A surprise day together, Father! Snow days are always welcome, and we have just enjoyed it so much! Thank You for out-of-the-blue gifts!
Luke 22:7-13 (<<click here to read the passage)
I don’t know how you do it, but our home is vacuumed and dusted weekly…whether it needs it or not. Life happens and though we may not intentionally dirty our home, it gets dirty just by living here.
In today’s passage, Jesus directed Peter and John to prepare for the Passover. In some of my research I discovered that Passover isn’t a week or even a day, but a meal…
Peter and John had to buy and prepare the lamb as well as the unleavened bread, herbs, wine, and other food.
But what I would like to emphasize in this passage is the Feast of Unleavened Bread. At twilight following the Passover meal, the 7-day Feast of Unleavened Bread would begin. Interestingly enough, no matter what day of the week Passover took place – it was always to be the 14th day of the month of Nisan on the Hebrew calendar, corresponding to a date in March or April on our…calendar – the feast would begin on the 15th.
The feast began with a Sabbath and ended with a Sabbath – and this was different from the weekly Sabbath (Saturday), but this is the part of this feast that points us right to Jesus.
When the nation of Israel made their exodus from their years of slavery in Egypt, part of God’s command would be that they were to get rid of any leaven – or yeast – from their homes. God used the fact that they didn’t have time to let their bread rise to symbolize the ridding of sin from their homes and their lives.
Jesus often referred to the “yeast of the Pharisees…” (Luke 12:1b NLT) and He equated it with their sin.
It would be a chore to rid our lives of leaven. Beyond the cakes or packages of yeast, you may have, think of everything that has yeast in it. If you had to get every last crumb of it from your homes, that would take some effort. You can easily find loaves of bread and boxes of crackers but how many young parents with toddlers could find every single Cheerio in your home? How many would they find between the cushions and under the fridge?
In the same way, it’s easier to get the big, obvious sins out of our lives, but more difficult to get the hidden, seemingly small ones out before they fester.
In Jesus’ timeline, this is the last week before His crucifixion. Understand that there are no coincidences with God. Everything was planned out to the very smallest detail. His last week very purposely overlapped the time for attempting to remove every last speck of sin from our lives. But is that even within the realm of possibility? We are after all sinners by birth, so even though we can’t get all of the sin out of our lives, we have Jesus to cover them all. Though we should still strive to live in a way that pleases God, if we believe in Jesus as our Savior, he even forgives the sins we’d rather leave in the dark places under the fridge. Even if the “home” of our life is sparkling clean, chances are that there’s some leaven hiding somewhere. *
I realize that we’re coming up on Christmas and not Passover, but just like Karen makes sure our home is cleaned regularly, it would be of great benefit to make sure our lives are clean of sin even more regularly.
Lord Jesus, help us to rid ourselves of all that so easily entangles us. May we strive to search out even the nooks and crannies, and those areas that we might rather leave untouched. And when all is said and done, may we allow Your grace to take care of the rest. Amen.
*The Feast of Unleavened Bread vs. Passover: What’s the Difference?
Dec 1st, 2020, Tues, 6:59 pm
