Feast of Unleavened Bread

Scripture: Leviticus 23: 1-8; Exodus 23: 14-15; 1 Corinthians 5: 1-8

Sermon: Feast of Unleavened Bread

Topics: repentance, immorality, new life

Preached: April 27, 2014

Rev. Mike Abma

Preamble: Here begins an Easter Sermon Series.

Liturgically, the days between Easter and Pentecost, those 50 days,

are meant to be one Great Extended triumphant Feast in the Church.

With that in mind, we will be looking at the Old Testament Feasts and see how they each find their fulfillment in the death and especially the resurrection of Jesus.

This morning we will start with the Feast of Unleavened Bread.

First with a reference to this Feast in the Old Testament,

Then with how Paul uses a reference to this Feast in his Letter to the Corinthian Church.

Exodus 23: 14-15

The Annual Festivals

14 Three times in the year you shall hold a festival for me [(Unleavened Bread early spring; Weeks late spring, and Tabernacles (booths) fall]. ¹⁵You shall observe the festival of unleavened bread; as I commanded you, you shall eat unleavened bread for seven days at the appointed time in the month of Abib, for in it you came out of Egypt.

LEVITICUS 23:1-8

The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: ²Speak to the people of Israel and say to them: These are the appointed festivals of the Lord that you shall proclaim as holy convocations, my appointed festivals.

The Sabbath, Passover, and Unleavened Bread

3 For six days shall work be done; but the seventh day is a sabbath of complete rest, a holy convocation; you shall do no work: it is a sabbath to the Lord throughout your settlements.

4 These are the appointed festivals of the Lord, the holy convocations, which you shall celebrate at the time appointed for them. ⁵In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month, at twilight, there shall be a passover-offering to the Lord, ⁶and on the fifteenth day of the same month is the festival of unleavened bread to the Lord; for seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. ⁷On the first day you shall have a holy convocation; you shall not work at your occupations. ⁸For seven days you shall present the Lord’s offerings by fire; on the seventh day there shall be a holy convocation: you shall not work at your occupations.

1 Corinthians 5: 1-8

Sexual Immorality Defiles the Church

5It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not found even among pagans; for a man is living with his father’s wife. ²And you are arrogant! Should you not rather have mourned, so that he who has done this would have been removed from among you?

3 For though absent in body, I am present in spirit; and as if present I have already pronounced judgment ⁴in the name of the Lord Jesus on the man who has done such a thing.^* When you are assembled, and my spirit is present with the power of our Lord Jesus, ⁵you are to hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved on the day of the Lord.^*

6 Your boasting is not a good thing. Do you not know that a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough? ⁷Clean out the old yeast so that you may be a new batch, as you really are unleavened. For our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed. ⁸Therefore, let us celebrate the festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

This is the Word of the Lord

Thanks be to God

INTRODUCTION

When I was growing up, we did not buy packs of Yoplait, Danon, or Chobani yoghurt from the store.

We did not pack Go-gurts in our lunches.

No, I grew up on a farm and we made our own yoghurt.

We would take about a gallon of milk,

heat it up to that point where it starts to froth

and let it simmer there for a while.

Then we would let it cool down, but not too cool —

maybe the temperature of a typical hot-tub.

Then we would plop in maybe a quarter cup of yoghurt that was from our last batch.

We would keep that milk warm, letting the active cultures in the yoghurt multiply.

After half a day or so,

voila, the gallon of milk was a gallon of yoghurt.

It was almost like magic.

FEAST OF UNLEAVENED BREAD

That is pretty much how they also made bread in the Old Testament.

They did not go down to Meijer to buy some

Fleishmans or Red Star dry active yeast.

No, they mixed up a big batch of dough,

then mixed in a small lump of old dough from their last batch.

The old dough would ferment through the whole batch,

making it bubble and rise, nice and puffy.

That is how they made bread, day after day, all year.

Except at Passover.

Passover was on a Friday and on that Friday they had to eat Unleavened Bread.

Then for the next 7 days – from the Saturday to the Saturday,

so it would have been from last Saturday to yesterday,

t hey could only eat Unleavened Bread.

Those 7 days were the Feast of Unleavened Bread.

They had to get rid of all the leavened bread and dough in their house.

They had to start with brand new dough.

This may have been hygienically helpful – making sure that the old sourdough did not become rancid or bad.

But the main reason was theological.

Since this Feast was celebrated the 7 days after Passover,

this Feast represented a clean and fresh start.

Everything from the old life – the Egyptian life of slavery and death – was over.

Everything for a new life of freedom with God had begun.

Out with the old.

In with the new.

I hope you can see how leaven, this old dough,

carried with it a negative image —

it represented not simply Egypt,

but everything that was worldly, idolatrous, sinful, bad.

PAUL and the FEAST OF UNLEAVEND BREAD

In his First letter to the church in Corinth,

Paul takes this Jewish image of leaven

and he uses it to reprimand them.

Paul knew there was someone in that church who was living as husband and wife with his own father’s wife.

This was not right. This was a form of incest.

But the Corinthian Christians loved their freedom in Christ.

They loved openness, tolerance, a readiness to welcome everyone into the church.

They probably thought Paul was being a bit of a prude,

and was making too big a deal of this.

The church has no business in the bedrooms of its members, does it?

Paul is clearly upset with this church member living like this with his father’s wife.

But he is even more upset with the seemingly nonchalant attitude of the Corinthian Church.

He calls that Church arrogant.

How could they let this kind of behavior stay in the church,

threatening to bubble up and infect and spoil the whole community?

So Paul advises that this man be removed from the community,

removed so that he could repent and be reconciled.

By verse 6 Paul is making a general rule for handling this kind of thing.

Just as in the Feast of Unleavened Bread,

clean out the old leaven,

so that you may be a new batch.

Clean out the old – whatever kind of immorality,

or malice

or evil that old is.

Clean it out,

so that a new batch can be started.

Die to the old self,

and let your new self begin.

EASTERN CHURCH and WESTERN CHURCH

From the Bible passages we’ve looked at,

leaven sounds pretty bad.

The Feast of Unleavened Bread

is all about ridding your house of all the old dough,

which represented the old life in Egypt.

This passage in 1 Corinthians is all about

ridding your life of the leaven of malice and evil,

your old life before knowing Christ,

so that you can start anew — a clean start.

Leaven sounds pretty bad.

Now I’m going to talk a little Church History.

You probably know that at first there was one church.

Then over time the Eastern part of the church

and the Western part of the church started to drift apart.

I was taught that the drift was mainly a doctrinal and political thing:

doctrinally the East and West wrote the creeds a little differently.

And politically the bishop of Rome did not get along very well with the bishop of Constantinople.

While working on this sermon,

I learned that one of the big things the East and West disagreed about

was the type of bread to have at communion.

The Western Church based in Rome said it had to be unleavened bread.

That is what Jesus ate at the Last Supper.

That is what we need to eat at Communion – unleavened bread.

Given the sermon so far, that sounds very convincing.

But the Eastern church used regular fluffy leavened bread.

They said that this bread was for them a sign of the resurrection.

It was a sign for them of their new life in Christ.

So who was right?

Well, they were both right.

That is the odd thing about leaven in the Bible.

Often it is referred to in a negative way —

as a symbol of the contagious quality of evil.

But leaven is also referred to in a very positive way in the Bible.

The kingdom of heaven is said to be like leaven –

put a little starter in the dough

and it finds its way into the whole batch.

DYING AND RISING WITH CHRIST

What I would like you to consider is how

this picture of leaven – both the negative and the positive —

is a picture of dying and rising with Christ.

In a very real sense, Jesus became old leaven for us.

God made him who had no sin to be sin for us.

Sweeping our lives clean of the bad leaven,

the leaven of sin and evil,

is not first something we can do by ourselves.

It is something already done for us by Christ.

By his death on the cross,

by his burial in the tomb

the old is gone – the old Egypt, the old Adam, the old us.

But then…then there is the Resurrection.

The old batch is done, gone.

But the new has come.

New life.

New resurrection power.

New creation.

A newness that will never spoil.

According to Paul, we are like jars of clay that hold this all-surpassing power.

We are like lumps of dough that contain

the newness of the kingdom of heaven,

the power of the resurrection.

This power spreads …

spreads into the different parts of our life individually;

and it spreads into the different parts of the church communally.

Christ’s holiness, his righteousness, is contagious.

This is the dying and rising process:

Dying to the old and rising to the new.

Dying with Christ to the old leaven —

The old rancid leaven of malice,

and rising to the new leaven of love.

Dying to the old leaven of resentment,

and rising to the new leaven of forgiveness.

Dying to the old leaven of arrogance,

and rising to the new leaven of humility.

Dying to the old leaven of discontent,

and rising to the new leaven of gratitude.

CONCLUSION

I don’t know about you, but I love reading stories of people who had what we would call a “conversion” experience.

The stories of people like

St. Augustine,

John Wesley,

C.S. Lewis,

Dallas Willard.

We tend to think of these conversions as once-in-a-lifetime events.

But really, once you get to know their stories,

you realize

that they lived lives of constant and continual transformation.

Lives that recognized that

This type of behavior grieved God,

This way of living was toxic to others

This way of thinking was self-destructive.

Their lives were constantly dying to the old,

Throwing out that old batch of dough,

Cleaning it out.

So that they could make a fresh start

In the power of the risen Christ.

People of God,

Eastertide,

These 50 days of feasting

Is all about our new start in the Risen Lord Jesus Christ.

We are free from Egypt,

Free from sin

Free from evil

Out with the old!

We are free to live new, fresh lives.

We are free to become what we ARE meant to be

in the risen Lord Jesus Christ.

Let the leaven of the Risen Lord,

bubble and ferment and rise in your life

and taste the wonder,

the goodness

the joy of his kingdom.

In the words of an old Martin Luther Easter Hymn:

Then let us feast this holy day on Christ, the bread of heaven.

The Word of grace has purged away the old and evil leaven.

Christ alone our souls will feed;

he is our meat and drink indeed;

faith lives upon no other!

Alleluia!

Amen