What Do the Days of Unleavened Bread Mean for Christians?

Among the Holy Days of Leviticus 23, God commanded Israel to celebrate the Feast of Unleavened Bread every year. They were specifically commanded to remove the yeast from their homes for 7 days and to not eat anything leavened with yeast for those 7 days. This yearly festival was primarily a commemoration of the Exodus, and specifically of the fact that God brought Israel out of Egypt by His power:

Exodus 13:3-8
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... And you shall tell your son in that day, saying, ‘This is done because of what the LORD did for me when I came up from Egypt.’"

God devastated and overcame the power of the Egyptians with the plague of the firstborn (the Passover plague) and then led Israel out of Egypt on the day after Passover, which is the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. As a matter of fact, the first words that Moses and Aaron spoke to Pharaoh were about this Feast:

Exodus 5:1
Moses and Aaron went in and told Pharaoh, “Thus says the LORD God of Israel: ‘Let My people go, that they may hold a feast to Me in the wilderness.’”

The Feast of Unleavened Bread clearly focuses on deliverance - so what point is God trying to make by asking us to not eat leaven during these days?

First, recall that Israel was commanded to leave Egypt in haste - they couldn't delay their leaving in order to give the bread time to rise, so God told them not to put any yeast in it. Yeast is a living organism that grows in bread and releases gas, which cases the bread to puff up over time as the yeast grows and spreads. They were supposed to be eager to get out of Egypt! The deliverance symbolism of the Feast is obviously made manifest because of God's act of deliverance, but the Israelites were to commemorate the event by eating unleavened bread in order to symbolize their willingness and readiness to receive that deliverance.

The Israelites had a problem with not trusting God to provide for them, and, as a result, they frequently wanted to go back to slavery in Egypt. In light of what the unleavened bread was supposed to mean for them, it's not surprising that the one of the fond memories that the Israelites had about Egypt was the bread that they ate there:

Exodus 16:3
And the children of Israel said to them, "Oh, that we had died by the hand of the LORD in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the pots of meat and when we ate bread to the full!"

The Israelites were so unappreciative of God's deliverance that they were not satisfied with the unleavened bread which symbolized that deliverance - they wanted to return to Egypt, where they ate leavened bread in bondage!

All of these things are written for our learning. Today, Christians are still commanded to eat only unleavened bread for 7 days. We observe the Days of Unleavened Bread to commemorate that God has Passed Over our sins and redeemed us from slavery in spiritual Egypt, which is the way that leads to death. The reason that we eat unleavened bread is to remind us of the urgency with which we are called to stop living under the control of sin. Just like the Israelites were not permitted to wait around in Egypt for the bread to rise, so also Christians are not permitted to continue in their sins. The New Testament teaches that sin is like yeast:

1 Corinthians 5:6-8
Your glorying is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? 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. 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.

Just like yeast lives in the bread, spreading and growing until the entire loaf is puffed up, so also sin lives in us, spreading and growing until we are thoroughly captive to it. If we delay in purging out our sins, they will spread like leaven in our lives until they completely control our us. Therefore, we must not compromise! When God reveals to you that you are doing something wrong, you must be READY and WILLING to change! 

We are called to eat the "unleavened bread of sincerity and truth." If you are not ready to stop sinning, then you are not sincere. If you say that you are ready to stop sinning but you willingly going back for "one last fix," then you are a liar and have not abided in truth. 

The primary message of the Days of Unleavened Bread of Christians is that God has brought us out of sin by His power, which is displayed in the Passover sacrifice. As a result of that deliverance, we must be totally ready to accept our salvation by willingly and eagerly following God out of sin, symbolized by eating unleavened bread - putting away sin before it has a chance to grow and corrupt us.

For more information on why Christians should celebrate these Holy Days, as well as how to celebrate them, see God's Holy Day Plan: The Promise of Hope for All Mankind.

God Will Have Mercy on Them All

If you’ve ever read Exodus, you may wonder whether or not it was fair for God to harden Pharaoh’s heart, especially when Pharaoh got to the point where he wanted to let the Israelites go. Is God fair? Did God condemn Pharaoh by hardening his heart?

Jesus and the Snakes

Numbers 21:4-8 gives a seemingly odd episode from the Israelites' wanderings. The Israelites, as they often did, complained that God was just leading them around "to die in the desert," grumbling that they had no food or water. As an unusual form of punishment, God sends poisonous snakes that begin biting and killing them. After this goes on for a bit, the Israelites quickly ask Moses to pray to God to take the snakes away. Interestingly, God didn't take the snakes away; rather, He told Moses to make a "bronze snake" and put it up on a pole, and that if anyone is bitten by a snake, they could look at the bronze snake and live.

Flash forward several centuries. In John 3:1-15, Jesus is explaining to Nicodemus, a certain Pharisee who believed that Jesus had come from God, that men must be born again to enter God's Kingdom. Nicodemus asks, "How can this be?" to which Jesus tells him that since he has not understood earthly things, then neither does Jesus expect him to understand heavenly things. And then, he says something interesting in verses 14-15: "Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life."

I am continually amazed by how intimately everything in the bible is connected. After some consideration, I came to the following conclusions as to the meaning of what Jesus is revealing here. Notice that in the Numbers account, God sent the snakes. Jesus prophesied that there would be many false teachers; and, given what we know about snakes in the bible, my best analysis is that these snakes are false teachers whose false instruction, their "bite," causes death. God is preparing a time of great distress to come on the earth, which will cause everyone to cry out to be saved as the Israelites did. God has lifted up Christ, so that all who will look to Him rather than to the false teachers will live, though they have been bitten by false doctrines. At that time, people will be given understanding that Nicodemus lacked, both of earthly and heavenly things.

What Happened at Massah?

Recall the story of Satan tempting Jesus in the desert. You can read it in Luke 4 for a refresher, and you will see that for each of Satan's temptations Jesus had an answer from the Law. The part that I want to focus on is this: when Satan told Jesus to throw himself down off the cliff and have the angels save him, Jesus said "It says: 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'" The scripture He quoted is from Deuteronomy 6:16, which reads "Do not test the Lord your God as you did at Massah." 

So what exactly happened at Massah? After being delivered from slavery out of Egypt, Israel had rejected the promised land by their lack of faith and were being led through the desert by God from one place to the next as a period of trial and testing. Eventually they stopped at a place where there was no water for them to drink, and they start arguing with Moses and complaining against God, telling him to give them water, to which Moses responds by saying "Why do you put the LORD to the test?" The word "Massah" means "testing," and I find it interesting that, while God was testing the Israelites to see whether they would follow His ways or not in their wilderness wandering, the Israelites, rather than obeying God, in turn tested God, challenging Him to see whether He would really provide for them - as if parting the Red Sea and raining down manna had not been enough!

Moses then asked God what to do, because he could see the people were getting out of control. Despite the fact that God wasn't happy with their attitude, He provided water for His people. As a result of this whole ordeal, Moses gave the place the names "Massah," which means "testing," and "Meribah," which means "quarreling," because Israel tested the God and argued by saying, 'Is the LORD among us or not?'" 

Going back to the temptation: Satan was asking Jesus to prove that God was with Him. How often do we question whether or not God is with us? Just as He patiently provided water for an unbelieving people then, even greater is the patience of God toward us, for surely we have all sometimes tested God ourselves in ignorance as we wander through our own wilderness! Thank God for His mercy! But we are called to a higher standard, because Jesus, in whose way we are called to walk, after 40 days of fasting demonstrated through His response that we should not seek to prove to ourselves or anyone else that God is with us, but to have faith in God to provide. The Israelites were ready to stop following God and go look for water themselves because they thought God might abandon them, whereas Jesus knew that God was with Him.

So also, by the holy scriptures we can know that God is with us! Isaiah prophesied of Christ in Isaiah 7:14 that He would be called "Immanuel," meaning "God with us." Jesus lived on earth and was "God with us" in the flesh, but also in the Great Commission, when Jesus appeared to the disciples after His resurrection, Jesus assured the disciples that "surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."  Jesus continues to be "God with us" today as we draw near the "end of the age," if we will repent of our sins, be baptized, and strive to live by God's word.