BEWARE THE YEAST!

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In Christ, Mark

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

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

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

Have you ever witnessed the miraculous impact of yeast?

Anyone who has ever baked a loaf of bread can testify to its amazing nature. And most of us have enjoyed the aftermath of yeast’s work when we enjoyed a nice fresh fluffy piece of bread, especially of the homemade variety.

Yeast itself is a tiny plant-like microorganism that feeds on the sugars found in bread dough. As the yeast organisms feed on the sugars, they give off carbon dioxide which fills thousands of bubbles in the dough and causes the dough to rise and expand. Then once the bread is baked, it has a puffy, airy quality which is delicious to eat.

With all this, we need to think of yeast as an organism that invades and infects its host, altering its original state in some way. In the Bible, we see this nature of yeast compared to sin in many places. Jesus even spoke of it in one of His parables as He warned about the false teaching of the Jewish religious leaders (Matthew 16:5-12).  

As we continue to look at the fifth chapter of 1 Corinthians, we see Paul using the yeast analogy as he addressed the church in Corinth. Look again at his words here:

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

This passage is ripe with references to the Passover, connecting Old Testament requirements of God to the New Testament covenant sealed in His Son Jesus.

The “old yeast” Paul writes of here is who the Corinthian Christians were before they accepted Jesus as Savior. The new believers were to be new creations, trading in their yeast-filled, sinful lives of the past for the new yeast-free life found through following Jesus. God had commanded the Jewish people to only eat unleavened bread during the Passover meal as a reminder of the bread prepared and eaten by their ancestors who made the long journey from Egypt to the Promised Land. Not having yeast, they survived on the unleavened bread through the providence and provision of God.

Fast forward to Jesus who was referred to as the Passover Lamb by Paul. Just as God had caused death to pass over the Israelites when He sent the curse of the first born on Egypt, He made the way for death to pass over anyone who would place their faith and hope in His Son. These Christians, saved by the blood of the Passover Lamb, were unleavened believers, those who set their sinful past aside for a new righteous life in and through Christ Jesus who would lead them to living in sincerity and truth.

These principles of life, either infected by sin or “yeast-free” through a commitment to Jesus, still apply today although we typically refrain from using the yeast analogy most of the time. As we look at our lives, we should always be reflecting on whether or not we have stayed “unleavened” or allowed “yeast” to creep into our spiritual life. For if the latter happens, Paul’s warning question is just as relevant today as it was back then:

“Don’t you know that a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough?”

Or he could have put it another way:

“Beware the yeast!”

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

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