Ye shall eat nothing leavened, in all your habitations shall ye eat unleavened bread. Exodus 12:20
In a little blue enamel tin cup, my mother would mix up the yeast that went into the batch of bread that she made at least three times a week. A yellow package of Fleischman’s yeast, a spoonful of sugar, and some warm water went into that mug, and it sat on the baking board for a few minutes. Quickly the mixture began to grow until it rose, like a muffin top, over the edge of the mug. Even as it filled that little mug, the yeast mixture didn’t look like much, but when my mother added it into the bread dough, it was enough to raise five lovely loaves of the best bread in all of New Annan. That’s the power of leaven!
In the Bible, leaven is often used as a type of sin, especially the sin of pride, because it causes the dough to rise up beyond its normal size. For one full week in the Hebrew calendar, the Israelites were to get ride of all of the leaven that might be in their homes. And it was a serious thing, too. Anyone found to eat anything leavened during that week would be cut off from Israel! And that warning is cited twice in the 12th chapter of Exodus. Even today, devout Jews will make sure their homes are leaven free during the week between Passover and the feast of Firstfruits. These special days in the Hebrew calendar provide a lovely picture of the life of the believer today.
The Passover – the Jews call it Pesach – speaks of Christ and represents our day of salvation. Firstfruits, an observance of that which was to come, represents the Rapture. And the days of unleavened bread tell us of the life of the believer between conversion and the trumpet call to Glory. We are still in sinful bodies, so the unleavened bread speaks of our goal, not our position. As the Israelites eliminated leaven, so we need to eliminate those things that corrupt our spiritual walk so that our lives will be more like the perfect life of our Lord.
There is leaven for us to eliminate today, around us and in us. Will we get rid of it? -Jim MacIntosh
Here is the link to the video of this message: https://youtu.be/Fn__i4igNsE