On all other nights we eat leavened bread and matzah – on this night only matzah.
Because we are purging out the leaven – the sin – that resides in all of us.
1 Corinthians 5 – 8: “Your boasting is not good. Don’t you know the saying, “It takes only a little hametz to leaven a whole batch of dough?” Get rid of the old hametz, so that you can be a new batch of dough, because in reality you are unleavened. For our Passover lamb, the Messiah, has been sacrificed. So let us celebrate the Seder not with leftover hametz, the hametz of wickedness and evil, but with the matzah of purity and truth.”
On all other nights we eat all vegetables – on this night only bitter herbs.
Because on this night we remember how bitter life was for the children of Israel in the land of Egypt.
Exodus 1:12 – 14: “…the Egyptians came to dread the people of Israel and worked them relentlessly, making their lives bitter with hard labor – digging clay, making bricks, all kinds of field work…”
1 Peter 4:12 – 14: “Dear friends, don’t regard as strange the fiery ordeal occurring among you to test you, as if something extraordinary were happening to you. Rather, to the extend that you share the fellowship of the Messiah’s sufferings, rejoice; so that you will rejoice even more when His Glory is revealed. If you are being insulted because you bear the name of the Messiah, how blessed you are! For the Spirit of the Glory, that is, the Spirit of God, is resting on you!”
On all other nights we don’t dip our food even once – on this night we dip twice.
Because we remind ourselves that even the most bitter circumstances can be sweetened by the hope we have in God.
Hebrews 6:19: “Now we have this hope as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul; a hope both sure and steadfast, and one which enters within the veil…”
2 Corinthians 1:8b – 9: “…the burden laid on us was so far beyond what we could bear that we even despaired of living through it. In our hearts we felt we were under sentence of death. However, this was to get us to rely not on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead!”
On all other nights we eat sitting or reclining – on this night we only recline.
We recline as free people – freed from the bondage of sin and death by Jesus the Messiah, our Passover Lamb.
Romans 8:37: “No, in all these things we are superconquerors, through the one who has loved us.”
Colossians 3:15: “…and let the shalom which comes from the Messiah be your heart’s decision-maker, for this is why you were called to be part of a single Body. And be thankful…”
