Spring feasts articles
Experience the Passover Seder online
LEAVEN
The Passover is the ceremonial dinner passed down through thousands of years of Jewish tradition, and is what we refer to as the Last Supper of Jesus with his disciples in the Gospels. Our goal and design for this passover Seder is for you and your family to experience it with us! So we included a easy prep guide with creative ideas on how to setup your Passover dinner with your family. You of course can just watch the video but the heart of Passover is to engage your family to discover the story of salvation by engaging all 5 senses. So check out the PDF guides below and download our PDF event guide so you and your family can join with us as we celebrate Jesus!
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Discover and prepare for passover
Now this will be a memorial to you, and you shall celebrate it as a feast to the LORD; throughout your generations you are to celebrate it as a permanent ordinance. (Exodus 12:14)
God commanded his people to celebrate the Passover “permanently,” a constant reminder of His salvation. It is not only an Old Testament command nor a holiday just for Jews. Even Paul encourages Christians to celebrate it with the updated understanding of Jesus Christ as THE Passover Lamb. Passover is NOT just a Jewish cultural celebration. Passover is ALL ABOUT JESUS. Passover is about SALVATION. Passover is about the BLOOD OF THE LAMB THAT DELIVERS US FROM SIN.
LEAVEN
Get rid of the old yeast, so that you may be a new unleavened batch—as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with the old bread leavened with malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. (1 Corinthians 5:7-8, NIV)
“For seven days you are to eat bread made without yeast. On the first day remove the yeast from your houses, for whoever eats anything with yeast in it from the first day through the seventh must be cut off from Israel.” Exodus 12:15
One of the traditions (and God-ordained commandments) of Passover is to remove all leaven from the home, as leaven (yeast) represents sin all throughout Scripture. In the days leading up to Passover, it is customary to search through the home and rid any yeast products. The home is then thoroughly cleaned and made ready for the holiday season. This is the original “spring cleaning.” Throughout the week of Passover, no leavened breads or foods should be eaten.
This also correlates with the soul searching each of us should regularly do for the leaven of sin in our own lives. The apostle Paul exhorts, “Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup.” (1 Corinthians 11:28 ESV) Passover, then, presents an excellent opportunity for personal reflection and confession of sin.
Interestingly, Jesus himself did a cleansing of sorts after his “triumphal entry” of Palm Sunday. He entered the temple and threw out the money changers (who he had probably seen many times before). It is easy to make the connection that he was following the Biblical instruction to prepare for Passover by cleansing His Father’s house.
THE LAMB
Notice all the details in the rest of God’s instructions: “On the tenth of the month each family is to take a lamb for themselves according to their fathers’ households. If your family is too small for a whole lamb, share it with your neighbor. Your lamb shall be an unblemished male a year old; you may take it from the sheep or the goats. And you shall keep it until the 14th day of the month, then all the people of Israel are to kill it at twilight." (Exodus 12:3-6)
The people were told the exact date they were to take the Lamb into their houses, how old the lamb was to be, that he was to be perfect, and when they were all to kill their lambs. It is no accident that these characteristics perfectly describe Jesus, the Perfect Passover Lamb. We will look at these parallels more closely during the seder.
Several thousand years after that first Passover, Jesus and his disciples still celebrated the feast every year. The most famous instance is what we now call “The Last Supper.” In Luke 22, we read that “8Jesus sent Peter and John, saying, “Go and make preparations for us to eat the Passover.” 13 ... So they prepared the Passover. 14 When the hour came, Jesus and his apostles reclined at the table. 15 And he said to them, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.”
By participating in this God-ordained holiday, we are pleasing Him by remembering His awesome work of salvation. Jews everywhere are observing this feast with us this week, as they have for thousands of years. But most do so without understanding the beautiful message of God’s original intentions…the Jesus Christ the Messiah was THE Passover Lamb that God had been pointing to since the days of Exodus. How privileged we are to be able to celebrate with that full knowledge!