Making Bread Without Yeast

One of my favorite jobs, though it paid the least, was the year I worked in a bakery. My bathroom scales reflected how much I enjoyed sampling the delicious cinnamon rolls, sticky buns, bread loaves, soft pretzels, and cookies we placed on the shelves to sell -- that was a downside to the job -- but on the other hand, due to the fast-working nature of fermentation in yeast-filled products, at the end of my shift, I got to take home a ton of "goodies" that had been made that day so the shelves would be clear and ready for fresh items when we opened the next morning.

I still claim that this is how I got my husband to fall in love with me. Maybe you've heard the quote: "The way to a man's heart is through his stomach." He and several of his friends waited eagerly until I showed up at the on-campus housing where I usually went after work, and they split up "the goods" when I carried them in.

So. My husband loves me because of my soft pretzels. :)

Anyway, this morning as I read 1 Corinthians 5 and Paul's reflection on yeast, I thought back to when I was a very young girl watching my mom get ready for communion the next day at church. My parents were church planters -- that is, the small church I grew up attending was one they had begun as an in-home fellowship in Asheville, North Carolina when I was just a baby. So -- offering baskets were a bread basket one church member had in her kitchen cupboard. Church nursery was a blanket spread out on the floor in front of the fireplace. Communion was my mom turning on the oven to bake some bread the night before so we could pass the tray the next day.

I have a distinct memory of watching my mom roll out a cookie-sheet sized portion of dough on a tray, dig the tines of a fork into it in even rows, and then place it in the oven, and I asked her why it looked different from, you know, the bread loaves we got from the store. 

She explained: "This bread doesn't have yeast in it." 

And so this was my introduction to the whole concept of yeast. Bread with yeast is kind of cool to watch. In my job at the bakery and at home (one of my favorite things to do is bake bread), I love kneading the dough, pushing it into a smooth, elastic ball, and dropping it into a warm, olive-oil coated bowl to rise, and coming back an hour or so later and seeing it almost spilling over the edges. It's so satisfying to punch it back down, flip it over, and repeat the process.

But one thing about that type of bread -- it doesn't look at all the way it did when it began. It changes. It grows.

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 5:6-9: "Your boasting is not good. Don't you know that a little yeast works through the whole batch of dough? Get rid of the old yeast that you may be a new batch without yeast -- as you really are. For Christ, our Passover Lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and wickedness, but with bread without yeast, the bread of sincerity and Truth."

Those two words rang in my head when I read them this morning: Sincerity and Truth. 

Did you know that it is possible to be sincere... and simultaneously, to be sincerely wrong? Truth is a key component here: Sincerity and Truth. 

Truth doesn't puff up. Truth doesn't change shape. Truth doesn't turn into something else. Paul's whole metaphor was given in this letter to the Corinthian church to warn them to strip themselves down to the Truth found in Scripture.

Here we go again, Tamara; you've talked about this before.

Why yes, now that you mention it, I have. I sometimes wonder if the Lord didn't call me to begin this blog ministry for this purpose -- to repeat this message over and over and over until it begins to sink in. "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever" (Hebrews 13:8), and since Jesus Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life... what He teaches is also the same yesterday, today, and forever.

So, y'all, with that in view, let's strip away the complexities we've added to the faith. Sometimes today's church reminds me of the church of the Pharisees. Although, where the Pharisees insisted on strict obedience to the letter of the law throughout the Old Testament, the church today tends to insist on obedience to cultural influences over what the Word says. We re-label the instructions found in the Bible. We cross out Truth and write in possible exceptions.

This entire chapter of 1 Corinthians 5 is brutal, y'all. I've written about it in some recent blog posts, so I'm not going to go through all of it verse by verse, but in summary, it is a rebuke from Paul to the Corinthian church for being proud of the liberty they have to continue to include a man in their church fellowship who is sleeping with his stepmother. 

Yeast pulls the dough away from its true form, Paul warns them. Get rid of the yeast. Get rid of the sin in your fellowship. He says explicitly: "When you are assembled in the name of our Lord Jesus and I am with you in spirit, and the power of our Lord Jesus is present, hand this man over to Satan, so that the sinful nature may be destroyed and his spirit saved on the day of the Lord" (1 Corinthians 5:4-5).

Paul ain't here to play. Whew! 

So that the sinful nature may be destroyed and his spirit saved on the day of the Lord. Look at what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 5:11: "But now I am writing you that you must not associate with anyone who calls himself a brother but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or a slanderer, a drunkard or a swindler. With such a man do not even eat."

Why not? Why can't we just, you know, ignore what they're doing and treat them as a brother or sister? Surely we're supposed to open our arms to our family and shelter them, love them unconditionally, right? There's all sorts of teaching in the Word about that, isn't there?

Yes. But there's also clear guidelines about what happens with Christians compromise with sin. And as I look at the wider church today, I see a clear pattern of drifting from the place of holiness, the place of peace to where God has called us. There are churches that accept sinful, intentional lifestyles in their leadership, and so teach yeast to a whole new generation. 

But we all sin, so what's so terrible about sin in leadership? God's grace is greater than our sin. 

Yes. But y'all, grace is what pulls us toward the cross. Grace does not walk with us along the compromising pathway away from the cross. At the end of grace is the cross and repentance. It is the entire goal, the entire purpose of grace: To draw us to the Holy of Holies to kneel before the Lord. So when we intentionally accept and embrace sin in our lives... we reject God's grace, and we allow yeast to ferment in our lives.

Keep this in mind: "The Word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart" (Hebrews 4:12). "Take the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God" (Ephesians 6:17). "The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds" (2 Corinthians 10:4).

Y'all, the Word of God is not a toy. It is a weapon against evil, able to divide soul and spirit, joints and marrow. It judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. It has divine power to demolish strongholds.

So why do we think that adding or subtracting anything from the clear-cut instructions for holy living in God's Word will bring us anything but heartache? Why do we "exchange the Truth of God for a lie?" (Romans 1:25)

Strip. it. down. Come back to sincerity and Truth. Sincerity with Truth.

Why? Because "Christ our Passover Lamb has been sacrificed." Most of y'all will know this, but I'll say it anyway: Just before the Israelites left Egypt, their land of entrenchment in slavery, they got ready to go. They put their sandals on their feet, took their walking sticks in their hands, and they baked bread without yeast to keep from having to wait for the bread to rise. They ate their meals standing up. Like runners on a starting line, they braced for take-off. 

They waited for release. They waited for the signal to leave behind their chains. And on the doorposts of each of their houses crusted the dried blood of the innocent, faultless lamb that had kept the angel of death from killing their firstborn child. The angel has passed over them, because of the blood of the lamb.

Blood plays an important part of the story of the Bible. The first bloodshed in the Word was the blood of innocent animals, when God Himself used their skins to make clothes for Adam and Eve after they sinned. The second bloodshed belonged to Abel, as his innocent blood cried out from the ground in judgment of his brother Cain. 

The ultimate bloodshed was the day Jesus, the innocent Lamb of God, died, which, significantly, was on Passover Day -- the same day the Israelites ate their bread without yeast as they waited to leave their land of slavery. 

They left behind their chains when they ate the yeastless bread. Y'all, that's so cool! They stripped themselves free of their shackles and they stepped forward in sincerity and Truth. They walked out of darkness into the light. Paul calls the church back to that place -- back to the the original shape God has intended for us: The shape of Freedom, the shape of Sincerity, the shape of Truth.

The Lord calls us back to the place of holiness without the fermenting and growing shape of yeast.

And I'll stop there, but y'all... drop your chains. Stop carrying them around with you. Leave them behind with the boasting about liberty to do as we like that is outside the sincerity and Truth to which God calls us. Paul says: "And you are proud! Shouldn't you rather have been filled with grief and have put out of your fellowship the one who did this?"

Father, forgive us where we have failed. Strip us down, remove the yeast we have allowed to ferment in our ranks. It's a culturally unpopular message, for sure. Help us to dive headfirst into it as we return to the joy and holy union of the church with the Bridegroom. Refine us, Lord. Put us in the fire, so that when we emerge, we bear the image of our Maker. Rid us of anything that does not reflect You. Lead us in lives of sincerity and Truth. 

Amen.