The First of the Harvest
Many Christians celebrate Easter today, but what many don’t realize is that their Christian holiday often overlaps with an amazing picture of God’s plan for humanity in the seven feasts of Yahweh.
The Day of Firstfruits means the coming promise in Hebrew. While this year the day does not overlap with Easter on the traditional calendar for most Jews—Messianic believers and Christians who celebrate it the Sunday after the weekly Sabbath usually place it the day of Easter.
Which is most apt to make sense for the holy purposes for which God declared the holiday back in the Torah from Leviticus 23.
In these feasts, we find the eternal plan of the Lord God.
“The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, ‘Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, These are the appointed feasts of the Lord that you shall proclaim as holy convocations; they are My appointed feasts’” (Leviticus 23:1-2 [ESV]).
Notice these are God’s feasts, not the feasts of any people group. While we shouldn’t appropriate culture and offend the Jewish people, God said these are His appointed times.
There are seven total, but I want to focus on one specifically based on the resurrection of the Messiah.
“And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, ‘Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, When you come into the land that I give you and reap its harvest, you shall bring the sheaf of the firstfruits of your harvest to the priest, and he shall wave the sheaf before the Lord, so that you may be accepted. On the day after the Sabbath, the priest shall wave it. And on the day when you wave the sheaf, you shall offer a male lamb a year old without blemish as a burnt offering to the Lord’” (Leviticus 23:9-12 [ESV]).
This ancient ritual of the ancient Israelites tells us a few things. But to get the “woo-woo weirdness” factor of the notion of sacrifice out of the way, most people sacrifice hamburgers and steaks today. A sacrifice was essentially a giant and ancient barbecue ceremony. That’s almost it. Sharing a meal with others and a god.
Therefore, the notion of human sacrifice is so heinous, and Yahweh forbids such things.
The sheaf offering is of the first part of your harvest. Many of us in modern cultures don’t understand some of the agrarian concepts in the Scriptures because we live in modern cities.
The first part of the harvest was symbolically offered before the priest, and it was to be on the day after the Sabbath of Holy Week.
Notice a male lamb without blemish is also involved. Jesus is the Lamb of God, who is without sin. This is in addition to the Passover lamb. Everything in the Bible ultimately points to Jesus Christ.
I’ve mentioned sod-level interpretations of Scripture common to Kabbalah here a few times in the past few weeks. Paul uses this technique to bring us a deeper understanding of what the Feast of Firstfruits means for Christians.
“But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Corinthians 15:20 [ESV]).
Paul is tying the ancient feast back to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Even the day is the same, the day after the weekly Sabbath.
This is a picture of ultimate redemption, when our bodies will be changed into a celestial body of perfection. No more death for humanity, no more decay. We’ll see loved ones again.
Christ is the first permanent being to be resurrected in that fashion. This event was so powerful that it left an image on his burial shroud, known as the Shroud of Turin. Imagine what might happen when billions are resurrected to new life.
That will be the last harvest, as Jesus alludes to in one of his parables about the end of the age.
“‘…and the enemy who sowed them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels’” (Matthew 13:39 [ESV]).
The faithful to Christ will be raised in this last harvest event at the end of time. The wicked will be gathered by the angels to be burned. Destroyed like weeds in a fire (though not eternally tortured forever, as most people erroneously believe).
The Messiah is the first of this harvest, and then no matter how many millennia pass, we will follow into the glorious kingdom of Christ in perfect bodies that cannot die. The eternal state is not some ethereal existence where we don’t have bodies. We will eat food, we will enjoy culture, and we will see our families we’ve lost once more.
This is the harvest we should all be looking forward to as Christians. Whether Jesus returns in fifty years or ten thousand years from now.
The Feast of Firstfruits is a mirroring type of the last harvest. Jesus fulfilled each of these spring feasts to the letter during His First Coming. The Fall Feasts of Yahweh will be fulfilled during the Second Coming.
May the LORD gather His harvest at the appointed time He has chosen and destroy death forever.
Blessed are You, King of the Universe, who raises the dead to life.
Shalom.
