The Meaning of Passover

The removal of leaven

Before the beginning of the Passover, all leaven, which is a symbol of sin (1 Cor. 5:6-8), must be removed from the Jewish home. The house is cleaned from top to bottom and anything containing leaven is removed. Then, the evening before the Passover, the father of the house takes the traditional cleaning implements: a feather, a wooden spoon, and a bag, and searches the house for any specks of leaven which might have been missed (my mother used to leave it on top of the refrigerator so my father shouldn’t spend all night hunting!).

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Passover in Israel – Past and Present

Every life has its landmarks: the first meeting with your future spouse, that initial open door that leads to other possibilities, or a decision to move on to uncharted territory. We reflect upon these landmarks as we consider the meaning of the story that the Lord is telling through our lives.

Nations also look back upon landmarks, and Israel especially does so. One of its most important landmarks is the Passover. Starting with the Exodus from Egypt, the annual Passover celebration has been a witness to every key event in Jewish history, including the most important of all, the coming of the Messiah. Passover, both past and present, is a time of earthly and heavenly excitement, especially in the Land of Israel.

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The Story of the Seder Plate

Does your family keep heirlooms? No matter if you’re rich or poor, the chances are that somewhere, hidden in an attic or a drawer, there is an object from another generation that has somehow passed into your family’s possession. It could be a photograph. It could be a book. It could be a candlestick. From time to time, you might look at it and say, “If only it could talk. What a story it could tell!”

The Passover Seder plate is a little like that – for the story it tells is the story of the Jewish people. And the Seder plate is a silent witness of the finished work of Jesus the Messiah.

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The Cost of Deliverance

I never really liked Passover when I was a kid. My parents held a seder (the traditional Passover meal) at our house every year with many close friends and family members, both Jews and Gentiles, everyone laughing and reading and eating – but not bringing any kids for my brother and me to play with. The whole thing lasted for what seemed like days.

One thing that made me feel better about our seders was when my mom told me stories about Passover when she was a little girl. For a time, my mom was brought up in an Orthodox home. Every Passover, the whole community would get together at the rabbi’s house for a seder that would last until after midnight. Long before the end, all the children would be fast asleep on the floor.

As a child, hearing these stories and participating in Passover, I was torn between the excitement of actually being able to sample the wine – that forbidden juice meant only for adults – and the boredom of having to sit through a seder that lasted all night and some of the morning.

However, as the years and seders went on and I actually came close to memorizing the Haggadah (booklet giving the order of the seder) we always used, I started to realize the importance of Passover. I devoted thought to the connections between the sacrifice of the Passover lamb and the sacrifice of Yeshua (Jesus), the Lamb of God. I realized that as God passed over the Israelite homes with blood on their doorposts (Ex. 12:12-13), the blood of Yeshua also saves all those who believe in Him from sin and eternal death (John 11:25-26).

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The Gift of Passover: One Body of Messiah for All Believers

Dear friend in the Messiah,

Shalom from New York City! We are rapidly approaching the Passover/Easter season, and I pray that this will be a great time of spiritual enrichment for you and your family!

During this time of year, I am often asked if I still celebrate the Jewish holidays now that I am a follower of Jesus. Since I grew up in a fairly traditional Jewish home in New York City, this is a deeply personal question for me and for many Jewish believers in Jesus.

The answer is an unequivocal yes! Zhava and I continue to celebrate the Jewish festivals as fulfilled in Yeshua (Jesus) the Jewish Messiah. But beneath the question of our continued commemoration of the feasts of Israel, there is another underlying issue. It is the question of whether a Jewish person who receives Jesus is still Jewish—and if so, whether this makes a Jewish believer different from a Gentile believer. I recently had a dialogue with a Jewish believer on this subject, and I would like to share some of the ideas I wrote to her in a letter. We must begin with Scripture, as this is the basis for the answers to all our spiritual questions.

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The Origin of the Afikomen

The Passover Seder (celebration) contains many poignant traditions, but the eating of the afikomen after the meal is one of the most fascinating customs. The Seder contains 15 separate steps or stages, and the afikomen comes during the twelfth step, which is called tzafun. The Hebrew word tzafun means “hidden” or “concealed,” which accurately conveys the uncertain and peculiar origin of the ritual.

Early in the Seder, the leader lifts up the three pieces of matzah, removes the middle piece and breaks it in half. He then takes the larger half of the broken matzah and sets it aside until later in the ceremony. This broken piece of matzah is the afikomen. In some traditions, the children in the home attempt to steal the afikomen during the meal, while in other traditions the leader hides the afikomen from the children, who then search for it. In both traditions, the leader attempts to redeem the afikomen from the children, often in exchange for a small gift.

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Removal of the Leaven

During Passover, observant Jewish people refrain from eating leaven. This tradition comes from God’s commandment to Israel in the Torah, “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. You shall eat nothing leavened; in all your dwellings you shall eat unleavened bread” (Ex 12:19-20). As Jewish people prepare for Passover, each family removes the leaven from their home. Then, during a ceremony called Bedikat Chametz, every traditional household conducts a final search for leaven throughout the house, gathers it together and burns it, after which the house is kosher for Passover.

Paul uses this Jewish practice as the background to his discussion in 1 Corinthians 5:6-8, “Your glorying is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? 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.”

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Why We Eat Horseradish at Passover

Every year, Jewish people gather in family dining rooms around the world to celebrate the Passover Seder and remember God’s redemption of Israel from slavery in Egypt. The Seder is designed to involve all five senses in the retelling of the Exodus story to the next generation. As we celebrate, we imagine that we too were once slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt, because “if the Eternal God had not brought our forefathers out from Egypt, then even we, our children, and our children’s children might still have been enslaved to Pharaoh in Egypt” (from the traditional Passover service).

We tell our children the story of our deliverance from Egypt so that they can remember the severity of our people’s slavery and the wonder of our redemption. According to Rabbi Gamaliel, who tutored the apostle Paul when he was a student, any father who has not taught his children about the Passover lamb, the unleavened bread, or bitter herbs (typically horseradish), “has not fulfilled his duty.”

Horseradish – normally used as a garnish – completely overpowers the senses when you eat it on a small piece of matzah. According to Jewish tradition, one must eat enough bitter herbs (maror in Hebrew) to bring tears to the eyes. The tears and the bitter herbs remind each Seder participant how the great affliction the Jewish people endured brought tears to their eyes.

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Passover: Redemption Fulfilled

Dear friend in the Messiah,

Shalom and happy Passover! This is a wonderful time of the year for both Jewish people and Christians who know the fulfillment of the Passover through Jesus the Messiah. This year, Your Mission to the Jewish People will be presenting what we call “Messiah in the Passover” at almost a thousand churches during the next few months. Our various Messianic congregations will sponsor Passover Seders (Banquets) as well, and so will many local churches and Jewish ministries.

You can also find out if there is a Messianic Seder being held in your community sometime over the next month. The event could be sponsored by a local Messianic congregation, Jewish ministry or even a local church. As a Jewish believer in Jesus, I can tell you from personal experience that “Messiah in the Passover” is an eye-opening presentation for many Jewish people – and many believers as well!

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Passover: Promise and Fulfillment

The Feast of Passover commemorates God’s redemption of Israel from its 400-year enslavement in Egypt. Over 3,000 years ago, the children of Israel suffered under the severe oppression of the Pharaoh. As the Book of Exodus records, God sent Moses to deliver them from the Egyptians, but Pharaoh refused to let the Israelites leave Egypt for the Promised Land.

Due to the hardness of Pharaoh’s heart, God proceeded to pour out a series of ten plagues upon the Egyptians, culminating in the final plague, the slaying of firstborn sons of Egypt. God protected the Israelite children with the marking of the doorposts and the lintels of their homes with the blood of a lamb (Ex. 12:1-30).

The Jewish people commemorate this event every year through a ceremonial meal known as the Passover Seder. Throughout the world, Jewish families gather to remember the events of the Exodus and to celebrate the faithfulness of the God of Israel. The word “seder,” which in this instance means order or procedure, refers to the retelling of the account through a special book known as the “haggadah” (telling of the story). One of the most important purposes of the Passover Seder is to teach the sacred history of the Jewish people to the children of each emerging Jewish generation.

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