Sermon Tone Analysis

! Twenty-Sixth Anniversary Message

!

The Feast Of First Fruits

!

Preparing For The Harvest

Leviticus 23:9-14

 

        It seems like only yesterday, when I was struggling to perceive, receive and obey the calling of the Lord with respect to this church, but it was on March 6, 1974, with me Sister Cathy, my wife, Sister Johnson, my mother, and Sister Sewell, who is now deceased, that The House of Prayer For All People was organized.

Shortly thereafter came Elder Johnson and then Pastor Butts and his wife, Jewrusha, and we were incorporated as The House of the Lord.

Now here we sit, twenty-six (26) years later, tremendously blessed by the providence of Almighty God, and it is marvelous in our eyes.

*Anniversaries are a good time to look back and see where God has brought us from, but they are also a good time to look forward and see where God wants to take us.*

Hindsight ought to lead to foresight!

God has been our rearguard, but He is also our vanguard!!!  We usually spend our anniversaries looking back, because we have grown so rapidly that there are people who do not know our story and our history.

And when a person or people do not know their history; they do not know who they are—they have no sense of authentic presence.

Therefore, in the motif of the Children of Israel, we periodically review our history.

After the Children of Israel were delivered from Egypt, they were to commemorate their deliverance with a feast, festival, or celebration and recount the story of

 

·        How God delivered them with His mighty arm;

·        How He opened up the Red Sea with the blast of His nostrils;

·        How they marched through the Red Sea on dry ground;

·        How God drowned Pharaoh’s army in the Red Sea;

·        How Miriam and the women of Israel went forth in the holy dance to praise Jehovah God.

It is important that we celebrate:

 

·        The many souls that have been changed.

·        The many people that have been ministered to.

·        The spiritual moves that God has taken us through.

·        Our beginning in my parent’s home on Douglas Street.

·        Our first church building and corporate miracle on Thornton Street.

·        Our second church building and corporate miracle on Brown Street.

·        Our camping in front of the Promised Land at the J. C. Penney’s building and the associated miracle.

·        Our first new building here at 1650 Diagonal Road

·        The various buildings we have built since.

·        The present construction project.

\\         But, God has been showing me over the years and has continued to teach me that celebration is vitally important in His economy.

I have neither the time nor the inclination to define “celebration” this morning.

So, let it suffice to say that the word “worship” deals much more with the substance of worship, while the word “celebration” deals much more with the outward observances, rituals, and ceremonies of worship.

*The word “celebration” also denotes the festive, merrymaking, grateful, happy aspects of worship.*

*  God has been showing me that humanity needs celebration.*

*  He has been showing me that celebration is a very important part of the Christian life!*

He has been showing me that celebration is of special significance and importance to African-American Christians.

*Life is a struggle for everybody, no matter what your color or nationality, but for African-American people life is even more of a struggle because of the residual effects of slavery.*

We must face more than most other races in terms of subtle discrimination, economic reprisals, educational stereotyping, etc.

After we have been beaten up and beaten down all week; after we have struggled and striven to achieve life through material and earthly means, we need to take a break from the rat race and return to the human race by entering God’s presence for a time of celebration.

*Therefore, I want our anniversaries to be times of great celebration.*

*As I thought about this year’s anniversary, God seemed to impress upon me the idea that this anniversary should be about the future and not the past; about expectation and not just recitation of the past; about preparation and not just complacency.*

In keeping with this impression, I believe that God led me to the 23rd chapter of Leviticus.

The importance of celebration is illustrated in the Old Testament in the 23rd chapter of Leviticus.

This chapter “contains in typical language, a record of God’s dealings with man in grace, from the death of Christ, to His millennial kingdom, and to the eternal glory and rest, which lie beyond it.”[1]

We are not going to study its eschatological import, but its practical meaning and implications for celebrating and preparing for the future.

The feast, festival, or celebration that we have in mind is The Feast of First Fruits.

It is found in verses 9-14.

Would you turn there with me please?

I will read this aloud for us as you follow along.

\\ *The major activity of this festival was offering or rendering to the Lord the first fruits or first produce of the harvest.*[2]*

*Keep in mind the fact that the Children of Israel had been wandering in the wilderness for forty (40) years.

So, “Until this time they had eaten only manna.

In the desert, a roaming people had no fields to sow nor harvests to reap.”[3]

This festival could *not* be celebrated until the Children of Israel entered into the Promised Land and the manna stopped.

As long as they were wandering through the wilderness, because of their own disbelief and disobedience, God rained down manna from heaven to feed them.

When they entered the Promised Land, the manna stopped and they planted a crop.

*No man was permitted to partake of any part of the new season’s harvest until the first fruits had been presented.*[4]*

*Nothing was to be taken from the fields or eaten, until a portion of it had been offered to Jehovah God.

 

(Before we move more deeply into the practical implications and truths that God wants to impress upon us, we need to get just a little bit of a picture of the actual sacred rituals of the day.)

“It must be borne in mind that this feast was kept on the sixteenth day, and that at that time the day began at six o’clock in the evening (hence the repeated statement in Genesis 1:  ‘And the evening and the morning were a day.’)

Toward the close of the fifteenth day, just before the going down of the sun, three men, each carrying a sickle and a basket, walked out through the city gate.

Separating from one another, each one would move toward one of the three previously buried hoops, and stand there.

These men would be accompanied by representatives of the people, both religious and secular—in other words, priests and elders—who would wait outside the city gate.

Quietly they would watch the sun set, denoting the end of that day.

As it slipped over the horizon the three men would address the priest with the following questions:

 

        Has the sun gone down?

On this fifteenth day?

        Into this basket?

(Each man would hold the basked above his head).

With this sickle?

(Holding the sickle high for all to see).

Shall I reap?

 

\\         To each question the priest would answer in the affirmative.

With the last ‘yes,’ the three men simultaneously would thrust their sickles into the barley within the hoops, and the sheaves would be placed in the baskets that they were carrying.

Then these men, with the priests and elders, would march processionally up to the temple with much rejoicing, where the bundles would be put together into one great sheaf or bundle and handed to the priest.

*He, in turn, took the sheaf and waved it before the Lord as a wave offering (this is seen in Leviticus 23:10-11)*:

 

‘...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.

And he shall wave the sheaf before the Lord for you to be accepted; on the day after the Sabbath the priest shall wave it.’

This wave sheaf was accompanied by burnt and meal offerings.”[5]

*You can see then, that the Jews celebrated this festival by waving a sacrificial sheaf or bundle of barley before the Lord*.

This is where I want to begin to make application and to give us the fresh word from the Lord, which arises out of the celebration of this feast.

The sheaf or bundle was the first fruits of the harvest.

There is a harvest before us, but I am not talking about the harvest of barley or wheat.

I am talking about the harvest of souls.

I do so on the basis of the imagery of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Jesus talked about the souls of the Samaritans in terms of the harvest.

I will preach about that tonight.

God has blessed us with the first fruits of the harvest and we should give them back to Jesus as a wave offering.

You are probably wandering, “What were the first fruits?”

I believe the first fruits were given to us in the month of January, when we saw twenty-six people respond to one altar call.

This was merely the first fruits of the harvest.

They were simply a small part of the harvest that is yet in the field, and we ought to offer them as a wave offering before Jehovah God, because of the implication of this kind of offering.

/(Somebody ought to be asking, “How do we do that?”)/

Well, we no longer offer physical sacrifices from our physical harvests, but we still offer sacrifices.

The Bible says in

 

Hebrews 13:15-16, “Through Him then, let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that give thanks to His name.

And do not neglect doing good and sharing; for with such sacrifices God is pleased.”

\\ The writer of the Hebrews says that we ought to continually offer up the fruit of our lips that give thanks to His name, our doing of good, and the sharing of our material goods.

We offer up the sacrifices of our mouths in thanksgiving; our manners in how we live; and our material in tithes, offerings, and benevolences.

Before we partake of any of the Jehovah’s blessings, i.e. personally or corporately, we should first thank God, live compassionately, and give to Him, His Church, and His causes.