Yeast

1 Corinthians 5:8 states:

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.

I don't  believe I commented upon it at the time, but I remember when I taught a class on the parables, and the commentary I used as my primary source mentioned that nowhere in the Bible is yeast used as a positive reference. That stopped me short and made me look up all the yeast references in the Bible, starting with the obvious:

1. The unleavened bread of Exodus 12, made in haste because of the impending departure from Egypt

2. The Parable of the Yeast, found in Matthew 13:33, in which it's hard to deny that yeast is a GOOD thing in this parable

3. Jesus tells his disciples to be on guard from the "yeast" of the Pharisees and Sadducees in Matthew 16:11

4. Paul uses the same yeast metaphor again in Galatians 5:8-10 

In the context of the verse today, Paul is clear in his warning to the people of Corinth. He began this chapter by commenting on the novel perversions in which they were engaged, and he warns them clearly that it only takes a small number of people to ruin a vibrant church. These words ring just as true today, and not just in churches. We're all aware that it only takes a persistence in negative comments to bring about the ruin of any institution. I'm going from memory here, but in Stephen Ambrose's three-volume biography of Richard Nixon, he described the 1950 California Senate race between Nixon and Democrat Helen Gahagan Douglas. Nixon developed the novel strategy of creating a false advocacy group that was purportedly supportive of Douglas, namely the Communist Negroes for Douglas. That little yeast of an idea effectively terminated Douglas' political career.

Yeast is such a small and insignificant substance that we can easily overlook it. What may seem small and trivial in our lives ("It's just a small sin, and no one saw it anyway...") can be the foundation for our slipping away from Christ. Paul was warning the Corinthians to make bread without yeast, or in other words, to live lives without wickedness, and his words are just as important to us today. The well-known song begins "It only takes a spark to get a fire going," but that spark can work both ways. We must be ever vigilant to keep the yeast of sin out of lives, lest it spread through us and ruin all we touch.

Scott