Passover: Celebrating God’s Way

Passover. Feast of Unleavened Bread. Y’all, it took a lot of repetitive reciting aloud to rewire my brain into accepting some truths about what seemed to be a traditionally Jewish holiday. Below I’ve highlighted a few nuggets from my study notes about what God constitutes as Passover and how it should be celebrated.

Passover is a 7-day feast!

Passover is also referred to as The Feast of Unleavened Bread.  The word “feast” comes from the Hebrew word “chag.” According to Bible Hub, it means “a feast or a festival.” Derived from the root word “chapag,” “chag” means “to celebrate” or “to hold a feast.” It is used to refer to a religious feast, often characterized by communal celebration, worship, and sacrifice. 

Understanding this, means we all need to give the C.M.E. Members a break! In case you’re wondering—C.M.E. is the acronym for Christmas, Mother’s Day, & Easter, as those are said to be the only occasions in which a C.M.E. Christian chooses to attend church. While having a “church going” mindset is still somewhat in line with God’s command for observing Passover, it still falls well below a full observance.

Have you been showing up late to Passover? 

The image above on the left is a U.S. calendar.  See how this one marks the first full day of Passover as Palm Sunday. While the last full day of the Passover is marked as Easter or Resurrection Day. 

The image on the right is a Jewish calendar. Notice the darkened section of dates marking Passover. It starts in the evening BEFORE the first full day of Passover. A holy convocation, or holy gathering, is held at the beginning and the end of Passover. 

It’s possible that C.M.E. members and regular church goers alike have failed to meet God’s standard for years! God was very specific about how  and who was to celebrate his Passover. Anything less is showing disobedience to God’s direct command. 

Celebrating Passover is a command of God.

As written in Exodus 12:14-20, God commanded His people to prepare for the destruction he would send to Egypt before He sent it. God gave specific instructions for every household to set aside an unblemished, one year old lamb. Households with fewer people could join with their neighbors to set aside one lamb. Through Moses, God told the Israelites to sacrifice the lamb on the evening of the 14th day of Nisan. While being fully dressed with their shoes on, the Israelites were to consume the edible part of the lamb and rush home afterward. (I suppose unleavened bread and bitter greens may have also been on the menu, since that is a customary Passover meal for modern day Jews.) Upon arrival at home, the Israelites put lamb’s blood on the doorposts of their home. Later that night, the Angel of the Lord came through Egypt on a destruction assignment. He was coming to kill the first born child and livestock in that area. For every household marked with lamb’s blood though, the Angel of the Lord passed over that house. On that same night, The Lord also executed judgement on the gods of Egypt.

14 ‘Now this day shall be a memorial to you, and you shall celebrate it as a feast to the Lord; throughout your generations you are to celebrate it as a permanent ordinance. 15 For seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, but on the first day you shall remove dough with yeast from your houses; for whoever eats anything with yeast from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel. 16 And on the first day you shall have a holy assembly, and another holy assembly on the seventh day no work at all shall be done on them, except for what must be eaten by every person—that alone may be prepared by you. 17 You shall also keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread, for on this very day I brought your multitudes out of the land of Egypt; therefore you shall keep this day throughout your generations as a permanent ordinance.    Exodus 12:14-20

Throughout both the Old and the New testaments, several significant events occurred during in the weeks preceding Passover as well as during the weeklong feast. A well known example, Jesus’ first miracle  happened. It was shortly before Passover that Jesus turned the water into wine at the wedding.

On the one-year anniversary of the “Passover” event in Egypt, God told Moses to tell the children of Israel that they are to observe Passover as the NEW first of the year. They were also commissioned to teach this permanent ordinance to the following generations.

REAL LIFE APPLICATION: Now of course, the Israelites were Jews i.e. God’s people. God and the Jews made a covenant for it to be so. Much like accepting salvation today, we enter a covenant to be God’s people. If God commands His people to observe certain feasts, does that not also apply to you? The obedience of God’s people then and our obedience today is contingent upon the belief we have in Jesus and how deeply we reverence God as Our Father.

Passover transcends time and physical constraints.

In the Old Testament, Israel gave offerings to God as an acceptable form of seeking God for forgiveness, thanksgiving, and reverence. Once a year, those offerings were placed on the altar in the temple at Jerusalem and consumed by God’s supernatural fire. Whether animals, crops, or liquids, it is an undeniable fact that offerings have played a significant role of the Passover tradition.
 
The Passover feast specifically required Israel to present three different offerings daily: (burnt) 2 bulls, 1 ram, and 7 male lambs: (grain) crops, and (sin) 1 male goat. During Passover, also called the Feast of Unleavened Bread, Israel was also forbidden to eat bread cooked with leaven. Matza bread, though, was acceptable. Ir looks like an old-school communion cracker, very similar to a saltine cracker. Matza is still recognized as a common Jewish staple for those who celebrate Passover today. 
 
In the New Testament, the need for physical offerings is finally eliminated once and for all. When Jesus, The Lamb of God, was sacrificed during Passover, all sin among humanity was spiritually atoned. When THE Lamb, Jesus, also called Our Passover, died on the cross during Passover observance albeit, Believers were given access to salvation as well as the choice to obtain eternal life through their faith and belief in Jesus Christ. Check out Romans 10:9-10 and John 3:16-18. 
 
Shifting to the specific part of the permanent ordinance of not eating bread with leaven, we must note leaven’s meaning in a spiritual sense. In doing so we recognize that leaven is still prohibited from the diet of the Believer. In 1 Corinthians 5:7-8, the Apostle Paul reinforces that the church should clean out the old leaven, which represents sin. As such, Paul encouraged the church folk to “be a new lump in the dough” (influencing others in a Godly way through sincerity and truth v8) for Christ has been sacrificed. Need more proof? Look at Peter’s teachings. He tells us to celebrate Passover without the presence of sin, malice or wickedness.
 

Let us move forward with this knowledge. As the eve of Passover approaches, let us honor God in the way in which He has commanded. Let us follow his permanent order as God commanded for His people to do in order to show honor and gratitude for the things He has done for us.