8 Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and wickedness, but with bread without yeast, the bread of sincerity and truth.
There is a wonderful word here in this text that contains a beautiful word picture. The word sincerity is a compound word which literally is sun-tested. The culture of the day is this. Most containers for food during that day were pottery. If you have ever made pottery in school you can remember how frustrating it was to find out after you fired the pot that it contained air bubbles. Those tiny air bubbles would burst and leave your pot with small holes. Or you pull the pot out of the kiln and it has a small crack. All that work for nothing. No one wants a cracked pot. No one wants to buy Polish Pottery that has imperfections in it. Well, back during the first century potters found a dishonest way to hide those imperfections. They would take wax and rub it into the cracks and holes making them very difficult to detect. They would be sold to the unsuspecting who would later on discover the imperfection. The only way to prevent purchasing a wax-enhanced pot was to put it in the hot sun. The sun would melt any wax revealing the true nature of the pot underneath. The pot would then be called a sun-tested pot. The Lord wants us to be sun-tested, through and through pure and wholly His. He wants us to be able to be put under a spiritual microscope and fully inspected. He wants us to not pretend, to cover up our imperfections. He wants us to be honest about who we are in Christ. He wants us to be sincere. What you see is what you get. No hidden agendas. No ulterior motives. Let’s be sincere. Let’s be Son-tested.
The Arnold Journey 