Bible Question: "I know in Exodus, that the Jews did not have time to raise their dough when leaving Egypt. Is that why they still at certain times use no raised dough? I know they used unleavened wafers in the temple ceremonies. What is the reasoning behind this practice, was it a God-given ruling?"

Bible Answer: Unleavened bread is used in the Jewish Passover celebration, which coincides with the Christian Easter season, as a remembrance of their hasty departure from Egypt.

Exodus 12: 39 says, "And they baked unleavened cakes of the dough which they had brought out of Egypt; for it was not leavened, because they were driven out of Egypt and could not wait, nor had they prepared provisions for themselves."

Later when Moses was giving GodŐs laws to the Hebrews for making their sacrifices, he specified using unleavened bread for virtually all the sin offerings, including the yearly atonement.

Leviticus 2:4 says "And if you bring as an offering a grain offering baked in the oven, it shall be unleavened cakes of fine flour mixed with oil, or unleavened wafers anointed with oil."

The Passover celebration recalls when the Jews were in Egypt and the Death Angel passed over their homes which had been covered with blood from a sacrificial lamb, while killing the firstborn in every home in Egypt not covered with the blood.

This was the last of the judgments of God to convince Pharaoh to release the Jews, and was the reason he finally let them go.

Exodus 12:15 is where Moses is commanding how the Passover is to be observed, "Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. On the first day you shall remove leaven from your houses. For whoever eats leavened bread from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel."

The symbolism of the blood of the sacrificial lamb is unmistakable, as it clearly is pointing to the death of Christ, the Son of God whose blood would cover the sins of the whole world.

But the leaven is also symbolic, a clear symbol of our sins.

1 Corinthians 5:7-8 says, "Therefore purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened. For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us.

"Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth." Leaven is yeast, and even a little yeast has a powerful affect on a lump of dough, causing it to rise up into a loaf of bread.

In this entire passage of 1 Corinthians 5, Paul is writing to the church at Corinth about gross sexual sin in that church.

"Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?" Paul writes in 1 Cor. 5:6. A little sin, like a little yeast, will quickly spread and affect the entire body of Christ.

Submit Bible questions by email to writeme@johnwmyers.com

(John Myers has been a Christian lay speaker, Sunday School adult teacher and newspaper Bible study columnist for more than 20 years.)