I’m going to take a little break this week from continuing my testimony. This Passover season, I was asked to teach a Seder to nearly 100 5th grade students and teachers at Mariners Christian School, where my daughter Charis is in 5th grade. While preparing for this teaching, my heart was filled with so much excitement as I saw the links between Passover and Healing Strongholds of the Heart, that I just had to use this blog to share them with you!
First, let’s take a look at 1 Corin 5:7-8. Paul tells us “Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened. For Messiah (Christ) our Passover also has been sacrificed. Therefore, let us celebrate the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”
I especially love this part of the verse – “Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened.”
The old leaven refers to the starter-dough leaven which was a small batch of already leavened dough left over from the previous day’s batch. When it was tossed in with the flour and the water, the old culture of the starter dough quickly spread through the new batch of dough, causing it to rise. A single culture of leaven was passed on from loaf to loaf to loaf, day-to-day.
To me, the old leaven also refers to our strongholds! They are what is left over from “the batch” of our old life – those old messages and lies that we believe about ourselves and that distort how we see God and how we think He sees us! Messages such as, “I’m bad, I’m not worth your time, I have to be perfect to be loved, I don’t exist, I’m not wanted, I don’t have a voice, I don’t matter, I deserve to be rejected, I have to hold all things/people together, I’m on my own, I’m always to blame, I don’t deserve good things, I’m not good enough, I’m inferior, I have nothing to offer, I bring ruin, I’m not worth protecting,” etc., etc.
In the bible, leaven is often symbolic of sin, and we need to see it as sin when we believe these strongholds and allow them to control us instead of God’s Word and His Spirit! When we continue to believe and act upon these old messages in our hearts, we’re allowing that leaven of sin to rise up in our lives, and we’re giving the enemy a handle or a foothold in our lives.
Now the beautiful part of this verse that gives us hope for healing is “just as you are in fact unleavened”!! As believers, Yeshua has already made us unleavened! When He sees us, He doesn’t see a person with all of the “old strongholds.” He sees us as holy and blameless in Him (Eph 1:4), a son or daughter of the King (Gal 4:5-7), with access into the Holy of Holies (Heb 10:19), pure and cleansed (Eph 5:25-26), having His righteousness – the worthiness to stand in God’s presence (2 Cor 5:21)! He took all of the punishment for our sin – past, present and future (1 John 4:10), so we no longer have to live in shame and self-condemnation when we sin, but we can confess our sins and thank Him that we are forgiven. Yeshua bore all of our iniquities on the cross (Is. 53:4), and I believe this includes all of our strongholds too! We don’t have to “carry them around” anymore.
We’ve already been made new or unleavened, so when these old lies and strongholds try to “pop up” and fill us with leaven, we are to clean them out! That is, we are to use our weapons of warfare to destroy them (confess that we have chosen to believe them (whatever is not of faith is sin); forgive; cancel Satan’s authority; offer praise, thanksgiving, and blessings) and ask God to help us see ourselves as He sees us! Then we will be able to experience who Yeshua has already made us as a result of His death and resurrection – the unleavened loaf!
The second way that I believe Passover links to healing strongholds of the heart is through the theme of blood over the doorposts. When the Israelites splashed the blood over the doorposts of their homes, the lives of the first-born were spared and death passed over their household. It was only because of the blood of the lamb that death passed over.
When we believe in Yeshua for our salvation, we are “covered in His blood.” I like to picture His blood covering the doorpost of our hearts. This means that not only are we free from experiencing eternal death, but we are also free from experiencing physical, emotional, and spiritual death as well! This death could come in many forms, for example: disease and other negative impacts on our physical health (from unforgiveness, anger, bitterness, fear, self-hatred); division and conflict in our relationships, a tendency to withdraw from relationships; lack of intimacy with God, missed blessings and the restrictions in our lives that result from fear of failure, fear of rejection, self-condemnation and shame.
Just as the Israelites were freed from their slavery, we no longer have to be slaves to these old messages. We can experience all of the blessings God has for us – His good, perfect and pleasing will for our lives! We are in a new family now, we are sons and daughters of the King of the universe, we are co-heirs with Yeshua and we are free from following the old family rules! We are free to believe and act upon the truth – the truth of who we are in Yeshua and how He sees us, and the truth of who God really is – not who our strongholds tell us He is!
So as you celebrate Passover this weekend, see yourself as God sees you – an unleavened batch, a son or daughter of the King, holy and blameless, pure and cleansed, having the worthiness to enter into the Holy of Holies of Holies, with Yeshua’s blood covering the doorposts of your heart. Let Passover remind you that just as you no longer have to experience eternal death because of Yeshua’s blood, you no longer have to experience death in your day-to-day lives as well!
Ask God to show you the old leaven in your heart, use your weapons of warfare to clean it out, and be free to enter into the new land that God has for you! A land flowing with milk and honey, what Yeshua refers to in John 10:10 as the abundant life!!!
And, if you have just 2:47 more minutes, check out this short video clip I made for the 5th Grade Seder teaching that emphasizes how Yeshua (Jesus) is revealed in the Seder. Chag Pesach Sameach! Happy Passover!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oylIMndqsVk
