Leviticus 23:9-13
Each day of the feast of unleavened bread, which lasted seven days, there was to be an offering unto the Lord. This speaks to us of fresh daily occupation with Christ, the source of all our blessings. All we do now is to be for Him, as we seek by His grace not to live unto ourselves but unto Him who died for us and rose again (2 Cor. 5:15) —precious privilege!
The next feast — the feast of first-fruits — is very beautiful. It is harvest time. They go out and gather a sheaf of the ripened grain, called the “sheaf of firstfruits.” They do not take this home for their own use; in fact they were not to eat of the harvest at all until they had brought the sheaf of firstfruits to God. God must have His first, and He always does when His people are in a right state of soul.
They gathered the sheaf of firstfruits and brought it unto the priest and he waved it before the Lord. But not on the Sabbath day; the Christian has nothing to do with that. But it was on the morrow after the Sabbath. The waving of the sheaf of firstfruits then is the lovely picture of Christ in resurrection, presented to God in all the value of what He has done.
“And ye shall offer that day when ye wave the sheaf and a he lamb without blemish of the first year for a burnt offering unto the Lord.” v. 12. It is the blessed Lord presented now before God in resurrection in all the sweet savor of His having been in death for the glory of God.
And so we have first, the passover, and then sheaf of the firstfruits. Christ is the firstfruits of the harvest of redemption. In 1 Corinthians 15:20 we read: “But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept.” Also, “Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ’s at His cong.” v. 23.
The Lord Jesus said in John 12: 24: “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” He was the “corn of wheat” who died as “our passover” and rose again as the firstfruits of a new harvest. In resurrection He is accepted for us, and we as believers before God are seen in Him in resurrection — “accepted in the Beloved.”
What a striking thing it was that the very day Jesus died, the priest and the people of Israel were keeping the passover, not realizing that that was the last passover that God would recognize, for in the death of Christ the type had come to its completion. Then on the very day that He arose, doubtless the priests were waving the sheaf of firstfruits in the temple. They were doing that very thing which for 1500 years had foretold His resurrection, even though they might bribe the soldiers to make a lie of the report that He had risen from the dead.
ML-08/20/1972