It's Not About the Toaster (Annual Re-Post)

The Days of Unleavened Bread. A toaster's day in the sun. Only during these days does a normally mundane appliance get thrust center stage in the relentless endeavor to purge out the leaven, aka, sin, from every corner of our homes.

It's a ritual re-enacted every Spring by those of us who take seriously the command to keep the annual High Sabbaths, given by our Lord in the Old Testament and observed by Him, and His Church, in the New, reminding us of His sacrifice and the covenant relationship we have entered with Him.

Our toaster is of course not the only item in our home that gets the attention of our vacuum cleaner. In our valiant effort to eradicate every vestige of the symbol of sin from our dwelling no appliance, no couch cushion, no cupboard is left untouched. But our toaster, being perhaps the greatest potential carrier of the sin virus, has typically commanded the top spot. We've fretted about it, inspecting it with the intensity of police dog sniffing for narcotics, meticulously scouring every last nook and cranny where a wayward crumb or runaway piece of crust might linger, no matter how minuscule or incinerated it might be.

In short, for a brief period every spring, our toaster became a rock star.

If our family toaster could speak it would probably tell you that the last few years in our house it's begun to suffer from an identity crisis. It just hasn't been treated like the rock star that it once was. Oh, it's gotten some attention, but its commanded nowhere near the spotlight it held back in the glory days.

Why?

Well, our family simply came to the realization that these days of Unleavened Bread, for lack of a better way of putting it, are not about the toaster.

In Colossians 1:26 - 28 we read, "...the mystery which has been hidden from ages and from generations, but now has been revealed to His saints. To them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles: which is Christ in you, the hope of glory."

Above all things this season is to teach us is that it is His life, living within us, that is the hope we have of salvation. While Passover reminds us that we are justified by His blood, Unleavened Bread reminds us that we are saved by His life, the "Unleavened Bread of Sincerity and Truth" living within us, continually covering our sin.

There is a reason these are called the Days of Unleavened Bread rather than the Days of De-leavening. The primary focus is on the putting in, not the taking out. We take in of Jesus Christ, the Unleavened Bread of Sincerity and Truth, for seven days. In the Bible the number seven represents completion. The symbol of taking in of His life, His nature, for seven days pictures the completeness of the work He is doing in His people.

De-leavening in this context becomes, then, a symbol, not of my efforts to become sinless, but of my becoming de-leavened, sinless through the cleansing sacrifice of our Lord. I put the leaven out, not to symbolize my struggle to overcome sin, but to symbolize what He has done through His sacrifice for me.

Don't get me wrong. I am not among those who believe Christ has done it all so there is no need to obey. We do need to overcome. We do need to strive to become like our elder Brother. We do need to struggle against sin. But the season of our overcoming, of growing up in Him in all things, is more appropriately pictured after, not before, the Feast of Pentecost, picturing the giving of the Holy Spirit which helps us in that process. The period between the Spring and Fall harvests represents a time of growth. Just as the crops, having been planted in the Spring, are allowed to grow to maturity and produce their fruit, so you and I grow to spiritual maturity and produce spiritual fruit prior to the return of our Master, Jesus Christ.

These Spring Harvest festivals, Passover, Unleavened Bread and Pentecost, are awesome pictures of the love He has showered on those He has called to be the first fruits of His harvest. It is right that our focus this season be on Him, not on ourselves. He gets all the glory.

The truth is that no matter how clean I get my toaster, or anything else in my home for that matter, no matter how determined my effort to make myself spiritually clean, I fall miserably short of God's standard. My righteousness before God is as filthy rags. It's His life continuing to live in me that makes me worthy, that allows me to be in relationship with the Father. "We who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Jesus." That's the awesome lesson of these days.

Yeah, my toaster might be feeling a little more lonely this Spring but it will just have to get over it. It's not as if it's getting completely ignored, it's just not the rock star it once was. That spotlight is shining elsewhere, off of the toaster, and onto the Master.