Exodus 12:14 – 20 “And this day will be a memorial for you, and you are to celebrate it as a feast to the LORD, as a lasting ordinance for the generations to come. For seven days you must eat unleavened bread. On the first day you are to remove the leaven from your houses. Whoever eats anything leavened from the first day through the seventh must be cut off from Israel. On the first day you are to hold a sacred assembly, and another on the seventh day. You must not do any work on those days, except to prepare the meals—that is all you may do.
So you are to keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread, for on this very day I brought your divisions out of the land of Egypt. You must keep this day as a lasting ordinance for the generations to come. In the first month you are to eat unleavened bread, from the evening of the fourteenth day until the evening of the twenty-first day. For seven days there must be no leaven found in your houses. If anyone eats something leavened, that person, whether a foreigner or native of the land, must be cut off from the congregation of Israel. You are not to eat anything leavened; eat unleavened bread in all your homes.”
WHAT WAS LEAVEN AND WHY WAS GOD SO CONCERNED ABOUT IT? Leaven was yeast, and God used leaven to represent the sin that had come to pervade the lives of the Israelites. The Israelites had been in Egypt for 430 years; by now, many of them were quietly worshiping Egyptian gods. It was going to take time to work Egypt out of the Israelites. To this day, observant Jews preparing for Passover make a practice of cleansing their houses from not only leaven, but also any food that can be soaked and swell up. Passover is a time for reflection and for seeking God’s face to eliminate anything that is not of God from our lives. Much later, Jesus, an observant Jew, warned his disciples about avoiding the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees. (Matthew 16:12 “Then they understood that He was not telling them to beware of the leaven used in bread, but of the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees.”)
The plague of the death of first born males was about to hit that night. God knew that once first – born Egyptian males began dying, the Egyptians were going to panic and urge the Israelites to leave as soon as possible. Yeast bread takes time to rise; unleavened bread, such as matzo, does not. With the institution of these practices, God was insuring that the Israelites would never forget the night when the angel of death spared their first born sons because of the lamb’s blood on the doorpost.
v. 21 – 28 ”Then Moses summoned all the elders of Israel and told them, “Go at once and select for yourselves a lamb for each family, and slaughter the Passover lamb. Take a cluster of hyssop, dip it into the blood in the basin, and brush the top and the two side posts of the doorframe with some of the blood. None of you shall go out the door of his house until morning. When the LORD passes through to strike down the Egyptians, He will see the blood on the top and the two side posts and pass over the door; so He will not allow the destroyer to enter your houses and strike you down. And you are to keep this command as a perpetual ordinance for you and your descendants.
When you enter the land that the LORD will give you as He promised, you are to keep this service. When your children ask you, ‘What does this service mean to you?’ you are to reply, ‘It is the Passover sacrifice to the LORD, who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt when He struck down the Egyptians and spared our homes.’” Then the people bowed down and worshiped. And the Israelites went and did just what the LORD had commanded Moses and Aaron.”
Hyssop is an herb in the mint family with cleansing, medicinal, and flavoring properties. Hyssop also has sturdy branches and leaves. Throughout the Bible, hyssop is used in traditional cleansing rituals. The mention of hyssop in Exodus 12 is the first such recorded in the Bible; however, there are many other places where hyssop is mentioned, including the account of the crucifixion of Jesus. It was a stalk of hyssop to which the Roman soldiers attached a vinegar – laden sponge that they passed up to Jesus when he was complaining of thirst. (John 19:28-30) God may have instructed the Israelites to use hyssop so that they would remember that it was the blood of the lamb that was purifying and protecting them and not anything else that they themselves had done.
APPLICATION: Evangelist Ray Comfort is fond of using the Ten Commandments to help people understand that they are sinners unable to help themselves. None of us can fully keep even one of those commandments, let alone all of them. Left to ourselves, there is no way any of us can possibly earn our way into heaven. But just as the blood of those spotless lambs protected the Israelites from the Angel of Death, so the blood of Jesus can protect us from the consequences of our sins…. if we are willing to believe that Jesus really came to earth, lived as a man, and died for our sins.
One day each of us will have to stand individually before a holy, righteous, and perfect God. On that day, the big question each of us must answer is this: what have we done about God’s Son Jesus. Have we believed in Him or have we rejected the truth about Him, claiming that it was merely a fairy tale? Are we depending on our own righteousness or are we trusting that the blood of Jesus’s sacrifice will save us?
PRAYER: Father God, please help everyone who reads this devotional to place their trust in you and to believe in your Son Jesus. Amen.
Burunche's Blog 
Leave a comment