Getting Rid of the Yeast

When the Israelites were being rescued from Egyptian slavery there was no time for their bread to rise.  God had led Pharaoh to give them the green light out of town and they needed to get out quick.  (It only took 10 plagues and the last one took the life of Pharaoh’s first born son… So they needed to get while the gettin’ was good!)

So God said, “No yeast.  Get rid of every last bit of it that is in your house.”  (Even today, before Passover every year, the Jews still practice a search for any crumb of yeast in a ceremony called Bedikat Chametz.  It’s pretty cool to read about this fun little search by candlelight.)

God was pretty serious about this “no yeast” thing. “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, whether he is an alien or native-born.  Eat nothing made with yeast. Wherever you live, you must eat unleavened bread.” Exodus 12:19-20 (NIV)

In Judaism yeast represented sin, the bent toward sin, the awful effects of sin… how it seems to blow up everything in your life, the decay of sin, with the eventual outcome of sin being death. 

 

We touched on this during the sermon on Sunday but yeast is a fermenting agent.  It causes things to decay.  Sounds kind of gross but the reason dough rises is actually because the yeast is causing it to decay.  It’s rotting before your very eyes and then you’re going to eat it?  Yummy.  

Sin causes things to decay.  It will rot relationships.  I’ve seen it wreak havoc on marriages, families, friendships and churches.  

Sin puffs things up.  The sin of arrogance and pride has bloated my ego at times and caused me to say words I still regret and led me into some really stupid behavior, all while putting a serious dent in my credibility and witness to others.  

Thank God for the Passover Lamb; The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.  The grace of Jesus reverses the rotting, the bloating, and the decay.  In Christ we are new creatures.  (Yes, we are still subject to the temporary effects of our sin, but no more are we victims of the long-term sentence of death.)

Now, we still need to work on that yeast thing… we need to practice Bedikat Chametz.  And we do that in tandem with God’s Spirit working within us, searching us, cleansing us, reshaping us.  So… We should often pray this ancient prayer written by King David:

Look deep into my heart, God, and find out everything I am thinking.  Don't let me follow evil ways, but lead me in the way that time has proven true.    Psalm 139:23-24 (CEV)

- David