Reading Sermon by Rev.
Ronald Hanko – May, 2003
(This can be used as a Preparatory Sermon)
Purging Out the Old Leaven
I. The Old
Testament Feast
II. The New
Testament Keeping of the Feast
III. The
Abiding Reasons for Keeping the Feast
Text: I
Corinthians 5:7, 8
Scripture Reading: I Corinthians 5
Psalter Numbers:
348
52
26
384
Introduction
You
probably know, beloved, that there were seven Old Testament feasts that the
Israelites were commanded to keep. But
what would you think if I told you that the command to keep those Old Testament
feasts was still in effect – that you were still required to keep those feasts
today? That is what the Word of God tells us here in I Corinthians 5:7, 8. When
the Word says, "Therefore let us keep the feast," it's talking about
one if those Old Testament feasts and telling us as New Testament Christians
that we too must keep that feast!
There's
a sense, you see, in which nothing of the Old Testament has passed away. In some respects the Old Testament is over
and done with, but there is another sense in which nothing has passed away. The
Belgic Confession reminds us of that in Article 25: “We believe that the
ceremonies and figures of the law ceased at the coming of Christ, and that all
the shadows are accomplished, so that the use of them must be abolished amongst
Christians; yet the truth and substance of them remain with us in Jesus
Christ, in whom they have their completion.” In its typical and shadowy
form the feast referred to In I Corinthians 5:7, 8 has passed away, but its
truth and substance still remain with us in Christ. For that reason we are
commanded to keep that feast in its spiritual reality.
In
the context Paul is talking about discipline in the church and the necessity of
discipline. It's in that connection that we read in verse 6. "A little
leaven, leaveneth the whole lump." Sin must be put out of the church
through discipline, otherwise it works in the church like leaven, and the whole
church is corrupted by sin. And so Paul says, "Make that sin is dealt with
in the church through church discipline, lest you all be corrupted by the presence
of that sin – lest your whole fellowship and all of your work be affected by
it. Put out from among you,” he says, “that wicked person, the person who does
not repent of his sins.”
But
then he goes on and speaks of discipline in a more personal way. Discipline is
necessary in the church and must be carried out in the church, but there's a
certain kind of discipline for which we are all responsible. If we are busy
with that kind of discipline there never will be any need in the church for
formal discipline by the elders. Paul is talking about that personal obligation
and responsibility, what we might call personal discipline, in verses 7 and 8,
when he says, “Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump.”
When
we do that – when we purge out the old leaven of sin, then we are in fact
keeping the feast as our text commands, keeping it not as the Israelites did,
in its old shadowy form. but keeping it in its New Testament spiritual reality
– keeping it as New Testament Christians.
So
I call your attention this evening to those verses with the theme:
PURGING OUT THE OLD LEAVEN
... and to three things in that
connection. First we need to look
briefly at the Old Testament Feast and see what it was all about. It is the picture of and pattern for the
feast that we are commanded to keep. Then we need to look at the New Testament
fulfilment of that feast, and finally at the abiding reasons the Word of God
gives for keeping the feast. Those
reason for keeping the feast are two: “Ye are unleavened,” and “Christ our
passover is sacrificed for us. You will
never find any better reason than those for keeping this feast.
I.
THE OLD TESTAMENT FEAST
Let
us notice, then, that the feast which Paul is talking about here is not the
Passover. He speaks of the Passover,
but that's not the feast he's telling us to keep. He's talking here about a feast that began the day after the
Passover. You probably know that
the feasts were celebrated in groups. In the Old Testament you didn't have to
go seven times to Jerusalem to keep the seven feasts. You only had to go three times.
And that was because you could keep several of these feasts at the same
time. You have an example of that
here. The feast Paul is talking about
began the day after the Passover. So
those who had come for the Passover would stay this feast as well, and so
fulfill their obligations as God's covenant people.
Even
in the New Testament this feast to which Paul is referring follows the
Passover. When he says, “Even Christ
our passover is sacrificed for us,” then he means that for us too the true
passover is finished and this feast has begun.
The
feast that Paul is referring to is the Old Testament feast of unleavened
bread. We read of that feast in Exodus
12. I think it would be of some profit to read a few verses from that
chapter. There are some things well
worth noticing in Exodus 12:18-20, the verses that describe this feast. There we read: "In the first month, on
the fourteenth day of the month at even, ye shall eat unleavened bread, until
the one and twentieth day of the month at even."
We
learn from Exodus 12 that this feast lasted for seven days and was a feast in
which the Israelites had to do completely without leaven: "Seven days
shall there be no leaven found in your houses: for whosoever eateth that which
is leavened, even that soul shall be cut off from the congregation of Israel,
whether he be a stranger or born in the land.
Ye shall eat nothing leavened; in all your habitations shall ye eat
unleavened bread."
Since
few of our mothers and wives bake their own bread any more, we should
understand that leaven is the same as yeast.
You put leaven into bread dough to make the bread rise and become soft
and light when it is baked. If you
don’t put leaven in then you get unleavened bread which is something like a
thick hard soda cracker. That was what
the Israelites ate during this feast.
The
feast of unleavened bread was a commemoration of Israel's deliverance from
Egypt. Israel had eaten unleavened
bread the night that they left Egypt, at the first Passover. They remembered what had happened to them at
that time by eating nothing but unleavened bread for a week during this feast
of unleavened bread. During that feast
they were not even allowed to have yeast in their houses. For a whole week they had to do without it.
There
is an old Jewish tradition which says that on the first day of the feast the
father, or the head of the house, would search the house with a candle and
would make sure in a kind of ritual fashion that there was in fact no yeast in
the house – no leaven. There is a
reference to that practice in the prophesy of Zephaniah. In Zephaniah chapter 1:12 God says, that
just as the head of the household would search his home for yeast on the first
day of the feast, so God would search Jerusalem with a candle. “It shall come to pass at that time that I
will search Jerusalem with candles, and punish the men that are settled on
their lees: that say in their heart, The Lord will not do good, neither will he
do evil.” He would punish them by
throwing them out of His Jerusalem just as the Jews threw all their yeast out
of the house on the first day of the feast of unleavened bread.
But
the question that we need to answer is, Why did they have to get rid of their
yeast, their leaven for the week of this feast? Why was that so important?
Why were they not even allowed to have leaven in the house during this
feast? And why were they threatened
with excommunication from the nation of Israel if they were found with yeast
during this time? Do you know the
answer to those questions?
The
answer lies in the Biblical symbolism of yeast or leaven. When you think of yeast, you must think of
something that has the power to work its way into and through something else. Anyone who has baked bread knows what yeast
does. When you put yeast in dough then
the yeast works all through the dough and affects the whole lump of dough so
that the dough rises and you can bake a nice loaf of bread with it. That power to work all through something and
affect it is what Scripture is emphasizing whenever it speaks of yeast.
Sometimes
in Scripture, good things that have that power are compared to yeast. In Matthew 13 Jesus compares the kingdom of
Heaven to yeast which a woman hides in some dough. Jesus compares the kingdom
of heaven to yeast or leaven because it has that power to work in and through
all of our lives and affect our whole life.
When God by His grace establishes His kingdom in your heart, then the
kingdom doesn't remain in your heart, but it works through into every area of
your life. Then your speech becomes the
speech of the kingdom; your conduct becomes kingdom conduct. Then you become in everything a citizen of
that kingdom of heaven. You become a
citizen of the kingdom in heart and mind and soul and strength. From that point of view the kingdom of
heaven is like yeast, or leaven.
But
there are sometimes bad things that are compared to yeast as well. They too are compared to yeast because they
have that same power to get into something and to work in it and through it
until the whole is corrupted and filled with that bad thing. The doctrine of the Scribes and Pharisees is
compared to yeast in Matthew 16:6, because their doctrine was not just wrong
but would work through and corrupt all the life of God’s people.
Most
often, though, when Scripture compares something to yeast, it compares sin to
yeast or leaven. Sin has the power to
work through everything and corrupt everything. That's something that we may never forget. We very often sin against God, and it seems
that sin isn't really a very big thing, but neither is yeast.
If
you know anything about sin, then you know that sin is like yeast. Even you children know that. When you tell a lie then that is not the end
of the matter. One lie leads to another
lie, and then another. That's one of
the ways in which sin is like leaven. Sin
grows. It grows and spreads just like
yeast in dough. It works it's way into
your whole life until your life is completely corrupted by sin. What began as a
little sin ends with a man leaving the church, abandoning the faith, going his
own way. That's sin working like
leaven. That's one of the things that
the Apostle Paul is bringing to our attention here in these verses.
For
that reason sin must be put away. In
the same way that the Israelites had to search every corner of the house and
make sure that there was no leaven in the house, it is our great business as
believers to do the same with respect to sin.
We must be busy always, not just once a year, not just four times a year
when the Lord's Supper is celebrated, but always – busy purging out the leaven
of sin.
When
we do that, then we’re keeping the feast – keeping the feast of unleavened
bread. We’re are not keeping it in that
typical way that the Jews kept it in the Old Testament. That was, after all, just a picture. But we’re keeping the spiritual reality to
which that Old Testament picture pointed.
You are keeping the real feast of unleavened bread, not the
picture feast, when you are busy purging out the leaven of sin.
Remember,
too, that the keeping of that feast, as Paul points out in the context here, is
necessary. The church will be destroyed
if we don't keep the feast. Just as Israel was destroyed as a nation because it
would not keep the feasts of Jehovah, so will we be destroyed. Not only does a little leaven leaven the
whole lump, but the presence of the leaven of sin in the church brings down the
judgment of God on the church.
II.
THE NEW TESTAMENT KEEPING OF THE FEAST
All
that does not explain, however, how we keep the feast. Do you know what that involves?
We
keep this feast, first of all, through self-examination. Self-examination corresponds to that Old
Testament ritual of searching the house.
In self-examination you search not a house made with hands, but you
search your own spiritual house – yourself.
You search it from top to bottom, from basement to attic. You search every dark corner and every room
– heart, soul, mind, motives, deeds. You search them all in order that the
leaven of sin may be put away.
Practicing self-examination is keeping the feast.
That
important work of self-examination, though we always emphasize it in connection
with the Lord's Supper, is the daily calling of the people of God. You are not just called to self examination
four times a year, but every day.
We
also keep the feast when we repent of our sins. That corresponds to the Israelites’ putting their yeast out of
the house. It's hard to explain to
someone who does not know anything about repentance, but repentance is in fact
a purging and putting out of sin. It is that because when you repent of your sin you are saying
before the face of God that you want nothing more to do with sin – you don't
ever again want to have anything to do with it.
But
repentance is also a putting out of sin in that it clears the conscience and
the heart before God. You know that if
you have ever truly repented of sin – that repentance really does, by the grace
of God, take away the sin that you've committed. It's like an enormous burden being lifted away.
In
I John 1, John talks about that. if we confess our sins, John says, He is
faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all
unrighteousness. In the way of
repentance we experience and enjoy relief from the burden of guilt and sin.
Conversion,
too, is also part of keeping this feast.
Conversion means, very simply, that you turn from your sin and pray for
grace to be holy. That's part of keeping
the feast, and is like the Israelite closing the door after throwing out the
leaven and making sure that the leaven was not brought back into the house.
Keeping
the New Testament feast of unleavened bread is not easy. It was an easy thing to keep the Old
Testament feast. All you had to do was
get rid of whatever yeast you had in the house. That wasn’t hard to do.
Purging out the leaven of sin is another matter altogether. That requires some effort. In fact, you can’t do it yourself. You need first of all the candle of the Word
of God. Only it can shed its light in
the dark corners of your life and discover the sins that lurk there. Only that candle of the Word can discover
our sinful nature as the source of every evil deed and thought.
In
Corinthians Paul talks about that. I Corinthians 11:31 says: "If we would
judge ourselves, we would not be judged."
Only the Word has the power to show us our sinfulness and convict us of
sin. You should know that from your
years of sitting under the preaching of the gospel. It does indeed have a way of shining into those dark
corners. Sometimes the minister
preaches the sermon and doesn’t even realize that by the candle of the Word
which he holds up, those dark corners of your heart are being lightened, and
the sins that are hidden in those dark corners found out. That's why the Word sometimes leaves us
uncomfortable, even angry. But that's
the way it must be, and you know that too.
You will need the Word of God, therefore, in order to fulfill your calling
to keep the feast.
You
will also need the work of the Spirit of God.
Only the Spirit can give you strength to repent of sin and hate it and
put it away. You will never do that
yourself. Anyone who has resolved over
and over again to do what is right and failed knows that from bitter
experience.
In
speaking of these things, Paul warns us against some dangers. He doesn't just say, “Purge out the old
leaven. Get rid of the sin. Repent of it. Practice self examination, repent and be converted.” But he mentions specific sins, “malice and
wickedness.” There are of course, I
suppose, innumerable sins that could be mentioned. But he mentions just malice and wickedness. There must be a reason for that. Why?
He
mentions malice exactly because it is a specific sin. There is the danger in repentance and in self examination that we
never get around to dealing with specific sins. Almost always when we pray we
ask for forgiveness. We say, “Forgive
me and forgive my family their sins.”
But we fail completely to confess any specific sins that we've
committed. Angry, harsh, uncharitable
words, malice, whatever the case may be, we seem never to get around to
confessing them.
That
can even be a way in which we hide our sins.
While we convince ourselves that we are in fact busy with repenting,
there's not a single specific sin that we've actually committed that we've ever
faced up to, confessed as sin, and repented of before the face of God. We have to watch out for that. And that's
one of the reasons why Paul takes the time to mention specific sins here.
Another
reason why he mentions the sin of malice, is that it's a very common sin ands a
sin that works just like leaven. It’s
like leaven first of all because you never really see it. It's hidden way down in the dark corners of
my heart or of yours. But it eats
there, and it grows there and it spreads there until it's corrupted the whole
of my spiritual life, or of yours. The
book of Hebrews talks about that when it talks about bitterness. It says, “Be sure that you put bitterness
away, because if you let it stay there, then it will grow. It will put down
roots.” That a little different figure
but the same idea. Bitterness, like malice will put down roots and grow in your
heart until it destroys you.
So
Paul is saying to us, when he mentions malice, “Make sure in this business of
putting out the old leaven of sin that you really do it. Don't just make a pretense of it. Be sure that you acknowledge and deal with
and put away the actual sins of which you are guilty. Very often those are exactly those sins that you're inclined to
love and to cherish and to keep.
Paul
also mentions, or uses the word “wickedness” here. That's not so much a reference to a specific sin but a word that
we can use to describe all sin. He uses
that word for another reason, to remind us that the leaven of sin is rooted in
and has its source in our old nature.
Putting away sin is not just being sorry for some things that I've done,
although it includes that too. But it's
coming by the grace of God, to the realization that I am a sinner and
that those sins that I commit have their source in the filthy fountain of my
own nature. That too has to be
acknowledged and repented of.
How
often are you sorry for what you are?
How often do you confess to God the fact that you are corrupt and
depraved – not just that you've done evil.
If you don’t, I suggest that you really do not know the reality and
power of sin in your own life. You and
I do not really understand sin until we understand and face up to the depravity
of our natures.
By
speaking of wickedness, therefore, and reminding us that sin is embedded in our
very nature, Paul is simply saying that we can never, ever win this battle, and
do this work, and keep the feast, by our own efforts. Keeping the feast is not just a matter of having the Word then,
but a matter of depending utterly and wholly upon the sovereign grace of God in
Christ Jesus. Only grace can lead me to
honest self-examination. Only grace can
produce the tears of repentance. Only
grace can bring conversion.
So
there's a warning implied too: Keep the feast in sincerity and truth. Be sure you keep it. It was possible in the Old Testament to make
some sort of a pretense of keeping the feast, by going to Jerusalem and
abstaining from yeast during the week of the feast, but doing it only as a
traditional thing. That was an
abomination to God – as much as if you never came to Jerusalem. Paul is saying,
“Be careful that you do in fact keep it.
It's not just a pretense. That
you don't just say the right words, ‘Forgive us our sins.’ But that you in fact, are busy with this
work of purging out the leaven.”
Sincerity
and truth are compared in our text to the unleavened bread the Israelites did
eat during the feast. Keep the feast,
Paul says, “with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”
The
Israelites were not only commanded to put away the leaven, but also to eat
unleavened bread. That was an important
part of keeping the feast. Putting away
the leaven was the negative part of the feast.
Eating the unleavened bread was the positive part of keeping the feast.
We
have that same two-part calling. We
must put away the leaven of sin, but we must also eat unleavened bread. In fact, we put away the leaven of sin for
the sake of keeping the feast with unleavened bread.
Eating
the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth is for us the same things as living
a life of Christian gratitude and obedience to God. That's what matters. And
the purpose of putting away the leaven of sin is that we may do that with all
our heart, and mind, soul and strength.
Even
in that, however, there's a warning.
The warning is against the person who thinks he’s keeping the feast only
because he’s dealt with a specific sin.
An example is the man who thinks he's converted because he's put away
the sin of drunkenness. That's not
conversion, not all by itself. A man
who is truly converted from drunkenness, or whatever sin, lying, stealing,
whatever, is only converted when in the place of that drunkenness there is a
real thirst after the living God. Only
when the filthy life of the adulterer is replaced by the purity of holy
obedience in marriage and in the single life is a man or a woman truly
repentant and truly converted. Only
then is he or shee keeping the feast with the unleaved bread of sincerity and
truth.
And
that's why Paul says that the feast must be kept with the unleavened bread of
sincerity and truth. He uses those two
words to remind us of the fact that from that positive point of view there are
two things that characterize the holy obedience of the child of God. As he puts away sin and strives to live in
holy obedience to God, there are two things that characterize him. The one is sincerity. Not hypocrisy, not a mere show of obedience,
but sincerity of heart. And with that,
comes truth. Our holines, our
obedience, must be according to the Word of God.
We
can use the Old Testament example to illustrate what God is saying here. You couldn't keep the feasts in the Old
Testament, not really, if you didn't come to those feasts with all your heart,
remembering and being thankful for what God had done for His people in bringing
them out of bondage and to the promised land.
That's why God says in Isaiah that those Jews who brought their
sacrifices, but didn't bring them from a heart that was true and right with
God, might just as well have been cutting off pig's heads, or killing or
murdering their neighbors, as bringing lambs.
It really wasn't any different if it was without sincerity.
But
they weren't keeping the feast either if they came and did as they
pleased. Keeping the feast meant doing
exactly as God commanded and doing all that He required. The feast must be kept also in truth.
III.
THE ABIDING REASONS FOR KEEPING THE FEAST
Laying
that calling before us, Paul gives us two reasons for obedience. Those two reasons are God's work in us and
God’s work for us. God’s work in us is
described with the words, “For ye are unleavened.” God’s work for us is described with the words “For even Christ
our passover is sacrificed for us.” Two
better reasons for keeping the feast you will not find.
The
Word of God here, therefore, appeals first to God’s great work of grace in us –
the work that He does by His Spirit and Word in regeneration, calling, faith,
conversion, and all of the rest. The
result of that work is that we are unleavened, that is, without sin, at least
in principle.
Scripture
never just says, “Do it.’ Or, “Don't do
it.” Scripture, when it brings it's
commands, always goes back to the work of God.
You hear those commands of Scripture.
You look at yourself, and you say, “How can I?” And you try and you fail and you feel like
giving up. Scripture doesn't just say
then, “Well you've got to go on anyway – you have to do it anyway.” But Scripture goes back to that work of
grace and says, “Remember – remember what God has done.” And then the Christian says, “Yes, God has
begun in me His work of grace. It
hasn't gone on very far yet. It's only
a beginning. But God has begun it. And therefore, though I'm discouraged,
though my sins rise against me, I know that I can go on. And I know that I will go on. I know that I must go on.”
And
when the Christian is reminded of the fact that in principle, by the grace of
God in Jesus Christ, he is unleavened, a new man in Christ, created not by his
own efforts, but by the almighty power of the Spirit of God, then he says,
“Yes. Yes. This is what I must do. This
is what I will do, God helping me.”
In
the second place, Paul appeals to God's work for us. We must do this, we will do this, also because Christ died for
us: “Even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us.”
When
he calls Christ our passover he is speaking of Christ as the Lamb of the
Passover, the lamb without spot or blemish that was offered to God as a
sacrifice for our sins.
That
sacrifice of Christ offered once for all is an encouragement to the believer in
his calling to keep the feast of unleavened bread. The Lamb has been slain as an atonement for those very sins
against which he struggles. What
greater encouragement could there be for that, than to know that these very
sins which rise up against me, and which so discourage me by their presence
always, are already paid for by the death of that Lamb.
By
His sacrifice, Christ has purchased everything you are fighting for, waiting
for, struggling for, repenting for.
It's all purchased already. He’s
purchased for you the right to keep the feast, the power to keep it, and every
good thing you do in keeping it. The
keeping of the feast is yours by His blood and righteousness.
How
shall I be holy? How shall I overcome
in this battle? How shall I keep the
feast? All I see is the struggle and
the end of that struggle does not appear very clear to me. But I know this, that the victory is won,
the blessings purchased, all accomplished by the death of Christ. And so too I am willing and do keep the
feast as the Word of God commands through Him who is my all.
The
passover, you see, is finished. The
Lamb is slain, the blood sprinkled, atonement made, all things purchased for us
by the priceless blood of Christ.
That's all done. We're not
called to keep that feast. Christ kept it in His suffering and death. Now it’s the day after the passover, the
first day of the feast of unleavened bread, a feast which will last until
Christ returns. Of that rest the Word
of God says, “Keep it. Keep it. Don't stay away. Don't be a hypocrite in coming.
Keep the feast; not with the old leaven, neither the leaven of malice
and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.” Keep it in self-examination, in repentance,
in conversion and in sincere and thankful obedience to God until He comes
again.
And
lest we forget or become slothful let us remember the warning of Exodus 12:
“Keep the feast, lest you be cut off.”
Amen.