The Greatest Passover Mystery of the Ages is Found in the Knowledge and Understanding of Who Yeshua HaMashiyach Is.

For some strange reason, a rather sizable chunk of Rooters seem to be more focused upon the mechanical observance of Passover than upon the revealed renewed covenant observance of the event.

What I mean by this is that in so many discussions that I’ve recently seen or read online about Passover, Yeshua is virtually never mentioned in terms of observance and focus. It’s almost as if we are blind to the fact that under the renewed covenant (see the Cepher of Hebrews for a detailed explanation), as Spirit-Filled Torah Observant Believers in Yeshua Messiah, our focus is no longer centered upon the Levitical-based administration of the Feasts of Yahweh/Yahovah/Yahuah. It’s a shocking thing to witness. Many of us have regressed back to a point where we were at Sinai when we worshiped the Creator through mechanical obedience to His written instruction to Mosheh. And this is where our Fundamental Christianity cousins peg us in many cases rather accurately: that we’ve become these legalists who seek to purchase our salvation through works that Shaul (i.e., Paul) seemed to struggle in ad nauseum with first-century Judaizers in the assemblies he was instrumental in founding.

I used to reject that line of thinking and accusation. However, given what I’ve been reading and hearing of late, maybe our cousins are not too far off as it relates to a certain segment of our Faith Community.

Somehow, someway, we must pack our spiritual bags and move from under Mount Sinai before it’s too late. As the redeemed of the Most High, we’ve been called to a life way way beyond that of Sinai living. Sinai served it’s great purpose, and for all intents and purposes, so did Yerushalayim and her Mishkin.

The Renewed Covenant Inbound to a Believer Near You!

Master revealed to the Samaritan woman at the well in Shechem: Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father. 22 Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews. 23 But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him. 24 God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. (Joh 4:21-24 KJV)

Now many in our crowd would challenge me, asserting that this time that Master is referring to has not arrived yet and that this time in which He speaks is during the latter rain and outpouring of the Ruach HaKodesh (aka, the Holy Spirit). These believe that we should continue in the ways of the Old Covenant until such time when Mashiyach pours out His Spirit on all flesh and reveals His new covenant to the world, regardless in many cases of Torah obedience when taking care of business at the Temple in Yerushalayim was necessary.

I personally believe that thinking to be hogwash. Bognosh. Foolishness. Fodder from the pit of hell.

The Temple—the Mishkin—was destroyed by the Romans in 70 C.E. (and if you’re a Rood follower, 68 C.E.). With the Temple gone and Yerushalayim made a desolate place at that time in history, a huge chunk of how we observe Torah changed. And that changed didn’t just occur because the Temple went bye-bye. It changed because our Older Brother, Yahoshua HaMashiyach, paid the death penalty on our behalf and made a great deal of the Temple rites obsolete.

Yeshua is our New High Priest Superseding the Old Levitical Priesthood

The Book of Hebrews, chapters 9 and 10 go into great detail to spell out for us the changes that came about when Master paid the ultimate price for us. Essentially, the old covenant transitioned from that mechanical obedience to Torah and using the blood of animals as a means of sin propitiation. That sin propitiation did not eliminate the sin for good in the eyes of a Holy God. Nor did that sin propitiation pay in full the debt that we each owed for our sins which is eternal death.

The Old Temple rites served only as a temporary measure to address the sin issue that has haunted each and every human since the fall in the Garden of Eden. This was administered via the Levitical Priesthood through the Temple services and rites.

So along come Master Yeshua, bringing with Him the Gospel of the Kingdom as his primary purpose, but who also assumed the covert mission of dealing with the sin issue once and for all and making available to all men the opportunity to escape eternal death. Master Yahoshua, after His passion on the execution stake, assumed the most central role in all of humanity—the role of the High Priest, not under the old Levitical Priesthood, but under the Priesthood of the Melekzedek (aka Melchizidek).

Worshiping Father in Spirit and in Truth Today!

If we but pay close attention to the words Master spoke to the Samarittan woman, it would seem crystal clear that the enactment of the renewed covenant is not to take place in some obscure time in the unforeseen future, but was happening right around the time Master delivered this news.

Master said: “But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth.”

And of the type of worshiper Abba is looking for even back then, Master was clear: “for the Father seeketh such to worship Him.”

So I would encourage that we stop this non-sense talk which on serves, in my opinion, to put us back at the base of Mount Sinai and blindly obey Torah, thinking that there is coming a day when the new covenant will alter somehow the way we worship the Creator. That new way is already here and has been here for some 2,000 or so years. It’s already here and in effect! That new covenant and new way that we are to worship Yahuah our Elohim took effect right after Master rose from the grave and presented Himself before His Father in heaven.

Why do we Stay at Sinai?

So my question to the Body of Mashiyach this Passover/Unleavened Bread season is: why do we insist on staying hunkered down at the base of Mount Sinai? What practical purpose does it serve? Why have we ceremoniously relegated Master Yahoshua, after what He greatly accomplished on our behalf, to a tertiary role in our Faith.

Why tertiary? Because first we listen and obey the teachings of the Rabbis and the “jack-legs of our Faith over that which is instructed in the Bible. From there we pay obligatory service, although meager at best, to Torah by reading into Torah that which is no longer applicable.

One sister in the Faith posted a comment to me on YouTube the other day stating that according to Torah, all “Ger” (whatever that means) and Torah Observers must pilgrim over to Jerusalem every Passover, regardless whether there is a Temple standing or no. So I asked her to provide me some biblical support for this Torah commandment. I’m still waiting to receive those support passages. Nevertheless, I believe I know where she’s getting this idea of every believer having to pilgrim over to Jerusalem for Passover. Torah does assign the Feasts of Passover/Unleavened Bread, Shavuot (Pentecost) and Sukkot (Tabernacles) as pilgrim feasts. And when were were assigned to go to the “place where Abba placed His Name,” namely Shiloh and Jerusalem, we did so with clear understanding of what we were to do there and it all had to do with worship of Yahuah via the Temple service and the Levitical Priesthood.

Now commonsense should tell anyone who thinks as this dear sister thinks, that we all must pilgrim over to Jerusalem, that when we get to Jerusalem, what are we supposed to do? How are we to worship the Creator when there is no Temple nor Levites to administer the services of Yahuah? This is where rote, blind obedience to Torah, devoid of commonsense buys us—blind obedience to Laws that we won’t even take the time to examine and understand why we did them in the first place. Typically, this can be accomplished via a detailed study and understanding of the New Testament (i.e., the Brit HaDashah). Unfortunately, that is not something that interests many in our Faith Community. It’s just so much easier to blindly follow what is written in the Book. The problem is: by blindly following what’s written in the book without understanding in these days, one ends up displeasing the Father because we fail to worship Him as He has revealed to us how He wants to be worshiped.

Seek Ye First the Kingdom of God and Abba’s Righteousness

Certainly, there are some things in Torah that we simply do without having to do deep exegetical examinations: don’t steal; keep the Sabbath; don’t commit adultery or murder, and the like. But what about what Master instructed? Did He not tell us to “seek after His Kingdom and the righteousness of Yahuah before we did anything else?” And that by seeking after His Kingdom and His righteousness (that comes only through following Master’s example and teachings) first and foremost, everything else would fall into its proper order? I believe He did instruct that and it’s found in Matthew 6:33.

So many of us have been fed only a diet of Torah, Torah, Torah, but only a meager helping of Yeshua. I get it. For many of us, Hebrew Roots offered us a haven away from religiosity and thus rescued us from Western Christianity. So as part of a survival mechanism, if you will, we’ve developed this pseudo-amnesia as it relates to the renewed covenant, the work of the Ruach Kodesh in believers’ lives, and the sacrifice of Yeshua. We hide in Torah. We do stuff in Torah that frankly doesn’t make sense. But we do them anyway because Torah, in mechanical obedience to what is written and that is devoid of any revelation of the Ruach Kodesh and the teachings of Mashiyach, makes us feel that we are doing what we’re supposed to do. Case in point: traveling over to Jerusalem each year at Passover and hanging out I guess.

Or how about this: One dear Hebrew Roots brother and Torah teacher who I greatly respect and who is quite popular in our Hebrew Roots Community on YouTube, published a post this past week on the subject of Passover. I found virtually all of the content of that post to be spot on in terms of being biblically sound. However, he added one little piece to what otherwise was a brilliant post that essentially ruined the whole thing for me. He proudly declared that he butchers a lamb and applies the lamb’s blood to the door posts of his home each Passover. He cited Exodus 12 as the basis for this act. And Exodus 12 does clearly lay out the first Passover event that included slaying a lamb and applying the blood of that lamb to the lintels and door posts of each Hebrew home for purposes of escaping the “destroyer.” We all know the story.

This brother further supported the reason for his slaughtering a lamb and applying its blood on the door posts of his home by citing 12:24-28, which served to command us to guard the Pecach service as an ordinance forever as Yahuah’s Pecach. But this practice of slaughtering the pecach and applying the blood to our door posts is not explicitly mentioned in Leviticus 23, Numbers 9, nor in Numbers 33, all of which addresses various aspects of the Passover ordinance service, including the aspect of each participant of the ordinance being by necessity in a state of ritual purity.

But in Deuteronomy 16, just prior to our entering the land of promise, the Passover ordinance service changed somewhat and it was the Creator who changed it. And this change was not discussed by this dear brother in his YouTube post. And that change had to do with a prohibition being given against sacrificing the pecach in our gates—within the realm of our homes that is. The pecach, instead, had to sacrificed at the place that the Creator placed His eternal Name. In addition, we were instructed to turn over the whole process of sacrificing the pacech to the Levitical Priests who would administer the rites that were originally given back in Exodus. But this time, those rites would be applied to the alter at the Tabernacle and Temple. From there, the priests would apportion the pecach to our families for consumption and we were of course to consume the portions before sunup and whatever had not been consumed, it would have to be incinerated.

Yeshua is our Passover—Our Pecach

I said all this, not for purposes of brow-beating this dear brother and sister for their respective ideas and religious practices as related to Passover. But more so to provide a plausible example of how we can get ourselves in spiritual trouble.

And please, don’t misunderstand where I’m coming from. I have not in any way arrived. I am constantly searching for the Truth of any matter. I believe that whenever we get to the point that we feel we don’t need to search out matters of Faith anymore (Proverbs 25:2) , we condemn ourselves to the whims and foolish pandering of the rabbis and the crazies that have found homes in our Faith Community. But I’m preaching to the choir I’m sure.

I perceive Passover to be one of the Great Mysteries of the Ages. Passover was foretold to us back in the Garden at the Fall of man: I will put animosity between you and the woman, and between your descendant and her descendant; he will bruise your head, and you will bruise his heel.” (Gen 3:15 CJB). Father, in His infinite wisdom and genius, created Passover from the tragic events of our time in Egypt and our eventual escape from bondage. The artistry of our Father is a thing to behold that I’m afraid most of the world has never stopped to understand and admire. Our bondage in Egypt—that is, a parallel of our life of bondage to sin and the penalty that is associated with that life of sin—coupled with the “destroyer going through the land of Egypt on that fateful night and we who were under the blood were saved from the destroyer, foretells of the Passion of our Master Yeshua some 1,500 years or so later. Every aspect of the Exodus—Passover—service is detailed in the Passion of our Master: from the bondage that we endured in Egypt to the killing of the Pecach; the applying of the blood of the pecach to our homes; to the eating of unleavened bread and the pecach; to the escape from bondage by night; everything Father did on our behalf in Mitsrayim (aka Egypt) translated into the most perfect application of these two events woven into a single tapestry of love—Abba’s love for us, His fallen creation.

Yochanan Ben Zachariah (aka John the Baptist/Immerser) proclaimed of our Master as Yeshua returned from His time in the wilderness: “Behold the Lamb of Yahuah, which takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1: 29)

When Will We Finally Begin Keeping Passover?

When will we begin to see and keep Passover the way Abba has always intended for us to keep it? I say, let us begin this Passover to keep Passover with the full understanding that Yahoshua HaMashiyach is our Pecach—our Passover. It’s no longer about blindly sacrificing lambs and following the traditions of the so-called sages. It’s about that which Shaul proclaimed to the Corinthian Assembly of Believers in Yeshua:

7 Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us:1 8 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.1 (1Co 5:7-8 KJV)

It’s so easy to get caught up in the rote, mechanical aspects of the Exodus Pecach service and lose clear sight of the big picture that Abba painted on the canvas of time, space and even eternity for us. It’s all about Him and His Son Yahoshua. It’s not about us and how we see things and how we believe things should be done. And that’s the Spirit in which I plan to observe Passover this season.

In Summary and in Closing

In these days of nations rising up against other nations with rumors of wars abounding throughout the 24-7 news media machine; the moral decline of our world’s population; the fear of evil threatening our very existence; and hasatan seeming to have total and complete control over every aspect of life on this planet—let us realize that it is a great time to keep Passover! Why? Because the only stable and firm foundation available to the citizens of this shaken world of ours is Torah the way our older Brother Yeshua taught us.

Yeshua is our Passover and He is the only hope for this world. Yet He’s commissioned us to assist Him in saving the world. So I must ask myself everyday: Rod, what are you doing to assist Yeshua in saving the world today? May I not fail in fulfilling that role—that assigned responsibility–of doing His bidding and following and obeying His instructions.

My simple call to action—my heartfelt admonishment–to you this Spring Feast Season, is for you and your family to keep the Month of the Aviv; keep Pecach and Unleavened Bread as you are so led by the Ruach HaKodesh; that you keep this Feast with as much passion and love that you can muster. Let the world know what we’re doing through our faithfulness, our love for all and obedience. Let the world see Yeshua in us.

Have a wonderful and blessed Pecach and Unleavened Bread. Until next time, may you be most blessed, fellow Saints in Training. Shalom. Pecach Semeach.

Faithfully yours in Yeshua our Master, this is Rod Thomas signing out.