According to the Bible, we have just entered the Biblical new year, and on the 14th day of the first month of the Biblical year is the Passover meal followed immediately by the 7-day Feast of Unleavened Bread, with the First Fruits offering in the midst. Most modern followers of Jesus just don’t know that much about any of it because we’ve just always celebrated Easter instead (because we’re Christians and that’s what Christians do). Apart from knowing about the Exodus from Egypt, learning the 10 plagues in Sunday School and the fact that Paul says Jesus is our Passover Lamb in 1 Corinthians 11, we shockingly just don’t spend much time on it!
In 2018, I started to wonder why this is.
Why don’t we, as the church, actually honor or celebrate or even acknowledge in a meaningful way what Yeshua (Jesus) instructed His disciples to do the night before He gave His life for us?
In going to prepare the Passover (Matthew 26:17-30, Mark 14:12-26, Luke 22:7-22, John 13-14) the night before He was crucified, He was about to reveal Himself over those next few days & then the weeks after He rose from the dead in ways that would change the world forever. He specifically says to them that He’ll partake of it (Passover) again in His Father’s Kingdom, which is very much still to come in the future.
My next big question: Why is Passover almost always on a different day, even a different week than Easter? Even if the Church at large was correct in inventing a new holiday apart from the Biblical Feast days prescribed in Leviticus 23 and Deuteronomy 16—why wouldn’t it just be when Passover is on the calendar? I researched all that information, even went so far as to look back at dates for 20 years to see how many times Easter & Passover were actually in the same week; it didn’t occur many times at all. So puzzling. When you look at how Easter is calculated, it literally has nothing to do with the Bible or Biblical instruction whatsoever.
Another question that bothered me from the time I was a little girl—Jesus said 3 days and 3 nights He would be in the heart of the earth, but Friday to early Sunday morning doesn’t add up to 3 days and 3 nights no matter how you look at it!
All these questions loomed in my mind, and no one had good answers for me!
And here was the real-life, boots-on-the-ground kicker about all of it:
I really wanted to teach my little boy about Jesus. I wanted him to know his Savior from the earliest age, to understand what He did, what He’s doing now and what He’s coming yet to do. I grieved hard about the Easter bunny, the eggs & the candy winning the attention of a little boy who is growing up in the American Church, my little boy, the very one I’m responsible for and about whom I will give account. To say the whole thing of Easter didn’t sit well in my heart was an understatement and I was crying out the LORD over it continually that year. The interesting piece to the puzzle is that I was also praying Matthew 15:13 continually, just seeking Him about what needed to be uprooted from my life. Here’s what Yeshua (Jesus) says in Matthew 15:13
13 But He replied, “Every plant that My heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted.
If you read Matthew 15 carefully, you just might see what I began to see as I prayed and sought God about all these questions. I had a whole lot of manmade doctrines in my heart that had been taught to me as if they were commandments of God. Yeshua rebuked the Pharisees for this very thing. They had made their own traditions so important, that they nullified the commandments God gave. I had manmade doctrine in me that I needed Him to uproot, and I’m very grateful He did.
I fully understand that some reading this will be offended at my story, and that is ok – but I also know there’s another Mom out there who feels exactly what I’m saying, because you are right there struggling in it, too. Maybe your kids are grown now, but you remember that struggle like it was yesterday. Well, I think there’s a chance that I’m writing this just for you.
There is a long history of what Easter is about, and it really truly has nothing to do with our Savior giving His life as a ransom for many, nothing about the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, nothing. If you really want to have your eyes opened, just listen to the testimony of a former witch who gave her life to Jesus and let her tell you about what Easter really means, and what those traditions of men actually represent. Those testimonies are available all over YouTube if you’d be so brave to look. But, if you’d just like to read the facts about that history, click this link for a very well-written and informative article by Dr. Laura Sanger, a psychologist very, very knowledgeable about the occult and the history of pagan traditions which have crept into the Church: https://nolongerenslaved.com/blogs/no-longer-enslaved/the-roots-of-easter. I very highly recommend that you become well-informed on this subject because the TRUTH will set you free, just like Jesus says it will.
Beginning to honor Passover & Unleavened Bread & First Fruits is actually very, very simple. Respectfully, I would submit that you do NOT need to follow the Judaism practice of a formal seder, nor any of the manmade traditions that have been added to God’s Word in Jewish religion. Thankfully, the Bible really does give us good insight on what we CAN do! No, we definitely CANNOT and SHOULD NOT sacrifice a Passover lamb, nor do we need to put blood on a doorpost any longer (that was just the first Passover instruction from God coming out of Egypt), but you can have a meal like Yeshua did with His disciples and honor Him in the Passover each year!
It’s actually all about Him, with nothing else mixed-in! Nothing to complicate matters of worshiping our King for what He did on Passover, nothing foreign nor of pagan symbolism to dazzle little eyes looking on or draw large crowds to church once or twice a year. Exodus 12:27 actually tells us specifically that we are to teach the story of the Exodus from slavery in Egypt to our children at Passover. We are to eat the meal with unleavened bread and bitter herbs (Exodus 12:8). And Yeshua made a point to explain Himself and what He came to do in the unleavened bread and the wine. So, we add wine/juice to our meal as well. Bread and wine are symbols of a covenant meal and covenant blessing, think Abraham & Melchizedek in Genesis 14:18-19, and how that ties in to Yeshua (Jesus) ascending to the right hand of the Father as our Great High Priest in the order of Melchizedek. There is deep symbolic meaning to Him explaining His body and His blood to His disciples that night.
Personally, on Passover, we read the Exodus story and the last supper/crucifixion story from one of the Gospel accounts. It’s a beautiful time to reflect on what Yeshua (Jesus) has done for us, how He gave His life to set us free from sin and death, and to remember what He is yet coming to do to ultimately deliver us again. Sometimes we wash feet and describe what He taught His disciples that night about humility, serving one another, and who is actually greatest is the greatest servant. We sing songs/hymns together at the end of the night, just as He and the Disciples did leaving the supper heading to the Garden of Gethsemene. It can be so simple and so meaningful. Whatever you choose to do, I pray you at least read about Passover and begin to pray and ask God what He’d have you celebrate and participate in, in remembrance of Yeshua (Jesus)!
For the Feast of Unleavened Bread, getting the leaven out of your houses is this really practical object-lesson of us examining our lives for things that should not be there. Yeshua mentions several times to beware of the leaven of Herod, the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of the Saducees. Think about that metaphorically.
Herod? The governmental/societal/worldly authority of the day.
Pharisees and Saducees? The religious authorites of the day.
A little leaven leavens the whole lump.
So, what did Yeshua mean? Beware of how the world and man-made religion can get into your heart and take root. Beware of that leaven which has invaded your life and then make an effort to remove it. Let your Heavenly Father uproot everything He Himself did not plant. That’s what 7 days of purposely cleaning actual products containing leaven from our homes and purposely eating no leaven but unleavened bread instead teaches us. It’s brilliant because He’s such a good Father! He instructs us and as we obey the simple commandments and do what He says, He reveals what we need, if we will humble ourselves and listen.
3 days and 3 nights after Yeshua’s body was buried in Joseph of Arimethea’s tomb, God raised Him from the dead. If you look at these events through the eyes of a first-century Hebrew, it was the day of the First Fruits offering. Crucified on Passover, raised to life again on First Fruits (Paul alludes to this in 1 Cor 15:20). Yeshua then walked with them for 40 more days, ascended into Heaven, then on Day 50 was the Feast of Shavuot. In Greek, we call it Pentecost. All these things in His perfect timing; all these things on God’s appointed Feast Days. He sent His Holy Spirit and filled the Believers who were gathered in Jerusalem because they were there to obey the command to come up for the Feast. Shavuot means “weeks”, and it comes from Leviticus 23 when we are commanded to count 7 sabbaths after Passover to celebrate this feast. The LORD never commanded us to count 40 days leading up to Easter, but He DID command us to count 7 weeks AFTER Passover to His next appointed time called Shavuot.
He is risen and He is coming again. Happy Passover to you & yours! Maranatha, Come Yeshua!
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