Yeshua’s Last Day of Freedom

Aviv 13    The Messianic Passover Preparation Day

2020:  Tuesday, April 7

Complete your final preparations for the Passover Seder.  Check and double check your menu and list of supplies.  Run those last-minute errands. Start preparing the food for your Passover meal today.

The final search for hametz.  Of course, by this time, the house should be completely cleaned for Passover; hopefully there is no hametz to be found. However, there is a traditional last search for hametz that can involve the entire family.

“Hametz Hide and Seek”

• Prepare ten carefully wrapped small pieces of bread and hide throughout the house for the seekers to find. 
• At a set time of your choosing, gather the family, explain the search activity, and recite the blessing:

Blessed are You, Yahweh our God, King of the universe, who has sanctified us by His commandments, and has commanded us concerning the removal of hametz.  Amen.

• Give each seekers a small paper bag in which to place the found hametz.  Have them carefully search the entire house and collect the ten hidden pieces.  Be sure to make a final count – all 10 must be found!
• Go outside and make a small, safe fire.  (Use an outdoor grill of firepit.)  Burn the bags with the hametz.
• Now recite the “nullification statement,” renouncing all ownership of any hametz you may have missed:

All leaven and anything leavened that is in my possession, which I have neither seen nor removed, and about which I am unaware, shall be considered nullified and ownerless as the dust of the earth. Amen.

• Once this ritual is complete, you may not eat any more hametz until after the Feast of Matzah. You are now ready to celebrate what is also called “The Feast of Freedom” for the next eight days. 

Today’s Bible Reading:   Exodus 13:1-16     John 13:1 – 17:26

Yeshua’s Passover Seder took place on this evening with the sunset ushering in Aviv 14.   Most Messianic believers we celebrate this remembrance tonight. To share this important meal so vitally symbolic of His death with His disciples was of extreme importance to Yeshua. He instructed His disciples that evening to always share the Passover Meal in remembrance of Him and what He was about to do.

Many wonder if Yeshua failed to “keep the Torah” by celebrating the Passover on this night rather than what is considered the tradition observance the next evening.  The answer is “No”.  It is important to know that in Yeshua’s day, the Pharisees celebrated the Passover Seder on this evening. The Sadducees, who were in control of the Temple at that time, celebrated the following evening – thus did most of the Jews in Judea. The sacrificing of the Passover lambs in the Temple had already begun on the morning of Aviv 13 and would conclude 3 PM on Aviv 14, meeting the beliefs of both persuasions.  Yeshua was considered by many to be of the thoughts and beliefs of the Pharisees as He did teach (and preform) the resurrection of the dead – something a Sadducee would emphatically deny existed. His choice of this evening for the Seder would make perfect sense to his disciples and others who knew of Him. 

Because of Yeshua’s observance on this evening, many families and congregations that are followers of Yeshua choose to celebrate the Passover Seder on this night rather than the still traditional timing of this meal after twilght the following day. This is not an issue to argue over. To celebrate the Passover Seder on either night – or both – is perfectly fine. The important point is that you DO celebrate it!

Yeshua wanted these teachable moments with His disciples. It was His choice to observe the Seder on this night so that future generations would better understand the Seder following His resurrection. He was not changing the day or time His Father had decreed. Furthermore, His Passover observance on this night may also have well been a settling ofthe question of which night Passover is to be observed. Yeshua, the eternal Living Word, created this feast in His Kingdom. He would certainly be the One to know!

Gethsemane:  After your Seder this evening, take time to give some thought and reflection to the events that took place in the Garden of Gethsemane on this night.  Read John 18:1-25.