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Passover Tidbit #4:    The Matzah

We all should know the account of Passover.  YHWH told Moses to instruct the people to be ready to leave Egypt and for that reason, they needed to eat while fully dressed with their sandals on their feet and staff in their hand.  They had no time to let the bread rise, so they were not to use leaven, thus the tradition to make only unleavened bread on the Passover.  This unleavened bread is called mat-zah’ in Hebrew. 

Khaw-mates' is the word for leaven and is always a picture of sin in Scripture.  The word means to infect slowly, exactly what both yeast and sin do. It puffs up the bread, and puffs up the sinner. So the bread of Passover is to be sin free.  That seems obvious and makes good sense, but remember too that the very bread of life, Y'shua, or Jesus in Greek, is, and has to be, sin free as well.  The picture could look no other way.

The traditional Passover Seder (the Hebrew word for order or instruction) uses three of the unleavened bread loaves, we might call them patties, or crackers, or cakes, as they are flat, more or less round, and about 8 inches in diameter stacked one on top of the other. 

At the Passover table, three of these are stacked together and covered with a cloth (the word in Greek for the cloth is Spargano, the same word for the linen strips used to “swaddle” the baby Jesus).  Another stack of three is hidden away in the home three days before the Passover meal begins.  I'm sure it is just a coincidence that they use three loaves, because the Jews do not believe Jesus is the Messiah, the middle person of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, at least not in the way Christians do.

And three days? Really? Jews hide them for 3 days? Do you know anyone else hidden for 3 days?

As you probably know the mat-zah’ are striped from cooking on a hot rock, or rack today, and pierced to let the steam out, so as not to ruin the bread.  Again any reminder of Jesus is probably just coincidence, right?

The unleavened bread used at the Passover table, as we know, is called mat'-zah, spelled MTA, Mem Tav Aleph. The Hebrew word for found is also pronounced mat-zah’ but spelled MTH, Mem Tav Hey.  As with all Hebrew words, each letter is a picture, and while the picture never changes, it can have several meanings, so each word using the same letters must have related and similar meanings.  In this way we know the unleavened bread of Passover is forever directly linked to the act of finding the bread ... of life.  Again Passover is about finding Jesus or Y'shua, which is from the Hebrew word for salvation.

At the end of the Passover meal the children in attendance are tasked with tracking down the hidden stack of mat-zah'.  The child, or children, who first finds the hidden mat-zah' receive a reward. The children who did not find the bread of life, the mat-zah', receive no reward.  Lets think about the symbolizm for a moment.   ....... Once found, the center mat-zah' is removed, then broken, and passed around the table to be served as dessert, called the afi-komen.

OK let's recap, a striped and pierced, sinless, piece of the bread of life, is searched for after being hidden three days. Once found the center cake of the three is broken, ingested, or taken to heart, and a reward, or gift, is given to all who find it.  Sounds a little like Jesus to me, so tell me again why you think Passover is a Jewish only thing?

The finding of the center cake of bread concludes the celebration of Passover.  Wow, that sounds like the bones of any Sunday morning sermon at every Christian congregation. 

So we can all see the picture of Y'shua in this, but YHWH, the Creator of all Heaven and earth, can certainly do anything He chooses to do. Is it really such a miracle that the picture of Jesus is included in the Passover Seder in the form of the mat-zah'?  While the actual events of Passover certainly do point directly at Jesus and His crucifixion, and no question YHWH did ordain the events we celebrate at Passover as a mik-raw’, or rehearsal, of the sacrifice Jesus would later make, why would the Jewish traditions also point directly at Jesus?

Consider that that YHWH did not include all of the pomp and circumstance of the first Passover meal.  He did not ordain that the wine be mixed with water, he did not ordain the 3 matzah use at the table, He did not ordain the finding of the hidden matzah after three  days and then a reward, or any of a hundred other Jewish traditions that point directly at Jesus as the Son of God. 

In fact much of the traditions contained in the typical Passover celebration, are mysteries to the Jews celebrating them. Ask a Rabbi why they do these things and they often have no answer, they just do it as prescribed by the Rabbis before them. 

The instructions are pretty specific as we read in Exodus 12, as to how to celebrate, and it includes none of this.  Many of the activities of the Passover are traditions written hundreds of years after Y'shua died on the Roman Cross, written by Jewish Rabbis as they considered and wrote the official Passover Haggadah or guide.  The traditions and actions to be followed and celebrated during the Passover bring to remembrance the occasion of the first Passover, but also, and somewhat unexpectedly, picture quite clearly the actions of one Jesus, the Messiah, or The Christ.  

These Jewish Rabbis and teachers did not believe that Jesus was the Messiah, so how did these traditions come to be?   

I might suggest it to be the Hand of YHWH?  Can you possibly see the opportunity here to witness to our Jewish brethren, when we not only celebrate the Feasts, but also understand more deeply the pictures contained in the Passover and other feasts than the Jews seem to.  How they fulfill the prophecies contained in the TaNaKh ?  

After all the very last verse of the TaKaKh, or Old Testament as we call it, describes the "coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord", Malachi 4:6 in that day, in the last days, I might suggest in these days now “ He shall turn the heart of the fathers, (Judah) to the children (Israel) and the heart of the children (Israel) to the fathers, (Judah) lest I come and smite the earth with a curse”  

All of the Feasts are like this.  The meanings are full for the Christian, (Gentile, Israel) and provide many opportunities to share Jesus with our Jewish (Judah, Jew) friends.  At the same time the feasts help to strengthen our own faith.  All Feasts seem designed by the Spirit of God to bring the hearts of the Jew to the Gentile, and the hearts of the Gentile to the Jew.



CB