John 6:48 I am the bread of life.
Yeast is a leavening agent. In the Bible, leaven is equated with sin. The Hebrew word for leaven is chometz. The word means sour or bitter. This is what sin does to people. It makes them sour or bitter. Sin causes people to ferment or swell. Individuals see themselves as larger than what they actually are, that is, pride.
Bread without yeast is matzah. This term means sweetness without sourness. Matzah, the sweet taste of bread without sin.
In the New Testament, the Greek word for leaven is ζύμη/zumé. This is the same concept as noted in the Hebrew language of the Old Testament. HELPS Word Studies states: Leaven is generally a symbol of the spreading nature of evil.
Jesus Christ is the body without sin. He is sincerity and truth.
1 Corinthians 5:7-8 Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened. For 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.
Jesus Christ is the prophetic matzah that Isaiah spoke of. Like the matzah, Jesus was striped, flogged, and scourged before He went to the cross.
Christ’s head was pierced with a crown of thorns. His feet and hands were nailed to the cross. A spear was thrust into His side to assure His death.
Isaiah 53:5 But He was pierced for our transgressions; He was crushed for our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with His wounds we are healed.
Just like the broken Afikomen of a Passover Seder, the bread or body of Jesus Christ was broken for us. In Isaiah 53:5 alone, there are 4 examples of what He did for us.
- …pierced for our transgressions…
- …crushed for our iniquities…
- …chastisement that brought us peace…
- …His wounds we are healed…
Roughly 700 years before the Suffering Servant would emerge on to the scene, Isaiah prophesied a Messiah would come as a Savior on behalf of humanity. Look at the examples in Isaiah 53. Jesus Christ died for us.
- Isaiah 53:4a Surely our griefs He Himself bore, and our sorrows He carried…
- Isaiah 53:6b …but the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all To fall on Him.
- Isaiah 53:8b …and as for His generation, who considered that He was cut off out of the land of the living for the transgression of my people…
- Isaiah 53:10a But the LORD was pleased to crush Him, putting Him to grief; if He would render Himself as a guilt offering…
- Isaiah 53:11b By His knowledge the Righteous One, My Servant, will justify the many, as He will bear their iniquities.
- Isaiah 53:12b …because He poured out Himself to death, and was numbered with the transgressors; yet He Himself bore the sin of many, and interceded for the transgressors.
Because of the broken body of Christ, believers in Him are redeemed.
Galatians 3:13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree.”
