The Ancient Word...

God commanded Israel to celebrate the Passover Feast each year to commemorate their Exodus from Egypt:

[It] is the LORD's Passover...The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are; and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt. (Exodus 12:11, 13, NIV)

Israel observed the Passover in conjunction with another feast -- the seven-day Feast of Unleavened Bread. The Lord declared:

This is a day you are to commemorate; for the generations to come you are to celebrate it as a festival to the LORD -- a lasting ordinance....

Celebrate the Feast of Unleavened Bread, because it was on this very day that I brought your divisions out of Egypt...For seven days no yeast is to be found in your houses. And whoever eats anything with yeast in it must be cut off from the community of Israel.... (Exodus 12:14, 17, 19)

From ancient times, leaven or yeast was a symbol for sin. So Israelites celebrated the Passover by removing the "leaven" of sin from their lives, much like Christians today practice repentance during Lent.

The Apostle Paul recalls these Jewish feasts as he rebukes Gentile Christians in Corinth:

It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that does not occur even among pagans: A man has his father's wife. And you are proud! Shouldn't you rather have been filled with grief and put out of your fellowship the man who did this?...

Your boasting is not good. Don't you know that a little yeast works through the whole batch of dough? Get rid of the old yeast that you may be a new batch without yeast -- as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us keep the Festival [of Unleavened Bread], not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and wickedness, but with bread without yeast, the bread of sincerity and truth. (1 Corinthians 5:1-2, 6-8)

God expected Israel to respond to the Passover -- to respond to deliverance from death -- by removing sin from their lives. Likewise, the gracious sacrifice of Christ, our "Passover Lamb," inspires us to turn from sin toward God.

Christ, our Passover Lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us keep the Feast.

... for Today

One key difference between the Jewish commemoration and the Christian "Feast" is the time frame. God commanded Israel to observe a weeklong event each year. The Apostle Paul exhorts us to make the Feast a lifestyle commitment.

We no longer search the nooks and crannies of our home for packets of yeast to discard. But we do search the depths of our hearts for that which would slip in and steal away life from us and from those around us.

The Cross of Christ is ever before us -- we "die every day" (1 Corinthians 15:31). And the Passover Lamb is ever before us -- "I am with you always" (Matthew 28:20). So we live in constant vigilance for the "yeast" in our lives.

We live this way not just for ourselves but, as Paul reminded the Corinthian believers, for the sake of those around us too.

We may harbor secret sin -- something that others may not be able to see or identify. But there is no such thing as purely personal sin. We can be certain that whatever tears us down affects others too. The "leaven" in our lives -- the malice, wickedness, lust, greed, lies, anger, jealousy, impurity, gossip, and other types of corrupting fermentation -- shapes us and others.

The Cross of Christ and the ancient Feast of Unleavened Bread still call us to repentance and renewal every day.

Discuss...

1. Have you seen (in your own life or in the lives of others) small things/sins grow out of control? What do you learn from this observation?
   
2. How can we effectively "search the depths of our hearts"?

Chris Davis, PhD & David Timms, PhD
Hope International University
Fullerton, California

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