Exodus 12:15 “For seven days you are to eat bread made without yeast. On the first day remove the yeast from your houses, for whoever eats anything with yeast in it from the first day through the seventh must be cut off from Israel.”

God was deadly serious about Israel keeping the yeast out of their bread at Passover. Even more, he wanted the whole house purged. Why?

Yeast offers us a natural picture or symbol of sin. As it feeds on and spreads through whatever has become its host, it has a corrupting influence. Its spread is difficult, if not impossible, to stop. And once yeast is introduced into a place, traces of it are everywhere. Actually ridding your house of all yeast is a daunting task. Today, devout Jews go through a ritual of “nullifying” any yeast in their homes twice in the twenty-four hours before Passover. In the ritual they renounce ownership of what little might remain because it is so hard to get rid of.

Is it hard to see why God would choose this to teach us about the nature of our sin? Ever try to get sin out of your life on your own? You could work at it your whole life and you would never succeed. Some people may feel that they only “dabble” in certain sins, but there is no dabbling in sin, is there. When I was a boy I liked to collect things. I dabbled in collecting rocks, collecting coins, collecting Hardy Boys mystery stories, and building models. When the time came, it was easy enough to give those things up.

You can’t pick sin up like a hobby and then put it down again. Long before you took hold of any particular sin, sin took hold of you and me. You know how difficult it is to shake your taste for attitudes or activities you know are wrong. And when we look at the broad sweep of sin in our lives, all the different parts of me that it has corrupted, all the nooks and crannies in which it lives and grows, we know its presence is everywhere. As yeast lives in bread dough, sin lives in people, people just like you and me.

So God had his people eat bread without yeast at Passover, a picture of the kind of people without sin who could be considered his own. But how many people qualify? All by itself, this picture would not make us more sure of God’s love. It would create more doubt and uncertainty. It would lead us to despair. How can we become such sinless people? Only one man ever lived whose life was not infected by the yeast of sin. He is God’s solution for our sin. In fact, he used the unleavened bread sitting on the table at his last Passover supper to give his sinless body to his disciples. That is better understood from another part of the Passover meal.

The Passover also involved the sacrifice of a lamb. This sacrifice was roasted and eaten by the participants. The perfect, innocent lamb sacrificed at the Passover was a picture of sinless Jesus. The Apostle Paul tells: “Christ, our Passover Lamb, has been sacrificed.” Just as the Passover lamb died instead of the sinful people who offered it, Jesus gave his life to spare us from our sins. John the Baptist cried out, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world.”

But how can I be sure Jesus’ sacrifice counts for me? I don’t see my sins vaporized after God tells me I’m forgiven. I wasn’t at the sacrifice when Jesus died on the cross nearly 2000 years ago. I didn’t even exist yet. I’m still committing sins every day. How can I be sure?

Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 10, “Consider the people of Israel: Do not those who eat the sacrifices participate in the altar?” The Passover lamb was more than a sacrifice. It was a meal. The people at the meal knew that they were partakers in what that sacrifice accomplished. They received the benefits of the sacrifice, that they had a personal connection to the sacrifice and its blessings when they ate the lamb. This was a personal and individual way in which they were involved. How could they miss the point that this lamb died for them as they ate the very flesh of the animal that gave its life?

Jesus’ sacrifice took place long ago, and it doesn’t need repeating. We didn’t get to see it. But our sin was present and paid for. Jesus’ sacrifice does count for me. And just to make us sure, God miraculously takes that same body sacrificed so many years ago, and he gives it to us to eat in the supper he sets before us at the communion table. It’s a personal and individual way by which he applies the forgiveness, life, and salvation flowing from Jesus’ cross to each of us.

Analogies for this are hard to think of, but consider this: I have a box of high school mementos at home which still contains a boutonniere from a high school banquet my wife and I once attended. It was a real part of that event that I can touch and see.

As interesting and meaningful as such a keepsake might be–more than a picture, but an actual artifact from the past– all it can do is conjure up a memory. It doesn’t actually bring me anything. In the feast Jesus sets before us, he does more than display an artifact from the past. He gives more than fond memories. We receive the body of God’s own Son. With it come God’s own promise of forgiveness and love. Here we see God’s real solution for the problem of sin, the sin he pictured as yeast, the sin our Passover Lamb removes.