Passover ...Memorial feast or Sacrificial feast?

"This day shall be to you for a memorial, and you shall keep it a feast to YHVH: throughout your generations you shall keep it a feast by an ordinance forever." ~(Exodus 12:14)

The keeping of Passover is a heated topic of debate in our circle, while we have some who practice it thinking the Passover lamb and practice is just a Memorial feast like the turkey on Thanksgiving day and not a sacrifice, but we also have some who does not do the Passover lamb, but instead a Passover Sider with some brisket or whatever at the end.

I myself used to think that we should do the full practice, yet without having done it, but was persuaded by others that it was a sacrifice and refrained from doing it,
but also I never lived on my own property, and still don't.

However I am now persuaded that it is NOT a sacrificial food offering of any sort because the Passover is not slaughtered by priest, but instead by heads of households ....man, or woman. Also YHVH commands to do the FULL practice as A MEMORIAL. And though it says, "You may not sacrifice the Passover within any of your gates, which YHVH your God gives you, but at the place which YHVH your God shall choose, to cause his name to dwell in, there you shall sacrifice the Passover at evening, at the going down of the sun, at the season that you came forth out of Egypt." ~(Deuteronomy 6:5-6)

it's also says in Deuteronomy12:2; "If the place which YHWH your God shall choose, to put his name there, is too far from you, then you shall kill of your herd and of your flock, which YHWH has given you, as I have commanded you; and you may eat within your gates, after all the desire of your soul."

..,well what if my soul longs to participate in the MEMORIAL Passover Feast with all its ordinances as a practice and MEMORIAL, and not as the SACRIFICIAL one required of the Levitical Priest within the Temple (or place) where YHVH put His Name?

Also though there is within this debate the condemnation of being "cut off" from Israel if you make such practice, but at the same time there is also condemnation if you don't according to the following:

"YHVH spoke to Moses, saying,
Say to the children of Israel, ‘If any man of you or of your generations is unclean by reason of a dead body, or is on a journey far away, he shall still keep the Passover to YHVH. In the second month, on the fourteenth day at evening they shall keep it; they shall eat it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. They shall leave none of it until the morning, nor break a bone of it. According to all the statute of the Passover they shall keep it. But the man who is clean, and is not on a journey, and fails to keep the Passover, that soul shall be cut off from his people. Because he did not offer the offering of YHWH in its appointed season, that man shall bear his sin.

If a foreigner lives among you, and desires to keep the Passover to YHWH; according to the statute of the Passover, and according to its ordinance, so shall he do. You shall have one statute, both for the foreigner, and for him who is born in the land.’” ~(Numbers 9:9-14)

Which kind of puts a "damned if you do, and damned if you don't" slant on the issue ...the above also addresses the issue if it is specifically an issue of Jew vs' Gentile.

So what do you all think?

Grafted In said:

Communion by the Church is the exact same thing. It is my opinion that if you were to acquire Matzo and wine and partake of them that would fulfill Passover. The unleavened bread and the wine consumed following the Passover meal is the very same thing as communion. They are not similar...they are the same. The Church just doesn't include the breaking of the unleavened bread, wrapping it in white linen an hiding it until after the meal has been eaten nor does it include the actual breaking of that piece that is retrieved. But the symbolism is the same.
Just my opinion.

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Oh yes, we must do communion.

Though it is the tradition of the "Church" to do communion every week, but are you saying or implying that communion should be regarded as more holy, that it should instead be done on Passover only in remembrance of Messiah in replacement of the Passover lamb? ...or along with the Passover lamb as many traditional Jewish Seder's do?

Where does it say that it is strickly a pilgrimage feast? ...and if it is where has YHVH set His Name at for all to gather? And what about those who cant pilgrimage?

...it does seem as if Paul did make pilgrimage back for Passover and other feast. He did keep going out to the Gentiles but he did keep coming back. Is this possibly because of the feast?

sevengreenbeans said:

Deuteronomy 12:12 is not saying what you think it says.

It's saying that ritual cleanness is not required to eat a meal in your own home. Only do not partake of the blood.

However, for all pilgrimage feasts, ritual cleanness is required.

Also, a woman is included in the household of her father, her husband, or her uncle. If she's a widow, her son. If no son, then her father or her father's closest male relative. She does not perform the ritual slaughter.

This is why it doesn't matter if a woman is unclean through menstruation on Passover, because exactly one month later for 2nd Passover, she would be unclean again through menstruation. Women being included in the household of a male relative allows for the ritual cleanness required for applying the blood of the lamb to the doorpost.

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That is an interesting take on that deal. I never heard that one before. Maybe I am wrong on the women deal. That never crossed my mind.

Though we once did a Passover lamb a couple of days before Passover as a rehearsal ...I guess me walking our goat around the house so she would'nt witness her buddy as my wife was popping a 22 into the lambs head while my buddy's cut the neck to ensure a kosher kill, that may have been a failure ...glad it was just a rehearsal, lol.