MATZA: THE FEAST OF UNLEAVENED BREAD


by Avram Yehoshua

Exodus 12:15-20 tells us that the Feast of Matza is to last for 7 full days in which the Sons of Israel are not to eat any bread with yeast, and they must eat matza, unleavened bread. In all the ancient world, every housewife knew that yeast made the dough 'to rise.' It was also seen, as it is in our day, that a man full of pride, is said to be 'puffed up.' In this Feast, leaven pictures sin. (As it did of course at the Passover Meal which is eaten on the first day of Unleavened Bread. This is why it is so biblically and symbolically absurd to have any kind of bread with yeast in it, for communion.)

What Yahveh is demanding from His People Israel, is that they are to be especially conscious of their calling to walk in holiness. It was not enough that God would free Israel from Egyptian slavery, they had to follow His Ways and be a holy People unto their God. What this meant for them was that their hearts would have to be totally dedicated to Yahveh. Something that we can identify with today. What the Passover-Feast of Unleavened Bread pictures is Israel free of sin. This is very timely and pointed for us. And this is one of the reasons why the Feast of Unleavened Bread is not done away with.
Exodus 12:15: 'Seven days you must eat unleavened bread, and on the first day you must remove leaven from your houses. For whoever eats anything leavened from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel.'
Verse 15 explains that for seven days there must not be any leaven, even in the house. If anyone would eat regular bread, that person would be cut off from Israel. We can see that this is a very serious offense to Yahveh. Why so many churches today conduct communion with leavened bread, in violation of the Word of God, is because they don't understand their ancient heritage.
Ex. 12:16: 'On the first day you must have a holy assembly, and another holy assembly on the seventh day. No work at all shall be done on them, except what must be eaten by every person, that alone may be prepared by you.'
Verse 16 relates how the first and the seventh days of Matza are holy (Sabbaths), and that an assembly must be called, for worship as a Body. Not working on these days pictures Israel entering into the reality of what Yahveh has freed us from (slavery), and to (Himself). He's freed us from slavery to sin and we are to walk in that freedom, trusting Him, for holiness, peace and life; allowing Him to be our God and make us into the Image of His Son Yeshua: sinless and holy and obedient to Yahveh. We can't do or add anything to what Yahveh has done, pictured in 'our working' on those days, and God calling us to rest (Sabbath). Literally, to cease from our labors. He has provided everything for us in the Sabbath.
Ex. 12:17: 'You must observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread, for on this very day I brought your hosts out of the land of Egypt. Therefore you must observe this day throughout your generations as a permanent ordinance.'
Verse 17 speaks of Israel being brought out of Egypt, on the First Day of Matza, the 15th of Aviv (Numbers 33:1-3), and that it must be observed for all the generations of Israel. Again, as a remembrance of what Yahveh has done for Israel. On this day, the first day of Matza, Yeshua dies at 3 in the afternoon. At His Death, we are freed from sin and death. This is what He meant when He said, 'It is finished!' (John 19:30), the Redemption of Israel.
Ex. 12:18: 'In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at evening, you must eat unleavened bread, until the twenty-first day of the month at evening.'
Verse 18 speaks of eating unleavened bread for the entire Feast, for 7 days.
Ex. 12:19: 'Seven days there shall be no leaven found in your houses, for whoever eats what is leavened, that person shall be cut off from the Congregation of Israel, whether he is an alien or a native of the land.'
Verse 19 reiterates verse 15 in both what must be done (no leaven in homes), and the punishment for eating bread made with yeast (separation from their People Israel, in effect, cutting one off from God's saved People).
Ex. 12:20: 'You shall not eat anything leavened. In all your dwellings you must eat unleavened bread.'
Verse 20 has Yahveh telling Israel that they must not eat anything leavened, and that they must eat matza for 7 days.

If a house can be a 'picture' of a human being, for we have seen this on cartoons, we have an idea of what God is doing here. The door of the house becomes a mouth. And the windows become eyes. Leaven is a picture of sin, and seven is symbolic of fullness (the days of the week of Creation, etc.), and holiness. What we see here is Yahveh calling Israel to a life of holiness, free of sin.

They were to remove the sin (leaven), from their lives (not eat any or have any in their house), for the seven days (which is a complete unit of time; a week). It would symbolize another complete unit of time: the coming year. What Yahveh was saying to Israel is that they were to not allow sin into their life for the coming year. The matza and the week symbolizing that they were to be pure or holy unto their God, for the entire year. Then the next Feast of Matza would come around and they'd do it again.

It also pictured their total freedom from sin and suffering, by the blood of the lamb. In essence, their being no leaven in all the Land of Israel, would signify that their wasn't any sin in Israel, a picture that Yahveh will transform into Reality one day.

'For I do not want you, brethren, to be uninformed of this Mystery so that you will not be wise in your own estimation that a partial hardening has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in, and so all Israel will be saved, just as it is written,
'The Deliverer will come from Zion. He will remove ungodliness from Jacob. This is My Covenant with them, when I take away their sins.'

From the standpoint of the Gospel they are enemies for your sake, but from the standpoint of God's choice they are beloved for the sake of the Fathers.' (Romans 11:25-28)
The Church will watch as Yahveh performs His Wonders in bringing the natural Seed of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to His Messiah King, Yeshua. And the Picture of the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread, will be fulfilled for Israel, the natural branch.

Eating matza for the seven days and drinking wine would picture communion every day of the Feast. The only way we can walk with Yeshua is to partake of His Body (Matza), and His Blood (Wine), for our needs or cleansing from sin, forgiveness, His Life in us, etc. God has provided Food for us; Messiah His Son, to sustain us in this Wilderness, till we get Home to the New Jerusalem. And even then, our Food will be our God.

Yahveh calls Egypt an 'iron furnace' in Jeremiah 11:4:
'which I commanded your Fathers in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt, from the iron furnace, saying, "Listen to My Voice and do according to all which I command you, so you shall be My People, and I will be your God,"'
An iron furnace is a furnace that is so hot, that it literally melts iron. It is a picture of intense suffering and affliction. A picture of the Hebrews suffering under Pharaoh. Matza, is called the bread of affliction, because of the stripes or bruises (a reference to the streaks of brown from the heat of the rack), meant to remind them of their existence in Egypt and what they are called to now. In Deut. 16:3 we read in reference to the Feast of Matza:
'You must not eat leavened bread with it. Seven days you must eat unleavened bread, the bread of affliction (for you came out of the land of Egypt in haste), so that you may remember all the days of your life, the Day when you came out of the land of Egypt.'
This pictures what God is doing within us, because of the Blood and Body of the Lamb, the True Bread or Matza from Heaven (bread without yeast or leaven symbolizes a pure, sinless bread; our Messiah). The seven days of the Feast is to be used to search for any 'leaven' in our lives, that so easily besets us.
Hebrews 12:1: 'Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,'
We are to afflict ourselves, to humble ourselves, in order to submit ourselves to Jesus, as He did His Father. In so doing, we become like Him who was afflicted and suffered and learned obedience through it. Not carnal mortification, the flesh trying to die to self, but death to self by submission to the Holy Spirit.

The matza is called the bread of affliction and Yeshua is the Bread from Heaven that was afflicted for us. And so, when we 'eat Him,' we are eating the Bread of Affliction, that we might become like Him, humble and submitted to Papa God.

Yahveh would use the Feast of Unleavened Bread to teach each new generation about Himself, what He did for Israel, and what He expects of Israel. And we too can use this ceremony, this Feast of Yahveh, to teach our children about our God, our sinful condition and that there was no possible way of escape or change for us, and how Yeshua was afflicted for us, that we might taste the Matza of Heaven and become like our Messiah, free from sin and glorified.

Yeshua was born in Bethlehem which translates out to mean, 'the House of Bread.' Yeshua called Himself the Bread from Heaven (John 6:31-51). The Bread from Heaven was born in the House of Bread.

When we eat of Him, we are eating Yahveh's Pure Unleavened Bread that is the staff of our life; the True Bread from Heaven. This all goes back to the matza that is unleavened because matza pictures a sinlessness. God set this up so that Yeshua who is sinless, could inject Himself into the symbolic meaning of the matza: sinlessness and freedom. And by eating of Him, one could attain Heaven: Life Eternal in the Presence of Yahveh.

The Bread of Affliction or Matza, is a picture of Yeshua pierced, crushed and crucified, as we saw in the Passover. In 1st Corinthians 5:6-8, Paul makes mentions of this Feast of Unleavened Bread and its symbolic meaning for our lives:
1 Cor. 5:6: 'Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough?'

1 Cor. 5:7: 'Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened. For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed.'

1 Cor. 5:8: 'Therefore let us celebrate the Feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.'
Paul begins by stating something universal that anyone would know: 'a little leaven leavens the whole lump' of dough. Then he tells the Corinthians to get rid of the old leaven (sin), to clean it out of their lives, that they might truly be what they are meant to be: unleavened?! Only a people that knew the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread could understand what Paul was talking about now. He has gone from the universal to the particular. And these are Gentiles. He continues by saying the the Messiah had been sacrificed, a statement reflecting that Yeshua was sacrificed more than 20 years earlier.

With verse eight though, Paul encourages the Gentile believers in the present tense, to celebrate the Feast of Matza! This referenced to 'the Feast' ('Therefore let us celebrate the Feast...'), can only mean the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread, as these are the only celebrations in the history of the world that deal with unleavened bread. And in fact, we know from various Church history sources, that both Gentile and Jewish believers celebrated the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread for many centuries after the Resurrection. (Please see the article on Passover for documentation.)

It would be on this day that Yeshua dies, the 15th of Aviv, the first day of Matza (Unleavened Bread), and is placed within the ground. John 12:24 has Yeshua saying:
'Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the Earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.'
It would be the late afternoon of the 15th of Aviv, the end of the First Day of Matza, about 6 PM, when they would place Him in the tomb, after the sacrifice of the lambs on that day. For on the day after the Passover, there would be lambs offered in sacrifice as special sacrificial offering to the Lord, but not the Passover lamb (which was sacrificed the day before, on the 14th of Aviv).

The Lord would resurrect on the Sabbath Day and appear to Miryam on the next annual feast: First Sheaf.