Firstfruits

Proverbs 3:9-10 (Opening) 9  Honor the Lord with your wealth and with the firstfruits of all your produce; 10  then your barns will be filled with plenty, and your vats will be bursting with wine. Introduction Rules are a funny thing. Some people feel more comfortable with them, and some people feel restricted by them. Even if they are the same rules for both people. I’m a rule follower, or at least I try to be. I’m not a rebel. I try to drive the speed limit. I stop at stop signs, even when it’s late at night and no one else is around. I use my turn signal when I change lanes, and when I turn, even when no one is around. Some people would say that’s my OCD. I just feel that it’s the right thing to do. Now, don’t think I’m going to think badly of you if you aren’t like me. I have lots of friends who aren’t as OCD about following the rules as I am. That’s fine. Their rule-following or non-rule-following isn’t my problem. That’s on them. Sometimes I have to remind myself about that, but again, that’s my problem. We all have a past that made us the way we are; our families, our experiences, where we grew up, and what was going on in the world when we grew up. People who grew up during the depression have a different way of thinking than people who grew up in the 50’s. And they have a different way of thinking than people who grew up in the 70’s. And they have a different way of thinking than the teens who are growing up now. Each group’s way of thinking is different, and each group had experiences or key people who influenced that way of thinking. Leaders who influenced large groups of people into thinking or behaving in a particular way. Produce The children of Israel spent over 400 years living in Egypt. During that time, they were exposed to all the religious practices of the Egyptians. They were surrounded by idolatry and worship of animals and almost every created thing, including the sun and the moon. Not only were they oppressed physically as slaves to Pharaoh, but they were oppressed because they weren’t allowed to worship God they way they had before they went to Egypt. After Moses led them out of Egypt, God gave the Israelites detailed instructions on how to live, and how to worship Him correctly. Those instructions included specific feasts and holidays, and what to sacrifice to Him, and when to do it. There were sacrifices of sheep and goats, bulls, doves, wine, oil, grain, and even bread. But God didn’t want just anything sacrificed to Him; it had to be the best. Animals had to be “without blemish”, in other words, no illness, broken bones, and not deformed in any way. Non-animal sacrifices were also to be the best quality, without decay or infestation of any kind. Another aspect of God’s laws on sacrifice was when the thing to be sacrificed was produced. God required a sacrifice of the firstfruits. The firstfruits is just what it sounds like, the first grain from the field, or the first wine or oil from the press. Again, God wanted the best, without decay or any infestation, and the first was always considered the best. Exodus 23:19a 19 “The best of the firstfruits of your ground you shall bring into the house of the Lord your God. Of course, after leaving Mount Sinai and spying out the Promised Land, the Israelites didn’t believe that God would give them victory over the people living there, so God punished that generation of Israelites by not allowing them to live in the land. He forced them to remain in the wilderness, wandering in the desert until all but two of that generation were dead, the two spies that believed that God would give them victory. While they were wandering in the wilderness, they didn’t grow crops, so there were no firstfruits of the ground to offer to God. He had to remind the Israelites about firstfruits, since they couldn’t offer them during their 40 years of wandering in the desert. Leviticus 23:9-11 9 And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 10 “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, 11 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. This is the explanation of the feast of the firstfruits. This feast would happen on the first day of the week, seven weeks after Passover. Another name for this feast is Pentecost, which is Greek for fiftieth, because that day is the fiftieth day after Passover. There were also sacrifices in addition to the sheaf of grain, including a yearling male lamb, grain mixed with oil, and wine. The entire lamb was burnt on the altar as a burnt offering. The grain and the wine had a representative portion, about 10%, either burned on the altar or poured against the altar, and the rest went to the priests as their portion, since they had no fields or vineyards of their own. Sacrificing the firstfruits to God showed faith that God would continue to bless the crops and provide enough from the harvest to sustain the people, over and above what had been given to God. Like we read earlier in Proverbs, Proverbs 3:9-10 9  Honor the Lord with your wealth and with the firstfruits of all your produce; 10  then your barns will be filled with plenty, and your vats will be bursting with wine. God would bless them because of their giving the firstfruits to Him. God can be trusted to provide for their needs, so sacrificing the firstfruits of the produce of the fields and vineyards would be a blessing to everyone involved. It is a demonstration of their faith in God. The firstfruits of the harvest was considered holy, set apart for God, and not to be used by anyone else but the Levites, as God’s way of providing for their needs. The firstfruits was a kind of promise from God that there would be more coming, not just the part that was required to be given back to God. But the firstfruits concept applied to more than just to grain and fruit, the produce of the fields. God told Jeremiah this about the people of Israel: Jeremiah 2:3 3  Israel was holy to the Lord, the firstfruits of his harvest. All who ate of it incurred guilt; disaster came upon them, declares the Lord.” Out of all the nations on the earth, God chose Israel as His portion. They were to be the firstfruits of the nations of the earth, because His goal was to bring all the nations to Him. And He protected them and punished the nations that attacked Israel. Firstborn But Israel was more than just the firstfruits of the nations. God said that Israel was His firstborn. Exodus 4:22-23 22 Then you shall say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the Lord, Israel is my firstborn son, 23 and I say to you, “Let my son go that he may serve me.” If you refuse to let him go, behold, I will kill your firstborn son.’” There’s a connection between firstborn and firstfruits. Like the firstfruits, the firstborn belongs to God. And technically, firstfruits are the firstborn of the seed planted that season. So, firstborn are the firstfruits of the womb. If the firstfruits of the produce of Israel was to be dedicated to God, what about the firstborn? Should the firstborn be dedicated to God, too? And are we talking about just animals, like sheep, goats, and cows, or does that include people, too? Exodus 13:1-2 1 The Lord said to Moses, 2 “Consecrate to me all the firstborn. Whatever is the first to open the womb among the people of Israel, both of man and of beast, is mine.” Consecrate means basically to make holy, or to treat something as holy. Just like the firstfruits of the produce, which God declared holy, He also says that the firstborn is holy, set apart for God. It doesn’t matter if that firstborn is livestock or a person, he is set apart, holy and consecrated to God. There are lots of laws about the firstborn. Firstborn from among the clean animals were to be sacrificed to God. A firstborn horse or donkey was to be redeemed by sacrificing a lamb in it’s place to redeem it, and if you didn’t do that, you were to break the neck of the horse or the donkey. A firstborn son was to be redeemed, of course. There’s no option there. However, if you couldn’t afford a lamb to redeem your son, you could sacrifice two doves. That’s what Mary and Joseph did when Jesus was born and redeemed at the Temple. When the firstborn of clean animals was sacrificed to God, it wasn’t a burnt offering, like the lamb sacrificed on Pentecost. It was a fellowship offering. That means the animal was sacrificed, butchered and skinned by the priests, then the priests would receive their portion, God’s portion was burnt on the altar, and then what was left was roasted and shared among the family members and friends of the person who brought the animal as a sacrifice. This was to be done with every firstborn of the clean animals. Deuteronomy 15:19-20 19 “All the firstborn males that are born of your herd and flock you shall dedicate to the Lord your God. You shall do no work with the firstborn of your herd, nor shear the firstborn of your flock. 20 You shall eat it, you and your household, before the Lord your God year by year at the place that the Lord will choose. Remember how I just said the firstborn son was to be redeemed by sacrificing at the temple or the tabernacle? Well, when Israel first came out of Egypt, they couldn’t do that to redeem all the firstborn sons that God spared during the Passover. They couldn’t sacrifice that many sheep and doves. God had another plan for how to redeem all the firstborn sons of Israel. In Numbers chapter 3, God tells Moses to count all the firstborn sons of the tribes of Israel over a month old, except for the Levites. Then God told Moses to count all the male Levites over a month old. Moses totaled up the list of the Levites and it came to 22,000 male Levites, a month old and older. The total number of firstborn male Israelites a month old and older was 22,273. Numbers 3:11-13 11 And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 12 “Behold, I have taken the Levites from among the people of Israel instead of every firstborn who opens the womb among the people of Israel. The Levites shall be mine, 13 for all the firstborn are mine. On the day that I struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, I consecrated for my own all the firstborn in Israel, both of man and of beast. They shall be mine: I am the Lord.” Instead of sacrificing 22,273 lambs, God redeemed the firstborn sons of Israel by consecrating the Levites to His service from that point onward. The extra 273 firstborn that were not redeemed by the Levites were covered by paying a “redemption tax” of sorts, five shekels each, and the money was given to Aaron and the Levites. Both the firstborn of all the people of Israel and of their livestock, and the firstfruits of the fields and the vineyards, were holy, dedicated to God for His purpose. People were to be redeemed, but clean animals were not. Even the work the animals would perform and the wool that the sheep would produce were dedicated to God. They belonged completely to God. Paul’s argument Why is all this information important? Well, first off, like Paul told Timothy, 2 Timothy 3:16-17 16 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. But on top of that, we can learn a lot by trying to understand how Paul would have understood the Old Testament when we’re trying to understand what he is writing. In his first letter to the congregation in Corinth, Paul writes about a lot of different things. He admonishes the congregation for doing things that are blatantly wrong and sinful. He encourages them to do good things and to help the poor. And it seems that several people in Corinth were saying there would be no resurrection, so he spends time defending the resurrection. We don’t know who in Corinth didn’t believe there would be a resurrection, but we do know that there was an entire sect of Judaism that didn’t believe in the resurrection. Not only did the Sadducees not believe in the resurrection, but they didn’t believe in angels, or most other spiritual beings except for God. Paul begins chapter 15 of 1 Corinthians defending the gospel he preached in Corinth and goes into great detail about the resurrection of Christ, and of the dead in general. He tells how Christ appeared to so many people after His crucifixion; reliable and trustworthy witnesses. It would have been no advantage for them to lie about it, since people were being stoned for their faith in Christ. Paul would know that better than anyone else, since he was one of the ones arresting Christians and having them sentenced to death, before he became a Christian himself. Paul goes into a long logical argument about why the resurrection had to have happened, and how the dead would rise again on the last day. His main argument to the confused Christians there in Corinth was in verses 16 and 17 1 Corinthians 15:16-17 16 For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. 17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. If there’s no resurrection, then you’re still in your unsaved state, because if there’s no resurrection, then Christ died for no reason, because He wasn’t raised on the third day. Not only that, but everyone who preaches the gospel of Jesus is a liar, because they say that Christ rose again on the third day. That’s an integral part of the gospel message. But then, Paul goes into the truth of Christ’s resurrection, and the real good news. 1 Corinthians 15:20-23 20 But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. 21 For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. 22 For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. 23 But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Paul compares Christ to Adam, the first man. Adam was the one who brought sin into the world. He was told by God not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but he still did, both he and Eve did. Because of that, all humans die, because we are all “in” Adam. But if we are in Christ, we are made alive, because He died to take the place of our death, to pay the price for our sins. And that only works because He had a sinless life and was a willing sacrifice for our sins. Paul says that Christ is the firstfruits devoted to God from the dead, the first to be resurrected. So, we too will be raised when He returns if we are in Him, if we belong to Him. The whole concept of the firstfruits is that if even though just a small portion is the firstfruits and is holy and given to God, the remainder is still holy because of the first portion. Paul does a better job of explaining it when he wrote to the congregations in Rome. Romans 11:16 16 If the dough offered as firstfruits is holy, so is the whole lump, and if the root is holy, so are the branches. So, because Christ is the firstfruits of the dead, if we remain in Him, we will be raised like Him. We are a part of the whole lump Paul is talking about if we are in Christ. Conclusion Sin is like a disease. Once Adam and Eve disobeyed God, that was it. The consequence of their sin was permanent and has been passed on from one generation to the next. Because of their sin, we have to deal with that pesky problem called death. But there’s an antidote for the disease. Jesus Christ is both the antidote and the prescribing doctor. All we have to do is believe that He is the antidote, that He died for our sins, and take that antidote as prescribed. That is, we need to repent and be immersed to wash away our sins, and then continue to try to obey His teachings. If we don’t do what He said, we aren’t following the doctor’s orders, and we won’t get the result we expect. If you have an infection and the doctor gives you a prescription and you don’t take all of it the way it was prescribed, chances are you won’t get rid of the infection. It may start to go away, but then when you quit taking the medication, it will come back. Sin is like that. If you think you’ve got it beat, and rest on your laurels, it can come back with a vengeance. That’s why we keep meeting together and praying together, to help each other when things get tough; to encourage each other to stay in the word, to keep learning, to keep studying, and to keep strong in the word so we’re less likely to fail. Every time we get together, it’s like a booster shot to keep us going. But you have to get started. You have to be immersed to be saved. That’s what Jesus said. Mark 16:16 16 Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. If you believe you need to be immersed, let’s talk. Colossians 1:15-20 (Closing) 15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. 16 For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. 17 And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. 19 For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. Bible Study Numbers 3:38-51 38 Those who were to camp before the tabernacle on the east, before the tent of meeting toward the sunrise, were Moses and Aaron and his sons, guarding the sanctuary itself, to protect the people of Israel. And any outsider who came near was to be put to death. 39 All those listed among the Levites, whom Moses and Aaron listed at the commandment of the Lord, by clans, all the males from a month old and upward, were 22,000. 40 And the Lord said to Moses, “List all the firstborn males of the people of Israel, from a month old and upward, taking the number of their names. 41 And you shall take the Levites for me—I am the Lord—instead of all the firstborn among the people of Israel, and the cattle of the Levites instead of all the firstborn among the cattle of the people of Israel.” 42 So Moses listed all the firstborn among the people of Israel, as the Lord commanded him. 43 And all the firstborn males, according to the number of names, from a month old and upward as listed were 22,273. 44 And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 45 “Take the Levites instead of all the firstborn among the people of Israel, and the cattle of the Levites instead of their cattle. The Levites shall be mine: I am the Lord. 46 And as the redemption price for the 273 of the firstborn of the people of Israel, over and above the number of the male Levites, 47 you shall take five shekels per head; you shall take them according to the shekel of the sanctuary (the shekel of twenty gerahs), 48 and give the money to Aaron and his sons as the redemption price for those who are over.” 49 So Moses took the redemption money from those who were over and above those redeemed by the Levites. 50 From the firstborn of the people of Israel he took the money, 1,365 shekels, by the shekel of the sanctuary. 51 And Moses gave the redemption money to Aaron and his sons, according to the word of the Lord, as the Lord commanded Moses. Exodus 13:11-15 11 “When the Lord brings you into the land of the Canaanites, as he swore to you and your fathers, and shall give it to you, 12 you shall set apart to the Lord all that first opens the womb. All the firstborn of your animals that are males shall be the Lord’s. 13 Every firstborn of a donkey you shall redeem with a lamb, or if you will not redeem it you shall break its neck. Every firstborn of man among your sons you shall redeem. 14 And when in time to come your son asks you, ‘What does this mean?’ you shall say to him, ‘By a strong hand the Lord brought us out of Egypt, from the house of slavery. 15 For when Pharaoh stubbornly refused to let us go, the Lord killed all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both the firstborn of man and the firstborn of animals. Therefore I sacrifice to the Lord all the males that first open the womb, but all the firstborn of my sons I redeem.’ Exodus 19:5-6 5 Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; 6 and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel.” Romans 5:12-21 12 Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned— 13 for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. 14 Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come. 15 But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many. 16 And the free gift is not like the result of that one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. 17 For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ. 18 Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. 19 For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous. 20 Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, 21 so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.