Exodus: Unity of Law and Grace

The Tenth Plague – Unleavened Bread

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson: The Tenth Plague – Unleavened Bread

Genre: Lessons with Q & A

Track: 032

Dictation Name: RR171R32

Location/Venue:

Year: Early 70’s

Let us worship God. Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth. Seeing that we have a great high priest that has passed into the heaven, Jesus the Son of God. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. Let us pray.

All glory be to thee God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. We thank thee, we praise thee, we rejoice in thee. We thank thee that on the throne of grace thou art ever merciful unto us. That day after day, thou dost surround us with thy blessings. Make us truly grateful, make us joyful, make us exuberant in our faith that the ends of the earth might know our joy and thy salvation, and that we are soldiers of thy kingdom. In Christ’s name, amen.

Our scripture is Exodus 12. Exodus 12:18-20. Our subject, for the forth time, The Tenth Plague, Unleavened Bread. Exodus 12: 18-20. In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at even, ye shall eat unleavened bread, until the one and twentieth day of the month at even. Seven days shall there be no leaven found in your houses: for whosoever eateth that which is leavened, even that soul shall be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether he be a stranger, or born in the land. Ye shall eat nothing leavened; in all your habitations shall ye eat unleavened bread.”

The Feast of Unleavened Bread, or matzo, is easily understood. For seven days, no unleavened bread was to be eaten, and no leaven or yeast, in any form, was to be kept in the house. Violation of this law meant that one would be cut off from the people which, in this context meant excommunication.

The problem of course with the whole matter is in the modern interpretation of leaven, and routinely we are told it means sin. Now this is very clearly wrong and absurd. Leviticus 7:13, for example, and elsewhere, we find the requirement of an offering of leavened bread with a sacrifice of thanksgiving of one’s peace offering. If the Scofieldian interpretation which others share with the Scofield Bible of leaven as sin is right, this means that God requires us to offer sin to Him, and that’s ridiculous. Leaven represents man’s work, that which is temporal and corruptible, that is it passes away. Leavened bread will mold. Unleavened bread will not. So, leaven represents that which passes away, things that we do, which are important for the kingdom of God in their time and maybe for generations thereafter, but in time, other things take their place. So, the leavened offering is that which man offers to God. It is not eternal. The unleavened represents what God does for us. It’s a part of His setting forth of His work, and it does not pass away. We are required to give a leavened offering as our thanks offering. It means that God requires our work from us even though it may last only a day or two in its total effect. Our service to the Lord is required, and so leaven offering is required.

But in sacrifices related to atonement, man contributes nothing, and hence a leavened offering means a belief that we have a hand in our own salvation, that’s why it is forbidden. Those who did not share in the faith but were in the same land as the believers were required to abstain from leaven during the week. The premise was this: We are not allowed to share in the advantages of life among God’s people and at the same time manifest disrespect for their work. This is an important fact. It means that in a godly society, you do not persecute the ungodly, but you do not allow them to show disrespect for the faith. And there’s a world of difference between the two. It tells us that conversion is not by the sword nor by compulsion. That we cannot go out and compel everyone to conform to the outward forms of the faith and pretend they are believers, but it does say there cannot be disrespect by those who do not share the faith, or the faith of the people of the land.

In Deuteronomy 16:3, we have a reference to unleavened bread which is important. It reads, “Thou shalt eat no leavened bread with it. Seven days shalt thou eat unleavened bread therewith, even the bread of affliction. For thou camest forth out of the land of Egypt in haste that thou mayest remember the day when thou camest forth out of the land of Egypt all the days of thy life.” Now this passage, unleavened bread is called the bread of affliction. And here again, too many have gone astray. They imagine that unleavened bread has a bitter taste and so on, but anyone who has eaten unleavened bread knows that that is nonsense. The Hebrew word used and translated as “affliction,” means depression with a hint of self-affliction. The explanation for this is “for thou camest forth out of the land of Egypt in haste.” From long established houses, they were going into tents in the wilderness. From a stationary existence, they were moving into a nomadic one. This meant discarding some possessions and securing others. For one thing, they now had to have tents. They had to have things that could be carried on their pack animals, things that could be used in a mobile existence. The goal was freedom, but the process was not an easy one. Imagine what it would mean if suddenly, we had to convert from a stationary existence in homes to a nomadic one, perhaps a year or two but in reality it turned out to be for forty years. It would not be an easy one. It was a venture of faith, a move from a stable situation of bondage into the risks of freedom. This responsibility was thus an affliction, and freedom and responsibility always are in part, an affliction. But they are alone the door to future blessings. To dream of a risk-free life is to dream of slavery, ad the bread of affliction meant they were going from the security of slavery, hastily, into the burdens and the problems and the responsibilities of freedom. No man can be blessed without first eating the bread of affliction. That’s a part of the world of freedom and responsibility. Edersheim wrote, and I quote, “The Passover therefore, was not so much the remembrance of Israel’s bondage as Israel’s deliverance from that bondage, and the bread which had originally been that of affliction, because that of haste, now became as it were the bread of a new state of existence.”

There is a reference to the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and of separation to the Lord, not only in 1 Corinthians 5:7 which we considered previously, a week or so ago, but also in Isaiah 52:9-12 which read, “Break forth into joy, sing together, ye waste places of Jerusalem: for the LORD hath comforted his people, he hath redeemed Jerusalem. The LORD hath made bare his holy arm in the eyes of all the nations; and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God. Depart ye, depart ye, go ye out from thence, touch no unclean thing; go ye out of the midst of her; be ye clean, that bear the vessels of the LORD. For ye shall not go out with haste, nor go by flight: for the LORD will go before you; and the God of Israel will be your rereward.” Isaiah tells us that our exoduses in history from captivity into God’s freedom will not be in haste nor by flight, as the original exodus, but with triumph. His verses are crowded with references to the original exodus.

Now in Exodus 23:14-17, the law of the covenant requires the observance by all males of three feasts. The Feast of Unleavened Bread, which is also Passover; the Feast of Harvest, or of the first fruits; and the Feast of Ingathering, or the harvest. The second and third feasts stress harvests, results. The first, the Feast of Unleavened Bread points to the beginning of all godly results and consequences, the venture of freedom, going forth, going forth in godly freedom and responsibility. There is no harvest without risks. No harvest without risks. Now this year was a difficult one for many of the farmers who had vegetables and grain crops in California. A large number of them had to plant three times. The weather was bad, into June there was bad and even freezing weather, frost at night, but risk is required. It’s a necessity if there’s to be a harvest, so they planted three times and did very well. Slavery gives security, freedom offers risks and results. So, going into freedom, the unleavened bread which signifies their deliverance is called the bread of affliction because now they have responsibility, and they will have the problems that go with responsibilities and freedom.

The Feast of Unleavened Bread cannot be separated from the Passover. The Passover celebrates redemption. The Feast of unleavened Bread means a total reliance on God’s work for salvation. The meaning of the unleavened bread is that God declares, “Ye shall be holy for I am holy.” Later on, in the history of Israel, on the day before the feast, the father with a lighted candle led the children in a search throughout all the house, into the closets, into chests, looking for leaven, to symbolize how they, to prepare themselves for the Lord, needed to search out all that was in their life that should be cleansed. Paul refers to this old festival and the search with a lighted candle in 1 Corinthians 11:28, in speaking of communion. “But let a men examine himself and so let him eat of that bread and drink of that cup.”

Now, food has a place in all religions, and no culture exists in which all things are edible without restriction. Food makes life possible. Man cannot exist without food. This obvious fact is lost sight of in modern cultures, because food is abundant for us and is taken for granted. A story that I told several times and it never fails to elicit the same kind of amazement and shock in me is concerning the student demonstration of the 1960’s, when they were calling for the triple revolution saying that work was outmoded and it was a capitalist conspiracy to educate them for a working work. And one girl, at Berkeley was asked by a reported, “But if you’re going to abolish all work what about food, what about food production?” She looked at him with disdain as though he were an idiot, and said, “Food is.”

Well, such an attitude is humanism gone mad, and that’s what is happening to humanism. The biblical festivals, remember, are food-related. All the main festivals are food-related. They require of us a recognition of our dependence on God for all things from our daily bread to our redemption. They remind us that we are a food-consuming people, that we do not exist in and of ourselves. If we are dependent on food to survive, how much more so on God? We are told, very plainly in these festivals, in the Feast of Unleavened Bread, that food is basic to our lives. That people are. We are to be members one of another, but above all we are dependent on God, and hence the stress in a number of hymns on food, on sustenance from the Lord. “Bread of heaven, bread of heaven, feed us till we want no more.” So much in scripture, as well as in the hymns, stresses the fact that we are creatures, dependent creatures and we need food to live and we need one another. Supremely, we need the Lord.

Paul tells us to put off the old man and to renew, be renewed in the spirit of your mind means honestly towards our neighbor and living with our brethren as members one of another, and our Lord declares, “It is written man shall not live by bread alone.” He must live with bread, but not by bread alone, “but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”

Men prefer to stress, in their religious rituals especially in an era of humanism, mystical or {?}rationalistic abstractions in dealing with the meanings of rites, and so you get a lot of mystical nonsense about things like the Feast of Unleavened Bread and other festivals. But what the Bible does is to stress our need in dependence. No more than we can live without bread, without food and water, can we endure as men and nations without the Lord. From one end of the Bible to the other, most of the required rites as we have seen are food-based, and again and again in history when men have forgotten that they are dependent on things like food and people, as well as the Lord, God brings them to the point where they see their most primitive dependence and cry out for bread, and starve for it. They begin by thinking of themselves as gods, which is man’s original sin, to be as God, and God reduces them to the point of killing for a crust of bread. Without food, material and spiritual, men and nations cannot live. Unleavened bread reminds us that both the provision and the very fact of life represent the creating and regenerating power, mercy, and salvation of our God. Let us pray.

Lord, our God, make us mindful that we are creatures, that we cannot live without food and water, or without one another and supremely, without thee. Make us grateful for these thy blessings. Teach us that freedom and responsibility mean eating the bread of affliction, that freedom and responsibility mean living in a risk-full world, dealing with the enemies of thy kingdom, bringing thy word to bear on all things and exercising dominion in thy name. Oh, bread of heaven, feed us and strengthen us, and make us strong in thee and for thy service. In Christ’s name, amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?

[Audience] I’m struck by the security of slavery comment, because the quest for security is what led the Germans into Hitler’s hand, and is leading us into the hands of government.

[Rushdoony] Yes. About seventy-five, eighty years ago, an American poet wrote a very interesting poem. Alfred Kreymborg, it’s a now-forgotten poem, on the slave, and in the poem he said, “They struck the shackles off the slave, but they could not unshackle his heart and being,” and he was right, of course, because Kreymborg in that poem saw that the real root of slavery is within man. And we are now a people in search of a slave master, and the federal government is offering itself to the people of the United States as its slave master. Any other questions or comments? Yes?

[Audience] I notice that the Passover immediately followed the {?} of Unleavened Bread, were they celebrated consecutively, and

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Audience] And were there any temple rituals or rites associated with these two feasts or were they just family-oriented.

[Rushdoony] Essentially family-oriented, primarily, we should say. Passover came at the end of the week, so that they really were two parts of one feast, and the family orientation was basic in all the great festivals, even when in the case of some when they had to go to Jerusalem, but the family was primary. And, of course, this is a note throughout the Bible including the New Testament, and it’s sad that in our day, the church and state are trying to take over the prerogatives of the family, increasingly asserting their primacy over the family. Any other questions or comments? Well, if not, let us conclude with prayer.

Lord, it is good for us to be here. For thy word is truth and thy word is manna unto our being. We thank thee that thou art He who doth feed us. We rejoice in the bounties of thy creation and of thy supernatural care and provision. Thy mercies are new every morning. Make us joyful in them. And now go in peace. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost bless you and keep you, guide and protect you this day and always. Amen.

End of tape.