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The
world is full of contradictions. It is an incredibly
beautiful yet ugly place. There is much that is
good and yet much that is marred by evil. Life
has pain and suffering, and also happiness and
pleasures, and sometimes the happiness is mixed
with the suffering. Sometimes we feel good about
ourselves and other times bad about ourselves.
There is life and there is death. We live, and
yet we die. Why is life in this world this way?
In the beginning, the amazingly good and wise
and powerful Creator made a magnificent, perfect
creation. He created a particularly beautiful
planet and filled it with an amazing variety of
beautiful things, including an abundant variety
of plants and animals living together in a complex
and harmonious ecosystem. He made a special garden
and placed in it the highest of the new creation
- the first man and the first woman - made in
the image of God, endowed with mind, emotion and
will. But sin and rebellion entered the creation,
and everything was marred. The physical order
itself was marred. It was cursed. It no longer
functioned flawlessly. Mankind became corrupted.
We became marred in every aspect of our being
- our mind, emotion, will, sexuality, body, soul,
spirit. Humanity was alienated from God, who is
the Source of Life and Happiness. Human beings
are headed toward death, not life. The first death
- physical death - is followed by the even worse
death - the second death - which is Gehenna, Hell,
the Lake of Fire.
But
God did not leave corrupted humanity in this sad
and hopeless condition. He provided temporary
ways to cover over our sin and rebellion until
the final redemption, the final atonement, the
fullness of salvation could be accomplished through
the Seed of the Woman, the Messiah, the unique
God-Man, fully God and fully man, the perfect,
flawless divine Son of God and the Savior of the
world! Only Messiah Yeshua - He alone and no one
else and nothing else - is capable of overcoming
our greatest enemies, the utterly destructive
forces of Satan, sin and death. Money and possessions
and politics and education and science and technology
and philosophy and religion and being a good person
can't prevail over these deadly powers.
To
help humanity overcome these overmastering forces
of Satan, sin and death, the Lord created a special
people who helped prepare the world for the Messiah,
who would come at just the right time. To prepare
the Jewish people for the coming of the Messiah,
and to strengthen us in our faith when He came,
the Lord gave us laws and rituals, institutions
like the Temple, sacrifices and special holidays.
There are seven Torah holidays that take place
during the year - four in the spring and three
in the fall. The four in the spring are connected
with the First Coming of the Messiah, who came
the first time in humility, making salvation from
Satan, sin and death possible. The three in the
fall are connected to the Second Coming of the
Messiah, foreshadowing His return with power and
culminating in the final salvation of humanity.
The holidays are connected to Messianic salvation.
The spring holidays deal with salvation from our
greatest enemies - Satan, sin and death. The fall
holidays deal with other aspects of salvation,
as well. Think of these first three spring holidays,
which are connected to each other and complement
each other, as revealing different aspects of
salvation from our great enemies of Satan, sin
and death. Humanity is fallen, sinful, corrupted,
perishing. Humanity needs a new beginning. Passover,
Firstfruits and Unleavened Bread take place at
spring, at the beginning of the year, when plants
come alive and animals enjoy new vigor. This is
the time for new beginnings - new beginnings for
nature, for Israel, for the Messiah Himself, and
for us. I want to consider these new beginnings.
Let's
start with what the holidays themselves originally
meant for the Jewish people. Passover is the celebration
of the great saving power of the God of Israel,
who freed His people from slavery in Egypt - the
superpower of that day. It took mighty judgments
and plagues to get the stubborn and sinful Egyptians
to do the will of God and release us from our
horrible captivity. Ultimately it took the death
of the firstborn sons of the Egyptians. But the
Lord enabled our firstborn sons to be spared.
A Passover lamb was killed as a substitute for
our firstborn sons, and its blood was applied
to the doors of our houses, and death passed over
those sons and their families. That first day
of Passover we escaped from Egypt. We became a
new, independent nation of free people!
Starting
with the beginning of Passover and going for seven
days is the holiday of Matzah. Matzah is called
the bread of affliction. When we eat the matzah,
we remember our suffering in Egypt. By eating
matzah we remember that when God saved us from
our affliction, He saved us quickly, so quickly
that there wasn't even time for our bread to become
fully leavened and rise. So, the holiday of Matzah
is also a symbol of salvation for Israel. We eat
matzah for another reason. Throughout the Scriptures,
leaven is used as a symbol for sin. Just as a
little bit of leaven will quickly spread and infect
an entire batch of dough, so a little sin will
quickly spread and infect an individual or an
entire community. We eat Matzah to remind ourselves
that the chosen nation that is meant to dwell
apart from the other nations is to be holy. We
are to be holy. We are not to worship their gods
or embrace their sins. Holiness is part of our
national salvation.
Some
40 years later, when we entered the land of Israel,
the Jewish nation began to celebrate another holiday
- Firstfruits. At the beginning of every year,
in the spring when we would go to the Tabernacle
to celebrate Passover, we would give thanks to
the Creator for the beginning of a new harvest
by bringing the priests the first sheaves of the
new barley. The priest waved the sheaves of barley,
showing the Lord that we were acknowledging that
He was the One who made our harvests possible.
He provided the plants bearing seed, the sun,
the rains, a free people living in a free and
good land, able to plant and harvest and benefit
from our crops. No food means no life. Through
the harvest the Lord would sustain us and keep
us alive and thereby save us.
Passover
- salvation from Egypt for Israel. Matzah - salvation
from Egypt and the need for Israel to be holy.
Firstfruits - the beginning of a new harvest that
would keep Israel alive and save us. Now, let's
consider how each one of these holidays was designed
by God to point us to Messiah and the greater
salvation that He alone brings. Passover was a
prophecy of a greater redemption, a more profound
Exodus, and a more excellent Lamb who was to come.
Passover was a prediction that God would one day
send His Son into the world to be the ultimate
sacrifice, to shed His infinitely precious blood
on a cross, so that God can "pass over"
the sins of those who know and believe in and
trust and serve the Messiah. His one sacrifice
and His blood that shed is infinitely superior
to all the bulls and goats and rams and pigeons
and Passover lambs whose blood was ever spilled.
It is infinitely more powerful and effective to
accomplish full and final and ultimate atonement.
John the Immerser may have understood this when
he said, "Behold the Lamb of God, who takes
away the sin of the world." Rabbi Paul certainly
did when he wrote about “Messiah, our Passover
Lamb, who has been sacrificed for us”.
How
does the holiday of unleavened bread point to
Messiah? During the holiday of Matzah, at His
last Passover Seder, Yeshua took the unleavened
bread, broke it, and gave it to His disciples;
and He gave this matzah new meaning when He said,
"This is My body which is given for you.
Do this in remembrance of Me." Yeshua was
declaring, "I am the fulfillment of this
unleavened bread; I am the first and only human
being who has lived in this world who never sinned,
and by doing so I have overcome the terrible power
of sin that has destroyed humanity. The Bread
of Affliction represents Israel's suffering and
hasty departure and salvation from Egypt - Egypt
being a symbol for sin. But I, too, am the Bread
of Affliction. I am a man of sorrows and acquainted
with suffering. And I provide a greater salvation;
I provide the way to overcome sin, which alienates
humanity from God. And I give My body, and My
sinless life, to make atonement for all of humanity's
sin. I offer a cleansing from sin and a fresh
start and new beginning for humanity".
The
holiday of Firstfruits was also a prophecy that
pointed us to another aspect of the salvation
provided by the Messiah. The sinless Messiah,
who died, needed to come back to life. Death could
not permanently claim the life of the Sinless
One. It seems likely that Messiah Yeshua was raised
from the dead on the Holiday of Firstfruits. It
is likely that the very same day the High Priest
was offering the first fruits of the barley harvest,
God was raising the Messiah from the dead as the
firstfruits of redeemed humanity. The holiday
of Firstfruits is the Biblical Resurrection day.
The
Messiah is the beginning of God's harvest of humanity.
He is the first to be raised from the dead. He
is the first to be resurrected. The first to get
a glorified, perfected, resurrection body, designed
to live forever in the New Heavens and the New
Earth that God will create. And, we very much
needed the Great Passover Lamb to rise from the
dead so He could be the "first fruits of
those who have fallen asleep" (see 1 Corinthians
15:20).
Let's
review: Passover - Messiah's death. Matzah - Messiah's
victory over sin. Firstfruits - Messiah's resurrection.
Now, what is true of Israel and of Messiah
must become true for us. Each one of us must
have our own individual Passover. We must die.
We must experience a kind of death. We must have
our own personal holiday of Matzah. We must overcome
sin. We must have our own experience of Firstfruits.
We must rise to a whole new kind of life. We must
have a new beginning, a new life, a fresh start.
We must be born again.
We
must have our own personal Passover and we must
die - now. Unless a grain of wheat falls into
the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it
dies, it bears much fruit. He who loves his life
loses it, and he who hates his life in this world
will keep it to life eternal. We must die to sin.
We must die to the lusts of the flesh. We must
die to the attractions of the world. We must die
to greed and materialism. We must die to the desire
for more and more things. The Son of God did not
need to die. He came to die for us to accomplish
the will of God for our salvation. Like Messiah,
we must pick up our cross and head toward crucifixion.
We, too, must die to self; we must die to self-living;
we must die to self-goals, to self-agendas; we
must die to self-priorities. We must die to our
own will.
We
must become unleavened bread and have victory
over sin, now and ultimately forever! In ancient
times, before a batch of leavened dough was baked
into bread, part of the dough was pinched off
and set aside. Later, that piece of leavened dough
was added to a new batch of flour, leavening the
new batch. This symbolizes the generational cycle
of sin, which began with our first parents, Adam
and Eve, who alienated themselves from God. Their
sin was transmitted to each ensuing generation.
We
must break this cycle of sin that has been transmitted
from generation to generation. We must remove
the leaven of sin from our lives. We must clean
out the old leaven that we may be a new unleavened
batch of dough. Messiah, our Passover Lamb, also
has been sacrificed. We need to live in such a
way that we are removing the old sins like hatred
and wickedness, and living lives full of sincerity
and truth. We must not allow sin to rule in our
lives, fulfilling its desires. We must search
our hearts, asking God to reveal and remove all
the wrong things from our lives, in order that
we break the cycle of sin.
We
must experience the Fruitfruits of resurrection.
We must rise from the dead now, and live a new
life now and be alive to God in a whole new way
now. We need to experience new life and resurrection
power, new power to live a new and God-centered,
sin-rejecting, self-rejecting, world-rejecting
life. If we do, one day we will rise from the
dead and live forever!
How?
How do we die the way we need to, overcome sin
the way we need to, and rise to new life the way
we need to? By getting to know God and His Word.
The more we hear, read and learn about God and
His Word, the more faith and confidence and trust
we will have in God and His Word, and the more
ability we will have to die, overcome sin and
rise to new life. By talking to God, by praying
and asking for His help to die and overcome sin
and rise to new life. By receiving the Holy Spirit
of God, who will live in us and empower us to
live for God and overcome sin. Ask the Lord to
help you. Ask Him to save you! Ask Him to reveal
more and more truth about Himself and Messiah.
Ask Him for more faith in Him. Ask Him to fill
you with His presence, to fill you with His Spirit,
who will powerfully live in you and help you to
die, overcome sin and rise to new life!
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