Celebrating Passover

Since Passover is quickly coming up, I will give you a general overview of what we, as a family, do for Passover. 

 The best advice in celebrating any of God’s appointed feasts is to look in His Word to see what He tells us about His appointed days – these are His days, not the Jews’ days (Lev 23:2).  It is important to differentiate between God’s commands and man’s traditions.  Some manmade traditions don’t line up with scripture and should be avoided.  There are other traditions that aren’t required, although they can help in understanding the meaning of the holy days or making the celebration more enjoyable.  Our family has many traditions that we have gathered  through the years.

I am not going to get into a discussion of the various calendars and calculations that people use for the timing of Passover.  There are many ideas out there, but I feel it is important not to get hung up on timing so much that it impairs the celebration.  First and most important is celebrating the day and, as God leads, looking into the various calendar calculations after that.  So, if you’re being led to celebrate these days, find the date on the calendar or Google it and just do it.

I love Passover.  It is my favorite holy day.  To really take the time to stop and dwell on the sacrifice of Yeshua and what He has done for me.  To have an object lesson of removing sin (leavening) from my life and replacing it with Yeshua (unleavened bread) each and every day.  To grieve for what I have caused Him and then to rejoice for what He has given me.  What an emotional roller coaster Passover is.  It's awesome the things that I learn while enjoying the gifts that God has given me through His holy days.

Passover preparation in our house usually begins right about now.  Passover is about a month away and I am starting to plan the meal, think of what I need to do to help the children understand, preparing for the service, meditiating on Yeshua's sacrifice and what He has done for me, etc

A couple of weeks before Passover, I go through the cupboards and remove all leavening and leavened products from our food supplies. I put these products in a crate and everyone knows that we want to use these up before Passover, so we waste as little food as possible.  The kids love it because many of these products are “goodies” and they get to eat them more often. 

I was raised thinking that I needed to do spring cleaning in order to properly prepare for unleavened bread.  I would clean for weeks making sure to get every nook and cranny in my house clean.  And, believe it or not, I would always still miss something.  But I found that I would spend so much time focusing on the physical cleaning of my home that I neglected the spiritual cleaning of my temple.

We don’t find any command in the Bible to spend weeks removing leavening from our homes.  It doesn't say to remove the leavening months before, weeks before, or even days before.  It says to do it right at the beginning of the festival. (Ex 12:15)  What a revelation that was to me!  I was following tradition all this time, not doing what the Bible says.  The Bible says to remove the leaven on the first day, so on the day of Passover, we throw the leavening in the trash and give the house a good thorough vacuuming.

One thing the little kids really look forward to as we lead up to the Passover is the "10 plague adventure".  On the 10 days leading up to the Feast, I "do" one of the plagues.  For instance, the morning of the first plague, the kids wake up and find all the water in the house is red.  I put red food coloring in toilets, water bottles, etc.  I got this idea from the book "Family Guide to the Biblical Holidays" by Robin Scarlata.  I also recommend "Celebrate the Feasts" by Martha Zimmerman.  We have found many traditions that we enjoy in these books.

We don’t do a traditional Jewish Seder.  Since the Seder is not commanded and it is very long, we structure our day differently.  We have a worship service in the afternoon.  This way we are commemorating Yeshua’s sacrifice at the time He was sacrificed. We enjoy praise and worship very much, so we incorporate a lot of music into our service.  We start with more solemn songs and they get progressively more joyful throughout the afternoon/evening.  This way, musically, we moved from the solemnity of our Savior’s sacrifice to the joy of our salvation.  The songs are interspersed throughout - 2 or 3 at a time between scripture reading, discussion, foot washing and taking of the bread and wine.  By the end of the evening we are dancing and making a joyful noise. 

We begin by reading Exodus 12 - the story of the first Passover.  After that we sacrifice a lamb (stuffed animal) and brush the blood (strawberry juice which dh squirts under the lamb when the littlest child "kills" it with a butter knife) on the doorpost with a small branch.  This gives the children a little more understanding of what the Israelites went through on that first Passover.  Then we discuss who in the room is a firstborn (we usually have a couple of families celebrating with us) and would be covered by the blood on the doorpost - but Christ's sacrifice covers us all.

The next part of the evening is spent reading about the sacrifice of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ - trying to help the children realize the extent of what He did for us; that He was the final sacrifice - our Passover lamb.

We then move on to the bread, wine and footwashing.  We read the scriptures referring to Christ's last supper with His disciples.  (Matt 26, Mark 14, Luke 22, John 13).  As we read through this, we take the symbols of bread and wine.

Matt 26:26  "And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body."  We each break a piece of unleavened bread and eat it as a symbol of Christ's body and the sacrifice He made for us.  Some people use matzos.  Some make homemade unleavened crackers.  We bake a regular loaf of bread and leave the yeast out.  It tastes a lot better than matzos.  Besides, we figure that's how the bread was in Exodus.  The Bible doesn't say they made crackers, it just said their bread didn't have leavening in it. (Ex 12:39)

Matt 26:27-28  "And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins."  We pour one cup of wine and all drink from the same glass - remembering the blood that Christ shed for us. 

After that we wash each other’s feet, following Christ's example in John 13:3-17.  This is an example of serving one another.  We use a plastic dishpan and wash and dry each other's feet.  The kids really look forward to this part of the service.

After the service, we finalize our food and then we have our Passover dinner.  We plan a very special dinner for the evening - the fanciest meal of the year.  We always pull out our fine china and special flatware, and have wonderful delicious food that we usually don't have any other time of year.

After dinner we enjoy the most celebratory songs of the evening.  We pull out the musical instruments, dance, sing and praise our great God and our Savior.  Then after we've danced away the dinner calories, we have a decadent dessert.  We usually have several desserts, but chocolate covered strawberries are always a requirement ;)

Every day of the feast we eat unleavened bread.  If you want to buy unleavened bread, try matzos, corn tortillas, Ry Krisp or Triscuits.  I usually have some crackers in the house, but I like to make unleavened goodies with the kids.  It gives us a chance to review that leavening pictures the sin in our life.  We must put the sin out and replace it with the righteousness of Yeshua  (unleavened bread).  If we simply put sin out without replacing it with something, there is a void in our life.  We need to be filled with the rightousness of our Savior.

Lev 23:9-14 also talks about the wave sheaf offering.  Again, I’m not going to debate timing of this day.  But it is in the Bible and we do our best to celebrate it with the minimal information we have.  This was the day during the Feast that they made a special offering of the first of the firstfruits.  Yeshua is the first of the firstfruits (I Cor 15:20).  This is the day that we remember he was raised and is alive.  The priest waved the sheaf of the firstfruits before God just as Jesus was raised before the Lord after His crucifixion.

I love the object lessons of Passover/Unleavened Bread.  Leavening pictures sin during this time of year.  It is so difficult to remove all the leavening from our home and not eat leavening.  I always find leavening hidden someplace just as there are always hidden sins in our life.  And we have noticed over the years that since I stay home where (most) of the leavening has been removed, I have a much easier time not eating it accidentally.  However, dh is out in the world where leavening is everywhere and he often slips up and partakes of the leavening (sin) without even thinking about it ... til later.

 I'd love to hear how others celebrate God's appointed times.