INFECTIOUS SIN

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In Christ, Mark

The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

When a leader listens to malicious gossip, all the workers get infected with evil.

Proverbs 29:12 (The Message)

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

Have you ever made bread?

Like anything else, there is a set of ingredients one uses to get started. You can get started with water, flour, milk, and a dab or shortening, salt, and sugar but if you try to make bread without adding one more ingredient, you will not end up with the product you are looking for, an ingredient that once added, affects the entire end product.

That ingredient is yeast.

Look at basic bread making directions and you’ll find the yeast is added to the water and fully dissolved before any of the other ingredients are added. Once the dough is kneaded, it looks ordinary enough until it is allowed to sit for a short time. Then something amazing happens for the dough rises and becomes larger, changing under the influence of the yeast. It’s a process referred to as leavening.

Of interest, the scriptures talk about the infectious nature of yeast. Look at these words of Paul as he wrote to the Corinthian church:

Your boasting is not good. Don’t you know that a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough? Get rid of the old yeast, so that you may be a new unleavened batch—as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with the old bread leavened with malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. 1 Corinthians 5:6-8

Note here how Paul is comparing yeast to sin and its infectious nature. The concept is simple. Add just a little yeast to dough and it leavens the entire batch. Allow the sins of who you were before Christ to come back into your life and you’ll find yourself leavened again by them, away from the new creation, the unleavened batch you became when you accepted Jesus as your Savior (2 Corinthians 5:17). In Christ, we are to live in sincerity and truth. Tainted by sin, we live in malice and wickedness.

This truth is at the heart of understanding today’s verse from the 29th chapter of Proverbs. Look at these words of Solomon:

When a leader listens to malicious gossip, all the workers get infected with evil. Proverbs 29:12

Note here that all it takes for evil to be spread around is for a person of prominence, a leader in this case, to be contaminated by wickedness. As soon as the leader allows the sin of gossip to infect him, all his workers will become infected as well. In other words, sin starts from the top and works its way down. The same could happen in a family if a husband or wife decided to start allowing iniquity to take root. Before you would know it, the other partner would be infected and then the children. Such is the insidious nature of sin. It is very communicable, spreading to adversely affect one person after another spiritually just as a virus might be spread to its victims.   

Jesus had something to say about this truth as He taught those who followed Him. Look at these words from the Gospels of Matthew and Luke:

When they went across the lake, the disciples forgot to take bread. ‘Be careful,” Jesus said to them. “Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees.”

They discussed this among themselves and said, “It is because we didn’t bring any bread.”

Aware of their discussion, Jesus asked, “You of little faith, why are you talking among yourselves about having no bread? Do you still not understand? Don’t you remember the five loaves for the five thousand, and how many basketfuls you gathered? Or the seven loaves for the four thousand, and how many basketfuls you gathered? How is it you don’t understand that I was not talking to you about bread? But be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” Then they understood that he was not telling them to guard against the yeast used in bread, but against the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees. Matthew 16:5-12

Meanwhile, when a crowd of many thousands had gathered, so that they were trampling on one another, Jesus began to speak first to his disciples, saying: “Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. Luke 12:1

Note that in both of His teachings, first to His disciples and then to the crowd of thousands, Jesus warned about the danger of allowing sinful influence to enter in and infect, particularly influence by the Pharisees and Sadducees who regularly rebuked the people for living in the same sins they committed out of the public eye (aka hypocrisy). This was a dramatic statement by Jesus because He wasn’t just talking about any mere fringe people in society. No, He was talking about the very religious leaders of the day, those who ran the houses of worship referred to as synagogues in biblical days. Those who were enforcing the rules and regulations set forth by God Himself. It was these prominent religious authorities that Jesus was telling the people to ignore and not be influenced by.

Think about that for a minute to see how radical it was. It would be akin to a person getting up before a congregation and telling all in attendance to not listen to the pastor because they were at risk of being led down the path of sin. You would probably guess that the pastor wouldn’t be all too thrilled about that and would probably want you tossed out, eliminated from speaking out anymore. So it was with the Pharisees and Sadducees. They wanted to silence Jesus so much so that they chose to plan His death and how they might arrange for it to happen. They then spread their lies to their followers until nearly everyone was infected and wanted to see their Messiah Jesus crucified. And so He was.

Friends, if this doesn’t illustrate the destructive nature of infectious sin, I don’t know what will. We need to always be on guard so to not be contaminated by others and the best way to do that is to never be out of the care of the Lord, our Great Physician, who will always immunize us from sin with regular infusions of righteousness, a righteousness that is just as infectious as sin, a righteousness we are expected to show to others so they might see the way that the Lord intends for us to live.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

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