Unleavened! A life trusting, transparent and true

plates of food, including a plate of flatbread, on a rock beside a river

Long ago, the Lord set a certain week each spring for his people to celebrate him. It wasn’t a wild-party kind of celebration. It was a choosing-to-go-with-God celebration. An adventure-by-faith celebration.

The Lord told them how it needed to look. They did what he said.

Actively trusting in him: They got ready to go – when the way had not opened before them. They ate a certain meal in a certain way – when they didn’t see what difference it would make.

As I write, another Passover week has ended. What’s more, Jesus has long since ushered in a New Covenant. And yet:

What one group of hurting people did long ago, and what happened as a result, paints a picture for us. Because God still keeps his appointed times. And he still calls those who know him to celebrate him – by actively trusting in him.

The backstory – and why it matters

The first Passover

God’s people celebrated the first Passover ever, on their last night in slavery in Egypt.

It didn’t look like their last night. Pharaoh had repeatedly – and ever more emphatically – refused to let the Israelites go. Still, at God’s word, the people prepared to leave Egypt quickly.

In addition, each household sacrificed a lamb and applied its blood to the doorposts and lintel of their house. God had told them to do that too. He said the blood of the lamb would redeem them from a plague of death that would hit Egypt that very night.

Nine plagues had already decimated the country. Pharaoh could have stopped the plagues at any time. He could have stopped them before they started. Yet, repeatedly, he hardened his heart – to the enslaved immigrants in the land, to the suffering the plagues caused his people, to God.

Now, God’s people got ready to leave a land they were forbidden to leave. They offered the sacrifice and ate the meal the Lord had commanded. Later that night, the death plague came – and Pharaoh relented. The next morning, the Lord released an entire nation from bondage.

The annual feast

The same time the Lord told his people, “Get ready to leave Egypt,” he also told them to set aside eight days every year, in spring, on the anniversary of the Exodus.

→ The first day would be a “memorial day,” a time to observe again the Passover meal. Always, the meal should include the Passover lamb, along with unleavened bread and bitter herbs.

→ The other seven days, the celebrants would continue to eat unleavened bread day by day. That reminded them:

The Exodus generation left Egypt so abruptly they had to take their dough “before the yeast was added” (Ex. 12:34). So they continued eating unleavened bread as they passed over, out of bondage.
Meanwhile, Pharaoh called up his army and headed out to stop them. To reach freedom, the people had to keep trusting and obeying God as he led them to and through the Red Sea.

God designated this week of annual remembrance, “the Feast of Unleavened Bread.” He told the people to remove all yeast from their homes for the entire feast, saying:

You will celebrate it as a festival to God down through the generations, a fixed festival celebration to be observed always. (Ex. 12:14 MSG)

Let us celebrate this feast

Centuries after the Exodus, and two decades after Jesus’ death and resurrection, the apostle Paul wrote a letter to the church in Corinth, Greece. Some Christ-followers in Corinth were Jewish. Many were not. Paul said to all who call Jesus Lord:

Christ, our Passover lamb,
has been sacrificed.
So let us celebrate this feast.
(1 Cor. 5:7-8 NCV)

He thus interjected the subject of Passover into a surprising context. What’s more, these inspired words do not urge us to observe a certain day in a certain way. They call us to celebrate Christ our Passover by the way we live our lives.

Get rid of this “yeast”

Paul had spent four chapters confronting the Corinthian believers, in love, for their:

Factions and divisions, jealousies and rivalries.
Arrogance and unteachableness.
Collusion with sexual immorality and abuse in the church.

Deeply distressed, Paul addressed the incest and the arrogance this way:

I’m telling you that this is wrong. You must not simply look the other way and hope it goes away on its own.

Bring it out in the open and deal with it in the authority of Jesus our Master. Assemble the community – I’ll be present in spirit with you and our Master Jesus will be present in power. Hold this man’s conduct up to public scrutiny …

Your flip and callous arrogance in these things bothers me. You pass it off as a small thing, but it’s anything but that.

Yeast, too, is a “small thing,” but it works its way through a whole batch of bread dough pretty fast. So get rid of this “yeast.”

The unleavened bread of sincerity and truth

That’s when Paul said:

The Messiah, our Passover Lamb, has already been sacrificed for the Passover meal, and we are the Unraised Bread part of the Feast. So let’s live out our part in the Feast, not as raised bread swollen with the yeast of evil, but as flat bread – simple, genuine, unpretentious. (1 Cor. 5:3-4, 6-8 MSG)

Or, in the New International Version:

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.

Thus using leaven as a metaphor for sin, Paul urged:

Let’s live out who we really are in Christ!
Let’s live lives characterized by:

Sincerity – transparent and tested

The word translated sincerity in 1 Corinthians 5:8 literally means, “judged in the light of the sun.”¹ This Greek word appears three times in the New Testament, all three times in Paul’s letters to the Corinthian church. And they did need reminding:

God sees us clearly. He judges rightly. AND he has made the way for us to live a life …

Transparent – and demonstrably genuine, through and through.
Tested in the searchlight of his presence – and shown to reflect his nature and his ways.

Truth – received, spoken, lived

The Greek word aletheia is translated truth throughout the New Testament. Primarily, in Scripture, this word refers to “truth revealed” – by the nature, ways, works and words of the Lord.²

Also in 1 Corinthians, Paul wrote:

Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. (13:6)

Paul could speak the truth to the Corinthian believers – he could bring out into the open what they preferred to excuse – because he loved them deeply, from a pure heart. “I will most gladly spend and be expended for your souls,” he told them (2 Cor. 12:15 NAS). They knew it to be true.

Yet they themselves had not rejoiced in the truth. Though they believed in Jesus, they had persisted in attitudes, words and behaviors that grieved God’s heart. Some sins, they actively pursued. Some, they “looked away” from and let continue unchecked.

Distressed, Paul wrote, “And you are puffed up, and have not rather mourned” (1 Cor. 5:2 NKJV).

Paul urged them – and Scripture urges us – to embrace the Truth and the Light with our lips and our lives.

An unleavened life, in a nutshell

From the start, Passover pointed to Jesus. Then – in the appointed year, at Passover – Jesus became our Passover Lamb. He made the ultimate sacrifice to deliver “whoever will” from sin and death.

And our part, the “unleavened” part? Receive him by faith. Then, cooperate with him in real time. Actively trust him: To free us from any sin that still binds us. To lead us into abundant life. Oh, dear one!

We celebrate our Passover each day anew,
by a life that is trusting, transparent and true.

A little leaven leavens the whole

Oh, dear one! Some days, we don’t live that life. Maybe a lot of days. For a lot of reasons. You probably have your favorite ones. I know I have mine.

Some days, we refuse to go where it seems too hard – and excuse some things we need to address. Perhaps because:

We’re exhausted and hurting.
We want certain things so much.
We’re afraid – or resentful; arrogant – or ashamed.
We think we know best.

Whatever the reason, we count the cost of denying ourselves, too high – and the benefits, too few.

Then, if it looks like our “little” rebellion has worked out okay, we may keep doing it.

If “everyone else” is excusing rebellion too, we may go even farther. We may take steps we otherwise would not take into attitudes and behaviors God hates.

Ultimately, we may blind ourselves to the stuff within ourselves that Jesus died and rose again to free us from.

Some days, we may want to run recklessly away from the path of life. Maybe someone has convinced us – or we have convinced ourselves – that any life without a little leaven is just no fun. And decidedly unprofitable.

Maybe God has shined a light on something we didn’t know was an issue – and we’re determined not to know.

Some days, we may know we’re blowing it – and truly not want to blow it – yet we keep blowing it. In spite of praying. In spite of seeking. In spite of trying again and again.

Some days, a life without leaven may seem like an effort in futility, a carrot on a stick. And we may feel that we. Just. Can’t.

How God makes the way

One thing alone opened the way for transparency and truth in our inmost being: the atoning death of the Lord Jesus Christ.

That first Passover in Egypt, people applied the blood and ate the meat of each sacrificial lamb. The picture foreshadowed beautifully – but it could not tell the whole.

The Lamb of God, who died that we might live, is risen. When we confess in truth, “Jesus is Lord,” we receive:

The Bread of Life.
The Spirit of Christ.
Continual access to his superabundant grace.

Actively trusting in him: We set out on a choosing-to-go-with-God life. An adventure-by-faith life.

I obviously need help!

And when all that eternal truth slams into today’s reality? We may find ourselves right there with Paul himself, when he cried out in Romans 7:

If the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help! I realize that I don’t have what it takes. I can will it, but I can’t do it. I decide to do good, but I don’t really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway … Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time.

Is there no one who can do anything for me? (vv. 18-19, 24 MSG)

And then, like Paul, we may realize:

The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. (v. 25 MSG)

[Or, in NIV:] Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!

When you or I feel helpless to live the life Jesus died to give us, he will often let us vent. Then, he may hold us. And he may scold us. That is, he may tell us it’s time to face whatever within us keeps sabotaging us.

Always, he urges us not to quit.

He may offer, again, to show us which way real delight and abundance lie. He may remind us that HE is the help we need, to get there.

Then, he may sit silently, while we ache and think and decide whether to listen to the Spirit – or to another voice that thinks it knows best.

Eventually, the Lord will ask, again:

Will you actively trust me
to make the way for you
to take each next step
into freedom and life?

And we will answer him, again – by what we do next.

God helping you

In a different letter to a different church, Paul wrote:

Be energetic in your life of salvation, reverent and sensitive before God. That energy is God’s energy, an energy deep within you, God himself willing and working at what will give him the most pleasure. (Phil. 2:12-13 MSG)

For God is at work within you, helping you to want to obey him, and then helping you do what he wants. (TLB)

In other words:

The Messiah, our Passover Lamb,
has already been sacrificed.

So let’s live out our part.

This post replaces a much shorter post, published April 10, 2012, and titled, “The no-leaven life.”

Photo by Lipetskaya Zemlya on Unsplash

Footnotes

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