PREPARING FOR THE LORD'S PESACH CELEBRATION 2025

[Rebbe]

PREPARING FOR THE LORD'S PESACH CELEBRATION 2025
Dr Les Aron Gosling, Messianic Jewish Rebbe

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The seven consecutive days of the Passover season during which unleavened bread is eaten, and throughout which period we abstain from eating anything which contains leaven or leavening agents, picture our deliverance from sin. Originally, these days were to be kept by Israel as a MEMORIAL of deliverance from the slavery of Egyptian captivity (Ex 12.14). Having our sins forgiven by Mashiach's shed blood (pictured by the slaughter of the unblemished lamb on the 14th day of the first month Abib, or Nisan) the seven days following the Passover (and recall that "7" is God's number of completeness) show us that we mustn't STOP CONTINUALLY at the cross -- remaining forgiven but with no real life of spiritual accomplishment and ongoing positive discipleship -- without any growth at all into the image of Messiah! Certainly WE MUST LEAVE SIN BEHIND, and grow into God the Father's expectations for each of us. And that is what the eating of unleavened bread for seven days is all about. Leaven is often a type of sin (1 Cor 5.8), puffing human nature up with boastful arrogance. Being unleavened is a spiritual condition which reflects the nature of humility which Yeshua the Messiah possessed.

Eating unleavened bread during the seven day festival reminds us continually that there is not to be any indication of an internal "puffed up leavening agent" causing problems in ourselves in relation to God or in our service toward others. So, WHY STOP at the 14th -- at the Passover? For, the Passover BEGINS the plan of God for the human race as revealed by the annual festivals of Israel.

First comes Passover, followed immediately by the days of eating matzos. Shavuot (Pentecost) then arrives 50 days later, followed in the seventh Hebrew month (September) with a series of festivals: Yom Teruah, Yom Kippurim, Sukkot, and finally the Last Great Day (Lev 23). The festivals all speak of God's salvific intentions for the human race, and indeed for the entirety of the universe. In "Constantinian churchianity" the Passover COMPLETES God's purposes for sin and humanity. In Messianic Jewish theology the Passover BEGINS or INITIATES God's great plan of salvation and His purposes for sin and humanity.

WHAT PASSOVER PORTRAYS

Passover portrays the EXTRINSIC act of Mashiach's sacrifice for our sins. It pictures the crucified, dead Messiah. What Mashiach accomplished on the bloodied tree of Golgoleth is what has reconciled God to us. Our appreciative acceptance of Yeshua's shed blood for the remission of sins begins our conciliation to God. The Ruach HaKodesh now lives in each of us and is accomplishing, with our submissive agency, an INTRINSIC work of changing us into the image of God's firstborn Son.

This is why the Days of Unleavened Bread are so important to those who name the Name of Christ. This is also why the Days of Unleavened Bread are attached to the Passover Seder. The observance of Pesach and the subsequent Days of Unleavened Bread are inseparable. They represent two distinct festivals. By the time of the apostles the Passover was also celebrated with unleavened bread as we shall shortly see. And even today the Days of Unleavened Bread are referred to generally as "Passover" by the Jews. But while these seven days of unleavening picture us coming out of Egypt in the Messianic view they portray our coming out of SIN. They picture the life and the work of the risen Messiah IN US -- gradually cleansing us of sin by the "washing of the Word" or "washing our clothes" -- and delivering us from its power and grip over our lives. Our past sins are forgiven by Messiah as a result of our pardon. All sin -- past, present and future sins -- are ignored in a spiritual sense by God the Father as a consequence of our justification. The EXTRINSIC Work of Messiah in his dying on the bloodied tree of Golgoleth SAVED US from sin. His LIFE lived over again in each of us INTRINSICALLY by the power of the holy Spirit SAVES US from sin. Our life is ongoing and the work of the Ruach HaKodesh is also ongoing.

To what extent do we put away sin? Partially (by recognising the significance of Passover) or completely (by realising what the meaning is of eating matzos for seven days)? Again, these two festivals cannot legitimately be divorced from one another. They are linked together by the Spirit of God.

WHY MOST CHRISTIANS REMAIN IGNORANT OF THE PURPOSES OF GOD

Churches of Christendom understand the salvific significance of the Passover celebration to the degree that they observe the Eucharist, or Mass, or Lord's Supper, or Communion -- and to that extent only. They teach that we must "accept" Messiah but generally have no real growth in understanding God's GRACE, or themselves, or their fellow man for whom Messiah also died. They fail to understand the REAL depth of the salvific plan, salvific purpose and salvific intent of God for the salvific future of this planet. They sometimes think they are forgiven and that they bear no further sense of responsibility for their lives from that point onward. Once they have "accepted Christ" they are ready to go to heaven at a moment's notice. Some continue to live in sin. Some set themselves to destroy the reputation of fellow believers by setting up so-called "Heresy Watch" programs. Some tear down theologies without replacing those theologies with something far better. Some persecute others with the Gospel of Grace, making it a Gospel of merits or works in demanding that the world turn to Messiah "NOW." In their theology, tomorrow might be too late. "Today is THE day of salvation." Yet in both Isaiah and Paul it is written in the original Hebrew and Greek respectively, "Today is A day of salvation." That God has other periods set aside for salvific purposes remains unknown to them. They fail to see that even in "The Judgment Period of the Great White Throne" salvation is plainly and evidently available to the dead, for the "Scroll of Life" is opened at that time along with many other mysterious scrolls.

BE AN "OVERCOMER"

In Jewish homes all leaven is sought out to be eliminated prior to the festival. Children are taught to make this seeking out of leaven a fun game in which crumbs or leavening agents are discovered and dealt with by removing its presence from the family home and environs. Even the vaccuum cleaner bag is emptied and scrubbed clean of all traces of leaven which may be caught in the accumulated dust. If during the Unleavened Bread period any leavened bread or leavening agent is discovered it is dealt with immediately -- and thus our attitude must be similar with any hidden sins that suddenly become exposed to the light of Yeshua's penetrating stare repented of and removed from our character immediately (which is oftentimes easier said than done). Things we may have thought were overcome may suddenly reappear and we must deal with those sins or character deficiencies instantly. After all, ordinary bread is composed of leavening agents which ferment causing decomposition, a dissolution of unity. Matzos speaks loudly of purity and an unchanged duration and durability. This is how we all need to become. Seven complete days of eating matzos can only symbolise converted man's entire life of overcoming.

As Israel hurriedly escapes Egypt (Ex 14.5-7) they are pursued by the Egyptian armies. While in Egypt Pharaoh's slaves were weak, powerless and helpless under their cruel taskmasters. But when Israel took the blood of the lamb and dabbed it on the door posts and lintel of their dwellings their God acted and Pharaoh released his captives. So it is when we are first converted there is usually great exultation and rejoicing and elation -- we are "up in the clouds" with joy and happiness. Nothing could ever shake our confidence in God. We are new born babes in Christ. Then suddenly we find ourselves pursued by DEMONS. Quite often we as inexperienced Messianic believers give up and quit. But what we need to DO is to recall the shed BLOOD and the mighty RESURRECTION POWER of Our Lord Yeshua haMashiach. We need to STAND UP with the full armour of God and face the enemy eyeball to eyeball. We are assured the enemy will turn tail and run! See Num 33.3.

THE PASSOVER LAMB

There was no Passover lamb ever sacrificed in OT times for SIN as a SIN OFFERING! Popular Christian teaching notwithstanding the Passover lamb was not a sin-offering and there is no hint of it being treated this way anywhere in the pages of the Bible. Passover lambs were not sin offerings because they were eaten by the whole family! The lambs, goats and bulls in the evening and morning sacrifices of the other 364 days of the year were sacrifices for sin offered by Israelites to their God, but the Passover lamb was God's Self-sacrificial giving of Himself to the world as a substitute for a lost humanity. There were not many lambs GIVEN by God to Israel. There was only ONE Passover Lamb from God. Its ONENESS speaks of its UNIQUENESS and its SOLE PRECIOUS SINGULARITY. The Passover was certainly a joyous feast of redemption of Israel from Egypt, and it should be a feast to us in the same unleavened spirit of real joy in our Christian walk and day by day experience.

Again, the Passover Lamb was never "offered" by man to God, and it was never "offered" from God to man. It was a special lamb GIVEN by God.

THE WAVE-SHEAF

The wave-sheaf or omer originally signified deliverance from the season of winter. It finds its origin in the wilderness sojourn as Israel came out of darkness into the light of Canaan, the Promised Land. The entire world in the second millennium BCE had been plunged into a literal darkness and wintry ice-age during earth's cataclysmic involvement with a stellar body which we have discussed in other literature. Certainly, Israel escaped over the Red Sea when large portions of it became an ice bridge. Speculation that it was a massive comet which caused the magnitude of devastation, and that it eventually was caught in a peculiar orbit around our Sun becoming the planet Venus is highly likely.
 
On the Sunday morning of the festival of Unleavened Bread the High Priest would take a small crop of barley and wave it before the Lord of the heavens and the earth as a thankful gesture for a successful harvest which would be forthcoming (Lev 23.9-14). This sheaf was called the "firstfruits" of the harvest. So Messiah was the firstfruits of the plan of harvest-redemption for humankind becoming the firstborn of God by a resurrection from the dead as SPIRIT. In the Scroll of the Apocalypse the Lord Yeshua is referred to as the firstborn from the dead (Rev 1.5). Spiritual resurrection -- or RESURRECTION INTO SPIRIT -- is a type of birth. It is being born of God ("born from above") in a literal, not merely spiritual, sense.

In the time of Messiah the Jewish authorities in Jerusalem always observed the state of the crops to see if they were ripe. If they had a severe long winter the officials would add an extra month to the previous year to give the crops more time in which to mature. This was essential because the priests had to select sheaves of grain (= firstfruits) to offer up on the Sunday morning during the unleavened bread period but if the barley wasn't mature enough by early March they postponed the beginning of the first month Aviv (Nisan) until near the middle of April. This was to be done year by year. And the barley had to be ripe enough or the year couldn't begin! The Jews lost all knowledge of the sacred calendar after the destruction and expulsion from the holy Land that came as a result of the Jewish War (66-73 CE and especially after the revolution of 132-135 CE).

In our own day, the Rebbe is encouraging observance of the Karaite calendar which is as close as one can get to determining the beginning of the sacred year. The present Jewish calendar is pure guesswork (as brilliant as it is) and it originated about 360 CE with Hillel II.

THE FESTIVAL THEOLOGY OF THE APOSTLE JOHN

Our concern is with the Passover celebration and the immediate following festival called the Days of Unleavened Bread. We need to gain an overview of the NT records and come to terms with certain and specific incidents of tension which exist between the records themselves which most Christians and Messianic believers consider to be straightforward on the matter of the Passover celebration concerning which Messiah partook. We will begin not with the Synoptic Gospels but with John's Gospel.

The apostle John adopts an interesting fabric for his life of Yeshua. He takes a broad chronological pattern of Israel's feasts -- followed by a sign -- and then he adds a discourse. This is John's literary procedure from start to finish. John writes, not a history of Yeshua, but a life of Yeshua set against the liturgical calendar (this will be covered by other literature). When we examine the discourse we are fed information relative to the meaning of the feast (whatever feast it may be in Israel's calendrical system) in the mind of John.

Certainly many biblical scholars have noted that John's Gospel of Yeshua (it cannot be considered in any way a biography) is unique in many respects when compared with the Synoptics (Matthew, Mark and Luke). For one thing, well over 90% of the book contains information, details and events not even given a scant reference or passing mention in the other Gospel accounts. As with his book of Revelation, John wrote his Gospel quite early but it was later revised and polished by him in his later years long beyond the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE.

It is clear his readership is not essentially Jewish, but Gentile. This is a fact well attested from the many references John makes in describing details of the Temple, aspects of the Jerusalem environs, the customs of the day, the topography of the area -- facts of which all Jews would have knowledge.

But his flair for mentioning festivals, followed by a sign by Yeshua, plus the additional feature of a discourse relating to the feast in question show a keenness by John to create a Messianic liturgy based on, but superseding, the normal Jewish model. John is using pure Midrash! After all, the appropriate Jewish liturgical readings in the synagogue for Passover time dealt with the gift of manna in the wilderness (Ex 16 & Num 11), and the overthrow of the Egyptian Pharaoh in the Red Sea (Ex 15), with accompanied appropriate prophetic utterances which provided a comment on those events (eg., Isa 54-55).

Now, with these facts in mind, let's take a look at John 6. In this section concerning a Passover celebration John focuses on the miraculous feeding of the multitudes (which the Torah expresses God as accomplishing during the wilderness wanderings), Yeshua walking on the water (which the Torah expresses in the form of the Red Sea deliverance over a bridge of ice), followed by the bread of life lecture (Israel was fed by heavenly manna). This is not all. In John 2.13 as a Passover approaches John portrays Yeshua as showing the eclipse of the Temple worship which has become grossly defiled by the practices of a corrupt priesthood. In John's view a new arrangement is coming, a new order of things. There is to be an exodus from the then-corrupt Temple of Judaism to the holy Temple of Mashiach's body. This is clearly visualised. On the Passover and during the Days of Unleavened Bread we have the record that the Messiah knows what is in our hearts and the inference by John is that we are not measuring up to God's standard of thought or deed. Again, by perusing the passages in John's Gospel (namely Jn 4. 45; 5.1; 6.4; 7.2; 10.22; 11.55; and 20.22ff) we are confronted with the creation of an entirely new liturgy. Looking up a concordance under the location of the "I AM" sayings of Mashiach proves a profitable venture in John's presentation of the Yeshua-fulfilment of each of the feasts.

When we come to John 7 we may not at first fully appreciate what feasts John is relating. There appears to be some ambiguity in the text (as if it has been subject to some scribal interference). Therefore allow us to clarify John's position. In Jn 7.2 we are introduced to the arrival of the feast of Tabernacles. But in the Greek John is telling us plainly that Tabernacles was approaching, it had not yet arrived. The "feast" or "feast time" or "feast period" basically meant that September (Tishri), the seventh festival month, was approaching. This is why in Jn 7.14 some confusion has arisen by some commentators and scholars (who do not grasp even the fundamentals of an understanding of the progression of Jewish feasts and fasts in the sacred calendar) over which festival is actually under discussion. This was decidedly NOT the feast of Tabernacles! The Greek when transliterated word for word has "already yet of the festival of being mid" or as some moderns have it "this festival was the middle festival." This celebration was the Great Fast Day -- Atonement, or Yom Kippur.

A similar confusion exists in Jn 20.22ff. Yeshua is here resurrected. He has gone through the turbulent period of Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread during which time he was crucified, dead and buried. John now has in mind presenting the Lord Yeshua in prophetic garb as predicting, and bringing about, a NEW Pentecost. How do we know this? Simply because Pentecost is the very next celebration in the sacred calendar after the entire Passover period!

As the "breath of God" (Ruach Adonai) breathed forth God's revelation in OT times in the Law (given on the day of Pentecost) so John presents Yeshua as breathing the Spirit out toward his people anticipating the coming of the holy Spirit. Yeshua had commanded his apostles: "Stay in Jerusalem until Pentecost" (paraphrasing Lk 24.49 cf Acts 1).

JOHN SEES YESHUA AS THE PASSOVER LAMB

Right at the outset of his Gospel John has presented Yeshua as the Lamb of God -- the Lamb from God -- the Passover Lamb. John sees Yeshua as replacing that Lamb. And he credits John the Immerser with this profound recognition, a prophet ALL Israel and the Sanhedrin both feared and respected highly. Indeed even the manna in the wilderness wanderings is replaced by Messiah in his new liturgy. John sees Messiah as the true and living bread descending out of heaven. Instead of streams which came forth from the rock struck by Moses, Yeshua offers the true and living water He himself gives. Yeshua as the Light of the world guides the path of the believer replacing the pillar of fire which led Israel through the wilderness to the Promised Land. So intent is John in presenting Yeshua as the ultimate fulfilment of the Torah and the prophets (Jn 1.15-17) that while the Synoptic Gospels record Yeshua cleansing the Temple in awesome fury during the final days before his condemnation by Jewish and Roman authorities, John places this event at the very beginning of his ministry (Jn 2). He introduces Yeshua and the attack on the Temple on a Passover feast deliberately making a point to the leaders of the Jewish nation and to the people, presenting the Messiah as the fulfilment of all for that which Israel stood. Most Christians believe there were TWO "cleansings of the Temple" -- one at the beginning of Yeshua's ministry, and the other in Messiah's final week before the crucifixion. This is not the case at all! There can be hardly a doubt that the Yeshua of John is not merely a Jew among Jews, or even just the Messiah. John has creatively portrayed Messiah in the image of the New and true Israel! And, as we now know, John as a previous Essene has drawn from Essene teachings on their religious superiority as the only authentic Israel -- the Essene remnant doctrine -- and applied it directly to the Lord Yeshua.

Please note that the Messianic Rebbe is not teaching the commonly accepted drivel of what is today known in some circles as Replacement Theology. Replacement Theology does away with Israel entirely in its view of the intentions of God. The Messianic Rebbe focuses on the entire theology of Israel as the earthly national Messiah which still has a profound and prodigious potential to fulfill in the biblical prophetic scenario. Indeed, in the early Messianic theology of the Messianic Movement, the Messiah has progressed much further than being merely the New Israel of the apostle John. In Rav Shaul's theology, Yeshua had become the "One New MAN" (or Humanity), or Cosmic Messiah. But one would have to be blind, or ignorant, or both, to not grasp this prime teaching of the apostle John! Messiah is the New Israel. Of this there can be no doubt.

Today, the focal centre of Christian interest is not the Torah as a code of law or instruction (I am not in any way denigrating, disparaging, or reducing the importance of the Torah). The focus of Christian interest is nothing else by comparison but the PERSON OF YESHUA HAMASHIACH who has set his will to save humanity. Yeshua IS the Living Torah.

The written Torah of God, though supremely beneficial in its application, could save no one. "For the Torah was given by Moses, but Grace and truth came by Yeshua haMashiach" (Jn 1.17).

GRACE ALONE, not Torah and justice, is the centre of the Christian (Messianic) message. Upon a declarative Grace, and in a declarative Grace, extrinsically gained in the cross event and imputed to all of us who believe in Yeshua as our Messiah, do we stand. That Grace is extended to all of us who have truly accepted Yeshua the Messiah's shed blood for the remission of our sins -- Passover blood.

Without the Reality of the Messiah, the feast days are meaningless. Unless the Passover Lamb was both sacrificed AND eaten by the family it was also meaningless. John's Gospel of Yeshua mentions the festival periods in relation to Our Lord a full 15 times in a grand total of some 25 times that the Greek heorte (= feast or festival) occurs in the pages of the NT corpus ( the Messianic Scriptures of the Yeshua Party). John also spends a laborious amount of time and space focusing on the final days of Yeshua and on the blood of that Reality.

It is the blood that redeemed Israel from Egypt.

It is the blood that has redeemed us today.

While it is the resurrected LIVING Messiah who saves, it is the blood which is the basic foundation and premise upon which the conciliation of God and his salvation toward humankind is established.

May we all approach the coming Passover in the proper mood and celebratory attitude appropriate to that which our loving God expects.