The Messiah, 291A

~ Jesus Christ and The Feast of Unleavened Bread ~

Background  ~ “Search the Scriptures—they testify of Me” — Jesus Christ (John 5:39).

“And beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, Jesus explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures” (Luke 24:27).  “Let no one judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or sabbaths, which are a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ.  Let no one cheat you of your reward, taking delight in false humility and worship of angels, intruding into those things which he has not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind, and not holding fast to the Head, from whom all the body [the true Church of Jesus Christ], nourished and knit together by joints and ligaments, grows with the increase that is from God” (Colossians 2:16-19).

The Scripture  ~  …  “And on the fifteenth day of the same month is the Feast of Unleavened Bread to the Lord; seven days you must eat unleavened bread.  On the first day you shall have a holy convocation; you shall do no customary work on it.  But you shall offer an offering made by fire to the Lord for seven days.  The seventh day shall be a holy convocation; you shall do no customary work on it” (Leviticus 23:6-8).  …

The Messiah  ~  “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” (1 Corinthians 5:7-8).  Paul wrote this in a letter to the early Corinthian Christian church—listen to it in modern day English.  “Your flip and callous arrogance in these things bothers me.  You pass it off as a small thing, but it’s anything but that.  Yeast, too, is a ‘small thing,’ but it works its way through a whole batch of bread dough pretty fast.  So get rid of this ‘yeast.’  Our true identity is flat and plain, not puffed up with the wrong kind of ingredient.  The Messiah, our Passover Lamb, has already been sacrificed for the Passover meal, and we are the Unraised Bread part of the Feast.  So let’s live out our part in the Feast, not as raised bread swollen with the yeast of evil, but as flat bread — simple, genuine, unpretentious” (1 Corinthians 5:6-8). 

The Feast of Unleavened Bread (April)  ~  The holy time of celebrating the Feast of Unleavened Bread is at its heart a concern for a holy lifestyle, one that is pleasing to God.  Because of the work of Jesus Christ—The Messiah on the Cross of Calvary we now have fellowship with Him.

“That which we have seen and heard we declare to you, that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ.  And these things we write to you that your joy may be full” (1 John 1:2-4).  The Apostle Paul could say, “But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ.  Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death” (Philippians 3:7-10). 

~ Robert Lloyd Russell, ABUNDANT LIFE NOW

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