Thur.’s Devo - Unleavened Bread

Read: Exodus 12:14-13:16; Matthew 20:29-21:22; Psalm 25:16-22; Proverbs 6:12-15
Unleavened Bread was to start on the fourteenth and last seven days until the 21st. During those days all the leaven was to be removed from the house. Leaven stands for sin and whoever continued to eat leaven would be cut off from the Israelite community, even if you were a foreigner.
Unleavened Bread started as soon as the Passover lamb was slain and eaten. Passover is a picture of our salvation. We apply the blood of Jesus to the doorposts of our hearts and we enter into a new life with Jesus as our Lord. From that time on we are to be sanctified. Unleavened Bread is a picture of our sanctification. We are to leave our old life and sins and enter into our new creation.
That night, the Israelites killed their lamb, smeared the blood on their doorposts and went to bed. During the night, the death angel passed over and killed the firstborn sons and animals of all the people who did not have the blood on their doorposts. No house was without a death so the mourning was horrendous Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron and told them to leave and take their livestock and everything. Just leave! But he added, “But bless me, too.” The Egyptians also wanted them to leave quickly, so they left with bread before it had risen (since it was to be unleavened) and fled Egypt. They had been there 430 years to the day.
God gave Moses commands for Passover in the future and laws for the first born. From that time, they were to kill all the first born animals and give to the Lord their first born sons. God would redeem their sons but their animals stood for the sons of the Egyptians; they had to die. They could choose to redeem the donkeys with a lamb. If they didn’t want to redeem it they had to break its neck. The donkey is the humble animal that Jesus chose to ride into Jerusalem on.
In Matthew, a crowd who also thought he was going to Jerusalem to be crowned the king, followed Jesus out of Jericho and two of them were blind. They kept crying out for Jesus to have mercy on them. Jesus finally stopped and asked them what they wanted. They wanted to see, so Jesus opened their eyes. They instantly could see and followed him. What a picture of what happens to a person whose spiritual eyes are opened… they follow Jesus.
Jesus sent James and John to get a donkey and its colt. The prophet, Zechariah had prophesied that the King of Zion would come “riding humbly on a donkey and on a colt, the offspring of a beast of burden!” The donkey was a symbol of slavery that God redeemed Israel and its offspring from.
Jesus entered through the eastern gate and was hailed their king at the same time the Pascal lamb was entering the northern gate and hailed their deliverer. To both lambs the people put down their coats and waved palm branches and cried out for deliverance.
Jesus went straight to the temple and cleansed it of the merchants and proclaimed that his house was to be called a house of prayer.
Jesus cursed the fig tree because it did not have fruit as a picture of Israel. She was not ready for her savior when he came either. Lord, may we be fruitful and ready when you return.