The Passover Must Come First

The Passover Must Come First

Why do people combine the Passover and Days of Unleavened Bread together?

Does it really matter?

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We are told that we need to be discerning as the Berean’s were, and search the scriptures (Acts 17:10&11). In Berea the Jew sought to understand Paul’s teaching and searched the scriptures, but many of the Jews in Thessalonica didn’t want to understand and to change, they wanted to hold on to what they had, especially their position and power (Acts 17:5). Today the Jews and others lump the Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread together as if they are one event, but is this correct? The scriptures tell us that the Days of Unleavened Bread are the first Holy Days (Leviticus 23:7), but is the Passover part of those Holy Days, or is it a separate event?

Let’s start to unravel this by comparing aspects of the New Testament Passover with that of the Old Testament Passover.

Matthew 26V20 Now when the even was come, he sat down with the twelve.

V26 And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body.

V27 And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it;

V28 For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.

V29 But I say unto you, I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.

Jesus instituted the New Testament Passover at the same time and day that the Passover was enacted by ancient Israel in the land of Goshen in Egypt before they were effectively thrown out of Egypt and started their journey towards the promised land.

Exodus 12V1 And the LORD spake unto Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying,

V2 This month shall be unto you the beginning of months: it shall be the first month of the year to you.

V3 Speak ye unto all the congregation of Israel, saying, In the tenth day of this month they shall take to them every man a lamb, according to the house of their fathers, a lamb for an house:

V4 And if the household be too little for the lamb, let him and his neighbour next unto his house take it according to the number of the souls; every man according to his eating shall make your count for the lamb.

V5 Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year: ye shall take it out from the sheep, or from the goats:

V6 And ye shall keep it up until the fourteenth day of the same month: and the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening.

V7 And they shall take of the blood, and strike it on the two side posts and on the upper door post of the houses, wherein they shall eat it.

V8 And they shall eat the flesh in that night, roast with fire, and unleavened bread; and with bitter herbs they shall eat it.

V9 Eat not of it raw, nor sodden at all with water, but roast with fire; his head with his legs, and with the purtenance thereof.

V10 And ye shall let nothing of it remain until the morning; and that which remaineth of it until the morning ye shall burn with fire.

V11 And thus shall ye eat it; with your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and ye shall eat it in haste: it is the LORD’S passover.

V12 For I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am the LORD.

V13 And the blood shall be to you for a token upon the houses where ye are: and when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and the plague shall not be upon you to destroy you, when I smite the land of Egypt.

Ancient Israel and Jesus Christ kept the Passover on the 14^th day of the first month in the evening, and Christ instituted the New Testament Passover to be kept at this same time every year. Again, just as Israel was commanded to keep the Passover every year at the same time as a memorial of when “the LORD thy God brought thee forth out of Egypt by night” (Deuteronomy 16:1), Christ commanded the New Testament Passover, and the apostle Paul stated that by doing so; “you do shew the Lord’s death till he come” (1 Corinthians 11:26).

We therefore can conclude that the Passover process of the Old Testament pointed to Christ’s sacrifice and the New Testament enactment of the Passover. The Old Testament Passover required the sacrifice of an unblemished lamb, whereas Jesus Christ was the actual unblemished sacrifice (John 1:29&36). But what did God command Israel to do?

Leviticus 23V1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,

V2 Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, Concerning the feasts of the LORD, which ye shall proclaim to be holy convocations, even these are my feasts.

V3 Six days shall work be done: but the seventh day is the sabbath of rest, an holy convocation; ye shall do no work therein: it is the sabbath of the LORD in all your dwellings.

V4 These are the feasts of the LORD, even holy convocations, which ye shall proclaim in their seasons.

V5 In the fourteenth day of the first month at even is the LORD’S passover.

V6 And on the fifteenth day of the same month is the feast of unleavened bread unto the LORD: seven days ye must eat unleavened bread.

V7 In the first day ye shall have an holy convocation: ye shall do no servile work therein.

V8 But ye shall offer an offering made by fire unto the LORD seven days: in the seventh day is an holy convocation: ye shall do no servile work therein.

The Jews and others lump the Passover in with the Days of Unleavened Bread, as if they are all one event. But as we can see here in Leviticus, they are not. But they do have something in common, unleavened bread, and perhaps this is why they get lumped together. Let’s look in detail at Leviticus 23.

In verses 2 God tells us that the feast days He is about to expound are His. They should not be confused with man’s devised days; “even these are my feasts”.
In verse 3 God exhorts us to keep the sabbath. It is a sabbath of the Lord, it is a God ordained weekly sabbath, we can’t change it; “it is the sabbath of the LORD in all your dwellings”.
In verse 4 God tells us that the feast days He is about to list are holy, and we should proclaim or observe them in their respective seasons.
Verse 6 expounds the first Feast Day, the First Day of Unleavened Bread, and verses 7 and 8 tell us that the first and last days of this 7-day period are to be Holy Days, Sabbaths.
But notice verse 5, before these feast days begin there is the Passover. Clearly the Passover is not part of the days of unleavened bread. In fact it can’t be. It needs to come first. The holy days, the annual sabbaths are a picture of God plan of salvation for all mankind, a plan for life, and includes the return of Christ, the removal of Satan and Christ’s reign on Earth. But none of this could happen without Christ’s blood being shed for the covering of sin, to pay the legal price of sin. This had to happen first, initially in representation with the shedding of lambs’ blood, and subsequently with the blood of Christ.

1 Peter 1V18 Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers;

V19 But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot:

V20 Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you,

1 John 1V7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.

Without Christ’s blood being shed there can be no redemption, no removal of sin from us, no cleansing. In effect, all of God’s plan for mankind would become impossible, a waste of time without Christ’s sacrifice.

So why might it be that the Jews and others lump the Passover and the days of Unleavened Bread together?

The answer is rather simple.

Exodus 12V18 In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at even, ye shall eat unleavened bread, until the one and twentieth day of the month at even.

Here is chapter 12 of Exodus God is telling Israel how to prepare for the Passover, that it was in the first month, when to select a lamb without blemish, to keep it and then prepare it, how and when it should be eaten etc. and that this included removing leaven and eating unleavened bread (Exodus 12:1-20).

Because eating unleavened bread carried on from the Passover through the days of unleavened bread, there is a tendency to lump the Passover and the Holy Days, Feast Days, together as one event, but they are not.

Passover, a very special separate event.

It is vitally important to understand that the Passover is separate, a very special event, and that without it coming first, being fulfilled first, God’s plan of salvation as set out in the Holy Day Seasons would be of no effect. The Days of Unleavened Bread cannot be fulfilled without the Passover being successfully completed.

The Passover sacrifice of a lamb has been enacted from the very beginning of the human journey on Earth. After Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden, God taught Adam and Eve and their sons Cain and Able about the role Christ would play in their redemption and taught them about sacrificing a lamb to represent Christ’s future sacrifice (Genesis 4:1-7).

Abraham sacrificed a ram to God, but it seems likely that making a sacrifice to God was not a one-off event. When Abraham and his son Isaac were walking towards the place where God had commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac asked his father where the lamb was for the sacrifice, he seemed to know that it was usual to sacrifice a lamb; “And he said, Behold the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” (Genesis 22:6-14).

When the Israelites were in Egypt as slaves, God had them sacrifice a lamb and place the blood on the entrance to their homes to remove them from the path of the death angle. When the Lord saw the blood, the death angle passed over the house (Exodus 12:23). Christ’s blood removes us from the path of eternal death. Christ’s blood pays the legal penalty for sin. Death passes over us when we claim Christ’s sacrifice.

Romans 6V23 For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

God’s gift to us is the shedding of Christ’s blood which makers eternal life possible.

Exodus 12V5 Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year: ye shall take it out from the sheep, or from the goats:

V6 And ye shall keep it up until the fourteenth day of the same month: and the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening.

V7 And they shall take of the blood, and strike it on the two side posts and on the upper door post of the houses, wherein they shall eat it.

V8 And they shall eat the flesh in that night, roast with fire, and unleavened bread; and with bitter herbs they shall eat it.

Exodus 12V22 And ye shall take a bunch of hyssop, and dip it in the blood that is in the bason, and strike the lintel and the two side posts with the blood that is in the bason; and none of you shall go out at the door of his house until the morning.

V23 For the LORD will pass through to smite the Egyptians; and when he seeth the blood upon the lintel, and on the two side posts, the LORD will pass over the door, and will not suffer the destroyer to come in unto your houses to smite you.

V24 And ye shall observe this thing for an ordinance to thee and to thy sons for ever.

Notice verse 23, “The Lord … will not allow the destroyer to come in unto your houses to smite you.” The destroyer is Satan. Without the shedding of Christ’s blood, we would be subject to Satan and death.

In Egypt the blood of lambs preserved their physical lives, but now with the blood of Christ our spiritual lives are preserved. Satan has no power over us.

God commanded that the Passover be observed every year, initially using a lamb to represent Christ, but now that Christ is our Passover we don’t need to sacrifice a lamb. Unleavened Bread represents Christ as being sinless, without puffery, pure in every way.

1 Corinthians 5V7 Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us:

1 Corinthians 11V23 For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, That the Lord Jesus the same night in which he was betrayed took bread:

V24 And when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat: this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me.

V25 After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had supped, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me.

V26 For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord’s death till he come.

V27 Wherefore whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.

V28 But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup.

The Passover is a solemn but joyous event. We no longer sacrifice a lamb in an act of look forward, we now look back and commemorated Christ the Lamb of God sacrificed for us. We enact the Passover observance that Christ commanded as we read in Matthew 26:26-29 and in doing so we also look forward to the time when all sin will be removed forever.

There are so many aspects of the Passover, past, present and future, that are a study in themselves, and the Passover is linked to the holy day seasons in many ways, especially the Day of Atonement. But in each instance under the old covenant there was a sacrifice for sin, picturing Christ’s actual sacrifice. Along with these were various food offerings, and in particular “the meat offering thereof shall be two tenth deals of fine flour mingled with oil” and “the drink offering thereof shall be of wine, the fourth part of an hin” (Leviticus 23:13). These are the very elements that Christ instituted as the New Testament Passover. The unleavened bread and the wine. And there is another vitally important, but little understood, event that was enacted for real on Christ’s resurrection, “And he shall wave the sheaf before the LORD, to be accepted for you: on the morrow after the sabbath the priest shall wave it” (Leviticus 23:11). Without what this waving of the sheaf depicts, Christ’s sacrifice would not be complete, and we would not be able to have sin removed from us or receive the Holy Spirit in us.

Let us be as the Bereans “and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so” (Acts 17:11), and “grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:18). It all starts with the Passover.

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