Chag Hamatzot/Feast of Unleavened Bread
The Facts:
What do the Scriptures say about it?
Exd 12:15 KJV – Seven days shall ye eat unleavened bread; even the first day ye shall put away leaven out of your houses: for whosoever eateth leavened bread from the first day until the seventh day, that soul shall be cut off from Israel.
Exd 23:15 KJV – Thou shalt keep the feast of unleavened bread: (thou shalt eat unleavened bread seven days, as I commanded thee, in the time appointed of the month Abib; for in it thou camest out from Egypt: and none shall appear before me empty:)
Exd 34:18 KJV – The feast of unleavened bread shalt thou keep. Seven days thou shalt eat unleavened bread, as I commanded thee, in the time of the month Abib: for in the month Abib thou camest out from Egypt.
Lev 23:6 KJV – And on the fifteenth day of the same month [is] the feast of unleavened bread unto the LORD: seven days ye must eat unleavened bread.

When is it?
Exd 12:18 KJV – In the first [month], on the fourteenth day of the month at even, ye shall eat unleavened bread, until the one and twentieth day of the month at even.
Exd 12:19 KJV – Seven days shall there be no leaven found in your houses:
What should you do?
1. The first day and the seventh day of the feast is a Sabbath of rest to the Lord. (Exod. 12:16)
2. There is a holy convocation on the first and seventh day sabbaths of the feast
3. No ordinary or servile work should be done on the first and seventh day of the feast
4. Remove all leaven or yeast from your home. (Exod. 12:19)
5. Eat unleavened bread for seven days. (Exod. 12:18)
Messianic Fulfillment-
The Feast of Unleavened Bread is significant of several things:
1. We are to strive to get all of the sin or leaven out of our lives and homes.
2. Yeshua was the sinless lamb, the bread of the earth without leaven.
3. We are to eat or internalize the bread of heaven which is the word of God.
Leaven in scripture is an analogy of sin or pride. Just as leaven or yeast causes the bread to be puffed up or raised, sin and pride in our own lives can cause us to be puffed up. Listen to what Shaul (Paul) teaches about it:
Col 2:18 KJV – Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels, intruding into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind…”
It is very clear in scripture that none of us are completely sinless before the Father. So do we just throw up our hands and say “well none of us are perfect” and go ahead and sin anyways? God forbid! What we learn in the Feast of Unleavened Bread is that even though sin and/or pride is present in all of us we still strive to get it out of our homes. As we search through our pantries and cupboards for every last crumb of leavening we should reflect on our own lives in searching out every dark corner of our souls to cast out prideful and sinful things. Shaul admonished the New Covenant brethren of his day to re-evaluate why they were eating the Feast of Unleavened bread without understanding what it meant and applying its significance to the believer’s life:
1Cr 5:7-8 KJV – Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Messiah our passover is sacrificed for us: Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened [bread] of sincerity and truth.
Isn’t that interesting that if Shaul supposedly taught that the Torah and feasts were no longer necessary in the New Covenant believer’s life then why would he say, “let us keep the feast.” The problem wasn’t in the feast itself but in how it was being observed in this particular assembly. Even today we have those that go through the motions lacking any spiritual zeal for what the feasts are about and what they represent. Let us keep the feast with sincerity of heart and in truth.
Yeshua came as our Passover Lamb who was the Son of God and without sin. The unleavened bread is a representation of His body that was without sin or leaven. Yeshua also removed the leaven from the temple by chasing out the moneychangers:
Mat 21:12 KJV – And Yeshua went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves,
Not only that, but Yeshua removed the last piece of leavened bread from the disciples when he told Judas to leave.
Jhn 13:26 KJV – Yeshua answered, He it is, to whom I shall give a sop, when I have dipped [it]. And when he had dipped the sop, he gave [it] to Judas Iscariot, [the son] of Simon.
Jhn 13:27 KJV – And after the sop Satan entered into him. Then said Yeshua unto him, that thou doest, do quickly.
Jhn 13:30 KJV – He then having received the sop went immediately out: and it was night.
The third thing we are to understand about the Feast of Unleavened Bread is that the Word of God is likened unto bread.
Mat 4:4 KJV – But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.
The Word of God does not have leaven or sin but religious men add leaven to it with false interpretations and bad doctrine meant to glorify themselves and not God. That is why it is so important to honor the Torah commandment:
Deu 12:32 KJV – What thing soever I command you, observe to do it: thou shalt not add thereto, nor diminish from it.
During the feast we are not only to refrain from eating leaven but we are also commanded to eat unleavened bread. It is not enough for us to merely cease from sin but to also to what is right in the sight of the Lord. We have to not only be hearers of the Word but doers also:
Rom 2:13 KJV – (For not the hearers of the law [are] just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified.
Jam 1:25 KJV – But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth [therein], he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.