Way of The Warrior- A Daily Devotional

Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. – 1 Corinthians 5:6-8 ESV

Warrior;

In the typology of the Bible, leaven is a TYPE of sin. Jesus said to them, “Watch and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” (Matthew 16:6, see also Mark 8:15) In the meantime, when so many thousands of the people had gathered together that they were trampling one another, he began to say to his disciples first, “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. Nothing is covered up that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. Therefore whatever you have said in the dark shall be heard in the light, and what you have whispered in private rooms shall be proclaimed on the housetops. (Luke 12:1-3) The Great sin of the religious leaders was HYPOCRISY. Today’s church has leaven that is called TOLERANCE. We have been made to believe that LOVE=TOLERANCE. Yet, here in this 1^st letter to the Corinthians, it is clear that tolerating SIN, under the guise of being ‘WOKE’ and supposedly being LOVING is nothing more than ENABLING the sinner to go down and take the church with them. Paul had invested much in the Corinth church for 18 months and after leaving and going to Ephesus, he heard that the church was living like the world and bragging about how tolerant they were- does any of this sound like what is going on in the church today? Yet, Paul told us thousands of years ago, to remove this sin, from the church, and let the devil have him, so that maybe his soul will someday be saved. It is the opposite of what is happening in the church today.

Leader, we must understand how Jesus used the power of YEAST to show how SIN destroys. In the making of sourdough bread, we are able to understand through a parable of understanding, the devastating effects of TOLERATING SIN in the church and being like the world. From a bread baking website: a sourdough starter is a fermented mixture of flour and water, it is home to a living culture of wild yeasts and lactic acid bacteria. This bubbly, fragrant, highly active culture is a simple combination of flour and water, but when these two ingredients are combined and given sufficient time, an incredible event takes place: wild fermentation. Yeasts feed on sugars in flour and release carbon dioxide, which gets trapped by gluten bonds. In turn, the trapped CO2 causes the dough to rise. The lactic acid bacteria feed on sugars and proteins, converting them into lactic acid, lowering the pH, and acidifying the dough. Sourdough starter is to sourdough bread what a SCOBY is to kombucha, or a kefir grain is to kefir. It’s the inoculant that initiates a wild fermentation process when added to a ball of dough. No matter how many loaves of bread it creates, a portion of the sourdough starter is always reserved. It’s kept alive and used again and again. This is how we take the understanding of one thing and lay it besides another to transfer over similar meaning. By just keeping a small chunk of the old dough, it affects the entire NEW DOUGH. This is how tolerating sin can affect every aspect of our lives.

Conduit, the oldest Sourdough culture, is over 4500 years old. The Ancient Egyptian sourdough starter is the oldest starter known to man. That is very interesting, since Egypt in the Bible, is also a typology for Sin, Egypt when talked about in the Bible is equivalent to the world. As we read about the EXODUS from Egypt, it was clear that God freed the JEWISH people from EGYPT- He got them out of Egypt. However, Egypt never got out of the JEWISH people, or mankind! This is what Paul meant in his letter to the Romans: “When Adam sinned, sin entered the world. Adam’s sin brought death, so death spread to everyone, for everyone sinned”. (Romans 5:12) As old as the ancient Egyptian Sourdough starter is- the “ADAM” starter is older! What we need to do is replace the OLD STARTER with a NEW STARTER. “For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ. Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. (Romans 5:17-18) This is why Jesus told Nicodemus that if he wanted to enter the Kingdom of God, then he would need a NEW STARTER! Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. (John 3:4-6) Why does a dog bark? Because it is a dog! Why does a cat meow? Because it is a cat! Why do we sin and fall short of the Glory of God? Because we are sinners! We can’t be GOODNUFF for God, only JESUS IS! Once we realize SIN IS PART OF OUR DNA, our starter, we can then HUMBLE OURSELVES and accept the unmerited favor of JESUS’ ministry of reconciliation. Hear the Word of the Lord: Besides this you know the time, that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed. The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires. (Romans 13:11-14)