Preparing for Passover & Pentecost

PASSOVER

Passover is the first of the Lord’s seven appointed feasts. This first celebration has three parts: Passover, Unleavened Bread, and Firstfruits. The Passover recounts God’s freeing of His people from bondage. The Exodus story can be found in chapters 1-15, and the fullness of God’s purpose in Exodus is given in Exodus through Joshua. To lay a simple foundation, we will look at two passages:

Exodus 6:6-8 CJB “Therefore, say to the people of Isra’el: ‘I am Adonai. I will free you from the forced labor of the Egyptians, rescue you from their oppression, and redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great judgments. 7 I will take you as my people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am Adonai your God, who freed you from the forced labor of the Egyptians. 8 I will bring you into the land which I swore to give to Avraham, Yitz’chak and Ya‘akov — I will give it to you as your inheritance. I am Adonai.’” This passage is the basis for the four cups of wine that are drank during the seder. (Seder means order in Hebrew. More on this later).

The instruction for the Passover Seder is found in Exodus 12:14-20 CJB ““‘This will be a day for you to remember and celebrate as a festival to Adonai; from generation to generation you are to celebrate it by a perpetual regulation. ¹⁵ “‘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.’”

~CELEBRATING PASSOVER ~

Mark 14:12-28 CJB “On the first day for matzah, when they slaughtered the lamb for Pesach, Yeshua’s talmidim asked him, “Where do you want us to go and prepare your Seder?” ¹³ He sent two of his talmidim with these instructions: “Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him; ¹⁴ and whichever house he enters, tell him that the Rabbi says, ‘Where is the guest room for me, where I am to eat the Pesach meal with my talmidim?’ ¹⁵ He will show you a large room upstairs, furnished and ready. Make the preparations there.” ¹⁶ The talmidim went off, came to the city and found things just as he had told them they would be; and they prepared the Seder. ¹⁷ When evening came, Yeshua arrived with the Twelve. ¹⁸ As they were reclining and eating, Yeshua said, “Yes! I tell you that one of you is going to betray me.” ¹⁹ They became upset and began asking him, one after the other, “You don’t mean me, do you?” ²⁰ “It’s one of the Twelve,” he said to them, “someone dipping matzah in the dish with me. ²¹ For the Son of Man will die, just as the Tanakh says he will; but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been better for him had he never been born!” ²² While they were eating, Yeshua took a piece of matzah, made the b’rakhah, broke it, gave it to them and said, “Take it! This is my body.” ²³ Also he took a cup of wine, made the b’rakhah, and gave it to them; and they all drank. ²⁴ He said to them, “This is my blood, which ratifies the New Covenant, my blood shed on behalf of many people. ²⁵ Yes! I tell you, I will not drink this ‘fruit of the vine’ again until the day I drink new wine in the Kingdom of God.” ²⁶ After singing the Hallel, they went out to the Mount of Olives. ²⁷ Yeshua said to them, “You will all lose faith in me, for the Tanakh says, ‘I will strike the shepherd dead, and the sheep will be scattered.’ ²⁸ But after I have been raised, I will go ahead of you into the Galil.”

(Parallel Passages: Matthew 26, Luke 22, John 12-18)

1 Corinthians 5:7-8 CJB “Get rid of the old hametz, so that you can be a new batch of dough, because in reality you are unleavened. For our Pesach lamb, the Messiah, has been sacrificed. ⁸ So let us celebrate the Seder not with leftover hametz, the hametz of wickedness and evil, but with the matzah of purity and truth.”

The Celebration of Passover is two-fold: we remember the initial deliverance of God’s people, Israel out of Egyptian bondage, and we remember our freedom from sin through Yeshua/Jesus’ sacrifice and our being grafted into the commonwealth of Israel.

I believe Derek Prince summarized Passover best when he said, “we are redeemed by the blood of the Lamb out of the hand of the enemy.”

Passover Articles | Passover Teaching Playlist

~ PREPARING FOR PASSOVER ~

To Celebrate Passover, you will need the following items:

A Messianic Passover Haggadah is a booklet that tells the story of Passover and is your guide through the Passover Meal. A Messianic Hagaddah differs from a traditional Jewish booklet in that it also incorporates Yeshua, our Passover Lamb, alongside the story of Israel’s freedom from bondage.

Recommended: The Messianic Passover Haggadah: Rubin & Companion Preparation Guide | Rabinowitz Haggadah (First Messianic Haggadah ever produced) | Vine of David Haggadah from First Fruits of Zion > While each Haggadah has the same basic format, each one gives different insights based on the author, various rabbis, and the insights each one of us can have into the Scriptures as the Holy Spirit teaches us. For that reason, I recommended changing your Haggadah from time to time.

You will need the following food items for Passover:

1. Meat (Brisket, Chicken, Beef Roast) – Main Course Recipies
2. Matzah (make sure it says it MAY be used for Passover). If you cannot find it at a grocery store, you can always order from Amazon.
3. Wine or Grape Juice (enough for each person to drink four cups. You do not have to drink the entire glass each time, but you do need to fill the cup with at least three ounces).
4. Roasted Egg
5. Parsley or celery
6. Bitter Herb
7. Horseradish (you can grind the root or just use sauce)
8. Small bowl of salt water
9. Charoset (mixture of apples, honey, wine, and nuts) – Recipies
10. 10. Lamb Shankbone (Chicken bone)

Other items needed:

NOTE: If this is your first Passover, don’t feel the need to buy all these special items the first time, as it can be overwhelming and expensive. You can use a regular plater as a Seder Plate, or if your table is not big enough, don’t even have one. Just make sure all elements are present. I bought a Seder plate and an Elijah Cup from CBD for my first Passover. Since then I found Judaica Websites with much larger selections, and each year I have a tradition of buying one new item to make Passover more meaningful.

1. 3 napkins to hold 3 pieces of Matzah – or you can purchase an Afikomen Bag
2. A Seder Plate | How to Prepare Your Seder Plate
3. Two Candlesticks with candles
4. Elijah Cup (A regular wine glass is fine)
5. Matzah Plates (optional)

UNLEAVENED BREAD & FIRSTFRUITS

After the initial Passover meal, we enter a week of eating no leavened foods. This physical act of abstaining from leaven is a picture of getting pride, sin, and unrighteousness out of our lives. The Sages teach, and Yeshua did as well, that if you do a good deed to be praised, it doesn’t count; it had leaven. Passover is a time to be delivered from the things that hold us back in our growth in God, Unleavened Bread, and continuing through the Counting of the Omer is a time of Spiritual and Physical refinement.

Yeshua is the firstfruits of many brethren (Rom. 8:29; 1 Cor. 15:20), and He rose on the Feast of Firstfruits. Passover is the first offering of the year (Deut. 16:16-17). Just as the congregations Paul established sent offerings to Jerusalem (1 Cor. 16:1-4; Rom. 15:25-26), when God called Abraham there was pronounced both a blessing and a curse; “ I will bless those who bless you, but I will curse anyone who curses you; and by you all the families of the earth will be blessed.” (Gen. 12:3 CJB). The English Standard Version and Christian Standard Bible bring a clarity of meaning;

Genesis 12:3 ESV “ I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

Gen. 12:3 CSB “I will bless those who bless you, I will curse anyone who treats you with contempt, and all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

*Bolding is for emphasis by me and not in the ESV or CSB

Romans chapters nine through eleven also lay out the importance of Israel and the Jewish people to Christians.

Firstfruits Giving Opportunities: Helping Jews Return to Israel (see Isa. 49:22) | Fellowship of Israel Related Ministries | Israel Defense Forces | Israel’s Emergency Services

THE COUNTING OF THE OMER & PENTECOST

~ The Counting of the Omer ~

The fifty days between Passover and Pentecost (Heb. Shavuot) is a time of great spiritual growth. Israel is commanded to count the days between the two holidays; Leviticus 23:15-17 ESV “You shall count seven full weeks from the day after the Sabbath, from the day that you brought the sheaf of the wave offering. ¹⁶ You shall count fifty days to the day after the seventh Sabbath. Then you shall present a grain offering of new grain to the Lord. ¹⁷ You shall bring from your dwelling places two loaves of bread to be waved, made of two tenths of an ephah. They shall be of fine flour, and they shall be baked with leaven, as firstfruits to the Lord.”

Resources: Counting the Omer Articles | Download the Omer Counter App (from Chabad.org) | Download the My Omer App (from the Meaningful Life Center); it is a companion to the Spiritual Guide | Spiritual Guide to Counting the Omer (booklet by Rabbi Simon Jacobson)

~Pentecost ~

Pentecost, or Shavuot in Hebrew, commemorates the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai. When we restore the giving of the Torah to our celebration of the coming of the Holy Spirit, it gives fullness to Yeshua’s words in John 14:15-26 ESV “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. ¹⁶ And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, ¹⁷ even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. ¹⁸ “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. ¹⁹ Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. ²⁰ In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. ²¹ Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.” ²² Judas (not Iscariot) said to him, “Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us, and not to the world?” ²³ Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. ²⁴ Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent me. ²⁵ “These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. ²⁶ But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.”

John 16:5-15 ESV “But now I am going to him who sent me, and none of you asks me, ‘Where are you going?’ ⁶ But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your heart. ⁷ Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. ⁸ And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment: ⁹ concerning sin, because they do not believe in me; ¹⁰ concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you will see me no longer; ¹¹ concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged. ¹² “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. ¹³ When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. ¹⁴ He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. ¹⁵ All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.”

When Acts chapter two says, “When the day of Pentecost was fully come,” many of us as Christians do not realize that the 120 had been up all night studying the Torah, as was the custom of the Jews before Pentecost. The Holy Ghost was given by Yeshua after the disciples had been studying the Word all night; the Spirit of truth came to lead them in all truth after they had already been immersed in the truth. Pentecost is a time for us to reflect on the Word of God, study it, and renew our commitment to walk in it.

Pentecost is also the second annual feast in which we are privileged to give a firstfruits offering to the Lord.

Firstfruits Giving Opportunities: Helping Jews Return to Israel (see Isa. 49:22) | Fellowship of Israel Related Ministries | Israel Defense Forces | Israel’s Emergency Services

Resources: Pentecost Articles