Trying To Extract a Little Leaven

Leaven

• 1a: a substance (as yeast) used to produce fermentation in dough or a liquid; 
• 1b: a material (as baking powder) used to produce a gas that lightens dough or batter
  2:   something that modifies or lightens

I recall the first time I read of leaven in the Bible and was like, “Huh? What’s leaven?” Like anything in scripture, there’s always a context that we must understand before we can gather the fullness of its meaning. When Jesus, for example, used the term, it would’ve resonated immediately with His contemporaries. “He spoke another parable to them, ‘The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three pecks of flour until it was all leavened’” (Matthew 13:33). Leaven has the ability to infuse itself, not just the way salt and sugar might physically mix in a bowl and remain chemically unchanged, but rather the way salt dissolves into water, splitting into separate sodium and chloride atoms. In other words, leaven actually invokes several complex chemical reactions that permanently change the dough. You cannot “un-leaven” dough.

If you want a loaf of bread that is unleavened, you’d better begin with a brand new loaf rather than trying to extract the leaven from a lump of leavened dough.In the Bible, leaven is often used to describe the infusion of evil into something good. Like yeast (a type of leaven), evil feeds off of the intrinsic nature of its host. In the spiritual sense, evil propagates as it feeds off of the flesh, figuratively speaking. The flesh is puffed up over time the way bread rises with leaven in it. Once it rises to a certain height, it is baked as it is, creating a finished loaf that is analogous to a heart that has been hardened (e.g., Pharaoh’s heart in Exodus 8:32). Only God, with His great mercy towards man, is able to “un-leaven” that which man cannot. It’s His sovereign choice.So then it does not depend on the man who wills or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “FOR THIS VERY PURPOSE I RAISED YOU UP, TO DEMONSTRATE MY POWER IN YOU, AND THAT MY NAME MIGHT BE PROCLAIMED THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE EARTH.”

So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires. 

You will say to me then, “Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?” On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, “Why did you make me like this,” will it? Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use?

What if God, although willing to demonstrate His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction? And He did so to make known the riches of His glory upon vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for glory, even us, whom He also called, not from among Jews only, but also from among Gentiles.How can something so small, microscopic, even, create such a change in something else? The same could be asked about evil in man. We may not possess the apparatus to trace the entire process as it transpires, but we know, by faith, that it happens. We are able to witness the end results, too, in ourselves and often in others as well. The leaven analogy is applicable to many situations in life, where evil of myriad sorts infects our souls. A perfect example of this is regarding our conclusions about Biblical principles or teachings, often called out as “doctrines”. What should we do when we discover that our doctrines have been leavened? What if the Gospel, itself, the foundation of all other doctrines, has been leavened?If the Gospel is leavened in your soul, even in the slightest way, such that you haven’t the fullness of it, as expressed by Jesus and His disciples, and you’ve since “cooked” a whole loaf of doctrines based on that leavened “dough”, then what say you of the individual slices of bread you may carve off of that loaf? If this be the case, what should you do? If you’re humble, you start over. I’ve done it. I personally removed over 1,300 hours of lessons from the ministry website because “a little leaven had leavened the whole lump of dough”. If I can do it, as a pastor, so can you. Courage is nothing more than applied faith. By grace, faith is given to the humble (James 4:6).Arrogance will cling to the former, leavened loaf of bread, considering it partially worthy somehow. And while that’s an understandable reaction, it is a potentially crippling one, as scripture describes. A lesser arrogance may even try to extract the leaven from the already cooked bread, which is futility. With the rise of advanced communications technologies, Satan has the Christian ranks distracted, even fighting amongst themselves, competing over the so-called “progress” of doctrines upon doctrines. Satan has rewarded them with small fortunes, selling books, sermons, and speaking engagements. Meanwhile, the Gospel has been shoved into a corner, receding into darkness in the name of “progress”. Instead of questioning their own understanding of the Gospel, they press on, ad nauseam, in the pursuit of greater knowledge and wisdom. So they go the way of Pharisees, Scribes, and Gnostics of old…slicing up loaves of leavened bread and feeding the masses tainted doctrines. The people are lazy, so they accept their meals, their support often commensurate with the amount of leaven present.For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths. But you, be sober in all things, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.If the loaf is leavened, then throw it out! If you see any leaven, especially in your gospel, then start over…and do it quickly. For some, this means dusting off the Gospel, heading back to the New Testament books bearing the name (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John), to see if their version of it has strayed off course. It may subsequently mean reevaluating all doctrines they’ve “sliced off” of a leavened loaf. It’s a humbling experience, trust me. If that means you, please know that you are not alone, for even Paul had to go through this. And if you know anything about him, he never proposed to have everything ironed out - ever humble to the prospect of being readjusted by God.Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things again is no trouble to me, and it is a safeguard for you.

Beware of the dogs, beware of the evil workers, beware of the false circumcision; for we are the true circumcision, who worship in the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh, although I myself might have confidence even in the flesh. If anyone else has a mind to put confidence in the flesh, I far more: circumcised the eighth day, of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the Law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to the righteousness which is in the Law, found blameless.

But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ, and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death; in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. 

Not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let us therefore, as many as are perfect, have this attitude; and if in anything you have a different attitude, God will reveal that also to you; however, let us keep living by that same standard to which we have attained.

Brethren, join in following my example, and observe those who walk according to the pattern you have in us. For many walk, of whom I often told you, and now tell you even weeping, that they are enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction, whose god is their appetite, and whose glory is in their shame, who set their minds on earthly things. For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ; who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory, by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself. Beware of leavened bread. Pray for the discernment to see it. Remain humble when you do discover it and God will grant you the faith to address it. If that means throwing out an already-baked loaf of bread, then so be it - step out with confidence. Better to digest something pure and simple than continue to eat something unhealthy. And don’t waste your time and energy trying to “un-leaven” your doctrines, for that is futility. Have the courage to start over again. Who’s all this about, anyways???

Love in Christ,

Ed Collins