This is Chad Harrison, and you're listening to hope alive, applying God's word to your daily life. Hi, this is Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and have been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open up his word to you and allow you to see him and to know him and to know his will, that you might glorify him and that you might walk in faith and power each and every day, especially today, in Jesus name.
Well, good morning. Welcome to lack Community church's morning Bible study. We are in Leviticus, chapter 23, and we're working our way through the feast, and we're in verse. And in all actuality, there are two, whether or not feasts. One of them is a feast, and one of them is a. Is a holy celebration. So there's. There's really, what's going on here is you've got a feast and then a celebration that happens right before that. Really a holy moment. It is. It's a. It's a day of. It's a day of. It's a Sabbath rest, but it's a day of celebration and a day of remembrance. And that is the Passover. And, you know, my headline says, and the Passover and unleavened bread, but it really should read the Passover and the feast of unleavened bread. And so those are two separate things, although they are tied together because they happen literally back to. Back in Egypt. And so when we're studying them, it's important. Now, I'm going to be honest with you. As a pastor, you know, for me, oftentimes I have in, in the. In my years of ministry, I've just kind of forgotten how this works. You know, you just don't even think about it until you really kind of studying through it and considering it. But the events that took place in Jerusalem that have to do with the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ took place during these two separate and yet intertwined and interlinked events that were celebrated as a feast and as a holy convocation. And they were. They were separate. Now, let me. Let me make sure I explain to you how they're intertwined. When. When the last plague came upon Egypt, that was the plague of the death angel, and he went throughout Egypt, and he. He took the firstborn of every family of every flock of every, every animal and every human Egyptian that was first born were killed by the death angel with the last plague on Egypt. Now, the way that didn't affect the Israelites in Goshen, and Goshen was just an area where they lived outside of the capital of Egypt. The reason they didn't kill. They didn't, the death angel did not kill everybody in Egypt because they didn't kill everybody in Goshen. The reason that happened is, is because they took a spotless lamb and they sacrificed that spotless lamb and took the book and placed it off over the doorpost of their, of their houses. And that evening, when the death angel passed, he passed by the houses that had the blood of the lamb on their doorpost. And so that is a clear. It is a beautiful picture of Jesus and his work of sacrifice and his work of redeeming us out of sin and well, and death. And so that redeeming us out of sin and death is pictured in the Passover. And it was a very important celebration. And they ate bread, unleavened bread, meaning bread made in haste, made quickly. And they ate. They ate. They sacrificed that lamb, and they ate of that lamb. They cooked the lamb and they ate it. And then they. And then they also had some herbs and some bitter, bitter roots and things like that that they ate. And they ate that meal that night knowing that the death angel was coming and knowing that the Egyptians would drive them out of the land the next morning. And so they had to cook a lot of bread and they wouldn't have had a lot of yeast. They may have had a lot of flour, but they wouldn't have a lot of yeast. And so they made that bread quickly and it had no, it had no leaven in it, so it didn't have any rise. And so, you know, when we communion on the days you celebrate communion at your church, well, that bread that you, that we eat is unleavened bread. It would not been super flavorful. Flavorful. And they prepared a bunch of it so that when they were told to leave, they could just pack up. They wouldn't have to worry about food. They had bread that they could take with them. And they left Egypt in haste. They, they looted the Egyptians in the sense that the Egyptians gave them whatever they could give them to get them out of there because they had utterly destroyed the nation with, with the plagues that had been backed to deliver them out of Egypt. And so they, they, they took those things and they left in haste. And then they, they ate that bread all the way across, across the Red Sea. And the Egyptians chased them and the whole. So the next seven days they lived off the bread that they cooked that evening, getting ready to get out of Egypt and, and God delivered them out of Egypt. And so those two things are intertwined, but they're separate. You have the, you have the eating of the passover lamb and spreading of its blood on the doorpost of the, of the houses. And that's one picture. And then the other picture is a sustaining work of God with unleavened bread, bread that doesn't have a hint of sin in it, which is also a picture of jesus. Jesus is the bread of life. He is, he is the passover bread. So you have Jesus being the bread of life and he sustains them as they escape from Egypt. And then you have JESus being the lamb of God, which is taking away the sin and the penalty of sin. He put to death he who had the power of death. Hebrews tells us he made it possible that they would not have to suffer that death. As the death angel passed through the judgment on the world. Egypt's a picture of the world. Those ten judgments are a judgment of the world. And so you've got a, you've got a powerful picture here and it's a powerful celebratIon. And so it says that these are the feast of the Lord, a holy convocation which you shall proclaim at the appointed times. On the 14th day of the first month at twilight, is the Lord's passover. So it starts right when it gets dark. Twilight is when the sun passes beyond the horizon and it is no more in the sky. That is what we call twilight. And it starts at twilight and it's the Lord's passover. And then on the fifth day of the same month is the feast of unleavened bread to the Lord. Seven days you must eat unleavened bread. And on the first day you shall have a holy convocation. You shall do no customary work on it, but you shall have an offering made by fire to the Lord for seven days. The seven, seven day shall be a holy. On the 7th day it shall be a holy convocation. You shall do no customary work on it. Now, what you've got here is a picture of twilight, Passover. They eat the unleavened bread. The lamb has already been sacrificed. The blood's already been placed on the doorpost of the heart. They go into their houses and they eat of the lamb and they eat of the bread. And, and the death angel passes. And the next merlin is the morning of deliverance, and they head out, and that is. That is the Passover day. The day of Passover, which would have started in the evening. Remember, a jewish day, a biblical day in Genesis, starts with the evening at 06:00 at twilight, when the sun passes over the horizon, and it ends at twilight the next day. So you have that, and then you have a holy. A holy day the next day. So they. They could not. They could not work that day. So you actually have two sabbaths in a row, and then. And then once you have that two sabbaths in a row, then they have a celebration, and they. They celebrate for seven days. And then a Sabbath at the end is the last day. And that's how it works. Now you go, well, how did that work with Jesus? Well, he celebrated the Passover with them a day early. He. He said he wanted to celebrate the Passover with them in that upper room, and he sent someone to get. Get the. And so when. When. When Jesus was being tried by Pilate at the. In. In the praetorium there, just above the temple, the lambs that were willing to be sacrificed for the Passover that evening, which would have been the evening after Jesus celebrated the Passover with his disciples, were being prepared for. Slaughtered. They were being slaughtered that day just like Jesus was being slaughtered that day. So Jesus celebrated the Passover with his disciples. A twilight or an evening early, which would have been on Passover day, actually, because, remember, they. They slaughtered the lambs, and then. Then it would have been. It would have. No, I'm sorry, it would not have been on Passover day. It would have been on the day before Passover, and then. Then they would have began Passover that evening. And that's why they, once Jesus died, they had to get him in the tomb, because Passover began at twilight that evening. And so, understanding that and understanding that then that day that Jesus was in the tomb, starting at twilight and the next day would have been a sabbath or a holy rest, a day that they did no work. So the day after Jesus is starting at twilight, the day after Jesus's death, would have been a passover, and then the next day, starting at twilight. So you'd had 48 hours in a row that they could have done no work and they could not have taken care of his body. And then. And then, obviously, you would have had another Passover, likely, which would have. I mean, another Sabbath, which would have been the actual Sabbath. And that's why there are many who believed that Jesus was crucified not on Friday, but on Thursday, because he would have been crucified on Thursday. He would have been. He would have been. The passover would have been on Friday. There would have been a Sabbath on Saturday, and then another, the first day of the actual feast of unleavened bread, and then he would have had to be. Then he would have been raised from the dead on Sunday, and that would have been that next morning, and the, and the ladies would have shown up and. And he would have been out of the tomb. And so that's kind of how that works. And, you know, knowing that timeframe helps you kind of understand it. In fact, it's almost impossible that Jesus would have been crucified on Sunday knowing, understanding how this works. I mean, crucified on Friday. And the reason is, is because he, the Passover, there would have been a Passover Sabbath rest, and then the first day of the feast of unleavened bread was a Sabbath rest. So that 48 hours period starting at twilight, that's why they had to get him in the tomb. They could have done nothing. And so if, if he. If. If he was crucified on Friday, then Saturday would have been Passover, and then Sunday would have been the first day of the feast of unleavened bread, which would have been a, a Sabbath rest, and they couldn't have gone then. And so they had to show up on Monday. And we've been celebrating Jesus's resurrection for 2000 years because he was resurrected on Sunday, and we know that. And so on the first day of the week, the Bible tells us. And so it's almost impossible that he would be crucified on Friday. He was crucified on Thursday because. Because understanding that during the passover week and the feast of unleavened bread, there are three sabbaths. And it starts out with two sabbaths or two holy days where there's no work. And they were, started out with two of them, and you can't start out with two if Jesus goes in the tomb Friday, because they couldn't have gone and ministered to his body on Sunday. So, so I know that kind of hurts folks feeling sometimes when we, when we mix that up. But, you know, the Roman Catholic Church, when Rome became christian, they're the ones kind of messed it up. And we're just continuing to celebrate doesn't diminish our celebration because even if we don't quite do it exactly right, doesn't mean Jesus wasn't risen from the grave. And it doesn't mean that the Bible's not true. It just means how we celebrate. It might not just totally fall in line with it, but it is a great and mighty work of God that he, that he delivered us from Egypt, he delivers from the world and from sin and death into his promised land or his place of plenty, his place of his very, very best, the spirit filled christian life. And so sometimes you just need to sit down and think through the logistics of stuff so you know what's going on. So you cannot kind of, in your own mind, for me, in my own mind, it's good for me to know these things because, because it makes sense to me, it makes sense why things are happening the way they're happening. As I read through scripture. And although this might not have been a very spiritual Bible study, it is a very great Bible study to kind of get the logistics down. And if you'll notice verses four through eight, just really just give you the logistics. Do this and do this and do this on this day. And trust me, it was done exactly the way God had planned it to do 2000 years ago when Jesus went to the cross as the Passover lamb.
As you go today, I pray that the Lord will bless you and keep.
You, that he'll make his face to.
Shine upon you, and that he will give you hope and peace today. In Jesus name.
