Week 9 ———  Jesus and the Appointed Times – Firstfruits
John 2:18-22

Last time, we talked about how God in creation set up appointed times of meeting, the moadim.  On the 4th day of creation, God made the sun, moon, and stars —to separate day from night, to mark the days and years, for signs, and to mark specially appointed times.

But historically, we Christians haven’t spent a whole lot of time studying the Older Testament.  We don’t read Leviticus – it’s too hard. We say that, but we must understand that Leviticus is what Jesus and the other Jews in the first century used as their first-grade reader.  While all the kids in my grade were learning about Dick, Jane, and Spot, Jesus was reading Leviticus.   Because our background on these appointed times is weak, we miss much of what God is saying in Jesus.

Leviticus 23 discusses eight appointed meeting times with God.  The first one mentioned is the most important, Sabbath.  Then, there are four spring times for meetings with God and three in the fall.  The first three in the spring all happen in the same week.

This year, the time for Passover and Unleavened Bread and Firstfruits begins this week.  It starts with the day of preparation for the Passover.  Before the destruction of the temple in 70 A.D., this would be the time when the Passover lambs were slain and then taken home to roast.  Today, this preparation day is also the time to prepare the meal. The Passover would be eaten after sundown.   That day, no matter which day of the week, is a special Sabbath and the first day of the seven-day Feast of Unleavened Bread.  The regular seventh-day Sabbath would begin as usual at the twilight of our Friday evening.  The Sabbath ends at twilight on our Saturday.  After the seventh-day Sabbath has ended, the Priest would go and harvest the dedicated barley and prepare it for the firstfruits offering, which would be given on Sunday morning.  This offering of Firstfruits always happens after dawn on the first day of the week (Sunday).  Unleavened Bread continues and ends with another special Sabbath on the final day.  Note there are 3 Sabbaths in this week and three of the four spring appointed times.

Firstfruits is a dedication of the barley harvest to God.  Barley is the first harvest in the spring.  The people have been living through the winter on their stored wheat.  If the wheat harvest was not good, they may have been running out of food at this point.  But even if they were near starvation, they were not allowed to harvest any of the barley until the first fruit offering to God was made.  They were not to touch the grain until the harvest was dedicated to God.  This was in recognition that the land and the harvest were God’s.  They were just stewards of His land; so though He deserved the whole harvest,  God had required only the first of the harvest.

In his book The Temple, Alfred Edersheim says the barley for the first fruit offering was cut by the priests in a particular field on the Mount of Olives on the day of the Passover sacrifice and gathered into ten standing sheaves.  The priests then crossed back to the Temple and to their homes before twilight to eat their Passover meal.  After the Sabbath during Unleavened Bread, they would cross back over to harvest the offering at twilight and spend the night preparing it for the wave offering the following day.¹  Offering the firstfruits consecrated the entire harvest to God. If God accepted the firstfruits of the harvest, it meant God would accept the whole harvest.

This offering was the first day of 50 days (this day and seven weeks of days) that they would have a similar wave offering to God, marking the days until the Feast of Shavuot (Weeks).  There were seven weeks and one day.  The book of Acts calls this appointed time “Pentecost” from the Greek for ’50’.  We will discuss this feast later and the three appointed times of the fall:  The Day of Trumpets, The Day of Atonement, and Sukkoth (The Feasts of Booths.)

What do these Old Testament feasts have to do with us?  

Passover.
 God established the Passover sacrifice and meal to remind the people of his great deliverance from Egypt.  They were slaves for 400 years.  God brought them out with power, with ten plagues or signs, the last being the death of the firstborn of Egypt.  The Passover lamb takes the place of the firstborn of Israel, and they are spared from death. For 1500 years, they celebrated Passover with the sacrifice of a lamb, recognizing the deliverance God gave them that day from death.  But they knew they needed a more complete deliverance from sin and death, and their prophets had told them that one day God would do something different. One day, a Messiah would come and be that perfect lamb of God not just to cover sin but to take it away; not just to spare them from death temporarily, but to defeat death— that it would not be a permanent separation from God.  And Jesus came to fulfill the Passover in his crucifixion. And  God arranged in his calendar to set aside Jesus to be our Passover lamb on the exact day and time that the Passover lambs were being sacrificed.  This is not a coincidence.  This is God being sovereign over time.  He didn’t want his people to miss the relevance of Jesus’ crucifixion. For thousands of years, God has painted a picture of history.  We only have to trouble ourselves to know what he has done in the past to recognize what he does in the present and what he will do in the future.

Unleavened Bread.  
God established the Feast of Unleavened Bread as a memorial to the Jews who quickly escaped from Egypt with no time for their bread to rise.  Yeast became a metaphor for corruption and sin.  They were to remove the leaven (yeast) from their homes as a reminder of their ancestors’ journey and that God had called them to live differently and not to follow the sinful ways of other nations.  Jesus comes to Jerusalem just before Passover when everyone is cleaning out their homes and removing the leaven.  Jesus sees the sin and corruption in God’s house, the Temple, and cleanses the Temple.  Jesus becomes the Bread of Life, without leaven, for us.

John 6:47-51 “Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life.  Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died.  This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die.  I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” 

Like the children of Israel, God has called us to live holy lives, free from sin (leaven).  We are not to be conformed to the world around us but to be transformed.

Firstfruits.  
The barley offered to God on the Sunday after the Sabbath after Passover represents the whole harvest.  If that portion is acceptable to God, the entire agricultural harvest is acceptable.  They do not touch the harvest until God receives his share first.  This is to remind them that everything they have is from God.  He is their life.   Jesus is resurrected from the dead at the same time as the firstfruits are harvested.

“But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.”      1 Cor 15:20

Because Jesus is resurrected, the whole world, the fields white unto spiritual harvest, are accepted.  He is our life.

John 11:25   “I am the resurrection and the life.  Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.”

Again, look at how the spring feasts are fulfilled:
Passover –  Jesus, our Passover lamb, removes the curse of death and sin in his crucifixion.
Unleavened Bread – Jesus is the Bread of Life who took on our sin (leaven).  It is buried with him.
Firstfruits – Jesus is the firstfruits of the resurrection.  Because he has been raised, we will be raised.
Feast of Weeks – fulfilled in the Book of Acts (we will get there in just over a month).

The spring appointed times have all been fulfilled in Jesus.  The fall feasts have yet to be fulfilled.  I do not know when they will be fulfilled, this year or 100 years from now, but I have to think they will, like the spring feasts, find their fulfillment on the same day God ordained for the originally appointed times.  

Let me cover at one more aspect of Jesus’ resurrection.  On Sunday morning, Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb and sees the stone rolled away.  Then she tells Peter and John, and they all return to the tomb to see it empty. John tells us that he and Peter returned to where they had been staying, but Mary was left weeping in the tomb.  Jesus appears and reveals himself to Mary and then curiously says, “Do not touch me for I have not yet ascended to my Father…” (John 20:17).

Have you ever wondered why Mary can not touch Jesus yet? He specifically asks Thomas to touch him later. But Jesus needs to appear before the Father first. If you understand the appointed times, there is nothing surprising about this. Remember that Israel was not allowed to touch the barley harvest until the firstfruits were offered to the Father.  Jesus is not to be touched until he is presented as the firstfruit of resurrection to the Father.

“But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.  For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ.”    1 Cor. 15:20

Because Jesus’s sacrifice is acceptable to the Father as our Firstfruit, we are all eligible to be harvested in resurrection as acceptable to our God.

Let me end with one of the Psalms of Ascent that those journeying to Jerusalem for these appointed times would sing as they travel.

Psalm 126:5-6   Those who sow in tears
shall reap with shouts of joy!
  He who goes out weeping,
bearing the seed for sowing,
shall come home with shouts of joy,
bringing his sheaves with him.²

The fields are white unto harvest.  The firstfruits have been offered in Jesus, now let us seek to bring in all the harvest.

1. Edersheim, Alfred. The Temple (1874)
2. Remember that sheaves in the Bible can represent people (as in Joseph’s dream).  Jesus said the fields are “white unto harvest.”