The Wide Path Dropout Mama
The Wide Path Dropout Mama
Passover
Join your host, Ginny as we talk about the parallels of the very first Passover in Egypt and the Passover/ crucifixion of Yeshua that has saved us all. I will go through some of the Jewish traditions of Passover as well as my own family’s traditions and how we celebrate this feast day and encourage you to create your own Passover traditions with your family! For the matzah recipe please email me at widepathdropoutmama@gmail.com
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Hi, my name's Jenny. I'm a wife, a mom, an entrepreneur and, most importantly, a disciple of Yeshua Jesus. I've been a Christian for over a decade, having studied the Bible for at least that long or better. Until about three years ago, I thought I knew Jesus pretty well. Then my world was rocked. I started studying the Bible from its Middle Eastern context and culture, and what I found has completely changed my and my family's lives forever. Join me as I share all that I've learned about our Jewish Messiah and listen to my conversations with other moms on their own journey with Jesus, as we discuss the practical ways that we walk out our faith in our everyday lives. This is a conversation for the Christian mom who wants more. This is the Wide Path Dropout Mama podcast. Hey everybody, welcome back to the Wide Path Dropout Mama podcast. It has been a hot minute and I am so happy to be back here with y'all. Thank you so much for joining me.
Speaker 1:Today's episode is going to be a timely episode, as we have the very first biblical feast day of the year coming up in April. So at sundown on Monday April, the 22nd Passover begins, and in this episode I am going to lay out some of the parallels between the first Passover in Egypt and the Passover where our Passover lamb, yeshua, gave himself up for our sins. So I'm going to run through some of those parallels, and then I'm going to teach you some of the traditions that our Jewish brethren do when they are celebrating their Passovers, and then I'm going to run you through the way that my family and I celebrate our Passover. So it's going to be a great one today. I'm so excited to share this stuff with you and, most importantly, my heart is to emphatically encourage you to celebrate this Passover feast with your family. If you've never done this before, I really encourage you to pray about it, to think about it, to look into it and to seek the Lord about this, because you know it's a commandment. He clearly states in his word that we are commanded to observe these festivals in remembrance of the things that he has done for us. And if you consider yourself grafted into the Commonwealth of Israel in which case I know I do then these people in the Bible, these Israelites that were rescued out of Egypt Bible, these Israelites that were rescued out of Egypt, they are our ancestors, and so we would be sharing the story of our history, of our ancestors and their history and what the Lord has done for them and brought them out of and into. And so when we read the story of the Passover, when we share it with our family every year as we celebrate, we are passing on that family history, we're passing on the history of our ancestors and what they went through, and so this episode, I am going to teach you a little bit about that and, again, just encourage you to celebrate on your own. So, without further ado, let's get into our episode for today.
Speaker 1:Okay, so let's jump right in to these notes that I have. We are going to start in Exodus 12. This is where the story of the first Passover begins, and the first thing that we are going to talk about is how Yahweh establishes his set-apart calendar. Before he tells them about the Passover, before he gives them the instructions about the Lamb instructions about the lamb he tells them hey, listen, this is now going to be the first day of the first month of this year for you. He tells them before he even takes them out of Egypt. He is already setting them apart from the entire world. He is already putting them on a separate calendar, a holy calendar, a set apart calendar unto himself. So let's read in Exodus 12, verse 1. Yahweh said to Moses and Aaron in Egypt this month is to be for you the first month, the first month of your year. So you see that he is already setting them apart by putting them on to a new calendar.
Speaker 1:Let's continue on in getting into these parallels between the first Passover and Yeshua and his crucifixion. Tell the whole community of Israel that on the 10th day of this month, each man is to take a lamb for his family, one for each household. If any household is too small for a whole lamb, they must share one with their nearest neighbor. So here in the beginning, we're already seeing a parallel. I'm seeing a parallel here. Each family was to take in a lamb for themselves. As each family was commanded to take a lamb. We are each given the opportunity to take Jesus as our Lord and Savior Right. So we each have the choice of taking our Passover lamb and the blood that was shed for our sins. We have an opportunity to take that unto ourselves, just like the Israelites had the opportunity to take a lamb into their home. So let's continue reading about the requirements of this lamb In 12, verse 5, we're going to pick up there lamb.
Speaker 1:In 12, verse 5, we're going to pick up there. The animals you choose must be year old males, without defect, and you may take them from the sheep or the goats. So we already see some more similarities there. Right, so the lamb was to be a year old male. A year old male lamb would have been in its prime. We know that Yeshua was 33 years old. He was in the prime of his life when he gave himself up. Let's continue reading about the lamb requirements and see some more similarities.
Speaker 1:Picking up in 12, at verse 6, take care of them until the 14th day of the month, when all the people of the community of Israel must slaughter them at twilight. Okay, let's look at that. He said on the 10th day of this month you are to take a lamb into your home. On the 14th day you are to slaughter them. When Jesus rode into Jerusalem on the donkey, that was four days before he would give himself up on the cross. So as he's riding in, you have that similarity, you have that parallel. They had to keep the lamb four days. Jesus came into Jerusalem four days before his crucifixion, to Jerusalem four days before his crucifixion. Another thing that is super cool is if you look on the back of a donkey, the way that their hair is colored, there is a shape of a cross on the back of the donkey. So when Jesus was riding into Jerusalem, when he looked down, he was seeing a picture, a shadow, of what he was going to do for us. I thought that was pretty cool.
Speaker 1:Let's continue reading in Exodus, in verse 12, we are going to pick up at chapter 12. I'm sorry, pick up at verse 7. They are to take some of the blood and put it on the sides and tops of the door frames of the houses where they it, on the sides and tops of the door frames of the houses where they eat the lambs. So they were to take some of the blood and put it on the sides and the tops of the door frames. They were to take a hyssop branch and dip it and then put it on their doorposts. So you see already another parallel, another shadow, as they were putting that blood on the top and the sides and I'm sure some of that blood would fall down at the threshold of their door. What does that paint a picture of? It paints another picture of the cross, doesn't it? So we're already seeing so many parallels, so many shadows to our Messiah in that first Passover. Let's continue on.
Speaker 1:I want to jump down to chapter 12, verse 12. It says On the same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn, both men and animals, and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am Yahweh. The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are, and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt.
Speaker 1:We already see some more similarities here, some more parallels. When Yahweh sees that blood, when he sees the blood of that sacrificial lamb, he's going to pass over his judgment. In the same way Yeshua died, his blood covers us. Everybody who chooses to come into covenant, everybody who chose to put the blood on the doorposts and go into that home and shut it behind them and stay in, was coming into the Lord's protection. They were protected from the judgment. In the same way, we all have the choice to apply the blood of the Messiah to our lives and choose to go into covenant with him, and in doing so we are being saved from death, from the eternal death that we are surely going to have if we do not accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior.
Speaker 1:So let's move on to some of the other parallels. Now we are going to get into the part where he commands the unleavened bread. So Passover is. Passover happens on the evening of the 14th day, but as you go into the next day, that begins your next feast day of the Lord, which is the Feast of Unleavened Bread. So that is going to. The Passover is going to kick off this seven day feast period where we have three feast days in the course of one week. We have Passover on the 14th at sundown. The next day begins the Feast of Unleavened Bread. This is where the matzah comes in. This is where the unleavened bread comes in.
Speaker 1:So let's pick up in Exodus 12, on verse 14. It says this is a day you are to commemorate for the generations to come. You shall celebrate it as a festival to Yahweh, a lasting ordinance. For seven days you are to eat bread made without yeast. On the first day, remove the yeast from your houses, for whoever eats anything with yeast in it from the first day through the seventh must be cut off from Israel. On the first day, hold a sacred assembly, and another one on the seventh day. Do no work at all on these days except to prepare food for everyone to eat. This is all you may do. Celebrate the feast of unleavened bread, because it was on this very day that I brought your divisions out of Egypt. Celebrate this day as a lasting ordinance for the generations to come. Come In the first month you are to eat bread made without yeast, from the evening of the 14th day until the evening of the 21st day. For seven days, no yeast is to be found in your houses, and whoever eats anything with yeast in it must be cut off from the community of Israel, whether he is an alien or native born. Eat nothing made with yeast, wherever you live.
Speaker 1:Let's take a look at that unleavened bread and see how it parallels to our Messiah. That unleavened bread is called matzah in Hebrew. That matzah if you've ever seen matzah, it is a cracker. It's like a cake. It's flat. They didn't have time to let dough rise. And also matzah, that leaven, represents sin, so they were to not have any sin with them when they were being carried out of Egypt. That represents our Messiah having no sin. And if you look at the matzah cracker, the matzah has stripes. The matzah is pierced, it is burnt, it is bruised. It is a shadow of what our Messiah endured before he went on the cross. And in the cross he was whipped. That's where you get those stripes. He was pierced. He was pierced in the side, he was bruised, he was battered, he was beaten. That matzah, it is a picture, it is a shadow of what our Messiah went through on the cross. So let's move on to some more of these parallels.
Speaker 1:Let's go back to the four days. The Israelites were commanded to take that lamb and keep it in their homes for four days. So on the 10th day they were to take that lamb. On the 14th day they were to slaughter that lamb. At twilight, when Jesus was riding in to Jerusalem on that donkey. That was four days before he would be crucified. So you see the similarity or the parallel there they also while he was riding on that donkey. On the back of a donkey, there is the way that their hair is colored, there is a picture of a cross. So, as our precious Messiah is riding in on that donkey into Jerusalem, as he would have looked down, he would have seen a picture of what he was about to endure for us, for all of us, the people who loved him and the people who could care less about him. He did it for all of us. So I thought that was kind of cool that the donkey itself even declares what our Messiah has done for us.
Speaker 1:Moving on to when the lambs were to be slaughtered, jesus was slaughtered at the exact time that in Israel, in Jerusalem, they were slaughtering their Passover lamb. He was slaughtered at that exact moment, at twilight he was. He gave his spirit up at that exact moment that the lambs were being sacrificed. So you see, that parallels perfectly with what our Messiah did and how he gave himself up on that fourth day. Another parallel is the broken bones In Exodus 12, verse 47, yahweh says. In Exodus 12, verse 47, yahweh says do not break any of the bones. In the same way, there were no broken bones on Yeshua when he gave himself up on the cross. They would usually break the legs of the person being crucified to speed up the process of death, but they did not have to do that, and that was to fulfill scripture. That was to fulfill prophecy in the correct way, that he would have no broken bones. So he absolutely fulfilled that in that way.
Speaker 1:We could go on and on about so many different parallels. There are too many to go through on this podcast and I want to leave some of that to you because it's really fun to look at these types and these shadows throughout our Bibles in the front of the book, going to the back of the book. There are so many parallels, so many types and so many shadows that you can find that points to Messiah from the Old Testament. It's so much fun to look into. But I am going to let you go on your own rabbit trail and find some of the other parallels and similarities, but for now I want to get into some of the Jewish culture surrounding Passover. So in today's culture, jewish brethren do a Passover Seder. Seder simply means order and what they do is they go through this process of retelling this story, just like the scriptures say. He commands us to tell this story over and over throughout all of our generations, generations, and Jewish people have a Haggadah. A Haggadah is a booklet or a script that Jewish people use to go through the liturgy of the Passover Seder ceremony, so they would use that to tell the story of the Passover.
Speaker 1:I want to read you a blurb out of the book that I talk about so much on this podcast. It's called Finding the Afikomen Encountering Jesus in the Spring Feast. It's by Christy Eisner. She is a woman who married a Jewish man and in doing so she became extremely close with her Jewish mother-in-law and she started learning about the Jewish culture. And what she found was is that Jesus is in every bit of this. So I want to read this part to you because I think that it helps understand some of this. Okay, in chapter 5, page 144.
Speaker 1:In this book she says Seder means order, as in the order of a service. So, as the order of the evening unfolds, all the participants are part of a play that is rehearsed yearly to remember what God has done for them. The way the feast has been kept yearly for thousands of years is to tell the story of the exodus out of Egypt at the family Seder table. The table is beautifully set with a white linen tablecloth, fine china candles, flowers and all the elements needed to walk through the story of the journey out of bondage to freedom. Hebrew learning is with the senses. Consequently, each step of deliverance is experienced not only by telling the story, but also by eating special foods symbolic of their bondage and drinking four cups of wine throughout the evening. Wine is used because it represents the joy of the Holy Spirit that increases as the Seder progresses, so that by the end of the evening, freedom is felt. The script for the evening is called a Haggadah, and each person at the table walks through the steps of their own deliverance as theyance, as though they were there. She mentions the Seder.
Speaker 1:I want to go over what the Seder is. A Seder, like I said before, just simply means the order of the evening. They had special foods that they included in a Seder, and each food represented a specific aspect of their slavery in Egypt and their subsequent freedom from slavery. So, for example, your typical Seder would have a lamb shank to represent the Passover lamb. You'd have bitter herbs to represent the bitterness of slavery. To represent the bitterness of slavery, you had haroset, which was like an applesauce mixture with wine, nuts and apple to represent the mortar that they used to build the buildings in Egypt.
Speaker 1:There were also three symbolic pieces of matzah, and if you look up this online or anywhere, you're going to find so many different, varying answers as to what these three pieces of matzah represent. Now, remember, most Jewish people are Orthodox Jews, meaning they only look at the first five books of the Bible. They only look at the Torah. They do not believe that Jesus is their Messiah. So when we look at the matzah, when I see three pieces of matzah, I see the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. When they see the matzah, it represents something different to them and depending on where you look at online, you're gonna get different answers as to what those three pieces of matzah represent. But what they would do is the middle piece of matzah would be wrapped in white linen. It would be broken and it would be hidden for the children to find. Already, you should be seeing some similarities there. It was wrapped in linen. This pierced piece of matzah, this bruised, broken piece of matzah, completely represents Yeshua the Messiah. He was broken for our sins. He was wrapped in linen and he was placed in a tomb. Then the children would go find it and it was called the Afikomen, which in Hebrew means the satisfaction. So the kids were to go find that broken piece of matzah. They were going to find Messiah. They were going to find the satisfaction of our lives and that is Yeshua. So I thought that was so cool. They celebrate Jesus and they don't even know it. We really need to be praying for them to have their eyes opened, because the only reason that their eyes have been shut is so us Gentiles could come into the commonwealth of Israel.
Speaker 1:Let's move on to more of the tradition. As I read in that little excerpt of Christie's book Finding the Efico Men, she talked about those four cups of redemption. Those four cups of redemption come from Exodus 6, verses 6 through 7. So let's go ahead and read that. Verses six through seven. So let's go ahead and read that. Therefore, say to the Israelites I am Yahweh and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment. I will take you as my own people and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am Yahweh, your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. So those four cups of redemption are coinciding with those four I will statements from the Lord in that set of scripture that we just read. So with each I will statement. They were to drink a glass of wine, so they were to have four glasses of wine throughout the Seder of the evening. And that would coincide with each of those I will statements. And if you get this book Finding the Ophiuchus, she breaks down each of those I will statements in each of those cups of redemption and what they mean. I'm not going to go into those on this podcast, but I really encourage you to dive into those. And I will tell you that all of these Seders they're going to vary from family to family, so every Seder is not going to look the same, and a lot of the Seders don't even go into these four cups of redemption. But I thought that they were so powerful that I really wanted to mention them here in this podcast. And that is going to do it for the tradition, the Jewish tradition of Passover.
Speaker 1:Now I'm going to get into how my family and I celebrate Passover. So when I first learned about this, it was back in 2020, towards the end of 2020. So all of the feast days had been done that year. I started my first cycle of feast days in the year 2021. And when I celebrated our first Passover, it was our family, with two other families. We went to my friend's house. We had a beautiful meal together that coincided with what the scriptures say to eat and we read scripture of the Exodus story. We had palm frond branches, we had our kids waving the palm branches and it was really a beautiful time. As the year progresses and as the years progress and as you move through the cycles of the feast days, you learn more every year, and so each year it's it's looked different for our family and also you go through different seasons in life.
Speaker 1:That year was, you know it was after covid. It was really rough and I didn't know much about it. So we did kind of like the bare minimum. And the following year, I think I went to we really did do everything per the scripture. So we removed all of the leaven out of our house, we made it fun for the kids, we included them in it and we're like, okay, let's find all the food that has leaven and let's get it out. And we had, we had a camper in the back of our property and we just took everything and we just put it in the camper back there, so it was out of the house.
Speaker 1:Now the word says that we are supposed you read that with me. You heard what he said you have to get the leaven out or you will be cut off. Now, since Yeshua has come, the Lord is. He is not so much interested in you keeping the feast day to the letter of the book as he is interested in your heart towards keeping this feast day. He wants your heart. He does not want these meaningless actions done, so he wants your heart to be focused on Jesus and focused on him in this feast day. So I encourage you to just pray and ask the Lord how do you want me to celebrate this? What are you leading me to do? It may be just as simple as you getting out your fine china and you having a meal and just reading the story of the Passover with your family. That, to him, would be better than you legalistically carrying out all the rules that he set out in the scriptures with no meaning behind it, with no feeling put into it.
Speaker 1:If you've watched the Chosen at all, there is a particular episode and a particular scene that I am reminded of when I go to celebrate the Sabbath and when I go to celebrate the feast days. I want to think that it's the second episode in the first season and it's the Sabbath episode, and if I hope I'm not spoiling it for you. But if you haven't watched it, please go watch it and see. But in this episode it's Mary Magdalene. He has saved her from the wretchedness that she was in and she is going to be celebrating the Sabbath or the Shabbat for the first time in years and she has some people over in her little humble abode. And who knocks on the door? But Yeshua himself. And she is kind of embarrassed himself. And she is kind of embarrassed. She's like I, you know, lord, will you do this? Because I, I don't want to do this, I'm going to mess it up. And he says I could tear up just thinking about it. He says no, this is your home. I want you to do it.
Speaker 1:And think of how he must have felt. That's his daughter that's choosing to honor his Sabbath and it just warms his heart to see his child doing her best to honor his word. And when we come to him that way and we are earnestly seeking to honor his word and to celebrate his feast days that he's commanded, he is not looking for perfection, he is looking for a heart that wants to worship him. So when you go to celebrate your first feast day, or even your 15th feast day, just remember that he's after your heart in this more than anything right. He doesn't want it to be legalistic, he wants it to be heartfelt, a heart that's full of worship for him. So I'll tell you a little bit about how we do the feast days in our house. So, as I mentioned before, and when you read the scriptures, you'll see that the two first feast days are clumped right together in that first weekend, but it's a period of seven days. So Passover begins at sundown on the 14th. The next day we're moving into the Feast of Unleavened Bread and we're going to be getting the leaven out, probably the day before Passover, and you can make that a fun activity for the kids and you to get the leaven out.
Speaker 1:But what I always do when I was growing up, my mom used to make us these baskets for whatever holiday it was. She would. We would wake up that morning and she would have these cute little baskets with all these gifts that were personalized to us and also to whatever holiday it was. So I love to take that tradition on because I loved it so much, and I have started a new tradition with the feast days where, right before Passover, I like to make my kids a spring basket. So when they get up, I have all these cute little gifts and a lot of them pertain to the things that they're interested in in the season that we're in. So, for instance, I might put some goggles in there for the upcoming summertime spring and summer. I might put some gift cards into whatever the kids are into, and I like to incorporate some of the biblical aspects of the feast days too, so I might get them a book about Passover or something like that. But that just makes it fun for the kids and it signifies like oh, this is time for this feast day. This is what we do every year. And another cool thing that we like to do because you are commanded to eat this unleavened bread.
Speaker 1:I have an amazing matzah recipe that I make every year. They are so good. It looks like little tortillas and it's a labor of love, because when you're making a lot of them it takes a little bit, but it is so good. My mom makes this amazing flavored olive oil, so I'll take the flavored olive oil and I use it to make our matzah and if any of you are interested in that recipe, use it to make our matzah and if any of you are interested in that recipe. I have my email in the show notes. If you just shoot me an email I'll be happy to send you that recipe.
Speaker 1:But we make just this special kind of matzah and we only make it at that time of year because we want it, that time of year, to be special and set apart, just like we are to be set apart, right? So that's what we do when we celebrate our Passover and it's looked different every year. We've never done a Seder, so I've never been to a Seder. Actually, confession. I'm going to my first Seder this year and I'm really excited about it. But I am going to have my own separate Passover celebration with just my family and whoever in my friends wants to come, and we will go through scripture, we'll tell the story of the Passover, we'll go through the foods and what they mean and we'll just talk about the Lord and we'll talk about the Passover story and it really is just that simple.
Speaker 1:We love it when those feast days roll around because they're just. They're times of joy and celebration and feasting and being with family. Just how we have our man-made holidays that everybody loves, these feast days are supposed to be just as joyous and celebratory as some of the man-made holidays that we have kind of replaced the feast days with in some cases. And there is so much history behind the feast days and some of these man-made holidays that have replaced the feast days and I'm not going to get into all that, but it is a big rabbit trail. If you want to go down looking into the history of the Roman Catholic Church and some of the things that they changed and the way that they Christianized some of those pagan holidays, it's very interesting to go back and look into that. But I'll leave that to you.
Speaker 1:But for now I just want to encourage you and your family to begin to celebrate these feast days, to begin to align yourself on Yahweh's calendar, because when you get on this calendar I've said it before in the feast day episode that I did you start to see these patterns and, as the scriptures say, there is nothing new under the sun. So what you see going on in the world today, it is nothing new, even though it looks new to us. It has happened before in the days of Noah, in the days of Lot. There is nothing new under the sun. And when you align yourself with the calendar of Yahweh, you start seeing these patterns, you start seeing the way that the Lord likes to communicate with us. So I mentioned in Genesis 1.14, it says that he laid the sun, the moon and the stars for seasons and for appointed times. So that word season is moedim or moed. That means appointed times, signs, signals. He laid these appointments to meet with him so he could communicate with us so universally, no matter who you are, where you are. Every tribe, nation and tongue knows the sun, the moon and the stars. So we can all align ourselves to that. We can all understand the sun and the moon and the stars and when we get on the calendar we can really see how God starts to communicate with us. So that's going to wrap it up for today's episode.
Speaker 1:I hope that this encourages you to go and celebrate Passover for yourselves with you and your family. There are so many resources that you can look up to help you in that. Searching and looking into it. Jim Staley and Passion for Truth Ministries is a wonderful place to learn about the history. Passion for Truth Ministries is a wonderful place to learn about the history.
Speaker 1:He also has a pamphlet that lays out the feast days and I believe that he has a Passover Seder that he's going to be doing. If you're interested in that. Also, the book that I mentioned always Finding the Efico Men Encountering Jesus in the Spring Feast that is a great resource. There are other resources that you can look up some of this information, but again, seek the Lord, pray about it, tell him that you want to know him in this way, tell him that you want to worship him in this way and ask him to lead you in how he wants your family to celebrate this Passover. And, as I always say at the end of every episode, may Yahweh bless you and keep you in his perfect peace. And until next time I pray blessings and peace over you and your family, and we'll see you on the next episode of the Wide Path Dropout Mama podcast. Thank you.