Let Us Keep The Feast

"Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth."  1 Cor. 5:8.  There were 7 feasts that Israel was to celebrate each year.  The first feast was Passover, the celebration of their deliverance from death in Egypt.  Because they applied the blood of the lamb to their doorposts, death passed over them.  The Passover pointed to the coming of Christ as 1 Cor. 5:7 says, "...For indeed Christ, our Passover was sacrificed for us."  Following the Passover, they were to celebrate the Feast of Unleavened Bread for 7 days.  For 7 days they were to have no leaven in their bread.  They would eat only flat unleavened bread.  Jesus also spoke of leaven when He warned His disciples of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees.  He said the leaven of the Pharisees was hypocrisy.  A hypocrite was one who acted in a play, and pretended to be someone else.  The Pharisees acted as though they were holy and without fault, but Jesus saw through their hypocrisy and knew the true motives of their heart.  Jesus also spoke of the leaven of Herod in Mark 8:15.  Herod bowed to peer pressure when he ordered the execution of John the Baptist.  He did not act out of sincerity of heart, but was swayed by the opinions of others.  He did what was wrong in order to gain the approval of others.  Paul tells us we should keep the feast, but not with the old leaven.  He doesn't want us to literally remove the yeast from our homes, but he wants us to remove the leaven from our hearts.  The leaven of malice and wickedness needs to be cleaned out of our hearts.  Malice is ill will and spite, the desire to inflict injury and harm on another.  It is mentioned in Eph. 4:31 along with bitterness, wrath, anger, quarreling, and evil speaking.  From the word malice we get the word malignant.  Something that is malignant has the ability to bring harm and damage, and malice will bring damage into our lives.  Paul says to clean out the old leaven, and don't leave any of it, because a little leaven leavens the whole lump.  Even a little bitterness and resentment can poison our life and keep us from bearing the fruit God desires for us.  "Therefore let us keep the feast....with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth."