God is saying. You cannot outbless me. And so we honor the Lord under Ideal situations. There's times in history when the church is persecuted, for example, and it's hard. Under harsh persecution, it cannot do it the same way but in Season, in season, peaceful season, again.
So worship God. and not what God had created. As so many do.
Some will end up worshiping money. This is Cross Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher, Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel, Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of Leviticus. Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about cross-reference radio.
specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. And now here's Pastor Rick in the Old Testament book of Leviticus, chapter 23, with today's edition of Cross-Reference Radio. The Feast of Unleavened Bread parallels our awakening into Christianity. There's two levels of sanctification. When we are justified and our sins are taken away, we're at the same time sanctified in the sense that God has put us on the side for salvation.
But there's also an ongoing work of sanctification. Of purging out the sin, of constant battle against the sin. That is sanctification, and that is the feast of unleavened bread. Get the leaven out, get the corruption out. No customary work.
That means there would, as mentioned earlier, not be business as usual.
Well, is that not like is that not conversion? When you come to Christ, it's not business as usual anymore. All the things you cherished in the flesh. are now being filtered out by Christ. And so there would be a great break in Israel's routine.
as when we come to Christ. Verse nine And Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying, verse ten, Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them, When you come into the land which I give to you, And reap its harvest, then you shall bring a sheaf of the first fruits. of your harvest to the priest.
Well, the third holiday, the feast of first fruits, but it is the barley harvest. We're still in March, April. We're still around the Passover week. or the unleavened bread. Yeah.
And This holiday, of course, is paused when Moses gave it. until they got into the promised land and had fields and could could do this. But it symbolized the consecration. of the early spring harvest because The wheat harvest will be the late spring. Harvest.
There are other harvests, the summer fruits of figs and dates, and then when you get into the September, October, on to December, you have olives. And so, you know, there's a lot of A lot of harvest seasons in that sense is not a single event. this bringing of a sheaf was to thank God for feeding them. It was a Thanksgiving offering. They just grab a handful of the barley stalks and cut it off, and that's what they would bring.
to the temple. God did not require them bring a tenth of their crop. Just a symbolic offering, and it was important. because they were not to eat until they brought that To the Lord. And we'll read about that soon.
When we get to Pentecost, I believe it's tucked away there. The first fruits is the resurrection of Christ First Corinthians, now remember. Before you look, I give you 1 Corinthians. There's two first fruits. the barley and the wheat.
The barley has to do with Christ. The wheat has to do with the church.
So 1 Corinthians 15, 20, but now is Christ risen. Risen from the dead and has become the first fruits. Of those who have fallen asleep, Well, Paul is not going to take the time to say, well, you know, I'm talking about the barley first fruits and give all this history. He's leaving that for them to get it in their sermons. The preachers can preach on these things, the teachers can teach on these things, which they were doing.
The barley crop The Feast of Pentecost. would be fifty late fifty days later. Barley. In early spring, typifying The resurrection of Christ after the Passover. The wheat Pentecost that we're coming to.
In late spring, typifies the birth of the church. By the giving of the Holy Spirit. As Christ promised, I will not leave you orphans, I will give you a comforter, I will send the Holy Spirit. And he will not testify of himself. No, he testifies of the Lord Jesus.
Verse 11: He shall wave the sheaf before Yahweh to be accepted on your behalf. On the day after the Sabbath, the priest shall waive it.
Now the wave offering belongs to the peace offering These are the two primary grains that the Jews would harvest: barley and wheat. And again, in case I've lost you, we're still talking about the wheat harvest at to early in early spring. Yeah. Grab that sheaf and present it to the Lord. Again, the mercy of the Lord.
What would that have done to the temple ground if everybody had to bring a tenth of their field? As an offering, it would have been overwhelming. And God didn't, He'd rather feed the poor with the corners of the field. Bring that to the temple. Verse 12: And you shall offer on that day when you wave the sheaf a male lamb of the first year without blemish.
and a burnt offering to Yahweh.
Well, there's always the blood sacrifice. Even though it's a sheep offering, there must be blood. Typifying, of course, the Lamb of God. Verse 13, its grain offering shall be two-tenths of an ephoth. Fine flour mixed with oil.
An offering made by fire to Yahweh, For a sweet aroma, and its drink offering shall be of wine one-fourth of a hin.
Now, we've discussed these, you know, the fine flour and work involved in presenting this. But the drink offering It's largely an invisible part. of the offering. I mean the priest takes the the Whatever is the wine, and he throws it onto the altar with the fire is burning, and the sacrifice is. you know, steam instantly.
Paul meant, gave us that picture when he thought he would not be freed from his second. Roman imprisonment, he wrote Timothy, for I am already being poured out as a drink offering.
So the Jews knew what that meant. The Gentiles had to learn what that meant. as we have had to learn. How many of you have picked up so much Jewish culture, you probably know more than a lot of Jews about their own culture just from the Old Testament because they're not reading their Old Testaments. But in Paul's day, it was the other way around.
Well, verse 14, you shall eat neither bread nor parched grain nor fruit. Fresh grain until the same day that you have brought an offering to your God. It shall be a statute forever throughout your generations in all your dwellings.
So the offering came before eating. On the day that it was due, you better get your tithe money in the box before you have your breakfast. That was the urgency. that was placed upon This commemorative gift to the Lord, to thank Him for feeding us. And so, as we hold our material offerings very seriously.
And out prayers before meals, they're coupled with this.
Now, any of you teens with a job? You're required to tithe. It's not like what mom and dad had no, you are now making income. and you are to tithe from that income. Proverbs 3 offers a blessing.
We've covered the urgency here. Tithing is maintained, or should I say, sustained, in the New Testament. Can't get away from it, nor should you want to. And it's about faith. If you can't trust God with a tenth of the things He's given to you, He says, You keep 90%, I'll take the 10%.
If you can't trust Him there, You have a faith issue. Proverbs 3. Honor Yahweh with your possessions and with the first fruits of all your increase.
Well, Solomon is thinking about this offering, this standard. He continues.
So, your barns will be filled with plenty, and your vats will overflow with new wine.
Well, he was a billionaire, billionaire. I mean, his vats were overflowing, but this is the word of God. And God is saying You cannot outbless me. And so we honor the Lord under Ideal situations. There's times in history when the church is persecuted, for example, and it's hard.
under harsh persecution, it cannot do it the same way, but in Season, in season, peaceful season again.
So worship God. and not what God had created. As so many do.
Some will end up worshiping money. The wave offering was a defining act in this Feast of First Fruits, and that told the The audience, because the people would be watching when the priests got hold of the sacrifices and were ministering the sacrifice, the people were watching. And totally went into the temple. And so the wave offering was something distinct. It would catch your eye.
Here's the priest waving your offering. And it's uh it had to be to the righteous Jew, a very moving moment. To see that. You didn't need a light switch plate with your name on it, donated by Joe Smith. You were content to just see that your offerings were in the hands.
of an ordained priest. And remember, the priesthood of Israel has nothing to do with any other priesthood. We have exceeded it in many ways as a royal priesthood. Anyway, this initiated, this wave offering initiated a period of counting seven full cycles, seven weeks. And then a Sabbath after on the 50th day, 7 times 749, then the 1.
This, and of course, seven is a big number in Scripture. It speaks of completion, and that God is paying attention to things that are completed and to be completed. After this wave offering, the countdown starts to Pentecost. The feast of first fruits of the wheat harvest.
So these two are connected. Though separated by 50 days, they're still joined. And the men have to make it to Pentecost, too.
So they go home. Israel's not all that big. They could go up north to the tribe of Dan or whatever tribe and still comfortably make it back to Jerusalem.
Now this Pentecost, the first fruits In late spring, AKA Pentecost, also known as Pentecost, Feast of First Fruits. gets that name from the Greek. Meaning fifty. And it Demonstrates to the New Testament student that the Jewish community had been dispersed throughout the world, as the prophet said would happen, and brought back to Jerusalem, but had already nested in various parts of the world and they picked up. Gentile culture, the language, the Septuagint is the Old Testament, the Hebrew Old Testament translated into the Greek.
And so the fact that we tend to use the word Pentecost for the Feast of First Fruits, is an indication that the Jews were already being prepared. to interact with the Gentiles on a religious level When they began to come into the church, none of this is on the surface. You've got to see between the lines and say, look at that. The Gentiles were able to converse with Jews. In the Greek language, to learn the Jewish, Hebrew, Old Testament.
Not in the Hebrew, but they learn the stories.
So you could go up to a Jew and say, tell me about Enoch.
Well, you're in the same you could speak the same language. If that hadn't been the case, if the Jews only spoke Hebrew, how difficult it would have been to spread the gospel according to the scriptures. God was ahead of the game, not only laying down the Roman roads all over the world for the gospel to be taken, but He put the language in place, He put a sufficient cultural capacity to exchange, to have contact. With each other without hostilities all the time. Quite impressive.
Nothing else like this in human history. Verse 15, and you shall count for yourselves from the day after the Sabbath. From the day that you brought the sheaf of the wave offering, seven Sabbaths shall be completed. Verse 16, count fifty days to the day after the seventh Sabbath. Then you shall offer a new grain offering to Yahweh.
Now we're at the wheat. offering it is now May or June. You know, Daniel with his seven weeks. You see the cycles of sevens, you know, and Messiah shall be cut off in the 70th week. If you were a Jew and you were into the scripture, you were sensitive to these things.
You could see. The Importance and the meanings, the types that were connected.
So when Jesus expounded to them all the things in the scripture pertaining to himself from Moses and the prophets. They were ready for it. Even though they missed it on their own, they needed him to come and point it out to them. But when he started opening it up, they said, yes, yes. They got it.
This feast day always lands on a Sunday without exception. Fifty days after the wave offering of the barley fruit, They were to bring a sheaf of wheat. and repeat the process.
So this is Pentecost, the birth of the church. James chapter 1.
Now remember, the barley was about Christ being risen. The wheat is about the Gentile church, the church opening up. The Spirit being given and really the birth of the church. James 1:18 of his own. Of his own will he brought us of his own will, he brought us forth.
by the word of truth. That we might be a kind of first fruits of his. Creatures. And so there's the application of first fruits to the church with the pronoun we shall be, no longer talking about Christ as. I referenced earlier.
In this sense, Philippi was the first fruits of Paul. They were the first church established in Europe, and that changed the world eventually. The Sunday church assemblies that we have Have to do with not only Christ rising from the dead on a Sunday, but also being associated. With that fiftieth day of Pentecost. And so there's that double connection which distinguishes the church.
from from everywhere. else, fifty days after. That Sunday, the Holy Spirit landed upon believers, and now eventually. We have what we have now: the universal church broken up into, or not broken up to, I don't want to use that word, but established. In local churches.
A local church is an outpost. Of a greater unit being the universal church, at least ideally speaking. On this day the high priest waved the sheaf, of the first fruits of wheat before the Lord at Pentecost as he did with the barley.
So, the calendar of the Jewish feast here in Leviticus 23 is an outline of the work of Christ. And we're just up to Pentecost.
Now verse 17, and just just think how much How much can you say in an hour? You know, you have to leave out so many details. Many of the details have nothing to do with us. They were, well, you've got to always be careful with that because every jot and every tittle has the, you know, the ink of the Lord on it. But much of it is just a little bit.
There's enough on the surface.
Well, you don't have to go so deep. To get these these rich lessons. But if you want to go deeper, You'll never get to the bottom of it. The deeper you go, the deeper it gets.
So that's why the scholars cannot give us something, you know, an exhaustive. manifesto of of the Bible is too deep. Verse 17. You shall bring from your dwellings two wave loaves Of two-tenths of an ephoth. Make sure you get that down.
See, that's what I mean. There are just some things that, you know, if you really want to dig into the ephoth and look for meanings, you have at it. But there's enough on the surface where you don't have to go that deep, and you really have more than you can handle most of the time. They shall, verse 17, be of fine flour. They shall be baked with leaven.
They are the first fruits of Yahweh.
Now, it is significant that this wave offering includes leaven. All the other ones, no leaven. They have a whole feast week of no leaven.
Now for the wheat harvest, the big one. compared to the barley harvest. They can use wheat in the I mean leaven in the offering. That opens the door to the Gentiles. That's that mixture between the Jew and the Gentile that really only Paul was getting in the early stages.
Well, Stephen got it, but Paul was really the one that.
So, this should be fresh for us because we're going through this in Romans. We've been watching Paul. Deal with the biases of the Jews against what Messiah was trying to do to the world. And we see that in their own scripture, God had these symbolisms, these emblems in there.
So, and I'm sure Paul must have used this, and the others like Apollos, eventually they got on the Got on track and would have said, let's go back to our own Old Testament, and there we can see. That at the Pentecostal meal or offering, leaven is brought in. It's not brought in as a corruptive agent, it's brought in as an emblem. Of God mingling the Jewish people with the Gentile people because of the work Messiah has done. and not because it is breaking down the faith.
So, Pentecost was the first step towards bringing the Gentiles to Messiah without subjecting them to Mosaic rites. And these are the big deals of what's, you know, that caused Paul to be persecuted by his own people physically. Why they why they killed Stephen. Anyway. A prophetic feast, verse 18.
We'll take this one to verse 21. And you shall offer with the bread of seven lambs. You shall offer with the bread seven lambs of the first year with Without blemish, one young bull. and two rams They shall be as a burnt offering to Yahweh with their grain offering and drink offerings. an offering made by fire.
For a sweet aroma to the Lord.
Now we've covered these in earlier verse chapters. Verse 19. Then you shall sacrifice one kid of the goats as a sin offering. and two male lambs of the first year as a sacrifice of a peace offering The priests shall wave them with the bread of the first fruits as a wave offering before Yahweh, with the two lambs. They shall be holy to Yahweh.
For the priest. And you shall proclaim on the same day that it is a holy convocation. To you, You shall do no customary work on it, it shall be a statute for ever in your dwellings throughout your generations.
Well, there still can't get away from the sin offering. Which was going on with all these offerings, they still had to do the daily offerings, so the burnt offering, the sin offering, they still had to go through their routine. This means For far as we can tell, that Aaron and his sons were on overload. The Levites would have helped, But they had to be there for everything. And so it was kind of like Iron Man football.
You're playing defense and offense. And that's how it was in the early days. Eventually, they had enough priests where they had divisions of priests, and the priests could go home and farm for three months, and then their division would come up, and they'd all come back to Jerusalem and serve. But not in the early days.
So if you are serving in ministry and you feel overwhelmed at times, I don't want to be snarky and say, good for you. But on the other side, it comes with the territory. of serving the Lord. Otherwise, are you really serving or are you just, you know, it's going to be more difficult times than others. Mm-hmm.
Moods should have nothing to do with service. Moods are something you have to plow through. And remember that next snowstorm, maybe. Verse 22. When you reap the harvests of your land, you shall not wholly reap the corners of your field.
when you reap, nor shall you gather any gleaning From your harvest, you shall leave them for the poor and for the stranger. I am Yahweh your God.
Well, of course, God is always mindful of those who just don't have enough. And so he looks for ways to provide, and it's built into their law. But you look at this verse, and looking at this verse, I say, you know, this is not random. He's talking about The feast at harvest time. And he doesn't want the Jews to lose sight of in their religion the practical side of religion.
That it's not just about taking a sheaf down to the tabernacle. What about people who have needs?
Well, for us in the New Testament church, much of it is about the gospel, bringing the gospel. How how often Do we depart the church? mindful of something the Holy Spirit has pointed out to us. How quick does it Just go up in vapor. Hopefully, we are mindful of something.
Hopefully, we can. We designed the pulpit curriculum for the children's ministry so that the pulpit would be ahead. One week. Of whatever the children are doing, so the parents would have a head start So when the if the going home, the parents said, well, what did you learn today? And they say, well, we learned about, you know, Noah.
Well, the parent got that if they were in church the previous Sunday. If they were absent without leave? For you, Army and Air Force guys, if they were AWOL, Then the kid's gonna know more than them. and they'll have shame forever.
So, anyway, the hope is that the parents would be a step ahead, and the teachers would also have. a little bit more prep time. by hearing it from the pulpit. Anyway, coming back to this, verse 23, then Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying, Speak to the children of Israel, saying, In the seventh month, on the first day of the month, You shall have a Sabbath rest Memorial of blowing Trumpets a holy convocation. Thanks for tuning in to today's edition of Cross-Reference Radio.
Pastor Rick Gaston is currently going through the book of Leviticus. We're glad you joined us. We trust that you're gaining some valuable insights into God's Word as we go through this Old Testament book. Cross-reference radio comes to you from Calvary Chapel, Mechanicsville, in Virginia. If you'd like to subscribe to our podcast, you can do so by going to your favorite app store and downloading from there.
For any additional information about this ministry, we invite you to visit our website, Crossreference Radio.com. Make sure to come back again for the upcoming edition in the book of Leviticus, as Pastor Rick has much more to share. We thank you for being with us right here on Cross Reference Radio.
