this tradition in Rome that this day should be celebrated every day, excuse me, every year on Sunday. It should be done on Sunday, and that eventually became what we understand to be Easter Sunday. But in the East, in Asia, in Asia Minor, in Turkey, and so forth, it was celebrated at the beginning of the 14th. And they followed the tradition of the Apostle John and his disciple, Polycarp. And these people at that time, they had a specific name. They were called Cuerto de Samani. So we would be called Cuerto de Samani, which means the 14th-ers. It's a word in Latin for the 14th-ers. We would be referred to as the 14th-ers, or the Cuerto de Samani. And so the Cuerto de Samani kept Passover at the beginning of the 14th of Nisan, and they refused to keep the Passover on Sunday. And there was a very famous meeting between Polycarp and the Bishop of Rome, Anasitus. At that time, he was called the Bishop of Rome. There was not this concept of a pope yet. He was called the Bishop of Rome. And they had this meeting where Polycarp defended the keeping of Passover on the 14th versus the tradition of Rome, which was to keep it on Sunday in honor of what they believed to be the date of Jesus's resurrection. This is very well-documented.

And in fact, Arrhenius, the Bishop of Mion in France, defended the 14th-ers to the pope much later, saying we should leave them alone and allow them to continue to do that. And I've mentioned this to some of my Catholic friends, saying, you know, by the way, you know, if you think you wonder what I'm doing, I'll tell you, Arrhenius, who is a Catholic saint, defended people who did what I did, you know, back then. So it's a very well-known controversy within that second century. So that's one of the first controversies here is, should this be kept on the single day of Sunday, or should this be kept on the 14th of Nisan? And Christians, for hundreds of years after the death of Christ, and certainly the apostles kept it, as everyone knows, kept it on the 14th of Nisan. It was changed by the tradition of Rome to be kept on Sunday, and that's how eventually they kind of migrated to this Easter Sunday concept. So then, as I mentioned, the other controversy is, should the Passover be slain at the twilight, or it should be done between 3 p.m. and the end of the day on the 14th? And I'd like you to turn to John 18 verse 28, because we can see this sort of, you know, a shadow of this in John 18 verse 28.

So, you know, we understand Jesus kept the Passover at the beginning of the 14th of Nisan, and he was betrayed that evening. And, you know, in the narrative and the flow, he's basically bounced around all of these officials. And in John 18 verse 28, it says, then they led Jesus from Caiaphas to the Vittorium, and it was early evening. The Vittorium, of course, where Pilate was going to be. But they themselves did not go into the Vittorium, lest they should be defiled, but that they might eat the Passover. So, these people who, these Jews, who were involved with taking Jesus, then, you know, into Caiaphas, they had not yet taken Passover.

Jesus and his disciples had taken Passover, as had many other Jews, but they had not yet taken Passover. They would not take that until later. And this was, again, we see these echoes within the New Testament regarding when they actually took it. So, if you don't type, you know, when should I keep the Passover, or when do the Jewish people keep the Passover? You might find references to the fact that, you know, why does it say in Exodus 12 that you're supposed to keep it on the 14th, and yet the Jewish Seder, or Passover ceremony, is on the 15th? I mean, this is well-documented and understood, and what you'll typically see in that response, if you rule around it, is that because the Temple no longer exists, there is no longer a need to slay lambs, and so it has now been combined into just one ceremony which celebrates the seven days of Passover, which begins on the 15th. And so that's what the Jews do today. They have seven days of Passover in Israel, eight days outside of Israel. That's another long story, which I think I've told you about. But anyway, seven days of Unleavened Bread, or seven days they call Passover, and they begin it with a Jewish Seder on the end of the 14th and the beginning of the 15th. And that already was beginning to be done even here in the New Testament period, which is not what was actually described in Exodus 12. So we in God's church observe in Exodus 12.6, beginning of the 14th Passover.

We are the Quartro de Samani, the 14thers, same night as Jesus, whereas the Jews no longer observe that. They observe a Seder at the beginning of the first day of Unleavened Bread, and they keep seven days of Passover in Israel, or eight days of Passover outside of Israel. So those are the two great controversies within Exodus 12.6. Let's go back there to Exodus 12.6 again. And again, it all tends to kind of come down to what does it mean to while I observe. That's really the interpretation of that concept, because in the New Testament, lambs were going to be slain the following day. So Exodus 12.6, now if you keep and tell the 14th day of the same month and the whole assembly of the congregation in Israel shall kill it at twilight, and they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the houses where they eat it. And then they shall eat the flesh on that night, roasted in fire with unleavened bread, and bitter herbs they shall eat it. So the blood of the doorpost, the blood was put on the doorpost that evening, and they ate a Passover meal at the beginning of the 14th. That's very, very important. And they ate unleavened bread with it. So even though the dates of unleavened bread had not yet begun, they ate unleavened bread that evening at the beginning of the 14th. Now we're going to come back to that unleavened bread, because obviously it's very important in this holiday. But let's go to verse 29 now, and we'll pick up the flow. So beginning of the 14th sunset, the lambs are slain until twilight, there's a meal eaten, people are in their homes. And then it says in verse 29, and it came to pass at midnight that the Lord struck all the firstborn in the land of Egypt from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on this throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the dungeon in all the first born of a livestock. So Pharaoh rose in the night, he and all 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 that was dead.

And so this then describes the scene as it were in the middle of the night as all the firstborn killed. And then in verse 31, he says, then he called for Moses and Aaron by night and said, rise and go out from among my people both you and the children of Israel and go serve the Lord as you have said. Now, one thing we should notice here is it says he called for Moses and Aaron by night. Did they arrive at night? We don't know, it doesn't say that. There's sort of an implication that he called for them and they instantaneously were there and he said it, but obviously he called for them. And then he had to wait because, you know, they were in another place and they had to get from where they were, you know, that there were a detachment, let's say of soldiers who went to go get them and then bring them back. When did they actually get back to Pharaoh and have this conversation? We don't actually know. Probably at night, maybe, you know, right after the sun came up. We don't actually know, but we know that it happened at night and he called for them at night.

So we know that's happened. Now, if we go back to verse 22, we understand something very, very important because a lot of people get confused on this, and especially certain Israeli traditions, that they did not leave that night. They could not have left that night that this happened. So we'll look at verse 22. It says, and you shall take a bunch of hyssop, dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and strike the lentil of the two doorposts with the blood that is in the basin, and none of it shall go, and none of you shall go out of the door of his house until morning. So you can't have Israel leave, Israel leave in Egypt after Pharaoh calls for them that night, and leaving them that night because they were barred from leaving their houses until morning. It's not possible to leave Egypt at night and stay in your house at the same time.

So they had to stay in their houses all night. So while this is going on, Pharaoh is calling for Moses, there's a lot of death and destruction going on outside. All the Israelites are in their homes. They have to stay in their homes, and that's a very, very important verse. And that verse is supported also by verse 10. If you look at verse 10, it says, you shall let none of it, referring to the meal, remain until morning, and what remains of it until morning, you shall burn with fire.

So they were to actually burn what was remaining, presumably sort of there in the morning.

So we know they didn't leave their homes until daylight. So they were in their homes all night, and the first thing they did was probably to burn or dispose of whatever that meal was.

And that's actually quite significant, because we're going to get to this in a moment about their food supply, what kind of food they took with them on their journey. So you can't have people leave Egypt in the evening of the Passover or during the meal. Now, let's go over to Numbers 33 in verse 3, because if we understand that they had to stay in their houses until daybreak, when did they actually leave Egypt? is the question. And then that question is answered definitively in Numbers 33 verse 3. Numbers 33 verse 3 says, they departed from Ramesses in the first month on the 15th day after the Passover, the children of Israel went out with boldness on the sight of all the Egyptians. So again, if we understand that the beginning of the 14th was that sunset, and they slayed the lambs, and they were inside their homes with the blood covering their doorposts, and that destructive force went through and killed the firstborn of Egypt, and they remained in their homes. When they woke up that next morning, or when they walked out of their doors that next morning, that's still the 14th.

That's still the 14th of Nisan. And it says here in Numbers 33 verse 3 that they left on the 15th, which means they did not leave Egypt until the end of that day passed the sunset. So that means they were in Egypt for the daylight portion after Passover, and that evening was finished. Now, what did they do during that day? Well, we get some hints about this in Scripture. Let's go back to Exodus 13 verse 19 about what they did. So you can imagine they've packed things up, they're walking outside, they're cleaning things up last time around the house, and then they go and they start assembling according to tribes so that they can leave Egypt. But they did some other things during that day as well. Exodus 13 verse 19. It says, and Moses took the bones of Joseph with him, for he had placed the children of Israel under psalm of saying, God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones from here with you. So chances are Moses directed during that daylight portion. Go get Joseph's bones. Let's make sure that we've got that all prepared appropriately, that we take him out of Egypt. If we look back at Exodus 12 verse 35, we see now the children of Israel had done according to the word of Moses that they had asked from the Egyptian articles of silver, articles of gold, and clothing. So obviously they can't leave their homes at night, so they come out on a daybreak at the beginning of the 14th, and you know, they go to their neighbor and say, hey, we're, you know, we're getting out of town. Anything you want to do to help me, you know, I've been around here a long time, and you know, help me out. And so, you know, they, they are able to, as we say, plunder the Egyptians. Now notice something else here in Exodus 12 verse 34, something important. It says, so the people took their dough before it was 11, having their kneading bowls bound up in their clothes on their shoulders. So, so imagine that on the Passover evening, the whole house is packed up, ready to go, right, you know, sandals there, everyone's ready to go.

And at first daylight, they assemble their animals, and they do their final walk through their house or their homes. And sometime early that morning, very likely, you know, the women or the men took the dough that they had, and they packed it up, along with kneading bowls, and kneading bowls are these things that really just work that so you get some nice, you know, rise from out of the web. And, and they packed it up in the equivalent of an ancient backpack, right, they just put it on their backs. And they left, and they again, they went to assemble with where they were, where they're going to go. And this is where we get into another controversy. And this controversy has been literally going on for about 2000 years. You can you can find Jewish commentaries of the first century discussing this controversy. And that's the controversy of verse 34, compared to verse 39. So let's look at verse 39. Exodus 12 verse 39, and they baked unleavened bread cakes of the dough, which they had brought out of Egypt, for it was not leavened, because they were driven out of Egypt and could not wait, nor had they prepared provisions for themselves. So the controversy is, there are three things here that appear to be contradictory, that can't all happen at the same time. So did they take their dough and put it in their backpacks and leave? Or did they take their dough and bake cakes and carry the unleavened cakes with them?

Right, you can't you can't do both. But then it also says at the end, nor have they prepared provisions for themselves. And the implication here is that they didn't take any food with them. Okay, so if they had unleavened cakes, that's food. So if they had cakes, then they had food. So did they have food or did they not have food? And if they had cakes, then what was the dough in their backpack for? And then you have the other issue that technically you can't have unleavened bread from dough sitting out. Right? I mean, it's not like, you know, you can point a laser at some dough and say, I'm going to kind of, you know, point a laser at that and get rid of all the leaven in there. We know leaven just comes in from everywhere, right? So dough will naturally rise if it's left out long enough, or excuse me, or naturally leaven if it's left out long enough, such that when you bake it, you're going to get some rise. And of course, they couldn't do that.

So, you know, there's some scholarship that says that this dough had to have had leaven in it, which means they left Egypt with leavened bread. And you can go out and read scholarship on this. Now, we don't believe this in God's church, but there are theories that they actually left with leavened dough, which then, you know, became leavened later. So how do you square these things? Did they bake cakes? Did they have dough? Did they have no food? Did they have food? What's the answer here? And again, you can read medieval Jewish commentaries from 500 years ago. They go into theories around this. Now, there's lots of different views on how these things are, how these verses are considered. But one of the views, and I think it's actually probably, in my view, the most plausible, is that if we look at verse 39, what it says, it says, they baked unleavened cakes of the dough, which they had brought out of Egypt.

That would imply that that baking took place after they left Egypt.

Right? Because it says they took it of what they brought out of Egypt, for it was not leavened.

So, if we think about the events of what occurred, I think the timeline that we see coming from these verses is that they took their dough and they put it in their backpack, and they walked out and they got ready. And when they had actually left Egypt that night and walked all night, sometime during the night, or more likely the next morning when it was light, they took that dough out of their backpack and they made some unleavened cakes. And chances are overnight, you know, with a lack of heat, short period of time, and all the jostling around, excuse me, you wouldn't have gotten any leaven in that batch. You would have gotten unleavened bread. That's all you got out of it. You got unleavened bread. And it was that unleavened bread that they baked that they ate. That's all they had. So, when they left Egypt, all they had was dough in their backpacks and maybe some leftover provisions from, you know, before the Passover. Because remember, they had to burn anything that was left from that Passover meal. So, you know, they had some goats, you know, they could, you know, they could slaughter a goat and try and cook some meat and so forth, but they didn't really have any provisions when they left. And that's pretty interesting. If you can imagine, they truly just left with nothing. They didn't even have food. They just had dough in their backpacks. And that really, I think, gives a different picture of what it meant on that day as they were getting ready. You can imagine, you know, life turns over to the husband and say, what are we going to eat? All I got is dough. I've got some dough in my backpack. That's it. And we've got this goat, you know, and where are we going? And what are we going to eat? And what are we going to drink? And this sort of, this paste, this urgency is really shown in this verse 39 at the end, because it says here that they were driven out of Egypt and could not wait.

This word driven means they were compelled to go. This was unleavened bread or die. This is what it was. Now, keep in mind, unleavened bread was not something you typically prepared. You know, if you were going to have a guest over, you were going to prepare something and it was going to be 11. But if you had an unexpected guest, you didn't have a choice. You served unleavened bread.

So, for example, when the three beings, we believe one being Jesus Christ prior to His incarnation and two angels visited Abraham, it was likely unleavened bread that was served. When Lot received the visitors, the two angels, and sought him, he served them unleavened bread. Because if somebody shows up at your door and you're not prepared, you're going to take your dough, which has not had a chance to rise, and you're going to cook it, and you're going to get unleavened bread. When Saul, excuse me, yeah, when Saul went to see the witch in the story where, you know, he asked her to conjure up this thing that he thought was Samuel, that witch prepared unleavened bread for him.

He was the king. You know, the king, you're going to serve your best, but she had no choice. She had to serve unleavened bread. So unleavened bread is something you're stuck with when you don't have any choice. And that's the situation they were in.

They didn't have any choice. They were compelled. They had to get out. They didn't have any food. They didn't know where they were going. They didn't know what they were going to eat. They didn't know what they were going to drink. All they had was some dough on their backs, and that was it. And that's what verse 39 says. And sometime later, after they were walking, they went ahead and baked these cakes after they had left, after they had left Egypt.

Now, there is some controversy as to where this location was that they walked to. Some scholars will say that it was only a short walk. I've read, let's say, something that says it was only about, you know, eight miles. Other scholarship says that it was actually a very long walk. But whether it's short or long, the fact is they left with practically nothing, and they baked up the dough, and they had to eat that unleavened bread for day, after day, after day.

If we go back to Exodus 12 to kind of finish the timeline, so in verse 41, now, you know, they put the dough on their backs, they gather their goats, they do the ones over in their house, they go and they wait to leave. Everybody's assembling the bones of Joseph there, they're spoiling the Egyptians, and now they're waiting to go. And you can imagine the sun is beginning to set on the 14th, and they're standing there in the desert, and they're waiting for their cue, right?

Are they going to leave at six o'clock, or seven o'clock, or eight o'clock, or nine o'clock, or ten o'clock? They don't know. You know, again, if you, you know, it's not like there was a drone that was giving them information, right? They're just standing there, and there's hundreds of thousands of people around them, and they don't see anybody moving. If people are moving in the front of the column, they don't, they don't necessarily know that. Maybe there's some things coming back and telling them, but this is the picture we get in verse 41. It says, and it came to pass at the end of the 430 years on that very same day, that is the 15th, because it says they left on the 15th.

It came to pass that all the armies of the Lord went out from the land of Egypt. It is a night, because they went out at night, it is a night of solemn observance to the Lord for bringing them out of the land of Egypt. This is that night of the Lord, a solemn observance for all the children of Israel throughout their generations. And so that is the night of solemn observance, the night to be much observed, the night of waiting, the night of vigil.

This is what this concept is giving across, because they were waiting, they were vigilant. When is our time? When is our time? When do we start walking? We've been sitting here, we've been standing here, we've been waiting. Give us the signal, we're ready to go. And that's what we observe on that night to be much observed. And I find it quite interesting, because if you consider that they had no food, except the dough on their back, and maybe some, you know, some things that they had in their pockets from from before the Passover, who knows, you know, what it what it was like.

We know they couldn't have unleavened bread, or they couldn't have unleavened bread later. Do they have some old crusty things in their pockets? You know, probably not. They probably, you know, probably at that time, when you had dinner, you probably ate everything there. You weren't going to keep anything sitting around. So, you know, there was probably no food left over. So we have this gorgeous meal, but they were, you know, sitting there with dough on their back, and that's all they had.

And then in verse 37, we just back up to verse 37, we get the the final piece of the timeline. Then the children of Israel journey from Ramesses to Sukkoth, about 600,000 men on foot besides children, a mixed multitude went up with them also in the flocks and herds in a great deal of livestock. And as I said, there's different views on this. One view was that it was about 240 kilometers, about 150 miles from Ramesses, where they were to their first stop, as it was, and that they would have walked about 18 miles a day. They walked day and night. Remember, they had a pillar of fire to guide them at night. So they walked day and night as they left. And during this time, they ate that unleavened bread, because it was this bread of haste. It was this bread of compulsion. It was, we got to get out of here. We're being expelled. There's no time to let any bread rise. We've just got to grab and go. So look at verse 15 then, to see then as they left. Exodus 12 verse 15, seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. On the first day you shall remove leaven from your houses. For whoever eats leavened bread from that first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel. So that's the timeline that we have in mind. And I think it's important to have that, because even many of my Jewish friends get confused and start saying, oh well, you know, the nights we were much reserved is the same as the Passover, and they left that same night. And yet Numbers 33 says they left on the 15th, and then scholars start getting in, and they start throwing in this concept of five different writers of the first five books. And one writer put that down, and they were in conflict with another, and you've got to take these things.

It gets really weird after a while, but we just accept the narrative in God's Church as we see it. We understand the Bible was inspired, and so they left on the 15th and not on the 14th. So with this timeline in mind, I want to share two lessons, two takeaways for us. Let's go to Exodus 13 and verse 33, because this is sort of a summary of all the things we read in Exodus 12. And again, it's kind of weird to kind of jump around in Exodus 12, but all the elements are there. Exodus 13 verse 3 is kind of a summary of it. It says, and Moses said to the people, Remember this day in which you went out of Egypt, out of the house of bondage, for by strength of hand the Lord brought you out of this place. No leavened bread shall be eaten. Isn't that a strange sequitur? Is that a non sequitur almost? You know, you have this momentous event of leaving Egypt, and then you have this thing which is like the conclusion of it all. Therefore, no leavened bread shall be eaten. It's like, really? I mean, you'd expect me to say something, therefore praise the Lord for His glory. Or, you know, therefore remember the destruction of the Egyptians. But He's like, therefore no leavened bread shall be eaten. Unleavened bread is a symbol of a forced, compelled evacuation from Egypt.

You know, the thing I want to share is, unleavened bread wasn't sort of a food choice, you know.

My wife and I have sort of a gloom and tolerance and go to our friends, oh, do you have anything gluten-free here? Can I have unleavened bread, please? Yes, it's important to me. No, it was unleavened bread or die. It was all they had to eat. They had to go, and that's all they had, that they were able to bake up after they left, because they were getting out of dodge, as we say.

Now, they had no provisions, just to go on their backs, and so when they left, they were completely and totally dependent on God to sustain them. So when Jesus says, feed on me in the New Testament, and when He says, I am the bread of life, I think the disciples had a little bit of this in mind. I think they understood the context, that they were totally dependent on Jesus, just as the Israelites were totally dependent on God to sustain them, with no provisions as they left, except just this unleavened bread. We leave our old life behind.

We don't take our own provisions, as it were, with us on the way. Now, what does this mean?

Well, this means leaving behind our old ways of thinking, leaving behind our fears, leaving behind our traumas, leaving behind our ways of coping, leaving behind our ways of basically navigating the world and seeking out new approaches. The Israelites couldn't take really anything except what they could carry, and even then they couldn't carry much because of the haste. It's not like they could go down to Safeway and stock up. And I find it interesting that as we think about verse 3 and as we think about the lesson 11, you know, we don't have a celebration about the destruction of Pharaoh's army. We don't have a celebration of the destruction of his chariots and his army and drowning. We have a song, a song in Exodus 15, that sort of celebrates that moment, but we don't celebrate seven days of the destruction of Egypt or seven days of the rescue from the Egyptians. We celebrate seven days of unleavened bread. I just find it so amazing in verse 3 that it just concludes, no leavened bread shall be eaten. That became the symbol of that event when they were so compelled that all they had was this dough that they were going to bake afterwards and they were going to eat, and that's all they had to go on. And I think sometimes in our lives today, we can focus a lot on watching world events, and we are told to watch world events. But you know, the children of Israel were not told to watch Pharaoh's chariots. They weren't told to watch Pharaoh's army. They were told to stand still and see the salvation of the Lord. When they got to the Red Sea, they wanted to talk to Moses about Pharaoh's chariots and what was going on with that. So if you look over to Exodus 14, we'll see this in Exodus 14 verse 10.

It says, And when Pharaoh drew near, so that the children of Israel had been walking a fair bit, the children of Israel lifted up their eyes, and behold, the Egyptians marched after them. So they were very afraid, and the children of Israel cried out to Moses.

So they wanted to focus on Pharaoh's chariots. They wanted to focus on Pharaoh's army. They wanted to talk about, as it were, events around them. But that is not how God wanted them to focus. Verse 13, And Moses said to the people, Do not be afraid, stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will accomplish for you today. For the Egyptians, whom you see today, you will see no, you see again, no more forever. So the focus of these seven days is not necessarily looking at Pharaoh's army, but looking at ourselves and what it means to be compelled to leave our old way of thinking, our old way of life, our old way of doing things. And if we think about 11 then as this symbol of haste and so forth, then we begin to see this sort of the symbolism of Revan developing then over time into what we understand is a symbol of sin. Look over in Hebrews 11 verse 24, because really at the time it was a symbol of compulsion and evacuation and necessity to survive, that they had to do that. Hebrews 11 verse 24, and this is important to know because if somebody says, well why is why is 11 a symbol of sin? Where do I see that? Can we see it in different places? This is one place we can go. Hebrews 11, it's 24. It says, my faith Moses when he became of age refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to suffer a function with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin, esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt, for he looked to the reward. So Egypt was an option for Moses if he wanted to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin. He wanted to live his own way of thinking apart from God.

He chose instead to esteem the reproach of Christ a greater rich than the treasures of Egypt. He decided to leave that behind in what his life meant. When we eat on 11 bread, we should eat it with an urgency to feed our old life. An urgency to feed on Jesus Christ and to focus on God's power working in our life to rescue us from whatever it is we were in before. And if we don't have that urgency, then it's really easy to just, you know, I'm just going to hang out here a little bit longer. I think we heard Steve Myers talk about that with Babylon, right? They were taken to Babylon and then they could come back and they wanted to stay. We have to have that sense of urgency to leave and we have to recognize that by staying in that old way of thinking, we're staying in that old way of thinking, which means we're staying in slavery.

And a lot of times that slavery is related to addiction and sin and all sorts of troubles.

So, 11 bread is this sense of urgency. It's this sense of do or die. It's this sense of, I've got to go forward in my life and put away the way of thinking that I used to have and look to God and feed on that unleavened bread every day. We should take unleavened bread every day. Now, there's a whole doctrinal paper about that. You have to take unleavened bread. If you don't take unleavened bread during the seven days, having sinned, I think the conclusion of that, that there might be situations where that's okay. But I don't think we want to even go down there. I think we want to feed on Jesus Christ. We want to feed on that unleavened bread for seven days.

The second lesson is that after Passover, the first action that people took was to start walking.

That's the first thing, that they literally had to get out of their homes and walk to some staging point. I didn't read that scripture, but you can read that. It says the armies were gathered. And then from that point, they started walking. Maybe they walked 18 miles a day. You know, it says their shoes didn't wear out. They didn't, you know, they had the energy. Imagine walking 18 miles a day, day after day after day. That's remarkable. And they walked and walked and walked. So literally, those who kept the first day of unleavened bread began those days on foot. Our response to the deliverance of Passover and the destruction of Egypt is the beginning of a personal journey. It's the beginning of a personal journey. It was the beginning of a personal journey for them, and it's the beginning of a personal journey for us.

We might want to, you know, after we've been delivered, you know, after you come out of a difficult time, you think about France after World War II. Five years of occupation, Nazi occupation.

And finally, Allied troops come and they liberate Paris and they liberate France after five years of Nazi occupation. Deliverance. What's the first thing people did? Revenge. That's the first thing they did. Some, you know, summary executions all over the country. You can see pictures where they brought out these women, these French women, who had basically given themselves over to the Nazis. They might have been mistresses. They might have even been married. They brought these women out. They stripped them down to just sort of camisole and sort of undergarments, and they shaved their heads as a way of shaming them in public. That's how people think after they've been delivered. Okay, the threat is gone and all those scores, we're going to settle some scores now. But that's not what we're supposed to do. We're not supposed to say, okay, now that I'm free, now I can go ahead and do what I want to do. Now, what we're supposed to do, instead of focusing on what's going on around, we're supposed to focus on ourselves, our personal journey. The days of Unleavened Bread are our response to rescue.

They are a response to being saved from addiction. They are a response to saving from destruction. And that response is to begin a journey. We are on a journey.

And if you're not on a journey like the Israelites, if I'm not on a journey, then we're not responding the proper way. And again, how do we know this? Well, if we can't see a difference in our thinking from year to year, if we don't ask our friends and family if they can see a difference in our behavior, then we're not making progress. Are you a different person than you were last year?

Then you were two years ago and five years ago. Have you made progress or have you had you backslidden? You know, sometimes you make two steps over one step back. That happens. But we should be making progress year to year. Now, in the case of the Israelites, they made progress from Ramesses to Sukkot. They could actually measure it, right? We walk so much today, so much tomorrow, and so forth.

But for ourselves, it's really from more sin to less sin, from pride to humility, from hypocrisy to authenticity, from talking to listening, from selfishness to selflessness, from the works of the flesh to the fruits of the spirit, from self-confidence to repentance from dead works, from belief that we love Christ to knowing that Christ loved us first, from death to life. I mean, this is our journey. And again, sometimes in God's Church, we can be focused on world events and miss out on our personal journey. And I think many of us have seen this over the years. We probably remember years ago, you know, people who were with us who are not with us anymore, and they might have been very, very good scholars. They might have been very well aware of what was going on in the world, but they weren't focusing on themselves. And it's very easy to point your finger at somebody else and say, that bad person out there, you know, and this nation's going down, and they're leading it down, and so forth. But it's a lot harder to point the finger at yourself and say, I'm causing the problem. Now, listen to a very interesting interview with Jordan Peterson, where he described how one of his early sort of research studies areas was to study the Nazi era in Germany. And Jordan Peterson is a professor at the University of Toronto and quite probably one of the leading thinkers of our day-to-day.

And he said he wanted to study Nazi Germany because he wanted to understand what happened, because if there was ever a time where there was hell on earth, it was during that time, just the most abominable, awful things done at a scale, not really seen in any modern age. And he said, you can look at Mao, and you can look at Stalin, and so forth. But Nazi Germany in particular was just this evil, evil time on the planet. And if that is, as he said, hell, he would like to understand what is the opposite. And basically, he came to the conclusion that most of us, and it's included, think that if we lived in Germany in the 1930s and the 1940s, that we would stand against that evil. But in actual fact, his research came to the conclusion that that's not true. That all of us would have gone along with that evil. We would have been a part of that evil.

And I think that's, that is the insight that we as Christians understand. We have an evil human nature. We have a sinful human nature, and left to our own devices, we will be just as evil as the evil that we can read about in history books. And understanding that, and our need to be freed from that evil in Passover, and what Jesus Christ did for us, our response to that is to take personal responsibility in our lives, and to eat that unleavened bread, which is the body of Christ, for those seven days, as a symbol of our journey out. And of course, the rejection of that past sinful life represented by 11. And so that timeline and that sequence of events helps inform us that we're on that journey. And we might be at that Passover moment, packing up, we might be getting ready, we might be already starting the journey, we might be well on that journey, we're all in different parts of that journey. But we're on that journey. And if we can't look back and say, wow, I can't believe I was so dumb. Sometimes we don't want to say that about ourselves, right? Oh, I can't believe I was so dumb 10 years ago, five years ago. That's okay. And hopefully that's progress.

But if we look back and go, yeah, that was pretty good. Yeah, I'm even better now. We probably missed the point. The timeline of events is important. And I hope this helps more from our theology, that we understand why we keep Passover on a different date, what that unleavened bread meant in the context of the Old Testament, how that migrates then from leaving behind Egypt, which Moses understood to be a symbol of sin or the writers of Hebrew understood Moses understood.

And that we now move forward with these lessons. I think it's time that we recognize that our response to Christ Passover is a complete and total reliance on God to give us the provisions of our journey, that that unleavened bread was all they had. And in the same spiritual sense, is all we have that stands between us and death. Jesus Christ died for us. And now this is our response that we feed on him. And if we don't, we too will die in the wilderness, as the ancient Israelites did. I look forward to the discussion afterwards.