Feast of First Fruits = Resurrection Sunday

Feast of First Fruits = Resurrection Sunday

By Pastor Gary Wayne

Text: John 20:1-19, 1Cor.15:20-23 , Leviticus 23:1-14

If we want our Resurrection celebration to be accurate, we wouldn’t call it Easter, because Easter is actually a pagan holiday with a pagan goddess of fertility. VERY MUCH like how Halloween & Christmas has become in the western culture. Pagan thinking mixed with Christian things to form a celebration that is actually VERY FAR REMOVED from the actual Biblical accounts of what God tells us to celebrate.

For us to celebrate the resurrection, our focus is on the “Feast of Firstfruits.”

When someone refers to the Passover, it can have two different implications.
It can refer to the event of the Passover meal, or the season of Passover.
Much like we might say, we are going to have a Christmas party, but it’s only the 19th . The phrase takes in the season as well as an individual event.
So when people talk about celebrating Passover, it sometimes refers to the season of the events.

The season includes the preparation for the Passover, the Passover itself, from the Passover right into the feast of unleavened bread, which is one weak, and then inside that week is the feast of first fruits.

Ver.9-14 V.10 When did God begin the observation of this feast?
There were two main gain crops – barley, then wheat about a month later.

Down through Hebrew history, the priests would use different methods for this, but the basic happing would be much the same.

There was a piece of ground not far from the temple for the priests to use. They would sow the seed in the winter, and when it came time to celebrate the Feast of Firstfruits in the spring, they would go to the field before sunset, and mark an armful or a handful of grain to harvest. One priest would prepare himself with the stalks in one arm, a sickle in the other. A second priest would stand watching the sun setting. At the exact setting of the sun, the watching priest would give the command, and the first priest would take a sickle and cut the first cutting of grain and wave it before the Lord. The main idea was to dedicate the first ripened stalks to God in anticipation that the greater harvest to come.

The sun would set and night would begin.

The next morning they would then take this fresh cut grain, beat it, grind and prepare it into bread and again wave it before the Lord – this time before a torn veil.

1Cor.15:20-23

Jesus literally fulfilled the feast of Passover by shedding His blood.
Jesus literally fulfilled the feast of Unleavened bread by being bread without sin.
And now He fulfilled the feast of Firstfruits being the first from the grave.

Think about early dawn on the morning of the Feast of Firstfruits.
What was happening?

Mt 28:1 “Now after the Sabbath, as the first day of the week began to dawn, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to see the tomb.”
Mr 16:2 “Very early in the morning, on the first day of the week, they came to the tomb when the sun had risen.”

Lu 24:1 “Now on the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they, and certain other women with them, came to the tomb bringing the spices which they had prepared.”
Joh 20:1-19

Put this together in your mind - What was going on at sunrise at the tomb?
What was going on in the Temple? The first harvest was being prepared for bread, and then waved before the Lord in preparation of the meal for Firstfruits.

Like the wave sheaf offering, in the intervening hours Jesus ascended to the Father and been accepted as a suitable redeeming sacrifice for God’s people.
Then later that same day, Jesus met with His disciples.

There is still a harvest to come.

Each of the feasts God said to observe, looked to an original event God wants His people to remember, but it also pointed forward to a day when the meaning and principal of that feast - what it was about - would be fulfilled.
But not just fulfilled, activated to be on-going in the lives of His people.
For example - Passover started as a miracle of God to deliver Israel from bondage, but it pointed to the day when Jesus would fulfill the Passover – and once activate it as an ongoing, the blood of Jesus continues to set us free.