Passover Preparations

This is another copy of an old post but I’m trying to figure out how to transfer the messages in a way that makes them easier to read. Please bear with me…

This year, 2007, our Pesach will be different than any other. This year we have two new children to introduce to the Pesach meal and my mom will be visiting from Texas. So our Pesach will be a new experience for several of our family members and we’re looking forward to viewing it through their eyes.

I wrote about our 2006 Pesach preparations here but I will copy/paste the content here but I will take the liberty of editing it a little as I have a few new ideas.

I’m posting our Passover/Pesach preparation and teaching plans to share with friends and family but also to see if anyone else has any suggestions or ideas. They are surely welcome! Much of my writing assumes a certain familiarity with the Passover/Pesach traditions, symbolism, and meanings. If something is unclear or unfamiliar, don’t hesitate to post a comment about it. On my sidebar there are several recommended web sites that would be good places to find more information. I must make clear that none of these ideas are original to me. I need to give the credit to the people at the Biblical Holidays forum and the FFOZ forum as well as to the materials produced by those two organizations. These are where the majority of the ideas below have come from.

We will start our lessons with learning about the plagues. Before and during this plague object lesson we will also focus on cleaning every nook and cranny of our house to remove all leaven. The weeks leading up to Passover/Pesach is a time to clean the house, the van, the truck, etc. Not just a light clean but a serious deep clean – spring cleaning if you will. This is a time to remove all leaven from the house, including all products that include leaven. From dog food to cream of mushroom soup to soda to bread. Anything with leaven, even a little bit, must be cleaned up and removed. The crumbs in the cracks of the wood floor, under the piano and the appliances in the kitchen, etc all must be cleaned up. This symbolizes the hunt and removal of sin from our lives. It is common for leaven to be the representation of sin in Scripture. It is important to search our hearts and ask Him to reveal to us areas of our lives that need to be cleaned up and removed. By Passover/Pesach the house will be leaven free and spotless.

We will demonstrate each plague here at home in the 9 days leading up to Pesach. Each plague begins at sunset because that is when the day begins according to Scripture. At the end of the afternoon the family will clean up what remains from the plague and before dinner we’ll burn what we cleaned up outside. The symbolism here is fourfold: 1) to make us aware of what the Egyptians went through 2) the direct challenge of their gods by The Holy One Himself 3) to realize that we, too, have our own Egypt that we’ve been brought out of (a life of sin and being outside of His covenant. 4) the last has to do with the removal and burning of the object lesson materials and the leaven. It correlates to the cleaning of the house, this is to symbolize our cleansing our own tabernacles from sin and not simply putting it in a cupboard (trash can) or storing it outside (garbage can). We need to get rid of it completely and fully so that we can’t go and bring it back into our lives.

Each plague will begin after dinner and will multiply when I wake up in the morning so when the kids wake up, it will have grown quite a bit. At the end of the afternoon, before dinner, we will clean up the plague to symbolize the Holy Ones removal of the plague in Egypt. We’ll focus on the relief that the people must have felt when each plague was lifted and the frantic cleaning and/or repairing they encountered as they attempt to get back to normal once each plague was over. This is another reminder that we need to be that diligent in cleaning up our lives and removing the sin. It will also be a helpful tool in our preparation cleaning of the house as we’ll be able to focus on one area of the house each day for deep cleaning.

Plague Lessons:

1) Water of the Nile turned to blood. Add red food coloring to everything with water – pitchers, juice, etc. Remove all traces at the end of the day.

2) Frogs. Cut out green shapes of various sizes and put them everywhere – in beds, on counters, on floors, in dressers, in the food, etc. Burn frogs at the end of the day.

3) Lice. Hole punch white papers and scatter the small pieces everywhere. Print off a few images of enlarged lice and scatter them around, like the frogs were.

4) Flies or Beetles. Hole punch (various sizes) with black paper and scatter them everywhere.

5) Livestock Disease. [I’m not sure how to replicate this one. DH wants to use the paint ball guns to paint the cattle and sheep. I’m not so sure.] We may place ‘dead’ stuffed animals all in one place in the living room.

6) Boils. We will use clear tape and put various sized pieces of red paper on each others skin. After a time they itch and get irritating. We will not be allowed to remove them until before dinner. They will multiply during the day.

7) Hail and lightning. Listen to a CD that is repeating storm sounds all day long. It will get irritating, but we cannot replicate the hail very well.

8 ) Locust. Brown larger than hole punch size papers all over, in the cupboards. Breakfast will find only one box of cereal available and lunch will find only a few scraps of bread. Thankfully the ‘plague’ will be over before dinner!

9) Darkness. Cover all the windows somehow and remove light bulbs from fixtures or simply tape over the switches so the lights cannot be turned on. We have a lot of large windows so there isn’t any way to block out the light completely. We will still be able to function in the house but it’ll just be darker than usual.

10) Death. We will not die. We will use red construction paper and DH will “paint” it around our front door (with a stapler) and write on it “The Blood of the LAMB”. We’ll use blue paper on both sides of the door leading to either the dining room or the living room to represent the Sea of Suf which was parted, the symbolism of the mikvah or baptism. On the Sea paper we’ll write “Mikvah in the Sea of Suf”. DH will do this in the afternoon, before our Passover meal. We will have our meal/Seder together and keep the papers on the door frames till the end of the Festival of Matzah/Unleavened Bread.

On the Eve of Pesach DH will take the family on a search for any left over leaven we have missed. He will search through the house with the family in tow to inspect that every piece of leaven has been removed. He will use a candle (or maybe a flashlight) to search out even the dark corners and a feather to brush away what traces may remain. This is like what the Spirit does in our hearts – He shines the light in even the dark places of our lives to clean out any hidden thing we might need to get rid of but may have overlooked or neglected to get rid of. I will hide some pieces of bread in odd places for him to find and once he’s searched the house we will take these pieces of bread out into the driveway and burn them like we did with our plague object lessons. Along with the leaven we will have written down areas of sin in our lives that we have discovered during our cleaning process and plague process and throw those papers into the fire. This will be before our meal together, before we enter the house under the blood (red construction paper) that is ‘painted’ around our door frame. It will be at this point that we will no longer be Egyptians but Hebrews because of our faith in Yeshua the Messiah (Jesus the Christ) has allowed us to be grafted into the vine, adopted as sons and daughters.

We may read the story of Moses/Moshe leading the people out of Egypt and the first Pesach outside as a group, weather permitting. After this, we will enter under the blood and then pass through the sea (blue construction paper) and into the living room. We may consider washing each others feet as Yeshua did for His disciples, before we eat of course, if time allows.

We will use a Messianic Haggadah. We’ll try not to be as slow as in years past (we learn so much and have so much fun, 2005 it was past midnight before we finished our meal). I purchased the above Haggadah at the local Christian bookstore last year but there is another Haggadah that I’d really like to get my hands on as well from First Fruits of Zion. Everyone enjoys the youngest son calling our for Elijah to come take his seat at the table. Maybe this year he’ll come!!

Late in the meal and we’ll have the Afikomen search by the kids (have candies as rewards for questions and who finds the afikomen). This is a neat part of the meal, where 1/2 of the broken piece of Matzah (reminding us of when Yeshua said, “This is My body broken for you”) is wrapped in a linen cloth and hidden (like burial clothes and buried in a tomb). The child who finds the hidden 1/2 brings it to the father of the house to redeem the piece for a piece of candy or some coins.

Have our Counting of the Omer chart displayed and sheafs ready to be applied to each day posted somewhere in the kitchen or living room. Personally, reading Psalm 119 daily is a highlight of the year for me. Being able to sit out on the porch and read before the kids wake up, watching the sunrise and hearing the birds – it is an amazing time of worship for me and I look forward to those times all year long. There’s something special about those 49 days and thinking that this is what Yeshua did with His disciples all those years ago before He ascended. What a powerful time.

This will take us into Pentecost/Shavuot. :~)