Download audio file — part 2

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Unleavened bread is a wonderful picture of Jesus the Messiah. The bread is without leaven, as He is without sin. It also is striped and pierced, as His body was beaten and pierced for our sins (Isa. 53:5; 1 Peter 2:24). In addition, the Feast of Unleavened Bread symbolizes Jesus’ burial. His body was placed in the grave but did not see corruption as He rose on the third day (see Ps. 16:10; Isa. 53:9; Matt. 27:57-60; 28:1-10) and carried our sins away (Ps. 103:12; Heb. 9:26).

Everyone should see Jesus in the Feast of Uneavened Bread because He fulfilled the feast’s Messianic symbols in the bread:

1. Provision (Jesus is the bread of heaven).

2. Propitiation (Jesus is the sacrifice who bore God’s wrath and satisfied His justice; in so doing He brought sinful people back into favor with God).

3. Preservation (Jesus’ body did not suffer decay in the grave).

There are other symbolic markers in this feast:

Jesus referred to Himself as the bread of life (John 6:35) and chose the bread of the Passover to be the symbolic memorial of His broken body (Luke 22:19).

Jesus was born in Bethlehem, which means “house of bread.”

The Lord expects believers put aside sin in our lives, as leaven is put aside in the feast (1 Cor. 5:7-8; see also Gal. 5:16-24; Eph. 4:22-24).

The seven days speak of satisfaction or fullness; believers are completely satisfied in Christ.

In summary, Passover and Unleavened Bread together picture the sacrificial, substitionary death of Jesus — the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world — and the burial of His body, which God the Father raised on the third day before it decayed. The resurrection, as we will see next week, is pictured in the Feast of Firstfruits.