The Feast of First Fruits
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Introduction:
We are going through a series entitled “The Feasts of Israel” or “The Feasts of the Lord” for they are feasts that was appointed by God for the people of Israel to observe. And what we are doing with this series is looking at how Jesus Himself through His death, burial and resurrection as well as His second coming are tied to these feasts.
The way in which Jesus fulfilled the Jewish feasts is a fascinating study. In the Hebrew Scriptures, the Jewish prophet Amos records that God declared He would do nothing without first revealing it to His servants, the prophets (Amos 3:7).
From the Old Covenant to the New, Genesis to Revelation, God provides picture after picture of His entire plan for mankind and one of the most startling prophetic pictures is outlined for us in the Jewish feasts of Leviticus 23.
The Hebrew word for “feasts” (moadim) literally means "appointed times."
God has carefully planned and orchestrated the timing and sequence of each of these seven feasts to reveal to us a special story.
The seven annual feasts of Israel were spread over seven months of the Jewish calendar, at set times appointed by God. They are still celebrated by observant Jews today. But for both Jews and non-Jews who have placed their faith in Jesus, the Jewish Messiah, these special days demonstrate the work of redemption through God’s Son.
The first four of the seven feasts occur during the springtime (Passover, Unleavened Bread, First Fruits, and Weeks), and they all have already been fulfilled by Christ in the New Testament.
The final three holidays (Trumpets, the Day of Atonement, and Tabernacles) occur during the fall, all within a short fifteen-day period.
Now we began by looking at the Feasts of Passover and Unleavened Bread and we discovered that Jesus fulfilled those feasts completely and exactly.
He came into Jerusalem on the very day the Passover lambs were set aside for slaughter, was nailed to the cross at the exact time the Passover lambs were being prepared for slaughter in the Temple, and then died at the exact moment the lambs were being slain in the Temple.
He was then buried at the beginning of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. At that time, he took our leaven, our sin, upon Himself and carried it to the grave.
This morning, we’ll look at the third of these feasts, the Feast of First fruits.
The instructions for observing the Feast of First fruits is found in Leviticus, chapter 23.
And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying,
“Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them: ‘When you come into the land which I give to you, and reap its harvest, then you shall bring a sheaf of the firstfruits of your harvest to the priest.
He shall wave the sheaf before the Lord, to be accepted on your behalf; on the day after the Sabbath the priest shall wave it.
And you shall offer on that day, when you wave the sheaf, a male lamb of the first year, without blemish, as a burnt offering to the Lord.
Its grain offering shall be two-tenths of an ephah of fine flour mixed with oil, an offering made by fire to the Lord, for a sweet aroma; and its drink offering shall be of wine, one-fourth of a hin.
You shall eat neither bread nor parched grain nor fresh grain until the same day that you have brought an offering to your God; it shall be a statute forever throughout your generations in all your dwellings.
We need to briefly place this Feast in its proper context. In Israel, grains were planted in the fall. They germinated in the ground through the winter, shot up as soon as the weather got warm, and ripened in the spring, barley first and then wheat. The stalks were cut and stacked in sheaves for the harvesters to collect for thrashing. But harvesting or eating any of the grain was not permitted until a single sheaf was brought to the priests at sunrise on the first day following a particular Sabbath after Passover.". This day was called the Feast of First Fruits.
Each Israelite who possessed a harvest observed the feast by bringing a single sheaf from the firstfruits of the barley harvest to the priest, who would then wave it before the Lord. This wave offering was prescribed by God as a symbol that God would ensure that the remainder of the harvest would be realized in the days that followed.
The whole concept of the firstfruits is very closely related to that of the firstborn. Both of these concepts were well known to the Jews and we find them consistently throughout the Bible. The first fruits were always the choicest, the foremost, the first, the best, of all that was to follow.
They were holy to the Lord and so they were to be set aside and presented as the firstfruits to Him. And so we find in the Bible that the firstborn of all men and animals as well as the firstfruits of all that was produced from the land were to be consecrated to God.
There are three main principles associated with the Feast of Firstfruits:
• The offering of the very best
As we’ve already discussed briefly, the whole concept of the firstfruits is that it is not only the first, it is the very best. When the farmer went out to cut the single sheaf that was to be presented before the Lord, he took great care to make sure that it was the very best from among his crops.
• The promise of a future harvest
One of the main aspects of the Feast of First fruits is that it anticipated the future harvest that was represented by the single sheaf that was brought before the Lord as an offering.
• The making holy of the whole
The sheaf that was brought as an offering to the Lord represented the entire crop. By offering that portion to the Lord, it set aside the entire harvest as being consecrated to the Lord and thus made it holy.
When the Temple was still standing, the ancient observance of this feast was quite an elaborate ceremony that took place after sunrise on the prescribed date for the feast.
The Talmud states that a group of Jewish pilgrims, carrying their offerings of the firstfruits, would be met at the edge of the city by a priest, who would then lead them in a joyful procession, with music, songs of praise and dance, up to the Temple mount. As the group of worshipers arrived at the Temple compound, the priest would take the sheaves, lift some in the air and wave them in every direction. This was a symbolic acknowledgement by the whole crowd of God’s provision and sovereignty over all the earth.
Since the destruction of the Temple in AD 70, the wave offering by the priest in the Temple can no longer take place. Today, the primary activities are reading of prayers and blessings from the Siddur, a Jewish prayer book and reflecting on the symbolic meaning of the day.
It is also the beginning of the count up to the Feast of Weeks, which occurs 49 days later.
There can be absolutely no doubt that Jesus fulfilled the Feast of Firstfruits through His resurrection. The apostle Paul very clearly links the resurrection of Jesus to the Feast of Firstfruits:
But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.
For since by man came death, by Man also came the resurrection of the dead.
For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive.
But each one in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, afterward those who are Christ’s at His coming.
In order to see how Jesus fulfilled the Feast of First fruits through His resurrection, let’s briefly review the events surrounding that faithful passover where our Lord fulfilled these feasts that last week of His life just before He would crucified on the cross.
Remember that Jesus was crucified on the Passover and then buried on at the beginning of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. We also know from Jesus’ own testimony that he would remain in the tomb for three days and nights:
For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
Luke records this information regarding the women coming to the tomb:
Now on the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they, and certain other women with them, came to the tomb bringing the spices which they had prepared.
And as the women came to the tomb that morning, it would have been at the very time when the priests would have been making the wave offering of the Feast of First fruits, Jesus was no longer in the grave. He had risen from the dead! He became our firstfruits. And in doing so, he fulfilled all three aspects of the Feast:
• The offering of the very best
By offering Himself up on the cross and then arising from the grave, Jesus did what no other offerings could do.
For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh,
As our firstfruits, Jesus was offering Himself up as the very best possible offering. Unlike the blood of animals or the waving of a grain offering, His sacrifice paid the penalty of our sin permanently.
• The promise of a future harvest
We can see this clearly if we go back to our passage from 1 Corinthians once again:
But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.
For since by man came death, by Man also came the resurrection of the dead.
For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive.
But each one in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, afterward those who are Christ’s at His coming.
The fact that Jesus arose from the grave is our guarantee that one day all who have placed their faith and trust in Him will also experience resurrection. Jesus is the firstfruits that provides a promise of a future harvest of all those souls.
• The making holy of the whole
As our firstfruits, Jesus is our representative before God and therefore He has made us holy before God.
For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
Because of our association with Jesus, we are positionally holy before God in much the same way that the entire harvest was represented and made holy by that single sheaf of barley that was waved before God.
(WAVE THE SHEAF)
Once again this is all exciting information, but the important question remains. What does all this mean for me?
Let me first speak to those of you who have never committed your life to Jesus Christ.
Over the past two weeks we have presented irrefutable evidence that the Messiah, Jesus died on the cross, was buried and then rose from the grave to fulfill the Old Testament feasts that God had ordained thousands of years earlier.
And for those who choose to trust in Him, Jesus is the firstfruits. He is the very best that God had to offer because he offered Himself. He is the guarantee of future resurrection. And He is the one who has the ability to make you holy before God. He has done everything that He can do to make all those things possible for you.
But he has reserved all those benefits for those who choose to believe in Him and trust in Him alone. If you’ve never done that, we invite you to make that decision today.
If that is something that you would like to do or if you are just interested in finding out more about what that involves, I would love to have the opportunity to sit down with you sometime at your convenience and discuss and answer those questions that you may have.
For those of us who have already made that commitment there are a couple of significant implications for us as well.
You’ll remember that last week we talked about how the Feast of Unleavened Bread was symbolic of how Israel was to be separate from and different than Egypt.
For us, it is a picture of the fact that we, too, are to be separate and different from the world. As new creations, we are to put off the old.
But putting off the old is not enough. We must also put on the new. That’s what the Feast of First fruits should signify in our lives. In the same way that Israel set aside their harvest and consecrated it to God, we need to do the same. Scripture states,
if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Jesus:
that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts,
and be renewed in the spirit of your mind,
and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.
The resurrection of Jesus should be a reminder to us that we have been freed from our former way of life and that we need to daily put on the new self, which requires a constant consecration of our lives to God.
But there is a second, and equally important implication for us as followers of Jesus. We find that second principle in the Book of James:
Of His own will He brought us forth by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures.
Just as Jesus is our firstfruits, we are to be a form of firstfruits in the lives of others.
In other words, we have a responsibility to share this good news with those who have not yet committed their lives to Jesus.