A LITTLE LEAVEN
1 CORINTHIANS 5:6-8
1 CORINTHIANS 5:6-8 NKJ
6 Your glorying is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump 7 Therefore purge out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened. For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us. 8 Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
OBSERVATION:
When the very first Passover was held in Egypt. The children of Israel were instructed to remove all leaven from their homes.
The Passover was the night that the blood of a lamb was spread on the doorposts and lintel of each home. When the destroyer would see the blood, he would pass over that house, and everyone would be safe.
So, each year as the Jewish people celebrated Passover, they would eat lamb and bread without leaven. Leaven has a fermenting action that causes bread to rise. It only takes a little amount to leaven bread.
Fast forward to the time when Paul was writing to the church in Corinth. And he is encouraging them to get the leaven out. But he is not talking about bread. Rather Paul is referring to a man who has taken his stepmother, his father's wife, and sleeping with her. That's not okay. And Paul said they should have removed this man from their fellowship. This man's sin was having an effect on the entire church. The leaven Paul is talking about is sin.
Sin has a way of corrupting, and it does not take much.
Paul reminds the church that Jesus was the Passover Lamb sacrificed for them. They are no longer the same people, but they have been cleansed. He calls them unleavened.
So, now Paul, by the Holy Spirit, is reminding the Corinthians to live differently. To live in sincerity and truth, not in malice and wickedness. Live differently because they are different.
APPLICATION:
Sin still has a corrupting element to it. This is why we are instructed to put sin away from us. We have been cleansed and forgiven of our sin, so don't let it back into our lives.
In the sixth chapter of Romans, Paul lays out a great passage regarding our relationship with sin. He told the church in Rome, and it still applies to the church in Conroe, to consider themselves dead to sin but alive to God.
So, we deal with the sin of our lives today by repenting and confessing it before God. Then we are cleansed and forgiven. Leaven free. The best way to live.
PRAYER:
Thank you, Father, for the forgiveness and cleansing that You have provided in Jesus.