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Pictures of Christ: The Unleavened Bread (13:3-10)
The heavenly Father decreed that any Jew eating leavened bread (made with yeast) during this period should be cut off from the people. Why was His judgment so strong? Because in the Bible, Old Testament, and New Testament, leaven is a metaphor for sin. Leaven represents the pride and arrogance that lead men to feel they have no need of God.
The Bible says, “God resists the proud. ..” James 4:6 NKJV) and “These six things the LORD hates. ..a proud look” (Prov. 6:16-17 NKJV).
Pride was Nebuchadnezzar surveying his kingdom and saying, “look what I’ve done.” The result of pride was Nebuchadnezzar on his hands and knees eating grass in a cow pasture.
Pride is an acid that turns the finest fruit bitter. Pride is a shallow and superficial weed that grows in all soils, without the need of water or care. It consumes and destroys every living thing it overshadows. Pride is a swelling of the heart filled with ego and self-importance. Pride raises you above others until you look down on them. Pride is the basis of racism that divides the church and America. There is no white church, black church, brown church, or yellow church in Scripture. There is only the blood-bought church of Jesus Christ. Pride is cancer that rots the soul. A man infected with pride needs nothing…not even God!
Picture a scene with me, if you will: Imagine a Hebrew participating in the Exodus.
He has watched:
1. the hand of God peel back the edges of the Red Sea so His people could walk across on dry ground;
2. Pharaoh and his army drowned as the waters crashed back to their rightful place.
3. God brings water from a rock;
4. God lead 3 million as they followed the pillar of cloud by day and were comforted by the sight of the pillar of fire by night.
Moreover, he has heard Moses explicitly state, on several occasions that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob has commanded that leaven shall be put away during the Feast of Unleavened Bread.
What if our imaginary Hebrew decides to have a nice little yeast roll for lunch? What does his rebellious action suggest? By today’s standards of gross immorality, eating leavened bread during this festival week would be considered laughably unimportant. Yet God commanded that any person who ate leavened bread during this feast should be stoned to death.
Think of it! What’s God saying here? He’s saying He has zero-tolerance for sin! This is a message America has forgotten. We have become a nation of drugs, divorce, drunkenness, abortion, pornography, incest, and homosexuality. We are lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. We snap our fingers at God as if He were a cosmic bellhop. But God never changes! God has always poured out His wrath on people and nations who refuse to confess their sin.
If our country does not have a time of national repentance, America will experience the wrath of God on her economy, on her land’s ability to grow food through floods and scorching heat, and on her children, who will continue to march into captivity to drugs, gangs, sexual diseases, and Satanism. “Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD” (Ps. 33:12 NKJV)-that verse does not describe America.
Why does God hate sin? Because sin is man’s declaration of independence of God. Hear me! You don’t break God’s law. ..God’s law will break you. Such arrogance is hard to imagine, yet it exists all around us, just as it flourished even among the religious leaders in Christ’s time. Jesus said, “Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees” (Matt. 16:6 NKJV). This sort of arrogance exists in the church; it’s contagious and it’s cancerous. Just like yeast, sin puffs us up.
Paul felt led to warn the early church, “Your glorying is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?” (1 Cor. 5:6 NKJV). His point? A “little” pride will destroy your marriage, your church, our nation, and your soul. The message of this feast? Redemption is to be followed by a holy life and right living. We may not be immediately punished for disobedience as the Israelites were, but we will pay the price for sin. There is a payday!