Deuteronomy

Passover and Unleavened Bread

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Lesson: 50-110

Genre: Talk

Track: 050

Dictation Name: RR187AA50

Location/Venue:

Year: 1993

Let us worship God. Put on the whole armor of God that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood but against principalities, against powers, against rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Wherefore take unto you the whole armor of God that ye maybe able to withstand all in the evil day and having done all, to stand. Let us pray.

Almighty God our heavenly Father we thank Thee that as we wage war against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places, we have the assurance that we are not alone, that Thou art with us, that Thou wilt never leave us or forsake us so that we have the assurance of victory in time and in eternity. And so our Father we come to Thee to cast our burdens down, to look unto Thy spirit for strength, light and peace and to glorify Thy holy name. In Christ’s name we pray, Amen.

Our scripture is Deuteronomy 16:1-8. 16:1-8, our subject: The Festival of Passover and Unleavened Bread.

“Observe the month of Abib, and keep the passover unto the Lord thy God: for in the month of Abib the Lord thy God brought thee forth out of Egypt by night.

2 Thou shalt therefore sacrifice the passover unto the Lord thy God, of the flock and the herd, in the place which the Lord shall choose to place his name there.

3 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.

4 And there shall be no leavened bread seen with thee in all thy coast seven days; neither shall there any thing of the flesh, which thou sacrificedst the first day at even, remain all night until the morning.

5 Thou mayest not sacrifice the passover within any of thy gates, which the Lord thy God giveth thee:

6 But at the place which the Lord thy God shall choose to place his name in, there thou shalt sacrifice the passover at even, at the going down of the sun, at the season that thou camest forth out of Egypt.

7 And thou shalt roast and eat it in the place which the Lord thy God shall choose: and thou shalt turn in the morning, and go unto thy tents.

8 Six days thou shalt eat unleavened bread: and on the seventh day shall be a solemn assembly to the Lord thy God: thou shalt do no work therein.”

Most persons reading Deuteronomy and the other books of the law for the first time are surprised, irked sometimes, or puzzled by the very frequent repetition of laws about the religious festivals. We shall look into the rational for that in the subsequent weeks beginning today. Two things among others puzzle people. First there is a repeated and strong emphasis on the festivals, second people find it difficult to view them as festivals because our idea of a festival suggests almost a carnival. The festivals of the bible seem to them very remote from a happy time but that’s because our outlook has changed. It comes as a shock to many people to learn that the Scots both in Scotland and in the United States and as I recall also in Canada came together several churches or many churches at a time to celebrate communion. These events were also preceded by many days of daylong preaching and eating together. The name for these events was holy fairs. Our ideas of a festival or fair are very different. Incidentally, festivals were common to the medieval church also. Parenthetically it is interesting to note that when a people go astray their character tends to determine how they do it. We Americans have gone bad in a flagrant open and ugly way and so have the Scots! And the reason is of course with neither country is there anything halfhearted about the way they do things. And in much of the world everything is done in a halfhearted way. The history of festivals within Christendom in the west can be divided into three phases. First, the festival was a religious event. However joyful and happy and exuberant an event it was religious, it was a holy day or holy days. The term commonly used was holy day. The holy day was a celebration of the faith and the cosmic, the universal victory it represented. The Christian Calendar celebrated victories of the faith. In the medieval era saints days marked God’s mighty witness to the world, in and through the lives of some of his servants. The holy days were therefore times to rejoice in the victories of God’s people.

Christian calendar reminded believers that the world moves to God’s predestined purpose and that time manifested His saving power. Then second, in time the religious or better the Christian festival gave way to a secular nationalist or statist celebration. The holy days were replaced, they were supplanted, by holidays. And there’s a difference between a holy day and a holiday even though they are the same word essentially. Days of national victories or deliverances now became as important and more important than holy days. Each country developed its own canon of holidays, Guy Fawkes Day, the fourth of July and so on. Man’s joy and pride now rested in national achievements and men identified themselves religiously with their country and its heritage. The state had supplanted the church and the faith in the daily routines of life. The focus of life had shifted from god to country. The holiday meant national ceremonies and parades. I can remember as a child when it was considered necessary for old and young to go to the celebrations of the national holidays, to watch the parades and if you did not go you were regarded as unpatriotic. Instead of holy days governing the country the holiday was now often honored by the church. But then a third development took place. The holiday became primarily personal. For example, Memorial Day is less and less celebrated in the older manner with the decorations of the war dead, the parades and patriotic assemblies. I can remember when everyone in a community turned out to the cemetery to observe Memorial Day. There was a parade that ended at the cemetery, great crowds there and school children as well as adults took part in the ceremonies. I can recall being chosen to recite the Gettysburg Address and In Flanders Field.

But it is now something only peripheral to Memorial Day or to any holiday. Increasingly the holidays are personal holidays, a time for rest and fun partly because people are disillusioned with the state. After the Vietnam war and the disillusionment with what we did to our men there and how the military were not in control and were not allowed to win the observance of national holidays fell off dramatically and conservatives also were disillusioned as well as liberals. This now applies as disregard for holidays as holy days as well. Christmas marks Christ’s birth less and less for most people and it is instead a family day at best, Easter celebrates the resurrection of Jesus Christ for fewer people and spring break for too many. The governing premise of the reduction of the holiday to the personal level is that the function of the ancient ideas of festivals should be happiness. Happiness for man. The happy hour in barrooms is an analogue for the happy days for the people with the holidays. Given this development in modern society the idea of a godly festival seems strange and remote as does the fact that such events were once a great delight to people. Many people on a holy day went on a pilgrimage to their favorite church or saint’s grave depending on their church. One of the interesting developments was is that congress has rescheduled the national holidays to give men long weekends. So now even the holidays like Memorial Day and the Fourth of July and Labor Day all are geared to giving a long weekend to people. Now all this is accompanied by a moral bankruptcy and a loss of a true focus in living.

The Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread were to be celebrated at the sanctuary. When Jerusalem became that sanctuary it meant a journey to Jerusalem. Since Israel was not too large a country it was not too difficult task for the people to assemble there. This was done in the month of Abib, later named [unknown] each spring at March or April in terms of our modern calendar. The two festivals were really one, they celebrated Israel’s deliverance of Egypt as our Easter Christ’s resurrection celebrates our deliverance from the power of sin and death. Passover marked also their adoption by grace into the household of God. It was therefore a family celebration together of all the families of the nation. They were the family of God. The scots until barred from doing so by medieval pope had a Passover dinner every Good Friday to celebrate the Christian’s victory. The Passover was a celebration of salvation in freedom. In verse three the people are reminded of their deliverance from Egypt. Here again we have an emphasis on memory. Remember the day when thou camest forth out of the land of Egypt all the days of Thy life. People with no sound memory of the past have no good hope for the future. Having no sound memory of past victories they have no foundation for present and future triumphs. One man in politics whose name would be familiar to all of you once told me that our political troubles can be traced to a great extent to the fact that the modern American is essentially an existentialist, it is only in rare occasions that he has a memory of what the man he is voting for has done beyond ninety days! The rare exception has been Senator Kennedy.

The festival was thus governed by memory and thereby by expectation. What God had done in the past he could do in the future. The loss of memory is a kind of insanity because the loss of one’s past is also a loss of our todays and tomorrows. This is why the high percentage of children educated in public schools have become in effect throwaway children, they have no knowledge of the past therefore no understanding of the present and therefore no future. There is another aspect to biblical festivals and one which was common to Christians, the fast. The fast is a time of total abstinence or sometimes a partial abstinence from food. Fasting and prayer are commonly associated in the Bible and in history. The fact is like the happy festival the fast is related to the past and the present. It often means repentance for past sins and other occasions it means earnest prayer for present and future victories. The focus of the fast and the festival is on history and memory. The person fasting biblically is one geared to action or one preparing himself for it. Just as one loses weight physically when fasting so the man fasting divests himself of the baggage of sins by repentance and of distractions by concentration on what he is praying for. Fasting and prayer means the active reassessment of one’s past, present and future. This is why historically the confession of sins to a priest or pastor often led in the past to the imposition of fasting as a penance. Its purpose was to reorder one’s life and focus, to reconsider one’s priorities and goals. At one time American presidents set aside a day for fasting and prayer. These were taken very seriously by many. The purpose was to clarify the national priorities and to cleanse its life.

I can recall vividly fasting as a child as our family commemorated the massacre of fellow Armenians and set aside the price of the food to aid the needy. Festivals and fasting give more than a purely personal meaning to time and history. And in our existentialist culture people see everything in purely personal terms. This is why the festivals, fasting and prayer refocused people on things bigger than themselves. Let us pray.

Our Father, we give thanks unto Thee for Thy word. We thank Thee that Thy word and Thy ordinances take the focus of our lives away from ourselves and onto the things of Thy kingdom. Our Father we weary ourselves continually with our absorption with ourselves. We have become a bored and a petulant people. Teach us to refocus ourselves on the things of Thy kingdom. Teach us to purge ourselves of those things that are a hindrance to our calling in Christ. Make us oh Lord Thine effectual people/ In Christ’s name, Amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson? Yes?

[Question unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] It falls between our April and May. It’s in terms of the Hebrew calendar which was a lunar calendar and the months were all even, thirty days each and we still observe the Hebrew calendar in one respect, every year Good Friday and Easter fall on the same day in terms of the Hebrew calendar. Any other questions or comments? Yes?

[Question unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] The bread of affliction was a term for the unleavened bread that they took because in the early days of the Exodus they could not carry with them leavened bread, it would very quickly spoil. But unleavened bread would last, so as they made the hasty trek from Egypt through the red sea to the other side they took with them unleavened bread and it was called the bread of affliction to remind them of the fearful time because looking at it from their point of view, we see it as a great deliverance because we know the beginning and the end. Just as our grandchildren may look at our time and see it as the era of deliverance and we see it as a difficult time. But here they were, they occupied the whole of the land of Goshen, you might call it a state within Egypt. They were leaving their homes where they had been for generations, they couldn’t take their furnishings, only what they could pack on top of animals or beasts of burden, and so assuredly a great deal that they treasured had to be left behind. So it was a time of affliction because as they left they didn’t know but at any moment the army of Pharaoh would be on their heels to destroy them and as they came to the Red Sea crossing of course they could see the cavalry coming and they hastened through not knowing what would happen and then saw the waters close over them. So it’s called the bread of affliction because it was a bread for those days of very great trial. And yet while it was called the bread of affliction after that it became a symbol of deliverance. Yes?

[Question unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Not completely but just like the United States it has gone astray, very seriously, in fact when I was first there I saw something in a periodical, this was in 87 I believe, that said the curse of Scotland was the lingering influence of John Knox. So they are as hostile to their heritage as we are to ours.

[Question unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Well the Church of Scotland, the official church, the established church, is thoroughly modernistic and when Margaret Thatcher as prime minister addressed them and in affect summoned them to be a Christian church immediately after the conclusion of her talk they immediately voted never again to have her back. The breakaway church of some generations ago that represented the orthodox wing became modernist and a small group broke away from that and a smaller group has broken away from them. So the number of those who are truly reformed is somewhat limited. And they tend to be rather overly churchy and overly critical of trifles.

[Question] Has Spain forgotten Calvin?

[Rushdoony] They forgot Calvin very quickly. There are signs of a revival of Calvinism there and also in France.

[Question unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Yes, in no country is the faith strong today. We can rejoice however there are hints of a return. Well if there are no further questions let us conclude with prayer.

Our Father we thank Thee that however men seek to secularize time, to give it a purely personal meaning, time moves at thy bidding to accomplish thy purpose. Teach us therefore to walk in Thee so that our days may not be in vain but may be effectual in terms of Thy kingdom. 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.