A Little Leaven

Many people in our society curse; taking the name of the Lord in vain.  This should be of a particular offense to all of us as Christians.  The avalanche started in 1939 when famed movie star Clark Gable ended the movie with the first profane line.  It shocked society and brought about condemnation from churches.  Unfortunately, that denouncement did not stop people from going to see the movie, Gone With The Wind.  Society voted with their feet as they marched into movie houses and sat through four hours of movie, just to hear that first profane word uttered in the cinema.  Since then, profane and obscene language has become common place in descent society.  In the 1980s, after twenty years of degradation in the motion picture industry, obscene language became acceptable in the work place.  Sitting across the desk from my boss in 1982, his phone conversation would have made a sailor blush.  When asked, “Who were you talking to?”  He replied, “Heather, our new budget director, you should hear how she talks to me!”  One woman obliterated the moral values of office conduct for that major university in Chicago.  From then on, the most vial language and perverted jokes became acceptable and widely used.  When confronting another coworker years later, “You want me to do what, to whom and how?”  He looked at me dumbfounded.  He had no idea of how base his language had become.

No one could have foreseen how that one word would open the flood gates of depravity; proving that a little lump of leaven (sin), can leaven the whole lump (distort and pervert an entire society).

“Your glorying is not good. Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump?” (1 Corinthians 5:6).

 “Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us: Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.” (1 Corinthians 5:7-8).

What is it about leaven that God uses it as a symbol of sin?  Leaven puffs up, just as the original sin of Lucifer puffed him up with vanity.  He thought that he could rise up against the Almighty God.  He took the attitude, “No one is going to tell me what to do!”

“How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High. Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.” (Isaiah 14:12-15).

We can not live by relative holiness.  Compared to the world, we can lull ourselves into a compromised set of values.  Given enough distance, one degree off, can separate us by miles from our goal of the Kingdom of God.  Beware of that little leaven of sin; that little compromise on holiness.