My First Messianic Passover and Hametz/Leaven/Yeast

This year Passover starts on April 6th and I am focused on leaven (yeast).  I feel there is more then 1 battle to be fought over the leaven removal in my house.  After all my family loves bread and this year, for the first time, we will be without leaven bread for 7 days.  I see the sad faces and hear the heavy sighs as I write.  This will be a big test for all of us in my house.

Leaven or yeast is symbolic of the sin in our lives.  In the book of Semot (Exodus) 12:15-20, it is written:

"For seven days you are to eat matzah - on the first day remove the leaven from your houses. For whoever eats hametz [leavened bread] from the first to the seventh day is to be cut off from Isra'el. 16 On the first and seventh days, you are to have an assembly set aside for God. On these days no work is to be done, except what each must do to prepare his food; you may do only that. 17 You are to observe the festival of matzah, for on this very day I brought your divisions out of the land of Egypt. Therefore, you are to observe this day from generation to generation by a perpetual regulation. 18 From the evening of the fourteenth day of the first month until the evening of the twenty-first day, you are to eat matzah. 19 During those seven days, no leaven is to be found in your houses. Whoever eats food with hametz in it is to be cut off from the community of Isra'el - it doesn't matter whether he is a foreigner or a citizen of the land. 20 Eat nothing with hametz in it. Wherever you live, eat matzah." Complete Jewish Bible.  

HaShem has commanded us to remove the hametz from our homes.  Now this commandment, I once took to be a totally spiritual act, and I believed the actual removal of the hametz did not apply for today.  I took mental notice or better yet, did a written account of my transgressions, prayed and repented of them, and that was that. 

 Had I taken the time to read the command-ment carefully, I would have noted that in verse 19 it states, "During those seven days, no leaven is to be found in your houses."  So HaShem has commanded us to physically remove the leaven/yeast from our houses.  Yes, that jar of fast rise yeast you purchased 2 weeks ago or those envelopes of active dry yeast you've been saving to make donuts have to go.  Yes, that loaf of bread you froze 3 weeks ago has to go. 



I can see how going through the whole house searching for bread crumbs can seem burdensome to more than a few.  (Hello, that was me last year.) But when I consider my own sinful nature, I understand how necessary the act of obedience is.  For as we search and find the bread crumbs that seem so out of place in the home office or clothes closet or under the cushion in the living room, we have an opportunity to repent of those sins that are hidden in our heart that we had almost forgotten about.  Was it pride?  Was it selfishness?  Was it anger?  Was it shame?  Was it lust?  Was it hopelessness?  Sometimes, the shelves in our kitchens are not the only places that show vestiges of leaven.  In what other rooms of my (spiritual) house, are the vestiges of sin. 

So, I have to ask myself, why if it wasn't for my own good, why would the Master of the Universe give me this perpetual commandment?  And this commandment is not only to the Jew, but to the foreigner (gentile) living in the land, as well.  Could it be that HaShem is saying (just suppose), yes that "crumb" was the one you forgot to repent of last fall, and I wanted to hear you acknowledge that "crumb" as sin.  And somehow, you just know that if you had not looked in that coat pocket, you would not have remembered that sin, and would have never repented.  Physical acts have spiritual components.  Am I not right MH.

I have not forgotten what the Word of G-d teaches in 1 John 1:9, "If we acknowledge our sins, then, since he is trustworthy and just, he will forgive them and purify us from all wrongdoing." Complete Jewish Bible.  Thank G-d for mercy, that He doesn't cut us off for disobedience, but is long-suffering.