When we celebrate Pesach every year we are commanded to view our observance as if we ourselves were redeemed from Egypt. How can we approach accomplishing this task, and how do the wine and the matzo, so central to the Seder ritual, help us in achieving this goal? Further, how can we experience our own exodus without paying tribute to Moshe whose mission it was to be Hashem’s representative as our redeemer? After all, in our recounting of the story of the exodus in the Hagaddah, the only time Moshe’s name is mentioned is almost parenthetically, as God’s servant, “And they believed in Hashem and in Moshe His servant.”
For us to try to observe the essence of Pesach, we must first understand exactly what Pesach means. Above all, as Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan A”H points out, Pesach is the first step to the acceptance of the Torah on Shavuot, and as such it continues to be the gateway to our rededication to Torah on a yearly basis. Rabbi Kaplan cites the Ariz”l and posits that the purpose of Pesach is to rectify the sin of Adam, and the yearly Seder continues this rectification. He adds that the ultimate rectification did occur at the receiving of the Torah, only to be lost with the 
As the Belzer rebbe points out, the only children who needed to hear the story and recognize Hashem’s intervention and complete mastery of our deliverance were Moshe’s children, who had been sent to live out of harm’s way with their mother and grandfather. 
sin of the golden calf. The wine of the four cups and the wheat of the matzo are both central to this theme.
We consume four cups of wine and three matzos during the course of the Seder. Besides their essence, the numbers themselves are enlightening. If we take the numerical equivalent of kos yayin, we get 156. When we multiply 156, that single cup, by four, the number of cups we drink at the Seder, we get 624, the numerical value of cheirut, freedom. We can do the same with matzo, using the Biblical term lechem oni. Lechem oni adds up to 208, multiplied by three for the three matzos, we again get 624 freedom. While the matzo represents the immediate physical freedom of our redemption, the wine represents our spiritual freedom of recognizing Hashem as the source of all freedom (and indeed of everything), culminating in our acceptance of Torah at Sinai..
Now let us get back to Adam. The Medrash tells us that Adam was prohibited from eating from the Tree of Knowledge only temporarily. Many commentators suggest that the “forbidden fruit” was in fact the fruit of the vine. They claim that Hashem forbade Adam from eating of the vine only until Shabbat, for He wanted Adam to use the vine for Kiddush. By eating of the vine before its time, Adam subverted its purpose and fudged the line of absolute knowledge of right and wrong which had been so clear prior to his sin. Mankind’s punishment for this sin was, “With the sweat of thy brow will you eat bread.” The enslavement in Egypt, the difficult toil and sweat, were meant to be expiation for the sin, followed by the bread from Heaven without toil, the manna. But with the sin of the golden calf we again fell into the post Eden state.
We now use wine for the blessing at the end of Shabbat, for the Havdalah, emphasizing the idea that knowledge is the faculty of discernment and differentiation between objects. How is this reflected in the structure of the Seder?
Halekach VeHalebuv discusses the Havdalah ritual and its relationship to the Seder. He asks, what distinctions are we made aware of by the Havdalah ritual? We begin with, “Between the holy and the profane” – the sanctification of time. This is our first cup of wine, our Kiddush, wherein we sanctify the day. This is followed by, “Between light and darkness” representing the light of our redemptions versus the darkness of our enslavement and exile. Our second cup of wine, blessing our recitation of the story of redemption itself, represents this phrase in the Havdalah service.
This is followed by, “Between Israel and the nations.” How are we different from other nations? We have undertaken the mission of elevating the physical world to the spiritual realm. We drink our third cup of wine over the meal, bordered by the Hallel, our praise to Hashem, half before and half after we eat. Finally, we differentiate between the seventh day, the Sabbath, and the six days of creation. We drink our fourth cup of wine with Nirtzah, commemorating our earlier redemptions in anticipation of the final redemption. The six millennia of this world will usher in the seventh millennium, the final Sabbath, the times of the Messiah. (A thousand years are as one day in His eyes.) At that time, we will again have the pure knowledge and clear perspective that Adam compromised by eating of the Tree of Knowledge before its time.
Our patriarch, Abraham almost achieved this level of perfect knowledge. However, with one small moment of doubt, he destined his descendents to slavery. Hashem had blessed Abraham and promised him this land as an inheritance. Abraham’s reply had within it that small kernel of doubt that required reassurance. “Whereby shall I know that I will inherit it?” Hashem replied, “You will know with certainty that your offspring will be aliens in a land not their own, they will serve them … for four hundred years.” This prophecy was the basis of our servitude in Egypt. And it is only with our liberation from that servitude that we again gained that clear and absolute knowledge, only to compromise it again with the sin of the golden calf.
It is this pure and absolute knowledge that we had immediately after our liberation from Egypt, when we had been “shown to know that the Lord is God; that there is nothing else beside Him” that we are required to pass on to our children at the Seder through telling the Passover story.
The mitzvah of passing on the story of our liberation was given to Bnei Yisroel immediately, but one generally bears witness only to others who are not present for the action. Bnei Yisroel were in a bit of a dilemma the first year of celebration after the liberation; all the children who were old enough to understand what was being imparted to them were themselves witnesses both to the slavery and to the liberation.
As the Belzer rebbe points out, the only children who needed to hear the story and recognize Hashem’s intervention and complete mastery of our deliverance were Moshe’s children, who had been sent to live out of harm’s way with their mother and grandfather Yitro when Hashem sent Moshe to Pharaoh to redeem Bnei Yisroel. It was only Moshe who could fulfill this mitzvah that first year by telling his children of the strong hand and the outstretched arm with which Hashem redeemed us from Egypt. Moshe, the humblest of all men, certainly removed himself as an active player, attributing all to Hashem. Now, when we retell the story, we pay tribute to Moshe by emulating his example and giving him only the role of God’s faithful servant, reserving the role of Master Actor to God Himself.
It is this humility that matzo represents. As Reb Nachman of Bretzlav explains, there is really minimal difference between actual bread and matzo. Bread is comprised of all four elements: earth, through the wheat flour; water to mix it with; fire to bake it with; and air which makes it rise. Matzo contains all of these elements with the exception of air. Air represents the puffing up of one’s ego, of making oneself the one of utmost importance, of being completely independent of outside restrictions. Its characteristics parallel those of the yetzer hora, the evil inclination. It was this desire for independent decision making that led to Adam’s original sin, and it is this thinking, this chametz, this puffed up ego, that we must rid ourselves of both in our homes and in our selves. Bread, once you mix the ingredients together, will rise on its own. Matzo, on the other hand, must constantly be worked on to retain its character, just as man must constantly work on himself to remain true to his purpose.
Reb. Nachman elaborates on further differences between chometz and matzo. Of the three letters in each word, two are the same. Only the “chet” of chometz and the “heh” of matzo are different. And therein lies a world of difference, for the chet, the basis of sin, misses the mark, while the “heh” means give, to be aware of the needs of 
Moshe, the humblest of all men, certainly removed himself as an active player, attributing all to Hashem.
the world outside oneself and be ready to give. Chometz is full of itself, its ego, while matzo is concerned with others. Pharaoh was full of himself. He would recognize no other God outside himself. He needed to be deflated.
Further, the difference in number values between chometz and matzo is three. As Halekach Vehalebuv explains, there are three matzos on the seder plate. Each represents one of the characteristics that, according to Ethics of our Fathers has the power to remove us from the world, and each corresponds to one tier of our nation. The top matzo represents kavod, the priestly garments to be worn for splendor and glory. But the pursuit of personal glory can be devastating. The middle matzo represents zealousness/jealousy, the Levites. When used correctly, you have Pinchas, and incorrectly, you have Korach and his congregation who rebelled against the authority of Hashem through Moshe. The third matzo represents taavo, passion/lust. While all of Israel should be passionate in the desire to do God’s will, it was so many passions that brought destruction on Bnei Yisroel in the desert. Therefore, by eating the matzo and internalizing the messages, we can, as Sichot Bavodat Hashem points out, emerge from the darkness of exile into the light of redemption, both personal and national.
Both the wine and the wheat of the Seder give us lessons in true knowledge and how to approach receiving it and using it. Each year, when we review the Hagaddah and view the symbolic foods at the table, we must remember that we each have the ability to help in our own redemption from the exile imposed by our own hubris