Yeast.

We are in the "middle"* of the Feast of Unleavened Bread and I've been thinking about yeast, or leaven.  To one who reads God's command to remove the leaven from your homes, communities, and bodies without surrounding context or understanding of God the command seems...strange, weird, odd, controlling, and whatever other kind of negative connotation you can, or want to, come up with.  But to the one who reads it within surrounding context and with an understanding of God the command makes sense and speaks of God's great love for us and of his desire to see us grow in relationship with him.

If you don't know what yeast is or does let me explain because it is at the heart of this particular command - more figuratively than literally but that comes later.  Yeast is what causes bread to rise, beer to have carbonation, turns fruit juice into wine, and other things.  It feeds off of simple sugars in the product being used and breaks down those sugars which in turn causes alcohol and carbon-dioxide to form the fermentation that causes things to rise and/or bubble up.  There's the most simple explanation.

So it seems yeast is getting a bad rap with God.  I mean, what did yeast do to offend God so much?  Ah.  It didn't.  It is simply serving as a vehicle for God to teach us a bigger lesson.  Just like we use various things as props for our object lessons so God is using yeast as his prop for his object lesson with us.  He's pretty creative that way.

We first see God's command to observe a time of unleavening in Exodus and Leviticus.  It is combined or is directly on the heels of God's command to observe Passover.  Coincidence?  Oh I think not, and neither should you.  For those who might be a little hazy in their history let me give you a quick refresher on the Passover.  God moved the Israelites out of Egypt in the course of one night, after many other things had happened, and he commanded them to go and go quickly.  They didn't have time for their bread to rise before baking it so they made it without yeast and got going.  Prior to this, the pass over was the Angel of Death that passed over each home in Egypt and those who didn't have the covering of lamb's blood on their door frame lost their first born to death.  The Angel passed over those who were covered by the blood of the lamb.  (Ever heard that phrase before?  Hmmmm.)  See, if the Israelites had waited on their bread to rise they might have changed their minds and decided that the knowns of Egypt - as hard as it was - was better than the unknowns of the desert they were going to trek into.  God knew their thinking patterns and their tendencies so he made sure they had a reason to get out quick and not experience any lag time.  Yeast would have given them the lag time.

So every year God has commanded his people to observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread as a reminder that when we allow yeast to sit and rise there's time for all sorts of "trouble".  It comes on the heels of Passover as a reminder that we are or can be passed over by being covered in the blood of the Lamb.  The blood of the Lamb covers the "trouble" yeast may provide.

It is true that every day we should be aware to the figurative yeast, or leaven, in our lives that is there.  It puffs us up in the areas of phoniness, falseness, feigned virtuousness, and prideful thoughts.  Figurative leaven also appears in our lives through impure activities like porn addictions or drug abuse.  It appears in our speech through gossip and judgments passed on others.  It rises in us through what we allow ourselves to be exposed to that serves as a trigger for other damaging behaviors.  The leaven in our lives is throughout and we should be aware of it daily and removing it daily.  We should but let's be real, we don't.

We get used to the leaven in our lives.  We grow comfortable with it, it has become second nature to a lot of us.  Because of that, it is harder to pinpoint it because we don't have "eyes to see and ears to hear" most days.  I believe that is why God asks us to purposefully stop using leaven in our physical lives for one week so that we can become attune, again, to the leaven that has invaded our spiritual lives and has been allowed to rise within us all sorts of displeasing and sinful things. It takes a little bit of work to abstain from leaven in the physical and a lot of work to remove it in the spiritual.  Like everything else worth developing it is a process and mistakes will be made. 

God allowed me to see the process, spiritually, firsthand during the Feast this past week through a physical example.  I had been super mindful of the leaven in food and had been doing good at abstaining.  I was thinking through my choices and paying close attention to any places of hidden leaven.  (Rice crackers?  Totally leaven free!)  Then on day 5 (actually day 6 since sundown had come and gone) I made a mistake.  Oh not willingly, not rebelliously, not in frustration over being deprived of leaven.  I just didn't think.  I sat down after a night of cooking with my cook group and we served up the pound cake and dug in.  Didn't even think about it.  In fact, when I was almost done with slice two (quit passing judgement) it occurred to me that pound cake has leaven in it and I had just consumed it without a second thought.  Oy.  Now, you may be reading this and yelling at the screen, "Beth!  So what?!  Who cares? God doesn't really and besides there's grace.  Sheesh you are taking this a little too far."  Guess what?  You are absolutely right on the middle point, "....there's grace."  Yep.  There sure is.  There is grace and I'm so grateful for it.  And does God care that I consumed leaven?  I'm going to go with yes and no.  He asks that we, his believers and followers, observe his appointed times and the Feast of Unleavened Bread is an appointed time. But he also knows we are going to stumble and that is where his grace covers.  We can, and do, unknowingly introduce leaven into our lives without even thinking about it and by the time we realize it usually we have consumed enough of it to make a difference.

Transfer that thought to sin, as yeast/leaven is symbolic of sin.  Sin enters our lives, whether it be knowingly or not, and by the time we realize it there's enough of it in our systems to make a difference.  Right?  Right.  In fact, Paul addresses this very topic with the church of Galatians, and therefore us.  "You know what they say, “Just a little yeast causes all the dough to rise,” so even the slightest detour from the truth will take you to a destination you do not desire." (5:9, The Voice)  Another version of the Bible, The Amplified Version, says it this way, "A little leaven (a slight inclination to error, or a few false teachers) leavens the whole lump [it perverts the whole conception of faith or misleads the whole church]."  Just the slightest amount of sin will cause a detour in our life.  First it puffs up in the heart and then makes its way to our words and actions.  That's called a detour my friends.  And it's so subtle at first, almost unnoticeable.  But the smallest amount causes a large amount of "puff".  And before we know it the sin has risen to the point of over spill.  (Has that ever happened to you when baking?  It has me, I've had bread rise over the top of the bowl and spill over - what a mess!)  When we over spill we then have a mess that needs to be cleaned up.  Unfortunately sometimes we choose to stay in our mess for a season, other times we clean it up right away.  The choice is yours.  But the longer you leave the mess there the more chances you have for the yeast (sin) in your life to expand.  A few years ago I tried making a new dinner roll recipe.  I got it all mixed and nothing happened.  They didn't rise in the time they were supposed to.  I threw up my hands in frustration and we left the house and had to go buy dinner rolls (which if you know me you know I was super bugged - I prefer from scratch!).  We were late so I had left the mixed dough in the pans and baking sheets I had placed it on and planned to dispose of it when we returned home later that day.  Imagine our surprise when 12 hours later, as we walked back through our door, we came home to risen dough all over the place!  It had finally risen during our 12 hour absence and we had bread coming out of our ears!  It was everywhere!  I didn't see it coming, I thought the yeast was inactive and the dough would just sit and I could just throw it away when we returned home.  That didn't happen.  And isn't sin just like that?  We knowingly, or not, introduce it into our lives and sometimes the yeast doesn't rise right away so we are deceived into thinking we "got away with it".  But then it rises and we have a mess to deal with.

Perhaps now you can see why God, in his creativity, chose to use yeast as his prop for sin in our lives.  It works so well as a visual.  Perhaps you can maybe even now see why he asks his people (of which we who are not born Jewish are because we have been grafted in) to observe a time of unleavening in the physical to show us the leaven in our spiritual lives.  It's because he desires us to be leaven free in our relationship with him.  Any leaven in our lives hinders our communication with him.  And he desires for us to be free of that so we can clearly hear his voice in our hearts and lives.  Have you found some leaven in your life?  Psalm 51 is a great way to walk through the removal process and get back into right relationship with God.  Being in relationship with others you can trust to hold you to high standards is advisable.  (King David had Nathan, which led him to his repentance over his sin and what Psalm 51 is recording)  Being willing to shed light on the leaven in your life to expose it and kill it off is advisable.  In James 5:16 we are told to confess our sins to another so that we may pray together and find healing.  Not to be condemned by others but to be prayed for and to be introducing to healing.  This is important in remaining as leaven free as possible. I don't know about you but I want to be leaven free in my relationship with God so that my life - its words and actions - glorify his name.

Maybe in the past (meaning right before you read this post, if you've made it down this far) you've thought the command of God's to observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread was a) just for Jewish people or b) weird or c) old fashioned/antiquated/outdated/not applicable.  If so, I get it.  I'm right there with you...or I was.  Now I've allowed myself to hear from God on such commands and I've allowed him to correct my thinking and perspective on such things and guess what happened when I allowed him to do that?  I got it!  I was able to clearly see what his intent and desire was, and is, in his commands that I was placing in a,b, and c!  And what is his intent and desire?  To have a relationship with him that honors who he is and what he has done in my life.  And what he has done is so much, so to observe his commands is the least I can do.


*Okay well when I started writing the blog we were in the middle, now we are done.  {sigh} #lifegotinthewaynotimetowrite