Typology of the Feast of Unleavened Bread

Next in order of the ordained feasts in the feasts of Israel is the Feast of Unleavened Bread. The Passover is often called the first day of unleavened bread because of its very close connection with it. After the destruction of the second temple, when the offering of the paschal lamb was no longer possible, the Passover and Unleavened Bread celebrations became integrated in the mind of the Jews and the Rabbis used the terms interchangeably, but they are distinct in the divine plan although in the most intimate relation with one another. These feasts stand in relation to one another as cause and effect: if the Passover sets forth the Lamb of God slain for us to bring pardon, peace and new life, the feast of unleavened bread was designed to prefigure the holiness of the new life and the fellowship with God that must characterise the redeemed. Here then, is the word of God on the subject;

“And on the fifteenth day of the same month (Nisan) is the feast of unleavened bread unto Jehovah: seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. In the first day you shall have a holy convocation: you shall do no servile work. But you shall offer an offering made by fire unto Jehovah seven days: in the seventh day is a holy convocation; you shall do no servile work”Leviticus 23:6-8).

Historical and Typical

The Jews took the Law seriously and went to great efforts to search the house for leaven and to remove it, wrap it up and prepare it for burning. Traditions grew around the search for leaven and it became a sort of game in which children could find a few crumbs of bread that had been carefully planted for the occasion. But for all the jollity that surrounded the celebration, it was serious business indeed, for we read that “whosoever eateth leavened bread from the first day until the seventh day, that soul shall be cut off from Israel” (Exodus 12:15). So it is in the greater scheme of spiritual redemption. It is the Lamb of God that bears away our sins and reconciles us to the Father, but the feast of unleavened bread makes spiritual demands upon all who take upon themselves that Holy Name, as Paul points out; “Let every one naming the name of the Lord turn away from unrighteousness” (2 Timothy 2:19).

The first thing to be considered here is what is meant by “leaven”.

Actual material leaven, of course, consists of a microscopic vegetable ferment which is characterised by the rapidity of is growth and diffusiveness so that it permeates the whole of whatever it is put into and nothing is able to stop its growth except fire. It is an agency that transforms the matter into which it is put by progressive inward permeation. Thus, it is a fit type of the sin and wickedness that, if left to its own devices, will rapidly take over the life of the individual or people who are its host.

In the New Testament, Jesus warns his disciples of three different kinds of leaven.

Firstly,

“Beware of the leaven of the pharisees, which is hypocrisy” (Like 12:1). Doubtless, there were many good men among the pharisees, men who, like Paul had a great zeal for God, “though not according to deeper knowledge” (Romans 10:2) and of whom it could be said that “according to the Law they were blameless” (Philippians 3:6). However, the pharisees were shaped by their traditions and the doctrines of men which were characterised by unreality and hypocrisy. “They say but do not do” Jesus said (Matthew 23:3).

And if we are to search our own hearts will we not find that is it true also of ourselves; that this insidious and hateful leaven is also at work in us? If we turn the divine light onto our souls, will it show that our walk is in sincere conformity to our profession? And looking away from the professing individual to the professing Church; how permeated throughout it is by the leaven of hypocrisy, particularly in those parts of the world when outward profession is no longer accompanied by risks, dangers and persecutions but is even, in certain circles, advantageous and fashionable.

How much “religion” there is in Christianity and how little of God and true holiness! And this outward profession of “a form of godliness but denying the power thereof” (2 Timothy 3:5) is to become more and more evident in these last days (1 Timothy 4:1-2). The final fulfillment of this awful leaven of hypocrisy and unreality will reach its climax in the last days when the worship due to Christ Jesus the Lord will be paid to one who comes in his own name; the anti-Christ. This will fulfil the type of the Jews who rejected the One sent from God and who will receive the false one just as Jesus said; “I have come in the name of My Father and you do not receive Me; when another comes in his own name, this one you will receive” (John 5:43). That is the ultimate fulfillment of the leaven of the pharisees.

Secondly,

“’How is it that you do not perceive that I spoke not to you concerning bread? But beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees’. Then they understood that He bade them not beware of the leaven of bread, but of the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees” (Matthew 16:11-12).

The leaven here is described as the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees. The teachings of these two sects were quite different in many respects but in God’s eyes they were equally pernicious. The chief errors of the Pharisees were that they laid equal, and even greater, stress on the oral law and traditions of men than on the Word of God and that, in consequence, they became ignorant of the righteousness of God and invented a whole system of outward religious show and appearances by which men were to gain righteousness. As Paul wrote to the Romans; “For being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and seeking to establish their own, they did not subject themselves to the righteousness of God” (Romans 10:3).

The teaching of the Sadducees, on the other hand, tended towards rationalism, and their opposition to Pharisaism went the length not only of rejection of the tradition of the elders but to a large extent, rejection also of the supernatural element in the Holy Scripture. Paul, himself a Pharisee, said of the Sadducees that “the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, neither angel, nor spirit” (Acts 23:8). These two elements still exist in modern Judaism, in which Rabbinism, in its doctrines and practices, is a continuation and development of Pharisaism as existed in the time of Christ, while the “liberal”, “progressive” or “reform” movement so common in Europe and the United States, reflects the rationalistic and humanistic principles of the Sadducees.

And is it not possible to see this destructive and ruinous leaven of the Pharisees permeating the modern Church? While the true ecclesia of which Christ is the Head lives now as it has always done in every age, yet surely the greater part of Christianity today is exalting the traditions of men – its Christian Talmud – to the same level, and even above, the inspired words of Christ Himself, His apostles and prophets. And, moreover, “the simplicity of the gospel that is in Christ” has been transformed by Christian “Rabbis” into a system of religiousness by which men go about to establish for themselves a righteousness before God by mere outward rites and observances.

As to the Sadducees, Christianity is full of it and it is humiliating to look around and observe the desperate attempts to strip the Christ of His divine attributes and the sacred scriptures of their supernatural element and divine authority.

Thirdly, “And he charged them, saying, Take heed, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod” (Mark 8:15).

The leaven of Herod is the third type of leaven that Jesus refers to. The Herodians were supporters of Herod’s dynasty, created by Caesar, and were more of a worldly political party than a religious organisation, their principal objective being to avoid giving any offence to the civic authority – Rome – from which they received their status and worldly dignity. They regarded the teachings of Christ as revolutionary in character and they sought to convict Him of seeking to establish a kingdom that would undermine that of Caesar. To that end, they co-operated with the scribes and the Pharisees, although they naturally detested one another – “Then went the Pharisees, and took counsel how they might ensnare him in his talk. And they send to him their disciples, with the Herodians…..” (Matthew 22:15-16),

The Herodians were made up of those who had grown wealthy and influential under Herod’s rule and so owed allegiance to him as the source of their position in the world. They cared only for the comfortable position that they held under the arrangements that existed between Rome and its running dog, Herod. As we look at the professing Church today, it is not difficult to see this Herodian leaven of compromise, selfish expediency, opportunism and worldliness doing its work of permeation and transformation in God’s people.

Typical Fulfillment

There has always been a typical and moral significance of the Jews’ searching of the house for leaven in commemoration of this feast although it is safe to say that not many of them understood that significance. It is comparatively easy for the Jew to get rid of the material leaven in his house, but a much more formidable task to get rid of the insidious leaven of corruption in our hearts. Nor can it be accomplished in one act for who, among the holiest of God’s elect saints, can say in truth while still in this “body of death” (Romans 7:24) “I have made my heart clean, I am pure from my sin”? Rather, isn’t it true that the more we seek to walk in the full light of His holiness, the more also the darkness of our own hearts is revealed to us?

Paul, as usual, had something to say to throw light on what Jesus had been teaching His disciples.

“Your glorying is not good. Know you not that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, even as you are unleavened. For our Passover also has been sacrificed, even Christ: wherefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth”(2 Corinthians 5:6-8).

The “old leaven” Paul refers to here corresponds to the “old man” and its “former manner of life” in Ephesians 4; “to be done with the former manner of life according to the old man, the one being corrupt according to the strong desires of deceitful ways” (Ephesians 4:22). We must throw off this old man and put him away, along with the leaven of our former ways.

The Feast of Unleavened Bread speaks to us today in this sense; if we embrace the provision of the Passover lamb slain for us on the 14^th Nisan, then on 15^th we must begin the task of getting rid of the leaven of sin, wickedness and worldliness that belongs to our days in Egypt. These feasts roll one into the other and so the work of sanctification must begin immediately upon the receiving of the sacrifice. Alas, for too many this is a prophetic picture in this feast of which they remain ignorant and it is little taught today. The leaven of complacency lies heavily on the body of God’s people of the New Covenant.

But the Blood of the sacrifice must lead on to sanctification. The writer to the Hebrews warns against the complacency and unbelief of the present age; “For if we sin wilfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remains no more a sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and a fierceness of fire which shall devour the adversaries. A man that has set at nought Moses’ law dies without compassion on the word of two or three witnesses: of how much sorer punishment, do you think, shall he be judged worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and has counted the blood of the covenant wherewith He was sanctified an unholy thing, and has done despite unto the Spirit of grace?

For Israel, the spiritual reality of the Feast of Unleavened Bread will be exhibited when, after they “look upon Him whom they have pierced” (Zechariah 12:10), and finally know, as John did at the cross, that their Messiah Jesus was their true Passover, sacrificed for them.

“Behold, I will bring it health and cure, and I will cure them; and I will reveal unto them abundance of peace and truth. And I will cause the captivity of Judah and the captivity of Israel to return, and will build them, as at the first. And I will cleanse them from all their iniquity, whereby they have sinned against me; and I will pardon all their iniquities, whereby they have sinned against me, and whereby they have transgressed against me. And this city shall be to me for a name of joy, for a praise and for a glory, before all the nations of the earth, which shall hear all the good that I do unto them, and shall fear and tremble for all the good and for all the peace that I procure unto it” (Jeremiah 33:6-9).