to the book of Leviticus chapter
23. And tonight we are going to be
looking at the fourth of these feasts, which are numbered here,
are named or given here in this chapter. These feasts that were
part of the law. given to Moses to the nation
of Israel. And tonight, the fourth feast
is the Feast of Firstfruits. Let's begin reading in verse
one. And the Lord spake unto Moses,
saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them
concerning the feast of the Lord, which you shall proclaim to be
holy convocations, even these are my feast." I wanted to emphasize
two things in that verse before we go on. These holy convocations. They would gather together. That's
simply what that means is an assembly. God's people assemble
together. Private worship, private worship
in our homes, alone with the Lord, in our closet, or in our
families, also important, but so is public worship. We gather
together. I'm not sure how the nation of
Israel worshipped at that time, this holy convocation, because
his first feast was the seventh day Sabbath and they were to
do no rest, but it was a feast unto the Lord. Now, the other
word I would emphasize in that text is the word my, M-Y, my. Notice that even these are my
feasts, just to remind us this evening that the gospel is the
gospel of God. It's his gospel. And these feasts
all contain typical pictures and types of the gospel of the
Lord Jesus Christ, the Savior. The first feast is this weekly
feast. Six days shall work be done,
but the seventh day is the Sabbath of rest and holy convocation. You shall do no work therein.
It is the Sabbath of the Lord in all your dwellings. And we
know that the Sabbath feast pictures to us the Lord Jesus Christ who
gives rest to the weary, those that are weary with the burden
of sin. Come unto me, all you that labor
and are heavy laden, and I will give thee rest. The Sabbath rest
pictured the Lord Jesus Christ, spiritual rest that we find in
him. Then the second feast, These
are the feasts of the Lord, even holy convocations, which you
shall proclaim in their seasons in the 14th day of the first
month, and even is the Lord's Passover. That was the second
feast, the Passover feast. And we all know that that pictures
the Lord Jesus Christ, our Passover, just as Israel was delivered
from bondage by blood. So the Passover Christ, our Passover,
He delivers His people by the shedding of His blood. And then
the third feast, the Feast of Unleavened Bread, beginning with
verse 6, and on the 15th day of the same month is the Feast
of Unleavened Bread unto the Lord. Seven days you must eat
unleavened bread, and the first day you shall have an holy convocation. You shall do no servile work
therein, but you shall offer an offering made by fire unto
the Lord. Seven days is the seventh day
is an holy convocation. You shall do no servile work
therein. Again, the Feast of Unleavened
Bread was connected to the Feast of Passover. And a week, they
were to observe this feast for a week, which pictures an entire
time period. And unleavened in the scripture
pictures to us sin. And the thought is that though
we are unleavened, As the Apostle Paul says there in 1 Corinthians
5, you are unleavened. In other words, our sins have
been put away, yes. But then he says, purge out the
old leaven. And even though our sins have
been put away, we know we still have sin in our lives. And in this life, no matter how
long it is, the time that God gives us, We're continually to
be purging out or putting out sin, that old leaven of sin. Now we come to the fourth of
these feasts, which is the Feast of Firstfruits. Let's read these
verses nine through 14. And the Lord spake unto Moses,
saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them,
When you be come into the land which I give unto you, and shall
reap the harvest thereof, then you shall bring a sheaf of the
first fruits of your harvest unto the priest, and he shall
wave the sheaf before the Lord to be accepted for you. On the
morrow, after the Sabbath, the priest shall wave it, and you
shall offer that day when you wave the sheaf, and he lamb without
blemish of the first year, for a burnt offering unto the Lord,
and the meal offering thereof shall be two tenths deals of
fine flour mingled with oil, an offering made by fire unto
the Lord for a sweet savor, and the drink offering thereof shall
be of wine the fourth part of a hen, and you shall eat neither
bread nor parched corn or green ears until the self same day
that you have brought an offering unto your Lord. It shall be a
statute forever throughout your generations and all your dwellings. A statute throughout your generations
until the type was fulfilled. Until the Lord Jesus Christ,
these shadows pictured him, but when the Lord came and fulfilled
these types, then these feasts, of course, were to be done away.
We don't observe a Passover feast on the 14th day of the first
month of the year. And, you know, over the last
several years, I've seen some so-called churches that do that. And it, you know, the feelings,
people are impressed by the feelings they have of going through a
similar service like the Jews had. But really, that's an affront. That's an affront to the finished
work of Christ. No, our Passover is sacrifice
for us, once in the end of the world, to put away sin by the
sacrifice of himself. But the Feast of the Firstfruits. Now you notice the first thing
in verse 10, it says, speak unto the children of Israel and say
unto them, when you be come into the land which I give unto you. Now this feast, these three feasts
that we've looked at so far, the seventh day Sabbath, the
Passover, the Feast of Unleavened Bread, those feasts could all
be observed when Moses was given the law. But now, this feast
cannot be observed until they come into the land. until they
come into the land, a land flowing with milk and honey, and sow
their fields and are to reap a harvest. They couldn't observe
this. This feast would begin, but it's
annexed onto that second feast. Think about this, the 14th day,
the Passover. Now the day ended at six o'clock
in the evening, The next day, the 15th day, is when the Feast
of Unleavened Bread began. Now we would say, well, that's
the same day. Yes, the way we count days from
midnight to midnight, yes, but the way they counted their days
was from sundown to sundown. Well, this feast now is to begin
on the morrow after that first Sabbath. When the Feast of Unleavened
Bread began on the 15th day, then the next day, well that
day actually was the Sabbath day, and they were to do no work
on that day. But the next day, it says on
the morrow, after the Sabbath, then they observed the Feast
of First Fruits. And you see there, the Lord Jesus
Christ was crucified on Friday, was in the grave on the Sabbath,
and rose on the morrow after the Sabbath, the first fruit
from the dead. It's a beautiful picture and
type of the Lord Jesus Christ, of his work, crucified on Friday,
our Passover, lay in the tomb until that morrow after the Sabbath. And he came out of the grave. The first fruits. There had been
men, and maybe women too, yes, women, who had died. The girl,
Jerris' daughter, she had died, 12 years old. And they'd been
brought back to life, but then they lived and they died. The
Lord Jesus Christ is the first fruit from the dead. He's the one who rose from the
dead never to die again with an immortal life. Yes. I want to look at this tonight
as typical, this, this sheaf, this sheaf, which was to be the
feast of first fruits and how it pictures to us the Savior,
the Lord Jesus Christ. First of all, the sheaf itself.
And I have five thoughts I want to bring to us about this. But
it was barley. This sheaf was barley. Now, when they came into the
land, they would have two harvests. They would have first the harvest
of barley, and then about six weeks later, they would have
the harvest of wheat. I looked up barley, and it's
still grown, of course, today. In fact, it's about number three
as the grain that is grown around the world. Barley. But most of the barley today
is used for animal food. Humans consume it, it's supposed
to be good for you, but most of it today. And the thought
is here, this sheaf was to be of barley and it pictures to
us the Lord Jesus Christ. Barley was inferior to wheat
as far as the bread was concerned. And it pictures how the Lord
Jesus Christ was when he came into this world. In Philippians,
the scripture says he made himself of no reputation. He took upon
him the farm of a servant. And in Isaiah 53, the prophet
said he shall grow up before him as a tender plant and as
a root out of a dry ground. He hath no farm. It's like that
barley was considered to be not as good as the wheat. The bread that was made from
wheat was considered to be better bread. And the barley pictures
to us here. When the Lord Jesus Christ came
into this world as a man, he was not respected, he was not
received, and he was looked down upon as a servant, as a root
out of a dry ground. No farm or comeliness that we
should desire him. One of the reasons, of course,
is that the Jews had been taught to expect a deliverer to deliver
national Israel from the servitude they were in and make them a
great nation again like they had been during David's reign,
Solomon's reign. But the Lord Jesus Christ came
to save his people from their sins, not to set up a kingdom
here in this world. The kingdom of God, he said,
is among you or in you. It comes not with observation.
Every other kingdom comes with observation, usually with warfare. But the kingdom of God, the kingdom
of the Lord Jesus Christ came without observation. And this
barley, to me, pictures that. The second thing, barley was
made into bread. Now one of the miracles when
our Lord fed 5,000 men, he began with five barley loaves and two
small fishes. So the Lord Jesus Christ is set
before sinners as the bread of life. When the Apostle Paul wrote
to the church in Corinth, he said, I determined not to know
anything among you, not to set anything among you as the object
of your faith, but Jesus Christ and Him crucified. He is the
bread of life, the living bread. He said, whosoever eateth this
bread shall live forever. The bread of life that we feed
upon is the Lord Jesus Christ. We receive life. You know, bread today is called
the staff of life. That's how we refer to bread,
the staff of life. Bread can maintain life. We must
eat. But bread cannot give a dead
person life. You can Have a corpse and you
can lay a piece of bread on that corpse. It's not gonna change
that corpse at all. Bread, but the Lord Jesus Christ,
he is living bread. And he, whosoever eateth his
flesh and drinketh his blood shall live forever. And we know
that's by faith. It's not by some ceremony that
we eat his flesh or drink his blood. It is rather by faith. But think of what the process
of making bread. The grain has to be winnowed,
right? The way they would do it, they
would bring the stalks and they'd pile them up and then they'd
beat them, they'd beat them. And then they would take it and
put it in some kind of a cloth or bag and throw it up in the
air and the wind would blow the chaff away. But think of the,
and then that, The grain had to be ground into flour. You
know, along with this feast, we're told here that there was
to be a meat offering in verse 13, along with this lamb that
was offered also. Now that meal, a meat offering
was a flour offering. That's what we would call flour.
It wasn't meat like we think of. beef or pork or something
like that. No, it was flour, but it was
fine ground flour. But my point is this sheaf was
barley. Barley is made into bread, and
the process of doing that shows the sufferings of the Lord Jesus
Christ, how he was beaten, how he was crucified. And then it's baked in an oven.
and how the Lord Jesus Christ was under the wrath of God for
the sins of his people, for your sins and my sins tonight. A third
thing, it was one sheaf. Notice that, it was one sheaf
in verse 10. Speaking to the children of Israel,
And say unto them, when you be come into the land, which I give
unto you, and shall reap the harvest thereof, then you shall
bring a sheaf. One sheaf shall bring a sheaf. What is a sheaf? A sheaf is a
bundle. It's a bundle. They would take
stalks and bundle them together. And they are to bring one bundle,
one sheaf. When we think of how this pictures
the Lord Jesus Christ as one, I wrote down here several ways
that Christ is one. First of all, he's one with the
Father. He said, I and my Father are
one. He's one with the Father. He's
one person. Now we know he has two natures,
but those two natures are one person. He's one person. He's the one mediator between
God and man, the man, Christ Jesus. Neither is there salvation
in any other, for there's none other name. under heaven given
among men, whereby you must be saved. And he's the one husband
of his church. The one husband of his church.
Look, keep your place here. Return with me to Isaiah just
a moment. Isaiah chapter 54. In Isaiah chapter 54 and verse
5, we read, For thy maker is thine husband, the Lord of hosts
is his name, and thy Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel, the God
of the whole earth, shall he be called. Thy maker is thy husband. Our maker is the Lord Jesus Christ,
is our husband, He's our Redeemer. He's the Holy One of Israel.
We have one husband. The church has one husband. I thought about the fact that
in Malachi, God reprimanded the Israelites because so many of
them were putting their wives away. For the least cause, from
what we've read, for the least cause, if a woman burned her
husband's He could just write her a divorce, put her out of
the house. But God said this in Malachi
about these things. Well, the Lord, the God of Israel,
saith that he hateth putting away. He hateth putting away. And he hates putting away because
he who put away our sins, will never put away his wife. He's
our one husband, and he will never put away his wife, the
church. I'm thankful for that, aren't
you? One husband. And then a fourth thing about
a sheaf, it contained many grains. You see, a sheaf would be a bundle
of stalks, but On those stalks would be the grain. The many
grains would represent unto us the many blessings that are ours
in Christ. This sheaf offering is a picture
of Christ, the blessing that we have in Christ. We can't even
begin to name all of them. They're called the sure mercies
of David, the blessings, the forgiveness, Reconciliation,
justification, sanctification, the resurrection, all these blessings
that we receive in Christ are pictured to us by the many grains
that was in this one sheath. I was thinking the other day
about the adoption. subject of adoption. I was thinking
about a particular person who was taken out of a very, very
bad, unstable situation and placed into a stable home. And I couldn't
help but think about me, about you. We were in a very unstable
situation, weren't we not? Lost and on our way to hell,
and God took us out of that unstable situation and has adopted us
as his children. Blessed be the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual
blessings in heavenly places in Christ, according as he hath
chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should
be holy and without blame before him in love, having predestinated
us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ Himself. How many blessings are ours in
Christ? They're all in Christ. Just like
this sheaf, there are many grains and many blessings that are ours
in Christ. If a person knows Christ, he
has everything, doesn't he? If he doesn't know Christ, no
matter what else he has, As far as things are concerned, He really
has nothing. But those of us who know Christ
tonight, we have all things in Him. And the last thing, the
fifth thing, it was a pledge. This one sheaf served as a pledge
when it was waived before the Lord. Now from what I've read,
they would take the grain and they would put it into an omer. That's what one man could eat,
that measurement that they used. When they had the manna given
to them in the wilderness, there was an omer for each individual. And they would take that grain
in an omer and they would wave it up and down. I always think
about waving it this way, but according to what I've read,
they waved it up and down. Two things it pictured. First
of all, It pictured they recognized that the harvest was given them
from God. The grain which they ate, God
is the one who sent the rain, and he's the one who gave the
sunshine that caused the crop that they were harvesting. It
was a recognition that what they had, they received from the Lord. That's so important, isn't it?
to give thanks unto the Lord. When we take our meals, we like
to do that, don't we? Recognizing that the Lord has
provided for us. He provides our food, and it's
a testimony. Those of you who have children,
they learn when they see you give thanks for the food, that
you believe it. that God is the one who gives
the blessings of life. But it was also a pledge, not
only a testimony that they recognize the food that they harvested,
the grain they harvested came from God, but it was a pledge. And we know it is a pledge of
our resurrection. The first fruit was the Lord
Jesus Christ. but he was first in the order. In fact, that scripture, if you
want to turn there to first Corinthians 15, that speaks about the resurrection. First Corinthians chapter 15
verse 20 says, but now as Christ risen from the dead and become
the first fruits of them that slept the first fruits. Now in
that feast, God told them they couldn't eat anything until they
observed that feast. And then they could eat the harvest
that they had. Christ is the first fruit. That
sheaf was a pledge. There was more out there in the
field. This is just a small portion of the harvest that we have here.
And Christ is the firstfruits, for the scripture says, but now
is Christ risen from the dead and become the firstfruits of
them that slept, that is, those who died. Look at verse 23. But
every man in his own order, Christ the firstfruits. Afterwards,
they that are Christ at his coming. Christ came first. He has a preeminence in all things,
doesn't he? And he's the first fruit, first
to rise from the dead to an immortal life. But every believer who
has passed away and their bodies have been planted in the earth,
when the Lord comes again, our bodies will be raised and will
be made like unto his glorious body. I pray the Lord would bless
his word here this evening to you.