Episode 3: The Feast of Unleavened Bread

Erin Davis: Hey Dree, do you like sourdough?

Dree Hogue: I do, I do. I actually love bread. You actually helped me learn to make bread. I don’t know if you remember that. My favorite bread recipe is an email from you from maybe 2010. I don’t know.

Erin: I remember. I still make that bread on occasion. People are going to want that bread recipe. It’s yummy. 

Take a guess, how long do you think a sourdough starter can live?

Dree: Well, if I was in charge of it, it might live like a couple months.

Erin: Yeah, same.

Dree: So, I have no idea.

Erin: I’ve never effectively developed a sourdough starter. 

Well, it can live a really, really long time, and here’s how I know this. Because right this moment in a refrigerator in Wyoming, there’s ancient sourdough.

It’s an ancient sourdough starter; it’s older than the Wright Brothers’ airplane. And currently, it exists in the home of a woman named, Lucille. Lucille’s sourdough starter dates back to 1889.

Dree: You are kidding me. That is crazy. 

Erin: Now, the way I heard the story is that Lucille got that starter from her momma, and her mom got it from a student at the University of Wyoming and that student at the University of Wyoming traced it all the way back to 1889, and believes that it was started in the back of a Wyoming sheep herder’s wagon.

Dree: So, tell me why you’re telling us about this and why you researched it. 

Erin: Well, I could just talk about bread endlessly. I’m fascinated by the whole thing. But I found this story as I was researching the seven feasts that we’re talking about, specifically The Feast of Unleavened Bread, which relates to sourdough.

If Lucille lived in ancient Israel, during the times of these feasts that we’ve been talking about here on The Deep Well, she would not be able to keep that famous sourdough year after year after year. She’d have to throw it away and start over. 

We’ll learn more. 

Dree: Welcome to The Deep Well with Erin Davis, a podcast from Revive Our Hearts. I’m Dree Hogue. I am excited to go alongside Erin as she continues to take us through Leviticus 23. Season 1: 

The Deep Well is all about the seven celebrations that God instructed the ancient people to observe.

Last time, we looked at God’s instructions for the Feast of the Passover. On this episode, we’re going to study the Feast of Unleavened Bread.

Here’s Erin with Leviticus 23:6–8.

Erin: 

And on the fifteenth day of the same month is the Feast of Unleavened Bread to the Lord; for seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. On the first day you shall have a holy convocation; you shall not do any ordinary work. But you shall present a food offering to the Lord for seven days. On the seventh day is a holy convocation; you shall not do any ordinary work.

If we disconnect the second feast from the rest of Scripture, this feels a little bit like a food lover’s heaven. No work, and eating unleavened bread for seven days in a row. But when we connect the dots between the feasts and the gospel, we see that this feast and all of the feasts are so much more. 

The process of bread baking is a parable, used throughout all of Scripture to teach us about the permeating power of sin in our lives. 

So as we turn our attention to the Feast of Unleavened Bread as a means to examine the sin that so easily works it’s way into our hearts and our homes, let’s consider Paul’s words recorded in 1 Corinthians 5:6–8. Paul writes: 

Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

We’re just two feasts into the seven feasts, and already we’re seeing many connection points between the feasts themselves, both the Passover and, as we will see, the Feast of Unleavened Bread are being alluded to here in 1 Corinthians. But we’ll also see that all of the feasts are pointing towards the gospel. 

If we look at the verses surrounding this verse here in 1 Corinthians for some context, we see that Paul wrote these words about the leaven and the new lumps. He was responding to a specific sexual sin in the church of Corinth.

It is the kind of sin that makes your stomach churn. And within the context of sin in one church, Paul is giving us an analogy that applies to all believers in every church. 

I’m going to read this passage from 1 Corinthians again, and this time make a mental note or write in your Bible every time you come to the words “leaven” and “unleavened.” 

Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

Now, most of us pick up our bread at the grocery store in a bag, right? So, the nuances of what Paul is teaching here, as he’s talking about the leavened and unleavened and you really are unleavened, it can get a little bit lost on us.

In bread baking, leaven is the substance that causes the bread to rise. It is the difference between a warm chewy baguette and a tortilla. Leaven works by creating air bubbles within the dough, and that causes the bread to rise.

Now, we typically use pre-packaged yeast to accomplish that desired rise. But the Corinthians were more likely to have used fermented dough, carried over from week to week, year to year, just like Lucille’s sourdough.

One of the things I love most about the Bible is that it uses what we know in the flesh to help us understand what we struggle to understand in the spirit. We understand Lucille’s sourdough. In the back of a wagon, leaven transformed flour into dough, and there was no going back. There is no way to extract the leaven and start over with pure flour.

And this is the way that leaven works. It works into every nook and cranny until the entire loaf rises. All this bread talk is making me hungry. 

Here in 1 Corinthians Paul is using this picture of leaven working its way into every nook and cranny of the dough to give us a strong reminder that sin has the same effect. 

Tolerating just a little bit, and if you’re listening you can’t see my fingers give air quotes but I am, because there’s no such thing as “little bit of sin” as we’ll discover as we examine this Feast.

But tolerating even a little bit of sin will change the structure of our hearts, it will change the structure of our homes, of our churches, of our culture. This is one of the messages that God was building into the Jewish calendar through the second feast.

All sin matters, because all sin is offensive to our Holy God. We’ve all experienced sin’s permeating effect. I bet that we would not have to reach very far back into our memories to think of an example from our own lives, and the lives of the people we love, where one seemingly insignificant compromise put us on a slow slide or in some cases a very fast slide away from holiness and toward gratifying our sinful flesh.

I think of the story actually very similar to the story that Paul was addressing in 1 Corinthians of a church that I attended years ago. There were some families in our church who were together in a small group and those families started taking camping trips on the weekends. 

Those camping trips pulled them away from regular church attendance, just a little leaven, no big deal. And before long, those camping trips started involving a little drinking. And then a lot of drinking, which led to crude talking and joking, which probably at the time seemed like little compromises.

And within a few months, multiple marriages in that group were over, because of infidelity within that group. The swath of sin can still be seen in those families, although the Lord has done a beautiful redemptive work. 

But now many, many, many years later, the effect of sin is still there. It started out so small, but sin so rarely, I think I’d say never, stays contained. Most, often just like yeast, it works its way into every corner of our lives.

And where leaven is used in Scripture, it is used as a symbol for sin. That’s something I love about my Bible. You can find almost anything and start looking for the pattern. The Bible is so consistent in the Old Testament and New Testament. We’re here in Leviticus, we saw it in 1 Corinthians, leaven is a picture for the way that sin works in our lives, and unleavened bread is a picture of life without sin.

Jesus, lived a life in the flesh, and yet never sinned. He’s pure. Utterly free from the contamination of leaven or sin. He had none of that in His life. That is what set Him apart. 

Just as the spotless lamb in Passover is a picture of Christ’s purity, the unleavened bread God asked His people to eat during this second feast, the Feast of Unleavened Bread, is a picture of Jesus’ sinlessness. Jesus, the Bread of Life, is untainted by the leaven of sin.

Consider again the instructions God gave the Israelites as He was preparing them for their deliverance from slavery in Egypt. Before the final plague fell on Egypt, God gave His people instructions for both the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread at once. The first two feasts are given to them together, here in Exodus 12.

Let me read us Exodus 12:15–20: 

Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. On the first day you shall remove leaven out of your houses, for if anyone eats what is leavened, from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel. On the first day you shall hold a holy assembly, and on the seventh day a holy assembly. No work shall be done on those days. But what everyone needs to eat, that alone may be prepared by you. 

And you shall observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread, for on this very day I brought your hosts out of the land of Egypt. Therefore you shall observe this day, throughout your generations, as a statute forever. In the first month, from the fourteenth day of the month at evening, you shall eat unleavened bread until the twenty-first day of the month at evening. For seven days no leaven is to be found in your houses. If anyone eats what is leavened, that person will be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether he is a sojourner or a native of the land. ou shall eat nothing leavened; in all your dwelling places you shall eat unleavened bread.

Sometimes we need to hear the whole chunk of Scripture that way in order to recognize the repetition. Over and over and over God is telling His children, no leaven, no leaven, no leaven, no leaven.

And I have a hunch why, because I’m a parent. If I really want my children to obey, I’ve got to say it over and over and over, did you get it, did you get it, did you get it? And that is the approach that God is taking here with His children as He’s instructing them for the very first time on the Feast of Unleavened Bread.

A lot of it can feel like overkill. Why does God say that so often? Why do they have to remove all leaven from their homes? And the penalty for resisting God’s instructions here seems severe, doesn’t it?

If anyone ate leavened bread during the days of the feast, they were to be cut off from the nation of Israel. It says that twice, in verses 15 and 19. This is clearly about more than what kind of bread the Israelites ate. 

The removal of leaven from their home was symbolic of their commitment to flee from sin and to live under the commandments from God. An unwillingness to follow this simple and relatively painless command to remove leaven from their lives for seven days was evidence of an unwillingness to obey God in larger matters.

Thus, those who refused to obey the Feasts of Unleavened Bread were cut off from God’s people. Ultimately by their own disobedience, and again we see such a picture here of the way sin works in our lives.

Adding yeast or leaven to a loaf bread is a long process. You will know this if you ever decided that maybe you’d just whip us some French bread to go along with your spaghetti for dinner. It’s not going to happen. The spaghetti is going to be done long before your bread has that first proof to rise, and multiple rounds are required. It takes time for bread to rise.

Unleavened bread on the other hand is quick, and it symbolizes a quickness to get out ofsin. Run, flee, there’s no time to prepare to clean yourself up, the need to run from sin is urgent. We don’t want to wait and to allow sin to rise and have its full effect on our lives.

Rapid fire consider these three passages:

No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it (1 Cor. 10:13).

Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you (James 4:7).

Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out (Acts 3:19).

Escape, resist, run away, repent, turn back, this is Scripture’s language for sin. There’s an urgency communicated through these verses. Rather than allowing the debt of sin to pile up in our lives, we respond quickly and eagerly when God calls us to repentance by His Spirit.

Understanding the corrosive and pervasive power of sin means we don’t let it sit in the dough, convinced that it won’t spread. God convicts; we repent. God convicts; we repent. God convicts; we repent. 

Now, I came to Jesus, kicking and screaming, and I still obey sometimes kicking and screaming. I am fond of saying that kicking and screaming obedience is still obedience. God will still honor it, even if I resist. I obey, but it's often hard for me, but I will say that after more than twenty years of walking with the Lord, I turn quicker.

Obedience is still hard for me, it may be hard for me until I am with Jesus in glory, but the longer I walk with, the quicker I turn. I don’t let it sit in my life. I don’t justify it. I don’t come up with a million reasons why I don’t have to deal with my sin, because that person isn’t dealing with their sin. I want out of it. I want to run from it. God convicts; we repent. 

And just as God was establishing a pattern for the Israelites by writing these seven feasts on their calendar, He’s given us this pattern for our lives: I convict; you repent. I convict; you repent. I convict; you repent. And this beautiful pattern for our lives: we repent; Christ forgives. We repent; Christ forgives. We repent; Christ forgives. You don’t have to wait to deal with sin, because you’re worried that grace won’t be there when you turn from it, it will.

The Feast of Unleavened Bread is a beautiful reminder that God has graciously invited us into a new rhythm in which sin doesn’t have a final say. We are free to live as new lumps as Paul describes us, because we’ve been cleansed by the resurrection power of Jesus. 

So let's take this depth of understanding of all the Feast of Unleavened Bread was pointing towards, what it represents, and let’s let it carry us to the Gospels.

Consider Matthew 26:17, 

Now on the first day of Unleavened Bread the disciples came to Jesus, saying, “Where will you have us prepare for you to eat the Passover?” 

If you’re paying close attention, you might notice that the Feast of Unleavened Bread seems to precede the Passover here, and that’s not how the feasts were outlined in Leviticus 23. 

The two feasts are mentioned separately in Leviticus 23, but they’re back to back. In Jesus’ day and for Jews today, the feasts of Passover, Unleavened Bread, and First Fruits are all celebrated together as part of the Passover Feast.

So the disciples were preparing to observe the first of the seven feasts, and they came to Jesus and they asked Him for instructions. In keeping with Jewish tradition, Jesus and the disciples ate the Passover meal at sun down on a Thursday evening. And Jesus was crucified, the following afternoon.

It’s important for you to know that Jewish days go from sun down to sun down. Not, like our sun up to sun up. And what that means is that Jesus was killed on the same day that He observed the Feast of Passover and Unleavened Bread.The same day that Jesus celebrated the Feast of Unleavened Bread with His disciples, He instituted the Lord’s Supper for us. 

The timing of the first Lord’s Supper matters, because even as Jesus gathered with His friends, even as He reclined at the table, even as He passed the cup, He knew that on that very day He would die, a horrific death. 

As He gathered with His friends in the Upper Room, He knew that by the end of that day, His body would be entombed in total darkness. It wasn’t just any bread that Jesus was breaking with those disciples, it was unleavened bread, symbolic of the sinless life He was about to surrender for them, and for me.

Way back in Leviticus 23, when the seven feasts were written into the Jewish calendar, God was telling a story—a gospel story of Jesus’ coming sacrifice. Jesus was crucified on Passover, and buried on the Feast of Unleavened Bread. 

That tiny cracker we pass for Communion, that little cup, it’s telling the same story as the Feasts: 

• That Christ’s sinless body, Jesus our unleavened bread, was broken for us. 
• That His untainted blood was spilled out on our behalf, why? So that the leaven of sin, which so permeates our hearts could be removed. 

The Lord’s Supper is the sweetest part of my week. I go to a Communion every Sunday kind of church.I sit with my small group, which is eight families all in the same season of life, that I’m in. We use the term “small group” loosely, there’s a lot of us. 

Most often one or two of us has a sick or cranky baby who didn’t want to go back to the nursery, and so between those families we pass those little chubby baby bodies back and forth among us. 

The Communion tray comes, and my husband started a tradition that we’ve never talked about in our small group, but we all do. Jason takes the tray first and he serves me Communion, and then he takes it himself. And somewhere along the line, I noticed all the husbands around, they probably got a little elbow from their wives, “See what Jason does?” All the husbands around us, they take the tray and they serve their wife Communion, and then they take Communion themselves, and I cry every week—every single week.

And two prayers bubble up inside my heart every week, “Thank You,” and “I’m sorry.” “Thank you for what You did Jesus for me, and I’m sorry that another week went by and the leaven of sin worked its way in again to my heart, to my marriage, to my parenting.”

I know those friends well enough to know, we’ve never talked about this, but I know they are all saying something like, “Thank You,” and “I’m sorry” as we pass what just seems like bread and juice around to each other. It’s a symbol of the victory Jesus has given us over sin. 

I am so grieved by my own sin, and frankly by the sins of the people that I love. I’m so frustrated by the way leaven creeps back into our lives, so often, and so easily. But I am so thankful for our Savior who made a way for sin to lose its power in my life, and in the lives of the ones that I love most. 

I want to take us back one more time to Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 5:7, 

Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.

I love those words “you really are unleavened,” translation “you really are transformed by Christ’s power.” No, really, it’s true! I know it doesn’t always feel true, but it is. The process is hard to see at times, but God is at work to purify you, to make you more like Him. No, really, it’s true. Focusing on your sin, your powerlessness over sin, it will never make you a new lump. But you can shift your gaze to Jesus, our Unleavened Bread.

Pastor John Piper puts it this way, “Jesus did not come into the world mainly to give bread, but to be bread.” Shift your gaze to Jesus, our sinless Savior, our Unleavened Bread and see He is more than able to cleanse you completely to transform you into something brand new. 

Dree: Erin’s been helping us get real about the seriousness of sin. It’s an uncomfortable topic and probably not the first one that we like to sign up for. But it’s so important because it anchors us into how life-changing it is that Jesus offers us rescue from that sin and brokenness.

Maybe you’re listening and you can think of friends that you want to share this with, because in your own moment of revelation, you realize how amazing and life-changing the rescue of Jesus is, and you want to share that with them.

I would encourage you to dive deep yourself, but also dive deep in community. Get some other people and go through these truths together. 

Erin has written a Bible study called 7 Feasts, and you can get that. You could listen to these podcasts together. But however you go about it, dive deep into the deep well of God’s Word. Let it change you. Let it offer you hope. And do it with other people because that’s how we grow best—together in community.

To get Erin’s book 7 Feasts, you just have to visit ReviveOurHearts.com/TheDeepWell. You can get started on your journey of learning these deep truths and connecting with the reality of Jesus more and more each day. 

Erin Unscripted

This is a really important thing for us to talk about in real terms. I think as I was listening and as I’m confronted with raising kids . . . I have a semi-adult daughter, that’s what I call her, a teenager, and a son. Man, the world that they’re swimming in wants to eliminate the idea of sin. 

You can’t say that something is sin and still love somebody. It’s like you have to never say that sin is sin if you want to love somebody. That’s not actually what the Lord teaches us in His Word at all, at all. 

Erin: In fact, it’s the opposite.

Dree: Yeah, you cannot avoid this topic. Jesus’ rescue would be meaningless to us if there was no sin to be rescued from. So, I just wanted to hear from you, how do you see that, and what’s been your experience with that, the rejection of the idea of sin in today’s world?

Erin: Well, we both love to talk about our kids. As you were saying that, a story came to mind of Eli, my first born. He was a little guy when this happened. I don’t think he’ll mind me telling this story. He came home from preschool, he must have been four, and he was just acting funny. 

I don’t know, call it discernment, call it the Holy Spirit, call it mother’s intuition. I pressed a little bit, and he brushed it off. 

Then I pressed harder. Well, he had stolen some seashells from his preschool classroom. He wanted to give them to his Gigi. And so we said, “Buddy, you know you can’t take from your preschool classroom.” So we put him in the car. We drove him back to preschool. He had to face Ms. Amanda, and give up the seashells.

It was hard, but it was actually such a tender mercy. Because he was able to get away with something that really would have been a violation of his conscience, I’m sure, if it had gone on much longer, and that probably was when he put the seashells in his pocket. 

That is the way it is with sin. I know that feels so trivial, but all sin feels a little trivial to us when we decide we are going to partake in it. It is actually a tremendous mercy when the Lord exposes the sin in our lives. 

I’m not saying it feels like a tremendous mercy, it does not. It feels awful when sin is exposed in our lives. But it’s actually such a mercy of God. If we ignore the fact that we are sinners, then we discount that. We don’t realize, we don’t recognize or acknowledge that the Lord needs to point out the sin so that it can be dealt with. 

Because sin, of course, separates us from the Lord, but it does all manner of other collateral damage in our lives. And so, yes, I’ve absolutely heard that idea, felt that idea maybe even as a parent or as a friend. It’s uncomfortable to address sin.

I don’t know that it ever gets comfortable; I don’t know that it ever should. It’s uncomfortable to recognize our own sin; it’s uncomfortable to recognize sin in others. But you know that is one side-effect of the gospel that we can’t live without.

We are sinners and that sin has all manner of terrible consequences in our lives. You flip that coin over, and it is that we need to redeemed from that sin problem and Jesus is the only answer to our sin problem. If we sanitize it in a way, we sanitize our need for Jesus, and that I need Jesus. I need to be reminded of Jesus, and sin in my life is that warning flare for me. 

Dree: One of the things just from what you are talking about is that sin has more impact than maybe it feels like it does. Like in this story of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, it’s in the context of community. My sin impacts my community, my family, my church, it might feel like it doesn’t, but I think it always does. It always finds a way out, right? It creates brokenness, so there’s a responsibility I feel in that.

Erin: As sinners, we recognize that’s true for other people. We could all say if we wanted to how other people’s sin has impacted us, but somehow, we are able to compartmentalize and convince ourselves that the reverse isn’t true. 

Yes, their sin impacts me, but my sin doesn’t impact them. Well, no, that’s not true. In fact, that’s the hardest part of my sin for me. The people I love most, you probably included, are walking around with shrapnel in their hearts because of my sin decisions that I’ve made. I’m walking along with shrapnel in my heart from sin decisions they’ve made, and that is uncomfortable. But again, it points us to Jesus and why we need Him so desperately.

Dree: You and I have known each other for a long time, and we’ve had moments. I remember our very first real disagreement. It was much like the leaven; you couldn’t get it out of the air. We were doing an event together, and I don’t even remember what all happened. But I remember we were not right. It was like we were crooked with one another. 

Erin: Yeah, fellowship was broken. I don’t remember what happened either, but the fellowship was broken. 

Dree: We had to have a conversation about it. That was uncomfortable.

Erin: Right.

Dree: We had to humble ourselves; we had to admit maybe where we were off. Both of us, I think, were probably expressing some insecurity by way of pridefulness in that moment.

Erin: I have a lot of insecurity by way of pridefulness, unfortunately.

Dree: Yeah, I mean, I remember that being a marker, because what happened in our relationship and in our friendship was that it didn’t break us apart. It actually took us deeper. 

Erin: Right.

Dree: But had we not had the Lord helping us in that moment to be humble and work through it together and be willing to say some hard things to one another, but also receive some hard things from the other, the outcome would have been very different.

Erin: Right.

Dree: I think sometimes we hide our sin because we’re afraid of losing everything or things breaking apart. I know you’ve experienced this at times very poignantly. I’ve experienced it as well, where the opposite actually happens. You’re actually stronger and better for it. 

So, what are your thoughts on that?

Erin: That’s so true. I think we do live under the illusion that it’s contained and that’s why I love this feast and that sin is described as yeast. I mean it just does permeate all of our lives. It does permeate our relationships. That can make me feel kind of hopeless, like ugh this sin in my life, it’s impacting everything and everyone.

Well, Jesus is the only, to mix metaphors, antidote. I don’t think you need an antidote for bread, but He’s the only way. You gotta get that leaven, that sin out. You gotta get it out of your heart, you gotta get it out of your relationships, because it won’t be contained. 

We can’t do that on our own, but Jesus can. He did so, so well on the cross when He paid the price, that was kind of an ultimate way He did it. But He also does it in our daily lives as He through His Word we’re able to recognize our sin as He allows us to repent and He forgives us and He helps us by the power of His Holy Spirit to turn from sin.

He’s kind of always pushing back that permeating effect on our lives if we let Him. And so that’s hopeful in the face of the hopeless realization that we can’t keep sin from creating implosions in our important friendships and families and that kind of thing.

Dree: You can’t grace that is so powerful, there’s nothing but hope when grace gets involved. 

Erin: Right.

Dree: Pushes us that way. The last thing is just that you know that the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the Passover, all of these feasts overlay the Holy Week events so powerfully. Like mind blowing powerfully, to encapsulate every single part of the gospel story. The part that we are anchored to, our reality. Not just what was and what is, but what is to come. And so, I didn’t know if maybe you could anchor us in this story, where does this fall in the Holy Week narrative? 

Erin: Actually, that is the part of studying the seven feasts that just keeps blowing my mind. This is like, woah, how come I never knew this redemption timeline was here Leviticus 23? 

The Feast of Unleavened Bread wasn’t like other feasts in that it was just a one-day feast. The Feast of Unleavened Bread lasted for seven days and so Jesus was observing the Feast of Unleavened Bread and the Feast of Passover as He gathered with His disciples in the Upper Room. 

We call that the Last Supper. It was, but on the Jewish calendar it was the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. They gathered together on a Thursday, and Jesus was crucified the following afternoon. We know that because we call it “Good Friday.” But you have to think about the Jewish calendar in which days went from sun down to sun down.

So, Jesus was killed on the same day that He observed the Passover, and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. The same day He instituted the Lord’s Supper with His disciples. It all happened on the timeline of this calendar that is found here in Leviticus 23.

You know as you picture Him with the disciples in the Upper Room, as He’s passes the unleavened bread. It would have been the Feast of Unleavened Bread, so He wasn’t passing loaves of bread like we think of around. He was passing unleavened bread. 

As He passed the cup, He knew that that very day He was going to die a horrific death and His body was going to be entombed in total darkness. That all happened on the Feast of Unleavened Bread.

Dree: I hope that gets down deep in me, that reality. I think we talk about God being omnipresent and omniscient, but I wish there was a word to say “omni-planner.”

Erin: Right. He’s planned all of time.

Dree: Yeah, it wasn’t like one day He decided, “Oh, I think I’ll send My Son. He had this plan in action to rescue us from the beginning of sin entering. It just is mind blowing to me. I just feel cared for and loved by it even in the midst of my own brokenness. 

Erin: He revealed the calendar of Holy Week to the Israelites. Of course, they had no way of understanding what it was.

Dree: Right.

Erin: But imprinted on their families through generations was this redemption story and how it would unfold. I feel loved by it too, that’s remarkable.

Dree: It’s just unreal to think about how much care the Lord took for us in His master plan for our rescue and our redemption. 

You, too, can go and understand these mind-blowing truths through Erin’s Bible study, 7 Feasts. I encourage you to pick one up.

Erin: I hope people do, not just because it’s my Bible study, but because it has been such a faith booster to me to see this passage of Leviticus 23 in a new way. So, grab your copy at ReviveOurHearts.com/TheDeepWell.

Dree: On the next episode, we’re going to talk about leftovers. Erin, do you like leftovers?

Erin: No, I don’t, and no one in my family does. It’s a little bit tragic.

Dree: That’s unfortunate.

Erin: It is unfortunate. In this next episode of The Deep Well, we’re going to talk about leftovers, but not the kind that might be lurking in your fridge. We’ll look at how God called His children not to give Him their leftovers.

Dree: Well, I’m excited about that next episode, so don’t forget God’s Word is a deep well. You can drop down your bucket and pull up Truth every single time.

The Deep Well with Erin Davis is a production of Revive Our Hearts, calling women to freedom, fullness and fruitfulness in Christ.

All Scripture is taken from the ESV.

*Offers available only during the broadcast of the podcast season.