Let Us Celebrate The Feast Not With The Old Yeast

BIBLE STUDY # 645 –CHURCHES IN THE HOUSE From: JULY 20-26, 2010

TOPIC: "Let Us Celebrate The Feast Not With The Old Yeast" I Corinthians 5:6-8 Sin contaminates everything it has contact with. We must not tolerate sin, but nowadays sin is not considered important, it is just left there. Sin should bring lamentation and make us take measures to eradicate it. That is our duty, so much as to not admit among us those who have committed wrongdoing as those mentioned by the apostle Paul. "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." 1 Corinthians 5: 11 The Corinthians had boasting of evil. What a great thing on their behalf! Their insolence and boldness was such! This is the problem of many inscrutables, the boldness and the insolence, without caring who they involve. Who cares?, they say. What a pity, nowadays, as with the Corinthians, there is so much boast in sin, it is so easy for many. When in church what we should always have is humiliation until we destroy all the interior things that wants to spoil us. And then, what do they do after they have knowingly sinned? They move to another church and then say that others are the ones who are wrong. In this way they tarnish all the clean things of the Holy God. Too bad for them! How will they escape from the wrath of the living God! If all who call themselves Christians acknowledge the same teachings of the Bible, then, How is it that we speak differently? It is believed that a little sin is nothing. Those of Corithians thought that they had sinned only once. But, Paul said that a little yeast ferments all the mass. A little sin falls upon all of the Lord’s church. The yeast here is an image of sin. And a small sin will soon grow and expand until all the communion remains seriously affected. The theologian

W. Mac Donald says, “A straight and pious discipline is needed in order to maintain the character of the Church.” There is no grace when with your mouth you say: “This is nothing, everybody does it”. Bad influences can corrupt a whole society. There is a saying that says well: Look who you are walking with and I will tell you who you are. The solution for the person who has a little yeast in his life is to be purified, nothing can be passed up. One must determine to be purified by God. We must have in mind that if the yeast is not removed it will end up fermenting the whole batch of dough. It will damage the whole church! One must take a severe action against evil in order for us to become a new batch of dough. The church of Jesus Christ is a pure mass without yeast, without corruption, because if there is corruption we would not belong to God but to the devil. It is that the spiritual state of a person should correspond with his position before God. We are His people, so let us live as such. Our God looks at us just as He is, He is three times holy; then, He expects to see in us holiness, upright and pure. It says in I Corinthians 5:7 that we have no yeast, God cleansed us as we believed and repented of our sins. That is our position in Christ. So according to “we are” without yeast in our position, also in our present state, we should “be” without yeast. In our practical and form of life one must be without yeast, without sin. Our Easter, which is Christ, was already sacrificed for us. So, having a sacrifice like this we cannot contaminate anything. Paul is thinking about the Easter supper to bring such illustration. On Easter the bread was eaten without yeast. In Exodus 12:15 and 13:7 we see that the law established some rules that the Jews followed and still do. The day before the Easter feast began they had to light up a candelabrum or lamp and take out all the yeast that was in the house and remove it completely. They even washed the place where the yeast was kept, so that not even a trace of it was found. This is the image of the kind of separation of evilness that is called for the Christians of today! Our easter lamb has already been sacrificed. It is Christ, whose sacrifice has delivered us from sin just as the easter lamb delivered the firstborn of Israel from death and from the captivity of Egypt. If we allow the bad influences in the Church it will become completely corrupted, in the same way that a bit of yeast will ferment all the mass. Therefore, a discipline must be imposed for all the church’s well-being. Closing our eyes to the offenses is not the kindest thing to do, it can be very harming. The poison must be removed before it extends. It is easy to pull out a bad herb, but if it is left it will seize all the land. All of us who labor for God must understand that the great principle of discipline should never be exercised for the satisfaction of the person who imposes it, but for the well-being of the person who has sinned and of the entire church, it is a curative discipline and not a vindictive. In order to always have a feast in our lives we cannot live with yeast of sin, with yeast of malice and wickedness, but with loaves of bread without yeast, of sincerity and truth. Amen.