Truly Deleavened?
26/04/09 16:56
During the seven day long feast that follows Passover, we are required to remain leaven free. God tells us that we must eat unleavened bread on each of those seven days and that leavened products are not to be seen in our homes. Seven is God’s number of completion, or perfection. The feast is seven days long, so the duration of that feast pictures a process that is taking place in our lives, or should be.
Exodus 12:18
18 “In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at evening, you shall eat unleavened bread, until the twenty-first day of the month at evening. 19 For seven days no leaven shall be found in your houses, since whoever eats what is leavened, that same person shall be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether he is a stranger or a native of the land. 20 You shall eat nothing leavened; in all your dwellings you shall eat unleavened bread.”
Abstaining from leaven is so much more than just the physical removing of the leaven from our homes and of not partaking of leavened products during the feast. God always uses physical things to teach us the true spiritual lessons that He wants us to understand. Becoming deleavened, brings about some changes in our lives and our normal every day routines. Extra care and thought must go into our meals and our eating habits are changed. We also have to be on guard against allowing any leaven to enter our homes, or our bodies. For those seven days we have to be vigilant and watchful.
What about when the feast has ended? We are free to eat leavened products again and we can go right back to the way we were before the feast. We can go right back to living the same life we were before and we can go back to being the same person we were before the feast, but where is the lesson? What are we to take away from the feast?
God asks us to remove something during the feast...leaven. Leaven is just a representation of what God really wants us to do. The leaven represents sin and all of the things that are contrary to living God’s way that we need to remove from out of our lives. God wants those things removed completely! We are not only to remove those things out of our lives, but they are not to be found anywhere among us including our dwellings. We are to be completely free from those things that are contrary to God.
The leaven that was in our lives, needs to be replaced with something. Just as God fed Israel in the wilderness with manna, the bread from heaven, we need to feed on the bread of life. God sent His only Son, Jesus Christ, from heaven for us. He is the true bread of life, the bread that brings eternal life. It is not enough to just remove the leaven from our lives, we need to replace it with the true bread of life...we need to be leavened with that true bread that comes from God.
Until next time...
Exodus 12:18
18 “In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at evening, you shall eat unleavened bread, until the twenty-first day of the month at evening. 19 For seven days no leaven shall be found in your houses, since whoever eats what is leavened, that same person shall be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether he is a stranger or a native of the land. 20 You shall eat nothing leavened; in all your dwellings you shall eat unleavened bread.”
Abstaining from leaven is so much more than just the physical removing of the leaven from our homes and of not partaking of leavened products during the feast. God always uses physical things to teach us the true spiritual lessons that He wants us to understand. Becoming deleavened, brings about some changes in our lives and our normal every day routines. Extra care and thought must go into our meals and our eating habits are changed. We also have to be on guard against allowing any leaven to enter our homes, or our bodies. For those seven days we have to be vigilant and watchful.
What about when the feast has ended? We are free to eat leavened products again and we can go right back to the way we were before the feast. We can go right back to living the same life we were before and we can go back to being the same person we were before the feast, but where is the lesson? What are we to take away from the feast?
God asks us to remove something during the feast...leaven. Leaven is just a representation of what God really wants us to do. The leaven represents sin and all of the things that are contrary to living God’s way that we need to remove from out of our lives. God wants those things removed completely! We are not only to remove those things out of our lives, but they are not to be found anywhere among us including our dwellings. We are to be completely free from those things that are contrary to God.
The leaven that was in our lives, needs to be replaced with something. Just as God fed Israel in the wilderness with manna, the bread from heaven, we need to feed on the bread of life. God sent His only Son, Jesus Christ, from heaven for us. He is the true bread of life, the bread that brings eternal life. It is not enough to just remove the leaven from our lives, we need to replace it with the true bread of life...we need to be leavened with that true bread that comes from God.
Until next time...