‘This is a day you are to commemorate; for the generations to come you shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord – a lasting ordinance. 15 For seven days you are to eat bread made without yeast. On the first day remove the yeast from your houses, for whoever eats anything with yeast in it from the first day until the seventh must be cut off from Israel. 16 On the first day hold a sacred assembly, and another one on the seventh day. Do no work at all on these days, except to prepare food for everyone to eat; that is all you may do.

“Get rid of the old yeast, so that you may be a new unleavened batch – as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with the old bread leavened with malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth” (1 Corinthians 5:7-8).

The Israelites were to begin to celebrate Passover one year after coming out of Egypt. For them it would mark the beginning of a new year, and it was to last for a whole week. Today we note the prohibition regarding ‘yeast’ or ‘leaven’. Why was this to be absent from the bread?

  1. It relates to the actual circumstances of the first Passover night (12:8, 34 & 39), and calls it vividly to mind. Leaven takes time to rise, and Israel had to be ready to leave in a hurry;
  2. It was to become a symbol of sin (see 1 Corinthians 5:8; Luke 12:1).

The fact of the matter is repentance is not a ‘one off’.The Christian life not only begins in repentance but it also continues in that spirit. We are constantly challenged (and perhaps never more so than around the Lord’s table) to “Get rid of the old yeast…” If you were to clean your house once, on the day you moved in, but never again, you would eventually find yourself living in a filthy hovel. House-cleaning is a repetitive and continuous necessity. It’s also hard work, but  it has to be done.

“All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure” 1 John 3:3

Thought: Which ‘room’ do I need to clean today?

PRAYER: ‘Lord, I heard someone say that you are more interested in the production of my character than you are in my comfort. Help me to also be committed to making progress in holiness. Show me where the dust lies and the cobwebs lurk, and give me the grace to remove them, for your sake Lord. Thank you, in Jesus’ Name.