The Unleavened Bread

The Unleavened Bread

Passover was followed by the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which lasted for an entire week. The regulations for this feast were very specific: “Celebrate this Festival of Unleavened Bread, for it will remind you that I brought your forces out of the land of Egypt on this very day. . . . During those seven days, there must be no trace of yeast in your homes. . . . During those days you must not eat anything made with yeast” (Exodus 12:17, 19-20).

While unleavened bread reminded the Israelites of their hasty departure from Egypt, the command to get rid of yeast had another purpose. Jewish teachers had always understood yeast to represent the corrupting power of sin. As yeast ferments, it works its way all through the dough. Sin works the same way. It is always seeking to extend its corrupting influence through a person’s entire life. For the Hebrews, putting away all the leaven symbolized breaking the old cycle of sin and starting out afresh from Egypt to walk as a new nation before the Lord.

When Jesus shared the Passover meal with his disciples the night he was arrested, “he took some bread and gave thanks to God for it. Then he broke it in pieces and gave it to the disciples, saying, ‘This is my body, which is given for you. Do this to remember me’” (Luke 22:19).

Were their eyes opened that night to the significance of the unleavened bread they had eaten year after year during Passover? Jesus made it clear that the bread—made of pure grain untouched by yeast—was a foreshadowing of his sinless and incorruptible life. The practice of breaking the bread symbolized his broken body on the cross. The second piece of bread, which was traditionally wrapped in a linen cloth, hidden, and later brought back to the table, symbolized Jesus’ body, wrapped in linen grave clothes, hidden in the tomb for three days, and resurrected. Christ not only had no corruption in his character, his physical body did not experience the ravages of death while in the grave. “[God] will not . . . allow [his] Holy One to rot in the grave” (Acts 2:27). It is his sinless life we feast on and his nature we partake of to escape the corruption of sin.

Sinless Bread of heaven, you brought the perfection of heaven into the corruption of this world. By your incorruptible life, you defeated the power of sin to damn my life through its corruption. Lord, as I feast on your life, your body, I find myself wanting to sweep sin out of my life and escape the corruption of this world.