The Unleavened Bread

What is the significance of the Unleavened Bread as we celebrate the communion?

What is Unleavened? Why unleavened?

Flat bread - bread without yeast.

- a simple bread made with flour, water and salt and thoroughly rolled into flattened dough
- made without yeast or sourdough

Yeast
- is a fungus
- use organic compound as a source of energy and does not require sunlight
- they grow in a specific temperature 10-37 degrees Celsius
- they die above 50 degrees Celsius
- uses: for alcoholic beverages, baking
- first record of usage of yeast in baking is in Ancient Egypt
- it grows in food, metabolizes food components and produce metabolic end products. This causes the physical, chemical and sensory properties of food to change and the food is spoiled.


Biblical Significance

Exodus 12:14-15
This is the day you commemorate; for the generations to come you shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord- a lasting ordinance. You are to eat bread made without yeast. On the first day remove the yeast from your houses. For whoever eats anything with yeast in it from the first day through the seventh must be cut off from Israel.

(This Feast refers to the feast of the unleavened bread)

:17
Celebrate the feast of the Unleavened Bread, because it was on this very day that I brought your divisions out of Egypt.
Celebrate this day as a lasting ordinance for the generations to come

Significance: It serves as reminder and a commemoration how God redeemed his chosen people from Egypt.
1. They left Egypt without putting yeast on their bread as this takes time
2. Yeast would easily spoil the bread.


How does this apply for us Christians?

John 6:48-51
I am the bread of life, your forefathers ate the manna in the desert, yet died, but here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which a man may eat and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.

Jesus is the bread of life.

1 Corinthians 5: 6-8

Your boasting is not good. Don’t you know that a little yeast works through the whole batch of dough. Get rid of the old yeast that you may be new batch without yeast-as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore, let us keep the Festival, not with the old yeast of malice and wickedness, but with bread without yeast, the bread of sincerity and truth.

The Yeast as presented by Paul is analogous to Sin.

What does Yeast do?
It works through the whole bread at the end the bread would spoil.
What does Sin do?
IT controls the person and eventually lead to spiritual death.

Symbolism:
Unleavened bread for Jews: redemption from the bondage of slavery in Egypt
Unleavened bread for Christians: redemption from the bondage of sin

Romans 6:6
For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin.

:22
But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life.

Hebrews 10:10-14

And by the will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when this priest offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right of God. Since that time he waits for his enemies to be made his foot stool, because by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy

Challenge for the disciple

1 Corinthians 6: 19-20
Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body

Romans 6:1-4
What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace my increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live it any longer. Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, Just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.


Promise for the disciples:

Philippians 4:13
I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me.

Matthew 11:28-30
Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

John 10:27-28
My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand

He lives in us
Galatians 2:20
I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me


As we celebrate the communion we take the bread and drink the cup. We remember how the bread of life that was being broken, for all humanity to receive such wonderful gift, how we are freed from the bondage of sin.
- Sin has no power over us for Christ lives in us.
- Sin has no control over us

Why?
- because of the cross
- because of the living unleavened bread

Gift: what joy it is for us, because we can live a good Christian life and we would be more intimate with our relationships not only with our fellow disciples but we could be more intimate with our Lord, our God thru His Son. We are so blessed to know that sin has no control over us because were redeemed from it.

Jesus offered his body, he is the unleavened bread, the sinless man, the pure Lamb and the sacrificial lamb; who redeem us, save us from the bondage of sin.

Jesus is the Living bread the bread of everlasting Life.

1 Corinthians: 11:24
And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me”

Luke 22:19
And he took the bread, gave thanks and broke it” This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me”


Dear father God, you have always been faithful to us and yet we most of time falter and miss the mark. You have been graceful and yet we oftentimes take this for granted. This morning as we celebrate the communion, as we take the leavened bread and the cup of wine, we remember how you have redeemed us from the claws of sin, that sin has no control of us, that you, after we have been baptized, you have nailed sin to the cross and gave as a new life, a new hope. Thank you for the unleavened bread, the body that was broken given to those who are willing to accept for the deliverance of mankind. Thank you for the wine which washed our sins away. All glory belongs to you , Father God, thru your son Jesus. Amen. To God be the glory!!


Feast of the unleavened bread - Saturday
John 6:48-51 Jesus is the bread of life
Leaven = sin
Exodus 12:14-16
1 corinthians 5:6-8
Symbolism:
Israel : deliverance from the bondage of Egypt
Christian: deliverance from the bondage of sin
Galatians 2:20
Romans 6:12-18

Crucifixion transpired on the 14th day (same day that the lamb for sacrifice is killed) Leviticus 23:5
Exodus 12:3, 13,14

Jesus = Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world John 1:29

1corinthians 6:19-20

Hebrews 10:10-14 offering of the body for the sanctification of man
1 peter 2:24 our sins on the cross

Hebrews 9:22 without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins

Ephesians 1:7 forgiveness of sin thru his blood

Hebrews 9:13-14 sprinkling of animal blood compared to Christ blood offered

Matthew 26:27-28 the blood of the new covenant
Hebrews 10:16-17 the new covenant