The Sabbath of Ceasing From Leaven

 In Exodus 12:15, as it reads in most Bible versions, we find a puzzling statement. God commanded His people, “Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. On the first day you shall remove leaven from your houses. For whoever eats leavened bread from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel” (NKJV).

“On the first day you shall remove leaven from your houses.” This wording makes it sound as if we should deleaven our houses on the First Day of Unleavened Bread, a Holy Day!

And yet, a few verses later, we discover, “For seven days no leaven shall be found in your houses, since whoever eats what is leavened, that same person shall be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether he is a stranger or a native of the land” (Ex. 12:19). If no leaven is to be found in our houses for seven days, then obviously it cannot be found in our houses on the First Day, either! It must already be gone by then.

So what’s the meaning of v. 15? It becomes a little clearer in some literal translations, such as the YLT (Young’s Literal Translation) and the LITV (Green’s Literal Translation).

Here’s Young’s: “Seven days ye eat unleavened things; only — in the first day ye cause leaven to cease out of your houses; for any one eating anything fermented from the first day till the seventh day, even that person hath been cut off from Israel.”

And here’s Green’s: “You shall eat unleavened bread seven days. Indeed, on the first day you shall cause leaven to cease from your houses. For anyone eating anything leavened, that soul shall be cut off from Israel, from the first day until the seventh day.”

The First Day of Unleavened Bread, then, is not the day we remove leaven from our houses, but the day it ceases from our houses. Or, more properly, the day we cause it to cease. There can be no leaven in our houses on that day! Just as God ceased from His works and rested on the seventh day, so must we cease from leaven on the First Day of Unleavened Bread.

A Special Sabbath

The Hebrew word translated as “cause to cease” is most fascinating! It is tash’bitoo, a form of the verb shavat (Strong’s # H7673; “cease”). This form describes the act of causing something to happen, rather than simply allowing it to happen. Rather than saying, “Leaven will cease from your houses,” God said, “You will cause leaven to cease from your houses.”

Now here’s what’s fascinating: this word is the root word of Shabbat, or Sabbath! Back in Genesis, at Creation, we find, “And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested [shavat] on the seventh day from all His work which He had done” (Gen. 2:2). The seventh day, the Sabbath, is a day of ceasing from work. It is called the Shabbat, or the Sabbath, precisely because God ceased from His works on that day.

The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew Lexicon defines shavat as “cease, desist, rest.” Gesenius’s Hebrew Lexicon, on which Brown-Driver-Briggs is based, defined it as “to rest, to keep as a day of rest.”

“To rest” or “to keep as a day of rest” is another command that applies to the First Day of Unleavened Bread. Here’s what God said in Ex. 12:16: “On the first day there shall be a holy convocation, and on the seventh day there shall be a holy convocation for you. No manner of work shall be done on them; but that which everyone must eat — that only may be prepared by you.”

God repeats this prohibition against work in Lev. 23:6-7: “And on the fifteenth day of the same month is the Feast of Unleavened Bread to the LORD; seven days you must eat unleavened bread. On the first day you shall have a holy convocation; you shall do no customary work on it.” And He repeats it again, almost word for word, in Num. 28:17-18.

The First Day of Unleavened Bread is the first of God’s seven annual Holy Days, and it is a holy convocation or commanded assembly, just like the weekly Sabbath. God also prohibited His people from working on the First Day of Unleavened Bread, just like the weekly Sabbath. This, by definition, makes the First Day of Unleavened Bread a Sabbath, albeit one that comes only once a year.

So it should be no surprise to us that all the Gospels describe the First Day of Unleavened Bread as a Sabbath. Of the day Jesus Christ was crucified, Luke 23:54 says, “That day was the Preparation, and the Sabbath drew near.” Mark recorded, “...it was the Preparation Day, that is, the day before the Sabbath” (Mark 15:42). Mat. 27:62, likewise, describes the day of the crucifixion as “the Day of Preparation.”

The Gospel of John adds a few more critical details. First, he clarified that the preparation day was the preparation day of the Passover, that is, Nisan 14: “Now it was the Preparation Day of the Passover, and about the sixth hour. And he said to the Jews, ‘Behold your King!’” (John 19:14). Secondly, he recorded that the approaching Sabbath wasn’t a normal, weekly Sabbath, but a special Sabbath: “Therefore, because it was the Preparation Day, that the bodies should not remain on the cross on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a high day), the Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be taken away” (John 19:31).

Now, as we can read in Exodus 12, Leviticus 23, Numbers 28, and elsewhere, God commanded that the Passover lambs be slaughtered on the fourteenth day of the first month, which was originally called Abib and later Nisan. This is the same day Jesus Christ died as our Passover Lamb, the preparation day of the Passover. The following day, Nisan 15, is the First Day of Unleavened Bread (Lev. 23:6; Num. 28:17), and it was this special Sabbath, or high Sabbath, that approached as the crucifixion day drew to a close.

So the First Day of Unleavened Bread is a Sabbath, and a special one. It is the day we cause leaven to cease from our houses, and a day we cease from work to gather before our Creator. It is this ceasing (shavat) which makes it a Shabbat or Sabbath. Though each of God’s Holy Days is unique in its own right, this one is unique for being the only Sabbath in which we cause leaven to cease from our houses for seven days.

Repentance and Reconciliation

I think most are aware that leaven usually pictures sin, especially in the context of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Jesus Christ warned His disciples, “Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees” (Mat. 16:6). And Paul exhorted the Corinthians, “Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth” (1 Cor. 5:8).

So, spiritually speaking, the First Day of Unleavened Bread represents the day we cause sin to cease from our lives. How is this possible? How can we, who have sinned all our lives, put away sin?

It’s all made possible by and it all begins with Jesus’ death as our Passover Lamb on the previous day, Nisan 14, “the preparation day of the Passover” (John 19:14). He died to atone for our sins, to redeem us from spiritual slavery, and His blood is there to cover us if we will accept it.

But to accept Christ’s blood requires more than saying we do. It requires repentance, a change of heart. When Yeshua/Jesus came to this earth, He said, “Unless you repent you will all likewise perish” (Luke 13:3, 5). “Repent” is Strong’s # G3340, which Thayer’s Greek Lexicon defines as, “to change one’s mind, i.e. to repent (to feel sorry that one has done this or that).”

Many people feel sorry for things they’ve done, but that sorrow never goes anywhere or leads to any real change. It isn’t a true change of heart. After a night of drinking, a drunkard may express sorrow or regret the next morning when he’s hung over, but he will drink again. A wife-beater may express sorrow for hitting his wife and promise he’ll never do it again, but he will indeed do it again if given the opportunity. Words have been spoken, but there has been no change of heart.

True repentance, a genuine change of heart, leads to a change of behavior. As John the Baptist told the Pharisees and Sadducees, “Therefore bear fruits worthy of repentance” (Mat. 3:8). When oppressed by the Ammonites, the Israelites cried out to God for deliverance and expressed remorse for their idolatry (Judg. 10:10), but He did not deliver them. Only when they bore fruits worthy of repentance, only when “they put away the foreign gods from among them and served the LORD” (Judg. 10:16), did He deliver them.

One cannot claim to accept the blood of Christ and go on sinning. “For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and fiery indignation which will devour the adversaries” (Heb. 10:26-27). True repentance involves action! It involves forsaking one’s sins and changing one’s lifestyle.

So when we accept Jesus Christ’s sacrifice, this must be accompanied by true repentance. We must turn from our sins. We must cease walking in sin, just as we must cause leaven to cease from our houses on the First Day of Unleavened Bread.

Because of Jesus Christ and His sacrifice, our sins are forgiven and we are no longer filled with leaven. “And you, who once were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now He has reconciled in the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy, and blameless, and above reproach in His sight” (Col. 1:21-22).

By accepting and partaking of His Passover sacrifice, we become one with Him: “For we are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones” (Eph. 5:30). “The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? For we, though many, are one bread and one body; for we all partake of that one bread” (1 Cor. 10:16-17).

Because Jesus Christ is unleavened, we likewise become unleavened through Him: “Therefore purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened. For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us. Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth” (1 Cor. 5:7-8).

Conclusion

So the First Day of Unleavened Bread is a special Sabbath indeed. Not only do we cease from our normal work on that day, as on all Sabbaths, but we also cause leaven to cease from our houses for seven days, beginning with that day. For seven days, no leaven should be found in our houses. And this ceasing is the very meaning of the word “Sabbath”!

Spiritually speaking, this day pictures our repentance and acceptance of Christ’s Passover sacrifice. Through repentance, we turn from our sins and cause that spiritual leaven to cease from our lives. By accepting the blood of our Savior Jesus Christ and partaking of His sacrifice, we become unleavened, just as He is unleavened. “For we are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones” (Eph. 5:30).

This is the wonderful meaning of the First Day of Unleavened Bread!