Dear Family,

Today is Monday, April 18, 2022. This is Day 2 of Week 1. It is Day 2 in our Count to Pentecost.

During several more days of this first week of our count to Pentecost, our homes are unleavened, and we will continue to avoid eating leavened bread for that period of time. Hopefully, as we have prepared physically and try to remain on guard against eating leavened bread, let us, at the very least, be just as careful to avoid the sin that the leavened bread symbolizes for us.

In the context of the entire fifth chapter of 1 Corinthians, the Apostle Paul exhorted the brethren at Corinth to purge out the spiritual leaven that was among them. Paul stressed that the Corinthians not go back to the patterns of the “old leaven” (verse 8), nor to hold onto the leaven of malice and wickedness. Rather, he urged them to keep the feast with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

1 Corinthians 5:7-8 (7) Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us: (8) Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

The metropolitan city of Corinth, and the early Church in that city, had many of the same kinds of problems and temptations that we find on our modern society today.

In this 21st century’s fast pace and our culture of accepting sin as we see it all around us in real life, as well as in our crazy world of entertainment, it is easy to be caught up in what the world is doing. Sometimes we can miss identifying the leaven that is all around us.

Let us follow Paul’s admonitions to the Corinthians in order to seek God’s sincerity and truth enthusiastically. It is Jesus Who is the epitome of God’s sincerity and truth! It is Jesus Christ Who is our Living Bread. Let us eat this Bread daily with clean hands and a purified heart.

Ben Faulkner, Pastor
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