Unleavened Bread Types

Last week we talked about how the Passover contains so many types and anti-types, and how important that is to understand. We went through scriptures that explain what a type and anti-type is. The type is a real event many times. It's something that's actually happened. It's a real person. And in that reality, though, those are examples of something that's even greater at another time. We looked at how the Levitical priesthood is a type of Jesus Christ. And of course that is said in the scripture. How Noah and his family being saved in the flood is a type of baptism. In fact, it actually says the anti-type, it's the way it's translated in Peter, is baptism. So the anti-type is always greater than the type. But understanding types, because they're real. And so we study them as part of God's plan of salvation. But understanding the anti-type is actually more important.

And the anti-types that we live by when we keep the Passover and the Days of Love and Bread are actually much more profound than the types of ancient Israel. Now we should study ancient Israel. That's part of the story. We should study the Exodus. That's part of the story. But we also have to learn in the New Testament that those things are expanded.

And so that our observance of the Holy Days today has a much more expanded spiritual meaning than it did for them. As we showed that eating the Passover had nothing to do with eternal salvation to them. That's not what it meant. Putting the blood on the doorpost didn't mean eternal salvation. There was no eternal salvation given to any of the Israelites because they put the blood of a Laum on a doorpost.

But that was a type of Jesus Christ in which He became and says, I am the Passover lamb. Paul calls Him the Passover. He is the Passover. So He's the anti-type. This is a symbol of something greater. And so we recognize that as we study that. We go through that every year looking towards what is greater that's happening in our lives.

So when we take that bread and that wine, because we don't eat lamb, they were commanded to eat lamb as a symbol. We're commanded to take bread and wine as a symbol. We don't believe, as the Catholics do, that when you take that, the molecules literally turn into the blood of Jesus. And the blood of Jesus is in your body. No, it's a symbol. It's, once again, even that is a type. Who's the anti-type? Jesus Christ.

The reality of that is greater than the type. Does that mean we should keep the type? Yes. But we're supposed to understand the anti-type. Otherwise, all we're doing is a ritual. You know, in an Orthodox Jewish community, they only keep the Passover. They only keep the Days of the Lamb and Bread. And they won't understand almost anything that we talk about when we talk about the Passover and Days of Lamb and Bread.

If you walked into an Orthodox Jewish synagogue and you taught what we teach about the Passover and Days of Lamb and Bread, they wouldn't understand it. Because they don't believe in Jesus as the Messiah. So it would make no sense. It would make no sense to them. They're doing it for a different reason because they're still celebrating the type. So we have to understand that. So we went through the types of the Passover, five of them. And today we're going to look at some types of the Days of the Lamb and Bread and the Anti-type. The reality. Because still what we're doing... We still eat the Lamb and Bread, but that's a type. It's a symbol of something else. Right? It's not that you eat that bread and the little molecules of that bread change into the molecules of Jesus' body. That's what Catholics teach. There's some other of the old mainline Protestant churches who actually believe that. That changes into the little molecules of His blood and His body. No, we're looking at types. We understand the type is a symbol. We're supposed to keep the symbols. All symbols haven't been erased in the Bible. We do the symbols because it helps us understand the greater truth. So let's go and look at the instructions God gave to ancient Israel. The first instructions in Exodus 12. Now, meals used to be, and especially at this time, a very important family and communal event. Sometimes we rush through meals, getting... just running and grabbing something at a fast food place and eating it in the car. Many times families don't even eat meals together, or all the meals are spent just sitting in front of a TV or screens, and it's not a communal time. Meals were very much communal times in the life of ancient Israel. Leavened bread was the staple. No matter what you were serving, you could serve all different kinds of things. A lot of different kinds of foods, but you always had bread with it. And one of the reasons why bread was used as a spoon. You would break off bread, and you would scoop up food and eat it. And then, not to double-dip, you would break off another piece. So people would sit around with these bowls of food, and they would dip the food out. And you can still go into some Middle Eastern restaurants today, and they'll do that. Where you get bread, and you'll break it and dip. One of the hardest things we're having on the trip to Turkey is explaining to the restaurants why we're not wanting bread. That makes no sense. They're not a Middle Eastern culture, but they still bread's a staple. And here, we're not eating bread. So, bread was an important part of these community meals. It's the center part. Bread's at every meal. And now we have this concept of unleavened bread.

Now, leavening then, they didn't go buy a packet of yeast, you know, at the local Egyptian food store. They had to let it set out and naturally become leavened. And then a piece of that dough would be taken out and put into another chunk of, you know, what you were creating. And that would actually transport the leavening from one piece of dough to another piece of dough, and it would get large.

I can remember as a kid, the smell of bread my mom would be making, as you'd see that little dough, and she'd cover it with a cloth, and you'd go back, I don't know how long, it seemed like, days later, because you're waiting for this to get cooked, before she could cook it, and then she'd lift it off, and that little piece of dough had been put into a bread pan and swelled up to fill the entire bread pan. And then it had to be cooked. And it was leavened now. Well, when they threw out their leavening, they would have to take a while to rebuild the leavening, put dough out, and get it leavened through spores that are in the air. I mean, you cannot remove all leavening. You couldn't breathe. Because there's leavening, there's spores. So, but this bread, and it's the bread, because it's so important. We have all kinds of issues today that they never had. They never used baking soda to put in their refrigerator. You don't think baking soda is a leavening agent, but it is if you put it in food. Or deodorant that has... There's deodorant in it, baking soda in it. Which you should not eat your deodorant during the days of the leavened bread. It's very important that you don't do that. But you see, they never had these issues. Although, as the Orthodox Jews, some of them even say you can't drink beer now. I mean, as life went on, they made it more and more strict. You can't even drink beer. But it's unleavened bread, and besides, that's not used as a leavening agent. It's not the same stuff, but they won't drink beer. There's a lot of things they won't eat.

The unleavened bread that you and I make, my wife makes unleavened bread, they wouldn't eat that to some Orthodox groups. It has to be made in an exact certain way. And if it's not made that way, and blessed by a rabbi, it's not eatable. So bread's real important in this story. A lot more than we think it is. I mean, okay, so you don't get a sandwich during these days of unleavened bread. There's certain...you don't get a piece of cake. There's things you don't do. Now, this is central to their eating habits. But why is it that they're told not to eat leavening?

Exodus 12, 29. And it came to pass at midnight. Now, last time we talked about the Passover. So we're picking up on the story of the Passover. That the Lord struck the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh, who sat on the throne, to the firstborn of the captive, who was in the dungeons, to all the firstborn, even, of the livestock. Verse 31. Then Pharaoh 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 and serve the Lord as you have said.

Also take your flocks and your herds that you have, and be gone and bless me also. And the Egyptians urged the people. They'd just been through ten terrible plagues, including the deaths of all the firstborn, no matter what age they were, from babies to elderly people, including their own livestock, the animals. Then they might send them out of the land in haste, for they said, We shall all be dead. So the people took their dough before it was leaven, having their kneading bowls bound up in their cloths on their shoulders.

And so they left. And this is the reason why. The reason why is because they were forced out so quickly. They weren't able to get their dough leavened. So they grabbed the ingredients and packed it up, and off they went. And God tells them that they are not to eat leavening now for an extended period of time. Let's look at verse 39. And they baked unleavened 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.

In other words, they didn't have time to let it set out and get the spores in it. Now, there would have been some leavening in it, just from letting it sit out. But that's not the point. It didn't get leavened. It was now flat. They're eating bread that does not have leavening in it in the terms of a practicality. It's just not there. And why are they doing this? They're doing it because they have to leave so quickly. That's what they're doing. And that's the reason.

Chapter 13, verse 3, And the Lord brought you out of this place. No leavened bread shall be eaten. Of this day you're going out in the month of Abib, and it shall be that when the Lord brings you the land of the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Amorites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, which he swore to your fathers to give you, a land flowing with milk and honey, that you shall keep this service in this month, and seven days you shall eat unleavened bread.

And on the seventh day there shall be a feast to the Lord. Unleavened bread shall be eaten for the seven days, and no leavened bread shall be seen among you, nor shall leavening be seen among you in any of your quarters. And you shall tell your son in that day, this is done because why?

Why are they eating unleavened bread? Because of what the Lord did for me when I came up from Egypt. They were to eat unleavened bread and throw out leavening because, and they were to teach us from generation to generation, they were to teach them. The reason we do this is because God killed the firstborn and freed us from slavery in Egypt, and we didn't have time to leaven the bread. And so we eat unleavened bread for seven days as a reminder of that time. Now, you and I are going to eat unleavened bread and avoid leavening.

Is it a reminder of the ancient Israelites leaving Egypt? It's a type. It's an important lesson. Yes, we should remember that, but that's not why you and I are eating it. We don't eat it for that purpose. We recognize it.

We recognize the type. We learn from the type. But what is the anti-type? What is the anti-type of unleavened bread? Well, leavening in the New Testament is used to describe something. Now, I gave a sermon this once. I have to give it sometime again, how leavening actually works. Leavening actually infiltrates every single cell of the dough, and it expands it.

It pops it up. It makes it bigger. So it's a process that you could sit and watch, I suppose, and see it happen, but it just seems to work so slow. But it literally changes what that dough was into something else. That's what leavening does. We find leavening used in a couple places in the New Testament, not in the literal sense, but in a figurative sense. That's what Jesus says in Matthew 16. And verse 5.

Reason among themselves is that, oh no, we forgot to bring food. And he's saying, don't get any food. Why would it be food? Well, what did you eat every day? Leavened bread. So they think he's literally saying, don't get any bread from the Pharisees and the Sadducees. And they're like, oh no, we forgot food. And he's going to get hungry. What are we supposed to do now? And he says, but Jesus says of her saying, being aware of it, said to them, oh you of little faith, why do you reason among yourselves? Because you have brought no bread. Do you not yet understand, or remember the five loaves and the five thousand, how many baskets you took up? No, the seven loaves and the four thousand. How many large baskets you took up? He says, I can make bread. Okay, that's not the point here. How is it that you do not understand that I not speak of you concerning bread, but beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees? Of their leaven, you see. They then understood that he did not tell them to beware of the leaven of bread, but of the doctrines, the teachings of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. There's a type of religious spiritual teaching that he calls leavening in a very negative sense. You know, leavening of itself is not evil, physical leavening. Leavening is used in a positive sense, talking about how the kingdom of God will fill the whole earth like leavening in bread. But in this sense, and this is where we have to understand how it's used in terms of the New Testament days of leavened bread, he uses it to point out there is something in false teachings, leavening in false teachings, that if you believe, they will simply take over who you are. They become who you are. Look at Luke, chapter 12. Jesus once again uses leavening in a very negative sense. And he's not talking about physical leavening. In ancient Israel, it was all about physical leavening. The type still exists. You and I should remove physical leavening. But the reason is dramatically more important. Verse 1, Luke, chapter 12. In the meantime, when an innumerable multitude of people had gathered together so that they trampled one another, he began to say to his disciples, first of all, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. There is nothing that is covered that will not be revealed or hidden that will not be known.

Here he calls hypocrisy leavening. In other words, pretending. Hypocrisy has to do with pretending. You're pretending to be good when really your motives and actions and what you're doing in secret is always evil. He says that's the type of leavening. It gets into the person and it changes who they are. Every part of their being is affected by that. Now, one of the most important or the most important set of verses on leavening in the spiritual sense of the New Testament is from the Apostle Paul telling a Gentile church to keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread. You know, it's interesting. Nobody says keep Easter because it didn't exist. Nobody says keep Christmas. It doesn't exist. No Catholic, no Protestant is going to tell you in the first century the church kept Christmas and Easter because it's not in the scripture. They know that. They know it came along in the second and third centuries. So there's no command to do that. There is a command to a Gentile church, non-Jewish church. We don't know how many Jews were in Corinth. Couldn't have been very many because there's nothing mentioned to the Jews. It's all mentioned to every every letter about the Gentiles, both the letters. It's about just how they were thinking, how they were acting, what they were doing. So let's go to 1 Corinthians 5 and look at that command. And in doing so, we see the anti-type of physical leavening. 1 Corinthians 5 and verse 6. You're glorying, glorying. You know, there's your pride. There's a lot of pride in the Corinthian church. Your pride is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? You would also, as a staple in the Roman and Greek world at mealtimes at this time, bread. It was universal. Bread was a staple at mealtimes.

And he says, don't you know, you know this. Of course, now in court they had bakeries, but most families would have made their own bread. Even if you went to the bakery, you understood how it worked, how the little dough had to puff up, then be baked.

In Pompeii, they have the ruins with the actual ovens of a bakery, where they would have put the bread in and taken it out.

And so, he's saying something, don't you know this? You know that. You know that a little leavening gets inside some dough and all of a sudden the entire dough has changed. And that's what your pride is doing to you. That pride in you is filling you up so that it's changing what you're supposed to be. Therefore, purge out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened. Now, I talk about leavening as a type of pride. We've seen Jesus use it as an hypocrisy. We've seen Jesus use it for false teachings in the Church.

He says, since you truly, you as a person. So this leavening is something that's in you, but as followers of Jesus, as members of the Church, they were being unleavened. And why? For indeed, Christ our Passover was sacrificed for. So he's telling a Gentile Church that the Passover was sacrificed for you.

You've come out of your paganism because you're coming into the religion of the true God, and you have to understand that you were leavened, and now you're unleavened because of Christ the Passover. That goes back to the types we talked about last week. Therefore, let us keep the feast.

They're talking about the Passover, leavening and unleavening, the days of unleavened bread. Let us keep the feast not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. Now he tells us the anti-type.

You see, leavening is a type of malice and wickedness. That's sin. Sin. But because of the Passover lamb, and we partake of the Passover lamb, we are to be unleavened, and therefore we are to be living with sincerity and truth. Now we have the anti-type. The leavened leavening we worry about as we de-leaven our homes. In other words, if you make yourself sick, de-leavening your home, and go into the days of unleavened bread, exhausted, not wanting to keep the days of unleavened bread, you miss the point. You miss the point. Now you're supposed to de-leaven. My wife started the other day. Once she gets it in her head, I just get out of the way. I don't want to be swept up and thrown out either. So she's been de-leavening now. And a couple days from now we'll be eating nothing but unleavened food as we prepare for the days of unleavened bread. Yes, we do that. But if that's all we're doing, we're no different than the Jews keeping the days of unleavened bread to celebrate coming out of Egypt. We're no different. Because we're living the anti-type. We're living becoming unleavened persons. That's what we're living.

We're living having malice taken out of us and having sincerity and truth put into us. So this leavening we have to be thinking about as we take out the leavening has to be, am I truly being unleavened? You know, it says examine yourself. What do you do?

When you throw out that leavening, the question is, okay, I'm throwing out some pieces of food. Am I being unleavened in the inner person? Is God doing this with me? The core of who I am is being changed because of the Passover, the real Passover, not because I take some bread and wine, the real Passover.

That I'm just looking at the symbols. These are types. The real Passover is in my life. And is this really happening in me? That's the question. Is this really happening in me? That I am being unleavened?

You know, the word sincere, sincere, there, there are sincerity. There's actually a great controversy that's been going on for 400 years, what that means in English. The Greek word just means pure, purity and truth, which makes perfect sense. And sincere is a Latin-based word. So there's all kinds of studies.

What did it mean in Spanish? What did it mean in French? What did it mean in Italian? So what does it mean in English? Well, that's what's interesting. You can find the meaning of sincerity in English has lots of different origins, none of them, which is probably entirely true. And sincerity meant the two words in Latin means without wax. Now, that's not what it meant in Greek. It was written in Greek. But in Latin, it was without wax.

And sincerity is a Latin word that came into English. So what does it mean to be without wax? So there's been all kinds of ideas what that means. And you can read it in all kinds of dictionaries. One of them is, well, it meant that you had to become like pure honey without any beeswax in you. And that's what it means.

And people who know Latin say, no, no, it doesn't mean that. The other is, and this could be true, is that in the ancient Roman marketplaces, when they'd make pottery, if they had a crack in it, they could fill it in with wax and no one would know it. Because the first time they used it, it would crack. Well, there were no guarantees. There were no, you know, warranties back then. That's it. So they would say, I can't even say it in Latin, it's cine cara or something like that.

Sincere, which means without wax. Our pots are without wax. There is some possibility of that, but a lot of linguistics experts who know Latin say, no, we found no proof of that. But you will find clear back into the 1600s, English writers saying that's what it means in the Latin. No one really knows. But there's great stories. You know, they're great examples. A pot with no wax in it that's complete and whole and has integrity. There's no secret splits that are being covered up. So it's a great example. I just don't know exactly if that's what the Latin word means.

But we know what the Greek word meant. I mean pure. You're pure. You're spiritually pure. We forgot. You're unleavened. And that's what being unleavened is. So when we take unleavened bread and we remove unleavened bread, we are symbolizing or when we remove the leavening. Let's just deal with that one right now. If we remove the leavening, we're symbolizing taking sin out of our lives because...

and I won't go there, but in Romans, Paul says that we are slaves to sin. So we're coming out of slavery. But our slavery is an Egyptian slavery. Our slavery is to Satan and to sin. Remember we talked about last week how the Pharaoh is a type of Satan. Well, we live, we recognize it's not Pharaoh that's the one that controls this. It's Satan who is the one who controls this. And it is Satan who is the Pharaoh of this world. We recognize that. And we have been in slavery, and we're coming out of that slavery. So we have the unleavened bread, or the leavening. So we take the leavening out and we don't eat leavened bread.

That's the first type. And it's a type of removing sin, removing malice, removing hypocrisy. But it isn't just a matter of removing it. It's a matter of you have to take unleavened bread. They were commanded to eat unleavened bread every day. Why were they told to do that? Well, because it would remind them that they came out of Egypt. There's something much more profound in the antitype than what we're doing.

1 Corinthians 11.

Here, Paul restates what Matthew writes in the Gospels about the night that Jesus was betrayed. Back to the Passover. That's why we had to go through Passover types before we can understand the entirety of the days of unleavened bread. 1 Corinthians 11.23 And as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death till he comes. When we take those symbols, they are types, not a physical Israel coming out of physical Egypt. They are types of the literal Passover lamb who is a real person who did die, who was resurrected.

And we must internalize that lamb. We take it in. That's the symbol. It's not just removing. It's not just removing. It's taking in.

And sometimes we get so caught up.

I think I told this story before. One time, a friend and I went to a Thai restaurant during the days of the bread. And we said, oh, this looks good. It has something in it. I don't know what it is.

So we asked, is there leavening in this? And the server said, I don't know. I don't know what leavening is. I'll go ask the cook. And then the owner came out and said, no, there's no leavening in that at all. There's no...none of the leavening agents are put in this. Oh, great. So we ate it. It was wonderful.

It was fantastic. And as we were leaving, she came out and said, wasn't that good? We said, that was some of the best food I've ever eaten. She said, you know the secret? Oyster sauce. Well, which is worse, the leavening, the unclean meat, okay? We both got out in the car. We just started to laugh. We said, God has to have a sense of humor. He's got to be thinking the boys sure are dumb. I mean, I can't imagine him being mad at us because we're just so dumb. We just didn't even think about it. And it's like, well, we've got something to repent about here.

But there was no malice involved. But still, we said we were sorry. But if all we do is remove leavening and make sure we eat a mozzo every day, at the end of the time, it may be nothing more than a ritual. Because as we do those things, we're supposed to be reminded of the anti-type, which is literally happening in our lives. These are supposed to be powerful reminders to us. So we take in this unleavened bread, which Christ said, this is me. So when you and I eat unleavened bread during the days of unleavened bread, we are symbolizing something incredibly profound that if we truly understood, we would be much more motivated than we are.

Let's go to John 6. John 6. We think, oh, wouldn't it be amazing to be able to follow Jesus Christ, to know Jesus Christ, to see Him? Well, this passage says that the majority of His disciples left Him after this point. They had followed Him up to this point. The majority of His disciples left Him. At the end, He had 120. At this point, we don't know how many He had. They just left Him. They decided He was crazy. He was bizarre. They wanted nothing to do with Him. That's because of what He teaches here. Let's go to verse 25 of John 6.

They couldn't find Him for a while. It says, Then they found Him on the other side of the sea. And He said to them, or they said to Him, to Jesus, Rabbi, when did you come here? How did you get here? He had crossed in a boat.

And Jesus answered and said, Most assuredly I say to you, you seek me, not because you saw the signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled. Remember, He took bread. We've already read where He re-accounted those two situations, where He took bread and He multiplied it to it, fed thousands of people. Just regular old bread and some fish. And He fed thousands of people with it. He says, You come to Me because you want the physical blessings.

You're hoping I'll do some trick for you and give you some more bread and fish. You're coming here for physical blessings. We've got to be careful sometimes. We only don't approach God for physical blessings. This was mentioned in the sermonette. Sometimes we don't get all the physical blessings, do we?

God actually doesn't promise us every physical blessing. He promises us eternal life, where we get eternal blessings. He does do physical things for us, and that's great. But there is no promise of eternal... Our whole lives will not have any difficulties.

There's no promise of that at all. I wish there was. I wish I could get up here and tell you, just pray this prayer and you'll have no problems. But that's not reality. That's not what God promises us. He does promise us to get through things, but He promises us an eternity, in which these things don't matter anymore. They're all fixed. He says, so you're coming just for physical blessings. He says, do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you, because God the Father has set His seal on him.

Then they said to Him, What shall we do that we may work the works of God? So, you know, this is good people saying, well, what do we do here to be right with God? Okay. Jesus answered and said to them, This is the work of God that you believe in Him, and we said.

He says, first of all, if you're going to do the work of God, you have to believe who I am. I am the Son of God. I am the Messiah. Therefore, they said to Him, What sign will you perform, then, that we may see it, and believe you? What work will you do? What miracle? Okay, make some more fish, okay? That was good fish. I know how you did that. Just make some more fish for us and show us that you're really the Son of God. Our fathers ate the manna in the desert as is written, and He gave them bread from heaven to eat.

He said, You know, Moses gave us food. So why don't you, you know, make us some more food, and maybe we'll believe then that you're the Messiah. Give us another giant physical blessing, and then we'll believe who you are, who you say you are. Then Jesus said to them, Most assuredly I say to you, Moses did not give you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. He says, Yeah, Moses, God gives you... He says, I'm not talking about your bread. I'm talking about this bread, this symbol. Bread is a symbol of something greater. The symbol of something greater. For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.

And they said to Him, Lord, give us this bread always. And He said, I am the bread of life. He who comes to me shall never hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst. He says, I'm it. I'm the bread. What did He say on that night? The Passover. Eat this unleavened bread. Right?

Because it symbolizes me. Take this wine, because it symbolizes me. This is why you and I don't eat a lamb as commanded in the Bible on the Passover. But we do eat a lamb, because that lamb was just a type. We eat a type that's... We take up a type that's even more profound. They ate a lamb because blood had to go on a doorpost.

We partake of a lamb whose blood already has been put on the doorpost, and we have already been brought out of Egypt. We live in the land between Egypt and the Promised Land. We live in the desert right now, but we've already been brought out of Egypt. We are being changed, because the bread of God lives in us. And every day, during the days of the 11 Bread, think about that when you take a bite of matzo or a rycrisp, of course it's sort of hard. Kim makes such good, unloving bread that it's like, oh, this is so good.

Sometimes I forget it's not a dessert. This is symbolizing something so profound that we have become partakers of Jesus Christ. I mean, this is just... You've all heard this over and over and over again until it's not profound anymore. It is profound. Verse 41 says, "...then the Jews then complained about him, because he said, I am the bread which came down from heaven." Is this not Jesus? Then they would go on to say, what do you mean?

Do we have to eat Him? It's a bizarre concept. He literally doesn't mean that, but what does he mean? Verse 48, "...I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna and the wilderness and are dead. This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that one may eat of it and not die." Verse 54, "...however eats my flesh and drinks my blood, has eternal life, and I will raise Him up at the last day.

For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed." Now, here's what he really means. No. And this is why the Romans actually accused Christians of being cannibals, that they got together and ate one of their members of their church. Because this got all twisted around and told the Roman, you know, governors, and they thought, what?

I mean, the Romans had a law against cannibalism, right? He'd be put to death for that. But verse 56, "...he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood, abides in me, and I in him." Abides. I live in you. But not only does Christ, through this Holy Spirit, live in us, we live in Him. Understand what that means. This is a relationship in which you are joined together to God the Father and Jesus Christ because of the Passover. And when we eat that unleavened bread, not because the Israelites came out of Egypt, but we commemorate it, we look at it, we understand it's part of God's plan, they were doing a type of what we're doing.

This is the greater truth. We're partaking of the literal body of Christ. Not literal. I don't want to sound Catholic. We are symbolizing the partaking of the body of Jesus Christ, the Passover lamb, throughout the entire seven days. Because we are now unleavened. Isn't that what Paul said?

You are now unleavened! So the greater truth is what you and I do. For Christians, to say Christians don't have to do this is a total complete misunderstanding of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. And what this symbolizes, and why we do it, is because we are being unleavened.

And they left him because he said, I will abide in you, and you will abide in me, and they said, this is bizarre. We're not following this rabbi anymore. And they left him. And yet this is what we're commemorating, starting next week. As God, through His Holy Spirit, and having Christ as our brothers show us the way, live in us and us in them. Abide is a strong word. Living in. It doesn't mean just, oh well, we should know each other. No, abide.

You live in. You abide in a house. You live in it. And He abides in us. It's that kind of relationship. The final, out of the three types I want to talk about, is in Leviticus 23. Because this is one that we don't think about a lot, and yet it's an important part of the Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread. Because Leviticus 23 isn't a holy day. I mean, and this verse is, we're going to look at.

Because Leviticus 23 is a list of the holy days. But this little inset here isn't a holy day. It's a sacrifice. It's an offering. Verse 9, because verse 3 is the Sabbath, verses 4 through 8 is the Passover and the 11 Bread. Then we have verse 9, The LORD spoke to Moses, saying, Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them, When you come into the land which I give you, and reap the harvest, then you shall bring a sheaf of the first fruits of your harvest to the priest. He shall wave the sheaf before the LORD, to be accepted on your behalf, on the day after the Sabbath, the priest shall wave it.

So the Sabbath has to do with during the days of the 11 Bread. So it was during the days of the 11 Bread that this would be offered. And it was the offering of the first fruits. There's something Jesus says in the Gospel of John that would make no sense if you don't understand this. And what's this a type of? It was literally a sheaf of grain that would be waved before God, presented to God during the days of 11 Bread. Well, we know that Jesus died on a Wednesday in that year, and He was resurrected at the end of the Sabbath, three days and three nights later.

That's so important. Three days and three nights later, because He said that it was the only proof He was the Messiah. Three days and three nights. So three days and three nights has to be that way.

You can't get Friday evening to Sunday morning and get three days and three nights out of that, and even with modern math. You can't do it. It won't work. So three days and three nights, He's resurrected at the end of the Sabbath.

John 20. John chapter 20. So this is the day after the Sabbath, and the days of 11 Bread. Jesus was killed. They kept the Passover. They kept the first day of 11 Bread. Then it's the day after the Sabbath.

On the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. When she ran and came to Simon Peter and the other disciples whom Jesus loved and said to them, they have taken away the Lord out of the tomb. We do not know where they have laid Him. And Peter went out and the other disciple and were going to the tomb. So they both ran together and the other disciple outran Jesus and came to the tomb first. It must have been John. I always liked the way John. Yeah, it was me. Peter thought he was tough. I outran him. But he always just says, and the other one did that.

And he stooped down, or they stooped down looking to the inn, saw the linen clothes lying there, and he did not go in. So Jesus had been resurrected. They went there before, you know, before sun up. So, you know, there is no sunrise service here. There is no Jesus rising from the grave at sun up because they arrived, it was dark. And He's already gone. It's because He had been resurrected the evening before.

Now, then why would He say this? Verse 11.

And they said to her, woman, why are you weeping? And she said to them, because they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid Him. Now, when she said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know it was Jesus. She dumbfounded. I mean, He's dead. He was there. She turned around and she just, it doesn't compute that He's standing there.

And Jesus said to her, woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking? And she supposed He was the gardener. And she said to Him, sir, if you have carried Him away, tell me where you have laid Him, and I will take Him away. And Jesus said to her, Mary. And she turned to Him and said, Rabboni, my great teacher. This isn't just a rabbi. This word literally means great teacher.

And Jesus said to her, do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to my Father, but go to my brethren and say to them, I am ascending to my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God. Mary Magdalene came and told the disciples that she had seen the Lord, that what He had spoken about these things to her.

Don't just hold on to me. I have something I have to do. Wait a minute. He had been resurrected hours before. Why is He not yet ascended to the Father? Because He wasn't supposed to yet.

The way she is offering is the offering of the first fruits to God. The first of the first fruits. The very first, you know, we look at the first of the first fruits. You get excited when you see that first tomato, right? You get excited when you see that first apple come out. You get excited because, hey, I'm going to have fruit this year. The very first of the first fruits was offered at this time. And according to the Apostle Paul, Jesus Christ is the first fruits from among the dead.

He's the first to be resurrected. And it was all set up clear back at the time of the Litical Priesthood that there was a type of what was going to happen. He was going to be in the grave three days and three nights, and then He was going to be resurrected back to life. But He wasn't going to ascend right away, and they were going to do in the temple a very special ceremony that morning. It wasn't a holy day, it was just a special ceremony that was going to represent Him ascending to the Father. He said, don't hang on to me. I'm coming back. Go tell Him I'm coming. I have to do this first. And it would have been at the same time that they were doing that in the temple. Now, which is the greater event? Aaron the High Priest waving some sheaf of grain, or Jesus Christ, going and presenting Himself as the first fruits to the Father. Which is the greater event. Now, we study the one, we honor it because God told Him to do it, but we are amazed, or should be, at what it actually means. That Jesus Christ presented Himself as the firstborn from the dead to the Father.

The first fruits. And He's called the first fruits. And those who He called in this day and age, the age of Satan, who were in that first resurrection, He also calls them the first fruits. Because there's two kinds of first fruits. But we'll learn about those types on Pentecost.

Because it's on Pentecost that we understand the different types of first fruits. Jesus had to present Himself as the first of the first fruits. And He did so during the days of the 11 bread.

As a type to encourage us, and when you take that 11 bread all during that week, we're remembering that.

You know, I'm going to have to pack up a bunch of 11 bread to take with me in Turkey. Because I don't think you're going to find too many Jewish stores in Turkey.

There's not much of a Jewish population there. To be reminded that during this time of year, He's resurrected and He's living in us, and we are to be unleavened.

We have to remember that. We have to remember these symbols are symbols that are supposed to be powerful because they tell us a truth.

A truth that is so profound, it has to do with eternity.

And of course, this is an important link between then these first Holy Days of Pentecost. They're all linked together. And that wave-sheaf offering is the link. Don't forget that one. Don't forget that type during this week also. Because we don't have anything to do. I mean, that wasn't Holy Day. There's no New Testament command because the type has been completely fulfilled.

See, the other ones haven't been completely fulfilled yet. That one has been completely fulfilled. He is the firstfruits. It's done.

It's done.

The rest of what we do during the Holy Days is because they're shadows of things to come. They haven't been fully fulfilled yet. That's why we keep doing them.

As Christians, we keep doing them because they're shadows of things to come.

We're not totally unleavened. Right? Certain things aren't completed yet, but we're in those things. We're doing those things.

The annual Holy Days are filled with all kinds of types. Many of them are actually prophetic because they still tell us... Well, they tell us what God is doing now in us, and they tell us what He's going to do with us and in us and in humanity in the future.

This is a glorious and profound time we're about to enter into.

If there is no real... If Jesus Christ is not the Passover lamb, everything we do is meaningless.

Understand that.

If He's not the Passover lamb, everything we do is meaningless.

It only has meaning if that's been fulfilled, and the rest of what He has taught is happening.

As soon as I get back from Turkey, I'm going to produce number five in a series of programs I'm doing on the Unknown Jesus.

And every show I end up taking something He says that most Christians today... I look at study after study... Don't even believe what He taught about almost anything.

And I say the same thing. Either Jesus is who He says He is, and we need to worship Him and follow Him as the Son of God.

Or He's a madman. He's one or the other. There's no in-between here. Either He's absolutely crazy or it's the truth.

I walk around saying, I'm the bread of life. You eat me and you can live for eternity. It's either true or He's a crazy man.

He's one or the other.

If it's true, it's true. If you believe it, if God has convicted you, then what we're doing next week is the most profound thing you can do and celebrate every year.

There's nothing more profound than the Passover and the days of the love and bread.

Because all the other Holy Days are contingent on that.

If Jesus isn't the Passover, we don't even understand what the rest of the Holy Days mean. We might as well be Jews.

Might as well be Jews?

Remove leavening from your homes. Eat unleavened bread during the Feast of Unleavened Bread.

But remember, those things aren't salvation. They're symbols of salvation.

They're symbols of what really gives us salvation. You can eat unleavened bread all year long and it won't make you righteous.

Right?

But eating it for the purpose of being reminded and understanding, it's profound anti-type.

That is salvation. Because the anti-type is salvation, not the type.

He is freeing us from slavery. He's replacing in us. He's replacing that malice and that sin with the authentic bread of life, which is the very nature of God so that we become His children.