Firstfruits: Christ Raised from the Dead (Lev. 23:9-14)

10/27/2008 8:50 AM

SPIRITUAL DIARY

My Worship Time                    Focus:  Firstfruits:  Christ raised from the dead

Bible Reading & Meditation               Reference:  Leviticus 23:9-14

            Message of the verses:  “9  Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 10  "Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them, ‘When you enter the land which I am going to give to you and reap its harvest, then you shall bring in the sheaf of the first fruits of your harvest to the priest.  11  ‘He shall wave the sheaf before the LORD for you to be accepted; on the day after the sabbath the priest shall wave it.  12  ‘Now on the day when you wave the sheaf, you shall offer a male lamb one year old without defect for a burnt offering to the LORD.  13  ‘Its grain offering shall then be two-tenths of an ephah of fine flour mixed with oil, an offering by fire to the LORD for a soothing aroma, with its drink offering, a fourth of a hin of wine.  14  ‘Until this same day, until you have brought in the offering of your God, you shall eat neither bread nor roasted grain nor new growth. It is to be a perpetual statute throughout your generations in all your dwelling places.”

            This celebration or feast was to show that God was faithful in giving Israel crops so that they would have food to eat.  The firstfruits of this harvest were to be offered to the Lord, as the best of the crop, on the day following the Sabbath that followed the Passover.  This would be a Sunday, the first day of the week.  Now it has already been written in an earlier SD that Jesus Christ died on the day and the time that the Passover lamb was slain and now it is learned that there is another feast that happens on the day after the Sabbath which follows Passover and it is called “Firstfruits.”  This is resurrection day, for Jesus Christ was raised from the dead on the first day of the week, and that day according to the Jewish Religious calendar was Firstfruits.  I wish to make one more point before going into some verses in the NT that say that Jesus Christ is the Firstfruit.  In the fourteenth verse of Leviticus chapter twenty-three it speaks to the nation of Israel that they were not to eat of any of the produce that was growing until the fruitfruits offering was made to the Lord and Dr. Wiersbe in his commentary on this section writes that that was a picture of Matthew 6:33, “But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”  As I look at this verse it does seem that he makes a very good point, something that I would have never seen.

            Now I want to look at some of the verses in the NT that speak of Christ as our Firstfruit:  “But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who are asleep.”  (1Cor. 15:20”  In John’s Gospel, the 12^th chapter and verses 23 and 24 Jesus Christ said this, “23  And Jesus *answered them, saying, "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.  24  "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”  The Apostle Paul carried this image that Jesus spoke of here in 1 Cor. 15:35-49, this chapter has been called the resurrection chapter as it goes in dept the resurrection that will come to all who believe in Jesus Christ. 

            Dr. Wiersbe went on to make two more points in his commentary on this section of Scripture:  First God accepted the sheaf for the whole harvest, which pictures God accepting us because He accepted Jesus Christ, “To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved,” Eph. 1:6 AV).

The second point is that the sheath was like the harvest, he did not was a palm branch to represent a barely harvest.  Jesus Christ represents what His children will be when they are raised from the dead.  Paul spoke of this in 1 Cor. 15:35-49 and he also spoke of it in Phil. 3:20 & 21 :  “20  For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ; 21  who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory, by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself.”  The Apostle John also writes about this in 1 John 3:1-3, “1 ¶  See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God; and such we are. For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him.  2  Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is.  3  And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.”  The point of all of this is that God’s children who are born again into the family of God have the hope of the resurrection because Jesus Christ was the First Fruit of the resurrection and we will follow in God’s perfect timing.

            Spiritual meaning for my life today:  I just love to read and study about the images of Jesus Christ in the Old Testament, things like Him being our Passover Lamb and not today Him being the First Fruit.  In this I see that God’s plans for the nation of Israel in the OT was a picture of who Jesus Christ is, and what He would accomplish when He came to planet earth.  Jesus Christ is truly seen in the Old Testament and I like to mine for these wonderful truths of gold that speak of Him.

My Steps of Faith for Today:

1. I desire to have a better prayer life.
2. I want to follow the path that the Lord has for me to follow.
3. I trust the Lord to teach me contentment through these trials that I am going through, and wisdom to do what He wants me to do.

Memory verses for the week:                                  Exodus 20:17 & Romans 6:1-2

17.     You shall not covet your neighbor’s house, you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife or his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

1.                What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase?

2.                May it never be!  How shall we who died to sin live in it?

10/27/2008 9:58 AM