In Folsom where we live, like in most of your communities, there is a specific “trash pick-up day” during the week when the local trash service picks up garbage, recyclables, and green waste. Our pick-up day is Tuesday, and for several weeks I filled our green waste bin with rosemary, even borrowing our neighbor’s bin during the weeks when he had little green waste from his own yard. When that portion of the project was completed, our hillside looked barren, but at the same time, clean and fresh. Of course, that’s just the first half of my backyard project. The hillside needed something else to replace the rosemary, but more on that next week. In this blog, I want to focus on the need to remove certain things from our lives, just like the unsightly and unwanted rosemary needed to be removed from our back hillside.

The Bible has a lot to say about “leaven,” otherwise known as “yeast.” If you are looking for a definition, leaven is basically “dough in a state of fermentation.” During the first Passover meal in Egypt, as the people were preparing to leave, the leaven did not have time to fill the dough. They were to be ready to leave on a moment’s notice and consequently, the people were commanded to eat “unleavened” bread. Here is what God said to Moses,

“Now this day will be a memorial to you, and you shall celebrate it as a feast to the LORD, throughout your generations you are to celebrate it as a permanent ordinance. Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, but on the first day you shall remove leaven from your houses…” (Ex. 12:14-15).

The Feast of Passover is always accompanied by the Feast of Unleavened Bread, when the people not only had to eat unleavened bread, but also had to remove all leaven from their homes. Interestingly, Jesus used leaven as a metaphor for “evil” and “corruption.” Jesus warned His disciples,

“Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees” (Mt. 16:6).

Jesus later told His disciples that the “leaven” of which He spoke was the “teaching” of the religious leaders (Mt. 16:12). The Apostle Paul also used leaven to refer to “false doctrine,” specifically the teaching of the Jews who were seeking to be “justified by the Law” instead of by grace through faith in Christ (Gal. 5:4). And then Paul warned them,

“A little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough” (Gal. 5:9).

Paul reminded the church in Corinth of the same issue, but then added some additional thoughts,

“Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough? Therefore, clean out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump of dough, just as you are in fact unleavened. For Christ, our Passover also has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth” (I Cor. 5:6-8).

Like Jesus, Paul is calling each of us to get rid of the “old leaven” in our lives. Some of that “old leaven” has to do with “malice and wickedness” as Paul said in the text above. But Paul also connected the metaphor of “leaven” with the “deeds of the flesh” which is contrary to the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Paul actually took a moment to list what he called “the deeds of the flesh,” or what he would also call “the leaven of the flesh,”

“Now the deeds of the flesh are evident which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissentions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you that those who practice such things shall not inherit the Kingdom of God” (Gal. 5:19-21).

That’s the “leaven” that Paul wants every follower of Christ to remove from their lives. You might be surprised to know that you cannot do it, but the power of Christ through His Holy Spirit can work in and through you to clean out the “old leaven,” all of that which is contrary to the purposes of God. Just ask God to reveal those areas of leaven that need to be removed from your life. It’s a search, and often a “deep search” into the recesses of your heart. But God can reveal those things to you that need to be removed. Just ask Him to do it. If He knows you are willing to allow Him to do the searching, He will immediately begin the process of revelation. Just pray as King David prayed,

“Search me O God and know my heart; try me and know my anxious thoughts; , and if you find any hurtful way in me, lead me in the everlasting way” (Ps. 139:23-24)

What God wants is not a lump of dough with “old leaven” permeating it, but as Paul says, a “lump of unleavened dough.” A lump that is clean and fresh, like my backyard hillside after the rosemary was removed. But once the leaven is removed, just like the rosemary, something needs to replace it. And that’s the subject of next week’s blog. Hope to see you then!