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Easter and the Forgotten Festival

Shimar Keith

If you pay attention to the Jewish calendar, last Saturday was the Feast of Passover. In the story of the Passover there are three (3) main players. The foreign gods who want to hold on to their power and control over Israel, there are the children of Israel who want to be rescued from slavery (Exodus 2:23), and YHVH who wants his people to go to the Promised Land and worship Him.


The method that God uses to rescue the children of Israel from slavery is the final plague, in a series of ten plagues, called Passover. During the Passover plague, God passes through the land of Egypt one night to judge its people. Any family found guilty of disobeying the Ten Commandments will have their firstborns executed on the spot as their sentence (12:12-13). The only other way to pay for their crimes is to execute a 1-year old male lamb with perfect skin and no physical defects and place his blood on the outer door frame as proof that the sentence had already been carried out. Only then would God pass over that house. Just as a reminder, let me read the Ten Commandments in your hearing:


Exodus 20:3-8, 12-17 – The Ten Commandments

  1. “You shall have no other gods before me.

  2. “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.

  3. “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.

  4. “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.

  5. “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

  6. “You shall not murder.

  7. “You shall not commit adultery.

  8. “You shall not steal.

  9. “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

  10. “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s.”

In addition to worshiping other gods and stealing the Israelite’s freedom, there is a passage, from the Bible, in Romans 3:23 that says, “…for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”… As you might imagine, it was a bloodbath for both lambs and firstborn. If this story had been written about in today’s newspaper the headline would have read, “The Massacre in Egypt”, instead of the Passover. As an example of the carnage, in the case where a firstborn married another firstborn and then had a firstborn, that family would have had to eulogize three (3) people, not including pets and livestock, if the blood from the lamb was not on the doorpost. However, even under the most favorable conditions, the Bible states that every bloodless house lost at least one person (12:30), but only the lambs were innocent.

Hundreds of years later, in Palestine, Israel another lamb was sacrificed unjustly. In a letter addressing the issue of sexual immorality, the apostle Paul wrote this to his friends in the city of Corinth, “For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival… with the… bread of sincerity and truth” (1 Corinthians 5:7-8).


Feast of Firstfruits

Most Christians recognize three (3) biblical holidays each year. Passover, Feast of Weeks, and Christmas. You probably know them as Easter, Pentecost, and Christmas. (Sorry Mother’s Day didn’t make the list.) But in the Bible, there is a feast in between Passover and Feast of Weeks. This feast is known as Day of the Barley Wave Sheaf Offering, Feast of Harvest [of the firstfruits], or simply Firstfruits. Here is a preview of the festival from…


Exodus 29:22-25

“You shall also take the fat from the ram and the fat tail and the fat that covers the entrails, and the long lobe of the liver and the two kidneys with the fat that is on them, and the right thigh (for it is a ram of ordination), and one loaf of bread and one cake of bread made with oil, and one wafer out of the basket of unleavened bread that is before the Lord. You shall put all these on the palms of Aaron and on the palms of his sons, and wave them for a wave offering before the Lord. Then you shall take them from their hands and burn them on the altar on top of the burnt offering, as a pleasing aroma before the Lord. It is a food offering to the Lord.”


Leviticus 23:9-14 lays out the legal code more clearly.

  1. When you come into the land that I give you

  2. and reap its harvest,

  3. you shall bring the sheaf of the firstfruits

  4. bring the sheaf of the firstfruits of your harvest to the priest,

  5. and he shall wave the sheaf before the Lord,

  6. so that you may be accepted.

  7. On the day after the Sabbath the priest shall wave it.

  8. 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.

  9. And the grain offering with it shall be two tenths of an ephah of fine flour mixed with oil, a food offering to the Lord with a pleasing aroma,

  10. and the drink offering with it shall be of wine, a fourth of a hin.

  11. And you shall eat neither bread nor grain parched or fresh until this same day, until you have brought the offering of your God:

  12. it is a statute forever throughout your generations in all your dwellings.”

These verses make it clear that firstfruit, at its core, about giving to God. Every time you get a raise, an inheritance, a royalty or dividend payment, your first paycheck, or any form of income you should give God your firstfruits. That said, there is way more to the story!


The Prophets

What is the significant of the wave offering? To be accepted by God, to honor the Lord, and to signal that there is more coming.


Proverbs 3:9 ESV – Honor the Lord

Honor the Lord with your wealth and with the firstfruits of all your produce;


Jeremiah 2:1-3 – Only God Should Eat

Israel was holy to the Lord, the firstfruits of his harvest.


What Does This Have to Do With Jesus?

This brings us back to our hero. Last Sunday I left Jesus on the cross. In Exodus, those who died stayed dead. That means that things do not look good for our Passover Lamb Jesus the Messiah. He is alive but barely.


New Covenant

I’m going to read three (3) New Covenant scriptures but I am going to put them in chronological order to help make sense of the events surrounding the resurrection.


Matthew 27:50-51 – The Tombs Also Were Opened

And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit. And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split.


1 Corinthians 15:3-4a – Christ Died

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried,

1 Peter 3:18-19 – Proclaimed to the Spirits in Prison

For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison…

1 Corinthians 15:4b-7 - Feast of Firstfruits

…that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scripture, 'and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.

Matthew 27:52-54 – The Tombs Also Were Opened

The tombs also were opened. And many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many. When the centurion and those who were with him, keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were filled with awe and said, “Truly this was the Son of God!”


Here is the direct connection between the Lord Jesus Christ and Firstfruits:

1 Corinthians 15:20-23 - Firstfruits of the Resurrection

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.


The reason Jesus got up on Sunday was because that was the date of Firstfruits. He was the first person to rise to rise to new life, never to die again. At his second coming we will merely follow in his footsteps. Later in this same chapter Paul hangs the whole of salvation on this event. He says that if Jesus did not rise we are still in sin and should be pitied!


Benediction

You being born into sin is not the whole story. I read Romans 3:23 in part earlier. Let me read it in its entirety in my closing.


Romans 3:21, 23-25 – All Have Sinned

But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.


Pastor Shimar is a seminary student and lead pastor of Feasts of God church. Follow him on most social media platforms @ShimarKeithSays. https://linktr.ee/shimarkeithsays

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