| 1. THE FEAST OF UNLEAVENED BREAD “On the fifteenth day of that month the Lord’s Feast of Unleavened Bread begins; for seven days you must eat bread made without yeast. On the first day hold a sacred assembly and do no regular work. For seven days present an offering made to the Lord by fire. And on the seventh day hold a sacred assembly and do no regular work.” Leviticus 23:6-8. “When the Israelites left Egypt, they left in haste. The bread they took with them was unleavened bread, baked in haste for a people who were on the move and preparing their victuals to travel. The Feast of Unleavened Bread commemorates the time when the Israelites left Egypt. Their next waypoint was the crossing at the Red Sea. The bread they took with them was not puffed up. It was baked without yeast. There simply was not time enough to allow the bread to rise.” LEAVEN AS A SYMBOL OF WICKEDNESS Leaven in the Scriptures is often, but not always, used as a symbol of sin. Before the Israelites celebrated the Passover, they were to remove all leaven from their homes, and they were to bake unleavened bread, i.e., bread baked without yeast, which was to be eaten for seven days during the festival, ending on the second Sabbath after Passover. Leaven was made by allowing grain soaked in water to ferment. It was then added to the dough to let it “rise” to make it more palatable. The process of fermentation was a process of decay symbolizing the decay that sin introduced to the human race. A small portion of the leavened dough was used to “set’ the next batch of dough, adding decay to the bread-baking process. Hence they were to remove all leaven from their homes and eat unleavened bread during the festival to symbolize the removal of sin from their lives by the sacrifice of God’s Lamb. BREAD FROM HEAVEN IN THE OLD TESTAMENT The Bread from Heaven was seen in the earlier history of Israel. The God of Israel provided manna in the wilderness for forty years. And the heavenly food of provision was spoken of by the prophets. The Bread of Heaven is seen repeatedly in the poetry of the Old Covenant. “In their hunger you gave them bread from heaven…” Nehemiah 9:15. “… He rained down manna for the people to eat, He gave them of the grain of heaven.” Psalm 78:24. “…He satisfied them with the bread of heaven.” Psalm 105:40. JESUS THE FULFILMENT OF UNLEAVENED BREAD “The typology of Christ as the Bread of Heaven is in the Holy Scriptures. It is taught in the New Testament and in the very words of Jesus Himself. Jesus Himself said that He was the “Bread sent from Heaven”. “For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” John 6:33. “Here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which a man may eat and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats this bread he will live forever. This bread I my flesh which I will give for the life of the world.” John 6:50, 51. The Pharisees, the religious establishment of the time, knew very well what Jesus was talking about. They were well versed in the typology of the Messiah as the Bread of Heaven. They knew when He referred to Himself as the Bread of Heaven that He was claiming to be the promised Messiah, the Holy One of Israel. That is why they took up stones to stone Him. Jesus was the final and perfect sacrifice for sin. He was the Suffering Servant spoken of by the prophet Isaiah. (See Isaiah 53). His body, broken and humbled on the cross, was offered for our redemption. He was buried just as the eve of the Feast of Unleavened Bread approached. He was in the grave for the 15th of Nisan, according to the scriptures. And thus Jesus Christ/Yeshua Hamashiach fulfilled the Feast of Unleavened Bread.” Here are the words of the Apostle Paul on the matter. “Therefore purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened. For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us. 8. Therefore 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.” 1 Corinthians 5:7 T |
Tag Archives: bread from heaven
A Divine Partnership
A DIVINE PARTNERSHIP
“At this the Jews there began to grumble about Him because He said, ‘I am the bread that came down from heaven.’ They said, ‘Is this not Jesus the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can He now say, ‘I came down from heaven?’ ‘
“‘Stop grumbling among yourselves,’ Jesus answered. ‘No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up at the last day. It is written in the Prophets: “They shall all be taught by God.” No one has seen the Father except the one who is from God; only He has seen the Father. Very truly I tell you, the one who believes has eternal life.'” John 6:41-47 (NIV).
The plot thickens!
Jesus’ assertions were stirring up the same old antagonism that got the people of Nazareth going against Him. The people of Capernaum could also not get past what they believed to be His ancestry — Joseph and Mary, the village couple from Nazareth. Here was a man, a flesh-and-blood man who stood before them making outrageous claims about Himself which were either dangerously blasphemous or true and they had to decide.
He held out the offer of eternal life and they had either to believe what He said or reject Him and His words. But that was not enough. If He were nothing but a deranged man or a liar, they had to get rid of Him because people were taking Him seriously and following Him because of the miracles He was doing, and they had no answer for that.
It was a tough choice for them to make. Were they to believe Him and risk the wrath of the religious leaders who had already made up their minds about Him, or were they to ignore His compelling works and words and reject Him as a phoney? What could they make of His claim, ‘I came down from heaven’? If that were true, then He would be saying that He already existed with God before His entry into the world as a human being. That would make Him God. Exactly! But how could a man be God?
Then He spoke of the Father as though He knew Him; as though He worked with Him in partnership and unity and as though He shared His power and authority. But that was exactly it, and they could not fathom how this could be!
Slowly but surely Jesus was building a case for His identity as the Son of God. He had to demolish their misunderstanding and prejudice and get past their fixed ideas and expectations about the Messiah and bring them to a willingness to watch and listen and weigh up the evidence.
This was not about inviting them to join a cause. This was about convincing them that He was the Son of God. Only on that basis would they believe in Him and give themselves unreservedly to Him, follow Him and receive from Him a new life which would catapult them into a kingdom and under an authority that would utterly transform their lives.
Jesus was intimating that He had a partnership with God, whom He called His Father that was so close that they worked together in perfect unity. It was the Father who drew them fo the Son and it was the Son who would give them resurrection life. According their revered prophets, there would be a time when His people would be personally instructed by God. Was He telling them that the time was now; that He, Jesus was actually God and that He was teaching them the truth from God?
As the one who was sent from God, He had seen the Father; implying not so much God’s visible image, for God is spirit, but seeing and understanding Him in the inner depths of His being because, according to John, He was with God from the beginning.
It is faith that opens the door to “sight”, not the other way around. If they took Jesus’ word seriously and put their trust in Him, they would have 20/20 vision in the realm of the useen which would propel them beyond struggle and mere existence into life where they would experience ever-increasing wholeness in the realm of God’s perfection.
Bread From Heaven
BREAD FROM HEAVEN
“Then they asked Him, ‘What must we do to do the works God requires?’ Jesus answered, ‘The work of God is this: to believe in the One He has sent.’ So they asked Him, ‘What sign, then, will you give so that we may see it and believe you? What will you do? Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written: “He gave them bread from heaven to eat.”‘
“Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly I tell you, it is not Moses who has given you bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.’
“‘Sir,’ they said, ‘always give us this bread.'” John 6:28-34 (NIV).
These people were well influenced by their religious leaders and still thought and operated in the natural.
Jesus had just challenged them, ‘Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life which the Son of Man will give you.’ John 6:27a. Their response was, ‘What must we do…?’ thinking that there was something extra that they must add to their already burdensome performance to guarantee them an eternal existence beyond the grave.
Jesus’ response took them back to the simple requirement He had persistently told them which they did not seem to hear or understand. It was not about works but about faith in Him that opened the door to what He called “life”. The people clung to Moses as their model because he was the agent through whom God did mighty miracles in the wilderness and delivered them from the Egyptians.
In spite of their ancestors’ grumbling against Moses and their disobedience and unbelief towards God and His miraculous interventions, these people still saw these mighty miracles as the sign that it was God who was with them and who led them to the Promised Land.
According to them it was Moses who had given them the manna which sustained them for forty years in the wilderness. He didn’t multiply a few barley loaves to feed a few thousand. He gave them an abundance of manna every morning which fed millions! That was Moses’ sign that it was God who was doing it. ‘What can you do, Jesus, to better that?’
Already their unbelief was working overtime! Why did they follow Him across the lake in the first place, and then back to Capernaum when they didn’t find Him where He had been the day before? Was it because He was feeding their souls with the living bread — His word? No! He had already diagnosed their motive — a free meal at God’s expense! They were certainly “working” for that bread.
Providing manna for millions of people every day was a small miracle compared with the greater miracle of God coming in person to provide “bread” that would sustain them forever. But they could not see it. The life He offered them was not simply an extra-long biological life on the earth but a supernatural quality of life in union with Him that freed them from the fear, guilt and shame that drove them to hide from God because of their sin.
The “bread” of which Jesus spoke was a symbol of the bread, His word that would nourish and sustain their spirits in an unbreakable connection with Himself. Because He would do away with the barrier of sin which had disconnected them from God and left them unprotected against the judgment of God, they would reconciled to God. They would be able to live in fellowship with Him without the sacrifices and mediators they forced to go through now.
Once again their response revealed their misunderstanding of His offer. The Samaritan woman thought He was offering her a supply of water that would relieve her of the burden of carrying water from the well every day. They thought that He would give them bread, like the manna, which simply fell from heaven and saved them the labour of having to bake their daily supply.
Because their minds were locked into the natural, as we shall see, their unbelief mirrored the unbelief of their ancestors and they forfeited the opportunity to receive this “bread” and enter the fullness of the life He offered.
Have you “eaten” this bread?