harvest – Effects of Anxiety

The Feast of Tabernacles: A Picture of God’s Only Son

If people entertaining that there’s going to be a final harvest of souls, wouldn’t you want to be counted in it? I mean, that’s the logical person. Even if you’re not, see, people, say, “Well, I’m not religious, or I’m, I’m,” but then figure it out. By the way, I’m not a person who says, “Be religious.” I have been the person that said, “Build your relationship with Christ; get to know Him.” You don’t need a middle person. Somebody like me is; I’m only here to open up, to tie the dots, sometimes to, most of the time it’s translation, but there’s no one that comes between you and Christ. That’s your relationship to develop. ♪ ♪ We have been studying the Old Testament, basically the Tabernacle.We started by looking at the structure, we moved into looking at the furniture. After that, we’ve been looking at the set times. For example, last week we looked at the Day of Atonement or Yom Kippur. So, we are at the seventh and final set time which is called the Feast of Tabernacles, or the Hebrew word is Sukkoth. And this feast is probably mentioned throughout Scripture, both in the Old and New Testaments, probably more than any other. And it’s kind of interesting because it seems like a lot of these set times occur in this window between September and October in the month of Tishri.And they are all kind of commemorative into something. This one for, ex simple is commemorating the 40 years of wilderness wandering by basically they would, the folks would move out of their houses for the span of approximately a week. They would build a temporary structure made with branches and boughs and all kinds of things that would be a covering. And this is going to be a little bit weird when I say this, but in terms of making a connection to something we celebrate, this may actually be the closest thing to Thanksgiving.Thanksgiving obviously was something that started here. The pilgrims in gratitude basically for making it here alive, surviving the harsh winters and I think I’ve told you coming over Psalm 18 was the banner for most who came ashore because it’s a psalm of Thanksgiving. Well, Psalm 18 or Psalms 113 through 118 would be part of this time of year, reading and singing and rejoicing in those psalms but the reason why I say it looks like Thanksgiving a little bit is this would be also, you’ve got the Festival of Booths or Sukkoth, but you’ve also got something else that is being celebrated and that is the ingathering. So crops had been harvested and you would almost have a great bounty of food to enjoy.So kind of think about that September/October time; our, Thanksgiving’s November, but it’s probably the most parallel in that respect, a harvest festival. The day would start, the seventh month of the fifteenth day of Tishri which is equivalent, as I said, to our September/October. It lasted for seven days and the first day of this Feast of Tabernacles and the day after were holy convocations, an assembly of people gathered.You were to do no servile work, no work at all and it was also usually a Sabbath. And these are noteworthy pieces of information because when you start reading the New Testament and you encounter which we will demand you encounter Jesus at this time, there are a lot of things that will almost come together if you didn’t know that this had a, basically a Sabbath ending or holy convocation Sabbath ending, it would clearly tell you why the Pharisees reacted to Jesus in a certain way that they used that. They were looking for any excuse but they used that one basically to go after Him. So, if we are looking at instructions, in Leviticus 23, verses 33 and 34, it kind of gives you just a short, you know, “The LORD Spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, The fifteenth day of this seventh month shall be the feast of tabernacles for seven days unto the LORD. On the first day shall be a holy convocation: ye shall do no servile work therein.Seven days you shall offer an offering made by fire unto the LORD: on the eighth day shall be a holy convocation unto you; and ye shall offer an offering made by fire unto the LORD: it is a solemn assembly; ye shall do no servile work therein.” So, that’s one. Numbers 29 tells us about the daily sacrifices, starting in verse 12. And I am actually going to take the time to read them because I want you to see even though it’s kind of a little bit boring, but I want you to see something. You know, God was very specific in giving instructions, “You’ll do this, you’ll offer that, this is how much, when.” So Numbers 29 verse 12, “On the fifteenth day of the seventh month ye shall have a holy convocation; you shall do no servile work, and ye shall keep a feast unto the LORD seven days: and ye shall offer a burnt offering, a sacrifice made by fire, of a sweet savor unto the LORD,” and here we go, “thirteen young bullocks, two rams, fourteen lambs of the first year; they shall be without blemish: and their meat offering shall be of flour,” remember we went through the offerings, so if you’re not; if you don’t remember, go back and reread why and what they represent, “their meat offering shall be of flour mingled with oil, three tenths deal unto every bullock and of the thirteen bullocks, two tenths deal to each ram of the two rams, and a several tenth deal to each lamb of the fourteen lambs.” Now you’re going to see as the days go through this particular set time, there’s actually one less bull every day being offered.But if you keep reading, for example, they’re numbered. So for example, verse 17, “On the second day you shall offer twelve young bullocks.” So remember the first one we had 13. That’s in verse 13, 13 young bullocks. Here, second, verse 17, “On the second day you shall offer twelve young bullocks,” “And on the third day,” verse 20, “eleven,” so you can see the numbers decreasing. But if you count up, and this is the thing, it’s a little bit weird, you’re either going to end up with 203 or 215 sacrifices depending on how you’re counting it. And that is aside from; so 215 offerings and sacrifices, aside from the daily regular offerings and sacrifices that would have been offered. That is a lot of sacrificing and offering. I just kind of put that in there. It’s not really that important that you should learn all these details, but what does matter, and I’ll just say this now because I’ve referred to it now for the last few weeks, is that the book of Zechariah says that God basically at the return of Christ, and during that time, people will come to the mount, a nation shall be born in a day.And it says clearly that the people will be forced to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles. So don’t just think of this as something old, antiquated, and not part of our future because, this book tells you that in the future; Zechariah says that, they will be forced to celebrate and keep the Feast of Tabernacles, which ties into something actually, we’ll call it the law of double or triple fulfillment. So let me just say this, you’ll probably hear me repeat it through this message. Tabernacles itself, moving out of your permanent abode and living in this temporary structure, is not just a reminder of Israel’s wanderings. It is a picture of God’s only begotten Son taking up what John says, “He tabernacled in a tent of human flesh,” and that flesh could not be permanent because all of the sin was laid upon Him and that body had to ascend and go into heaven. So all that was laid upon Him could not have been carried into the heavens, so be very careful when you analyze or parse this.But Christ tented or tabernacled temporarily in a tent of human flesh, so Tabernacles has that dimension attached to it as a first type in fulfillment. A second type in fulfillment is when it says that all these people will have to come to the Mount; that is the final chapters of Zechariah, pointing to a future time where they will have to keep and celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles. Imagine that if a nation is born in one day and people are streaming to worship at that Mount, they will have no choice but to live in temporary dwellings. They will not be able to have permanent abodes. And there’s actually more to this feast than just the temporary dwellings, and I’ll get to that in a minute because it’s quite fascinating actually. There’s also a rule or a law, if you will, about this particular celebration falling on a sabbatical year.That is in Deuteronomy 31, and I’ll read it to you just so you can have the details. This, it’s as much details as you want. I’m not trying to drive you crazy here, but Deuteronomy 31:10, “Moses commanded them, saying, At the end of every seven years, in the solemnity of the year of release, in the Feast of Tabernacles, when all Israel is come to appear before the LORD thy God in the place which he shall choose, thou shalt read this law before all Israel in their hearing.Gather the people together, men, and women, and children, and thy stranger that is within thy gates, that they may hear, that they may learn and fear the LORD your God and observe to do all the words of this law: and that their children, which have not known anything, may hear, and learn to fear the LORD your God, as long as ye live in the land whither you go over Jordan to possess it.” So you’ve got some regulations therefor if this happens to fall in a sabbatical year. So that’s kind of giving you the details more or less, an outline. I don’t want to get bogged down on that. Equally because there were so many offerings being offered, and now I’m going to, I’m actually going to just shift this like I did last week, two temple times, because it’s much easier to talk about details in this festive time at the tabernacle versus at any other time; I’m sorry, at the temple because we have enough information or more information.So what we would see on this particular day, and this again, this ties into all these small details, we would see all of the courses of the priests, all 24 courses, would participate in this time. It’s kind of radical for another reason, and I’ll tell you why. The priesthood all in its full glory in participation; think of now pointing to a future time, they’ll, just like God was speaking in the book of Revelation to John saying about the hundred and forty-four preachers of righteousness, these 24 courses of the priesthood, if you will, will need to be present at that time. So there will probably be a reinstitution of some form of the priesthood, as we read it, some form, and these 24 courses will be present at that time as well.It’s kind of; it’s all tied together. You can’t just go, “Okay, this is Old and this is New and we, the twain shall never meet.” No, they’re actually, you read them together and you see the big picture coming together of what exactly that’s going to be like in the future. Also, I reference this because it touches on three of the major feasts.This is one that all males of a certain age were required to go to Jerusalem, the three feasts, this is one of them, and God says in Deuteronomy 16:16 to not appear before Him empty-handed. So the men that came to Jerusalem to celebrate these three feasts also would need to come with something in hand, an offering of some kind to the Lord.These set times, all, as I said, there’s a cluster of them and this particular set time, the Feast of Tabernacles marks a change in season. And this kind of dovetails into the other things we don’t really talk about regarding the Feast of Tabernacles. So for these people of the book, biblical times, extremely important, mark the time of sowing and harvesting. It also marked a time; this particular time of year would basically usher in what would be analogous to their winter and a rainy season, minimally, if not snow. And I know people, again, tend to think of the Holy Land and they never think of it, it’s like the song, “It Never Rains in Southern California,” which is a lie. I don’t know why people think it never snows in the Holy Land. Hello. But anyway, let’s, let’s go back to that at a different time.And the climate people will be raising their fists at me, all right. So, but we understand due to the nature of the time we’re dealing with people depending on their crops and specifically one particular thing: rain. So this particular time would usher in, as I said, the winter/rainy season, but it didn’t always guarantee rain. So there was this, we’ll call it prayer for water, for rain, to bless the crops for the next year. And two things don’t seem to go together, moving out into temporary booths for seven days and praying for rain. It doesn’t seem like they go good together, right? But that’s what they did. So by temple time, I want you to imagine what the scene would have been like.So I want you to think if you could even imagine looking at an aerial view and imagining it would be like looking at thousands, thousands and thousands of ants moving around, hustling and bustling, because they had to move out of their houses and build temporary structures. But then remember, this is a feast where people must come to Jerusalem, right? It’s a pilgrimage feast. So it means the streets anywhere where you could place your temporary dwelling, it would be crowded. And people would be essentially racing on the, the night of the fourteenth of Tishri to finish their structure. So the scene there would have been kind of a little bit chaotic. And I’m imagining if we had a, if we could fly a drone back then to see what it looked like, you’d see all of these people just moving around frantically to get their structures set up.And they had to do it before the priest would sound the horn that let them know that the feast had started. So it’s almost like, “On your mark, get set!” I don’t know about you, but I would not want to be building my structure under that much pressure, especially if rain’s coming. I’m not, you know, no. But, so we could focus on the rain part. But what actually is interesting is, you know, how holidays have morphed. I explained this to you. A lot of things were added in by human imagination. So there was something added to this holiday that gave way to something called “the water libation,” the offering, the collecting, and the offering of water.And so what you would see during this time, and I’m now looking at, as I said, temple times, what you would see is the high priest who would take a golden pitcher. And I just, again, I’m going to try and paint the picture. You almost have to picture a bustling, very excited crowd following the high priest as he took his pitcher down to the pool of Siloam and probably collected no more than maybe a quart of water.And the procession that went around him, singing, and they would of course be reciting Psalms 113-118 by heart. There’s nobody carrying around a scroll, all right? It’s all by memory. Imagine the instruments and the kind of the chaotic noise. I don’t, I don’t envision that the music was, in my, I don’t know, in my imagination, the music’s not pleasing. It’s probably very irritating with people blowing something that probably sounds like a very off-key recorder or a flute, something that’s irritating; people singing, tambourines, clapping and whatnot, accompanying the priest as he would return back to the temple area. And so this whole entourage followed him to the pool of Siloam to collect the water, followed him back to the temple, as he went through the water gate, entered into the southern gate, and the silver trumpets would be blown three times.Remember, we covered the silver trumpets. And the words of Isaiah 12:3 would be recited. I’ll read them to you, “Therefore with joy you shall draw water out of the wells of salvation.” And the high priest would take the pitcher of water that he collected and pour it into one of two silver basins. The other silver basin would be for the wine/drink offering libation. I don’t, I’m not really quite sure what the category is for that, but there would be two basins. And then you would have the three blasts that would sound from the trumpets, the people reciting, singing, all kinds of clamoring, thanksgiving would fill the air. And essentially that, the act, the ceremony of pouring the water was essentially like saying to God, “Okay, we’re ready for You to open up the skies and pour us out a blessing so that we can have food for the next year.” We tend to take this very much for granted. But, you know, we can, because you can always go to the store, right? Go to the store where you need a bag of potatoes, you need a bottle of milk, or whatever.But think of this, if your whole life depends on the crop yielding, you’re going to be hoping, you’re going to be doing everything you can and hoping and praying that God actually does let the rain go. Otherwise, you’re not going to have food. So, you know, we tend to not really connect these dots, but it’s important to get in the same mindset as what these people would have had to go through. Now, let’s park that here for a minute. You would also see these priests, many of them waving branches and boughs, sometimes they were palm branches, but they would be waving them almost like in excitement, like, you know, it’s like stirring up the air, right? It’s kind of waving everybody.Again, I imagine the scene being really beautiful, but I’ve also been, I’ve told you, I’ve been to churches where people think it’s their job to stir up the air. All right, now let me start making some connections here. So, turn, if you will, if you’d like to, with me to the New Testament, Matthew 21. So, I want to start showing you, we’re making connections to how this applies in both the realized time of Christ’s time and future fulfillment. So, in, in Matthew 21, very early on, we have Jesus entering Jerusalem and if you remember, you’ve got all of these people that are thronged around Him and they’re screaming. The multitudes went before and followed and cried, “Hosanna to the son of David: Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord; Hosanna,” which is basically “save now,” “in the highest.” But this scene is also told in Luke, I believe and in John, and you’ve got the scene of them basically with the palm leaves, waving branches and whatnot.So, I think it’s interesting, also mind-boggling, that when you start looking at, you know, traditions that might have been implemented, morphed through time because now the same; we have basically the King entering Jerusalem, but they’re, some are saying it in mocking and some are saying it in truth, but most probably in mocking regarding Jesus. When He comes again, trust me, there will not be anyone laughing. That’s, see, that’s the wonderful thing about God’s book is God gets to have the last laugh, okay, while people ridiculed and they made fun and whatever they did to Him. God will get to have the last laugh. And I, I’m not saying that’s going to be funny either because it won’t be. It’s a very serious time, but I think it’s, it’s mind-boggling. Here we have Jesus entering and the scene, which I imagine is kind of the, we’ll call it the mockery version of what will be when He comes back and you’ve got a whole processional around Him. I just think that there’s, there’s a connection there to that and also the other thing that we read of in Revelation 7, which is we see all of these people basically dancing around the throne.They have, some type of branches in their hands as well, singing and praising Him. So I think this time, this set time is very pivotal and when people talk about the Lord’s return, this is a very important time and it’s very important for us to understand; just don’t read this as simply Old Testament. We’re looking at what happened in the New and what will happen at a future time. Now, the second evening I’m not done in the New Testament, but we’ll just take a little break there. On the second evening of the Feast of Tabernacles, people gathered in the court of the women. And that’s very important too. This gives us some clarity about the way things were done. So you have all these people gathered in the court of the women, which traditionally was cordoned off and segregated for women only because that’s how worship practices were done. The men and the women were kept separate, but on this particular night of celebration, they would lift the partition up and the partition lifted would reveal four very large menorahs, and these menorahs or candlesticks would be lit.Now I want you, again, imagine. I want to try and paint the picture. Imagine if you were a pilgrim coming from afar, going towards the epicenter of Jerusalem, pitch dark, and all you can see is the center of the city is aglow, because those candelabras would have lit up everything. You would have seen the glowing-ness, then of course you probably have small fires here and there for people who are encamped (and hopefully they practiced tabernacle safety; never mind). But my point is if you could, if you could see what the imagery was, if you could only imagine. You know, sometimes, I’m sure all of us have seen pictures of our mountains here on fire at nighttime and the sky is glowing with the orange and all the colors of the fire. Imagine coming in as a pilgrim and seeing the glow of the city, the bustling of the people. It had to be quite a scene. But then you have something else that happens. So this partition is lifted up. These four menorahs or candlesticks are in the inner court.And then you’ve got all of these Levites now that make their way through a passage and they descend on the stairwell through the court of the Israelites down to the court of the women on these stairs. So it must have been a big, we’ll call it very ritualistic procession that occurred. And the sound of psalms and singing, the psalms I referenced again, 113-18 would be just flowing through the structure and the temple would have been filled with music and reveling. This would be repeated every single night. And then now let me give you some thoughts here because it’s really, I’ve just painted a picture and that’s really all good and well. But if you know your Bible, you know that Ezekiel, the prophet Ezekiel, describes the glory of God leaving the temple. Do you remember that? Okay. And then we have the picture of the return and that’s at a future time. Now remember that fire is always synonymous with God’s presence. Remember the burning bush, the bush that burned, that was not consumed, “Take off your shoes, Moses. The place where you stand is holy ground.” It was only holy because, or hallowed because God was there; fire, the symbol of God’s presence.These people were celebrating this celebration. Guess what was missing? God’s presence. You’ve got to light the fire to have them, we’ll call it the essence. I’m not saying God was not present as in, He can’t look down and see, but as the Shekinah glory that once filled the temple and the fire that represented God was not there. They had to create this. And I don’t think that they did this to replace or create or even, maybe they weren’t even cognizant. When I was reading and studying and seeing all the different procedures, I, it resonated with me that this is very much like how to, how to make it as though, it’s like putting fake fruit, hanging plastic fruit on real tree branches, and saying, “Look, there’s fruit growing.” It’s kind of like that.God maybe was watching, but His Shekinah certainly was not there. And as I said, if you are kind of putting this all together, you start to see that this festival of light and water, these two things are going to bring you not just the tabernacle, the set time itself, but water and light are also going to bring you to Christ. And I’m about to show you that right now. So we’re still in New Testament, if you didn’t go too far away, turn to John 7 with me. So John 7 tells us that it was the time of the Feast of Tabernacles. Jesus was returning to the temple when the religious Pharisees, of course, were always trying to, you know, trip Him up, but they tried here. So if you just read the opening, if you have a Bible like mine, it says, “Jesus at the Feast of Tabernacles.” But if you start reading the chapter, “After these things Jesus walked in Galilee: for he would not walk in Jewry because the Jews sought to kill him.Now the Jews’ Feast of Tabernacles was at hand. His brethren, therefore, said unto him, Depart hence, and go into Judaea, that thy disciples also may see the works that thou does.” And if you keep reading this, you’re going to see that there is a whole exchange go on. “The Jews sought him at the feast,” that’s verse 11, saying, “Where is he?” Much murmuring. So we know that this is kind of the setup, if you will.And then something interesting happens. So if you keep reading through this, because that sets up the, the tone for everything. But you have two things that are going to happen within this chapter. One of them occurs in; it’s still in chapter 7 beginning at verse 37 when Jesus talks about the, the living water, “If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.” And so I need to kind of clarify this now, because there’s a lot of pieces of information, and if you’re not, if you can’t connect the dots, it’ll be hard to follow along. So remember I just talked to you about the water libation and the pouring out of the water that became part of the Feast of Tabernacles.And here we have the One who basically is able to give the water of life speaking, and it’s during this time. He goes on to heal a man in chapter 9 that was born blind. And it is at this moment in this reference, if you read and you put this all together, the healing of the man born blind would have been on the eighth day. And why that’s important, when did I say the eighth day would have been? A Sabbath; see, otherwise you just read stuff and it’s like, “Oh, okay, what’s the big deal about that?” Right? So Jesus heals the man, and what is said, obviously Jesus speaks and He says, “I am come into this world, that they which see not might see.” And then of course we have the whole reference to Jesus being the light of the world.So we have two references that actually, because of the time they’re happening, they would almost see, there are dots we can’t connect because we don’t necessarily know the minutia of their celebrations. But imagine if you knew about the pouring out of the water and the libation and the prayers for water, for rain to be blessed by water, and the light that they lit, you’d see clearly that and this is happening at Tabernacle time, this passage we’re looking at from chapters 7 at least through 9 are occurring in this space of time. If you were one of these religious people and you were sitting back and you heard Jesus either, A) referring to Himself as saying, “Out of Me come the living waters,” or “I am the light of the world,” you would have actually taken that possibly in several different ways, not just the statement itself as blasphemy, but imagine in the backdrop of all the temple celebrations you would have, if you were a religious person and well versed, you would have said, “How dare He? He’s saying He’s the water when we are the ones who pour out the water, and we bless you with the water.And He says He’s the light, but we light the fires.” Do you see what I’m saying? This all occurred during this time. So why I think this is important is that they were up in arms, by the way, if you read this whole passage on Jesus healing the man, because the whole thing was you’re not to do any servile work. Now listen, they didn’t acknowledge Him as the Son of God, but if God is God, God can do whatever He wants.He can heal, He can not heal, He can whatever He wants. But I find it interesting because it’s the mindset of these people that they’d prefer to let somebody, an animal, or a human being suffer than for the person to be healed and not celebrate that healing. So they thought; they sought to kill Him because He did this on the Sabbath, amongst other things, as most of us know. So you start tying this together, and as I said, it becomes very interesting to me. So the temple needed to have, we’ll call it, artificial light for it to become full of joy and festivities. This temple, your temple, our temple, does not have to have artificial light.It has the true Light. See, these are all the things that you juxtapose and you realize that we could never separate ourselves. You know, not studying these set times, not studying the Tabernacle, you do yourself a disservice because you can see it’s almost like this was so woven into the fabric of what would be unfolded down the road that not knowing all of this substance, you start reading now, go back and you read about starting at the Tabernacles, the Feast of Tabernacles time, and you will see that there are a lot of details in there regarding light and water out of Jesus’ mouth that basically are pointing you to no, don’t look at the temple. Don’t look at the shadow. Don’t look at the, what is just for now. Look at who is the permanent source: Christ. So, the seventh day of the feast, unlike the other days where there would have been, as I was referring to what went on inside, three blasts of the silver trumpet, but on this day, on the seventh day, sounds three sets of seven blasts.And I think that’s also interesting, the number seven and three. Three, we did the numbers; three is divine manifestation, seven, is the number of completion or perfection. And if you want to put them together in any form, I guess you get 21, last time I checked, don’t call that racist. These numbers are also important. So, what’s not said for us, clearly, in a future time, at the Feast of Tabernacles, as I said, Zachariah spells out that that’s what’s going to happen in the future; not yet happened yet. I’m also imagining that these sounds will accompany that day. And if you don’t think that they’re somehow connected in the book of Revelation, I’ll let you dig that one out for yourself. They are. It’s very interesting. All right, so, we have some other things that I want to talk about now. And, if you remember, I started off by saying, ingathering or harvest time. So, there are enough references to this final chapter on planet Earth, if you want to call it that, final chapter in terms of biblically speaking, where final judgment on earth is viewed as a final harvest.And if you’ve been listening to me over any amount of time, I’ve repeated some of these Scriptures. Hosea 6:11 says, “He hath set a harvest for thee, when I return the captivity of my people.” Joel 3:13 says, “Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe.” And Revelation 14:15 says, “And another angel came out of the temple, crying with a loud voice to him that sat on the cloud,” and said, “Thrust in thy sickle, and reap . . . . for the harvest of the earth is ripe.” So, you know, I have, it’s a rhetorical question, but it is, I think I’ve asked this for the last few weeks. If people actually even entertain that there’s going to be a final harvest of souls, wouldn’t you want to be counted in it? I mean, that’s the logical person.Even if you’re not, see, people, say, “Well, I’m not religious, or I’m, I’m,” but then figure it out. By the way, I’m not a person who says, “Be religious.” I have been the person that said, “Build your relationship with Christ; get to know Him.” You don’t need a middle person. Somebody like me is; I’m only here to open up, to tie the dots, sometimes to, most of the time it’s translation, but there’s no one that comes between you and Christ. That’s your relationship to develop. So, think about it this way. Somebody who’s lazy, who doesn’t care, that’s the type of relationship you’ll have. Somebody who’s taken it upon themselves to cultivate, develop, get to know. You know, I actually know people like that. Have you ever met anybody who just, you know, they seem like they’re going to be really cool people, but they don’t really want to take the time to get to know you. They just sit there and they nod their head, or they’ll, if, if you eat food with them, they, they like to dine and dash, but they’re not really, they’re superficial people, right? Well, God’s not interested in superficial people.If that makes any point clear to you, if you’ve got friends like that, recognize you might be a little bit like God when you say, “I don’t like that,” because God doesn’t like it either. So, I have a quote here. It kind of paints the picture. What is said is, “It shall come to pass, that when the LORD shall beat off from the channel of the river unto the stream of Egypt, and ye shall be gathered one by one, O ye children of Israel.It shall come to pass in that day, the great trumpet shall be blown, and they shall come which were ready to perish in the land of Assyria, and the outcasts of the land of Egypt, and ye shall worship the LORD in the holy mount of Jerusalem.” Very interesting, several times over Isaiah says these things, and it’s talking to us about a future time. This is why I said there’s no place now or tomorrow or next year or in the future for ego and pride in the kingdom. If you don’t know what you don’t know, recognize “I don’t have enough knowledge here.” It’s like; it’s like a survival thing, all right? We have no electricity.We have you have to be your own resources and figure things out. Now, do you wait until the last minute when everything goes wrong, or do you learn some basic skills along the way that will help you? I think that’s a rhetorical no-brainer, right? You’ll learn some basic skills. Otherwise, you’re going to be hoping and praying that you have some very generous neighbors.Never mind. All right, from the prophet Zechariah, he says, “And it shall come to pass that everyone who is left of all the nations which came against Jerusalem shall go up from year to year to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, to keep the feast of tabernacles. And it shall be, that whichever families of the earth do not come up to Jerusalem to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, on them there will be no rain.” For those that do not come, I believe that’s not a reference simply to no water, but there will be no blessing upon them by God, ultimately in Christ because they refuse. They were told they must come up. They must perform this and they will not. Now that’s Zechariah 14:16, 17, 18; something like that. You decide. You can go at your own leisure and read that and see what you think that means. But not only does God demand that they come and do as He prescribed, but He also says, “You will come and you will bring offerings.” And this is why I, I get a little frustrated with people who seem to think that giving is just an add-on in Christianity.It was never an add-on in the Old and it was never an add-on in the New; it is intrinsic to our existence as believers. Ezekiel 37:27 says something like this, “My tabernacle also shall be with them: yea, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” And that reference is to none other than “my tabernacle” is speaking about Christ. You know, again, if you were reading the Old Testament and you couldn’t put together the symbolism, you might think, “My tabernacle” is in the; that’s the old tabernacle that Moses dragged around, that David dragged around. No, “My tabernacle shall be with them: yea, I will be their God, they shall be,” is speaking and referring to Christ.It goes on to say, “And the heathen shall know that I the LORD do sanctify Israel, with my sanctuary and I shall be in the midst of them.” Now, if you take that same look and you look at Revelation 21 and I believe it’s verse 3. And you’ll, you’ll have a similar statement, “I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.” Can you tell me; it’s a yes or no answer, can you tell me that you could read the Old Testament and not by reading the New, seeing that this is like a mirror? They are saying the same thing.I just read you a passage out of Ezekiel, Ezekiel 37:27 and 28, and Revelation 21:3, they’re saying the same thing. It’s like God was saying to the Old Dispensation, “I’ve revealed Myself,” if you want to call it in a hidden or cryptic way, until Christ put on flesh and let us know who He was. So this is why I say it’s, it’s kind of baffling that people would read the Old Testament and not, and not see, “Whoa! That’s Messiah right there, that’s Christ.” The other thing is, as I said, the Feast of Tabernacles, in my opinion, it’s very obvious the relationship and the connection to reveal Christ both in the New Testament as we know Him on the pages, and telling us about what will happen in the future because the pattern of what was established in the past is essentially going to be put out there. It’s almost like the whole Bible, I’ve said this before, is like bookends. What you had in the beginning, you will actually have in the end. So we had a tree set up, God said, “All this is yours, but this one tree, don’t touch it.” It’ll be the one tree for the healing of nations.Everything is like a bookend. What they had as perfect unity with God in the beginning and then the fall occurred, in the end we have, we are once more reconciled back with perfect unity. So how could you not look at the Old and say, “That’s where Christ is”? All the minute details, and then you go back into the New and you put them together and you’ve got this incredible portrait that’s not black and white, it is full of color and gives you a deeper understanding.And remember I said, water and light, so let me go back to that for a second because these two things became part and parcel of the celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles. When I just quoted from John 7, Jesus says, “He who believes in me, out of his heart will flow the living water.” And He says that many times about the living water. Out of, out of you it shall flow, right? You even have, interestingly enough, something that the prophet Jeremiah says ties all of this together. So, bear with me. It’s a little complicated to tie these details together because they’re far away, but when you bring them all together you can see the connection. Jeremiah says, “My people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and have hewed themselves cisterns, broken cisterns, which hold no water.” So, remember, part of this celebration is the pouring out of the water which basically brings you to Christ.And Christ says out of Him this, this essential part of life that now flows out of us. We are, we are not empty, broken, hewn-out cisterns pouring water as a libation like works. We have received the Spirit of God. There’s this great connection for this. So Jesus was telling us essentially, Jesus, not me, “I’m the source. I am essentially the river of life out of which all things that you need flow and I shall impart them to you. Do not try and make it for yourself.” Otherwise, you embody what Jeremiah was saying about the people of the Old Testament. They were just that.Now if they really had care and concern, I’m going to say this again, would they have grafted onto? God didn’t make the libation of water and God didn’t make the celebration of light. That belongs to Hanukkah and to other festivities. So why did they do this? Was it not enough to sacrifice 203 or 215 animals and to go along with God’s prescribed way of moving out of your house? But these were things that actually were lacking in the equation that were not, we’ll call, we’ll say, revealed about Christ. So how interesting that man grafts on the water libation and the fire for this particular celebration that God did not institute like this, as if the people were saying, now they’re not saying this, but as if the people were saying, “There’s a little part that was left out about Christ here, except we don’t know what His name is and we don’t actually know who He is and we won’t actually say that He’s Messiah because we, we don’t think so.But we’ll graft these things on,” which are actually revealing Christ as well. I just think it’s kind of mind-boggling to me. And we must see Christ’s words in proper context when He says out of the individual will flow the rivers or the live water or living water. The same thing is true of the light when Jesus says, “I’ll be, I will give you as a light to the Gentiles,” or “that you may be my salvation to the ends of the earth.” The concept of light and water is permeated through everything that Jesus says. So if you kind of put this all together, it, it paints a picture. And the Feast of Tabernacles, as I’ve said; don’t get me wrong, all of these feasts, set times mark out something.The Passover talks about the sacrifice of Christ. If the children of Egypt were delivered out of Egypt’s bondage and then set free, we are delivered out of the bondage of the world, of sin and the world through Christ our Passover. Or the Day of Atonement, which I spoke on last week, Yom Kippur, which for the children of Israel could only be a covering for the year, yet Christ when He died, my sins, past, present, and future were laid upon Him and they were taken away; they weren’t just covered. So, the Feast of Tabernacles is speaking on some, we’ll call it much deeper level about the work of Christ; not just the work that He did while He was here, but the work that is yet to be done in the final harvest of souls on earth. And the fact that He, throughout the pages, says, “I am light. I am, I am the true,” and fill in the blanks because He, He is the source of all, which leads you back, if you want to go back there to creation; He was there too.But my biggest thing here, it’s kind of a tragedy that when He came and told the people essentially, or was revealing in, in part who He was, that they didn’t listen. And again, these people who were steeped in these ceremonies couldn’t look and not be blind, to not see. This is the this is the walking, living fulfillment of what God spoke of, very interesting. So, starting at the close of Tabernacles or thereabouts is a celebration that takes you through the reading of the law in a cycle that when you get back the following year, you should have completed all the reading. If it took you that long, you may be a slow reader. Anyway, I think to bring all of these messages to a close, what I, what I want to say to you is, and the reason why this, all of these set times just speak to me, and they actually kind of, they, in some ways have set a fire inside of me because it’s exciting to see when you start getting into the detail, and these were not exhaustive messages by any means, but when you start getting into, and there’s much more detail, all of these minute details point to Christ.All of these point to His work, His ministry, and whether it is healing, cleansing, whatever it is, salvation, it’s all there. So when somebody says, “Well, I’d prefer to study the New Testament,” my answer is always going to be this. You must read Old and New together, and you’ll find that, as I’ve said many times, what is put out in the Old Testament may be as not a crystal clear picture, in some cases like the tabernacle, it’s crystal clear. But God in His mind when He was speaking, when people were writing, there was only one thought at the back of all this, or maybe at the front, and that was Christ. Christ was there all along. You may say, “Well, but, but Christ wasn’t in the flesh yet.” That’s true, and we have many revelations of Christ as a Christophany or a Theophany in appearance, but without the flesh, perhaps as an angelic being or bright and radiant.But in any case, the most important thing that I can tell you is these set times tell me something so important about the return of our Lord, and that is where I’m just going to take one second, then I’ll be done. See, you could start off by saying, “Well, I looked at all the feasts and I studied them, and I can see how they all reflect Christ.” The Feast of Tabernacles, however, paints a little bit different picture so that when you’re reading with caution, and I said, please, in your own leisure, read the closing chapters of Zechariah, because it paints the picture of when Jesus’ feet touch down, when He returns and His feet touch down on the Mount of Olives, geographically how the land will be changed. Water that does not flow from underneath the temple will flow from the temple; there, another symbol of water coming out from the source going, going out from, not coming into.So if somebody says to me, “Well, why should I study this?” Because your future actually depends on it, because with everything else that is going on in the world where people are contemplating, “Are we heading to World War III? Or what’s going to happen? Will I be broke next week? Or will, whatever political situation “it doesn’t, I hate to say it, it matters, of course it matters for our beloved country, for our citizens, for the people who actually are patriots and love this land. But in the bigger picture, further removed from this, there is looking ahead to a distant time. No one knows what’s going to happen, the dates, you know, the Bible says, no one knows the exact date of Christ’s return. But He’s coming back and the Feast of Tabernacles, probably above all, Trumpets and Tabernacles tell me we better pay attention.If all the other feasts have been fulfilled in past and in the present as they occurred with possible future fulfillment, some of them yes and some of them not, not completely like Tabernacles, we need to pay attention. That tells me that; people say, “Well, how do I know?” If God’s word has been right and accurate, we’ll say up to 95 percent offhand this is not a crystal ball where you’re predicting, but if God’s word has been right about future events; just think about the unfolding of history as we, one time when we studied the book of Daniel to see the successive kingdoms that had not yet been birthed or collapsed and Daniel paints them as clear as day.He speaks about people like the spirit or if you want to call it the spirit of Antichrist or the spirit that was in Alexander the Great conquered the then-known world. All of these things that you have to look at and you have to almost step back and say, “Well, if all of that has been fulfilled and this feast is looking for a future time, then my message to people would be, think very carefully about what you do with the time that remains.” And the time that remains could be a year, it could be a hundred years, but whatever that time is, it’s remaining. It’s not like there’s an infinitesimal time in front of us. And I don’t want to be gloom and doom because I say to you with, with great joy, someone who is in Christ, they need not worry; they will be with Him.You have life eternal. You will live with Him forever. This isn’t like, “Oh, let’s click our heels and hope for the best.” It’s what’s been revealed here. So what I’m saying to you is anybody who’s not redeeming the time right now, I’m not telling you, spend every living hour in this book. I’m not telling you, “Go and live in a cloister somewhere.” I’m not telling you that, but I’m saying, “Make time.” You make time for everything else. You make time to look at your darn phone every day, check your emails, go on social media for whatever five minutes that you do, which probably turns into an hour, then you’ve got time to sit down and at least read a little bit to get to know, because that’s how you get to know God. You sit down and you study and start reading His book, and maybe you don’t start by studying, you just start by reading.And you read where you can, getting to know the big picture. What was the meaning here? What was the take? What, what was it that God was wanting these people to know that He wants me to know? Once those things start taking hold something interesting happens. You start to think of the future radically different. I do not know what’s going to happen next year or next month or even tomorrow, but I know who will be with me. I know who’s going to see me through. And like many of you who’ve seen that picture of the two footprints in the sand, there’s only one person walking, that’s each and every one of us.So think about it. It’d be kind of silly to not say, “I’m going to take this time and learn all I can,” because when the time comes, I will, I will recognize. I will know Him. I will also know who the false prophet is. I will also know who the Antichrist is. I will know and I will recognize these things. And the spirit of Antichrist, which is already working in the land, I will recognize that too, not as some good thing for the citizens so we can all become better globalists or better communists. But yeah, I know I said it. It’s very hard, you know, to control this mouth and try to censor myself, okay? And if I really let loose, you’d probably all be like, “Ooh, I’m going out the door.” But I’m a real person and what you see is what you get in my care.And my concern is for those people who have not yet come to that place; and I’m not an evangelist saying, “If you died today,” I’m not; I don’t do that. I am saying, consider the fact that God was gracious enough for some reason to have you listen today to say, “Maybe I need to take this thing seriously. Maybe I didn’t hear all the other messages she preached, but this one is now telling me I should try and get to know God a little bit more.” And maybe you’re already on that journey. I don’t know, but if you haven’t started, today is a good day to say, “This could be the first day, not just of the rest of my life, but the first day, literally, of eternity because I started today to get to know the One who will be with me, take care of me, and see me through”” I don’t know what else to tell you except these are wonderful messages to learn more about Him and I hope you’ll go back, listen again, and it’s, as always, we come to an end of a series and I kind of feel like, “Huh, now what?” Well, you’ll have to be here next week to find out what that will be.That’s my message. You have been watching me, Pastor Melissa Scott, live from Glendale, California at Faith Center. If you would like to attend the service with us, Sunday morning at 11 am, simply call 1-800-338-3030 to receive your pass. If you’d like more teaching and you would like to go straight to our website, the address is www.PastorMelissaScott.com.As found on YouTube https://is.gd/cgc_9_8_prescreen_submissionMy 6-step formula for GCSE exam success. Achieve a top grade in all your GCSE exams whilst spending half of your time doing the things you enjoy. I explain why note-taking is NOT the way ➯➱ ➫ ➪➬ The General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) is an academic qualification in a particular subject, taken in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. State schools in Scotland use the Scottish Qualifications Certificate instead. Private schools in Scotland may choose to use GCSEs from England.http://flywait.jeevan91.hop.clickbank.net https://www.facebook.com/LeRoystudio/shop/?view_public_for=599164993460144&ref_code=mini_shop_profile_plus_header_cta&ref_surface=profile

Christ Is the Firstfruits, and We Are the Harvest – The Tabernacle through the Eyes of Christ #18

Don't say you are a Christian. Don't parse words with me. Don't play games with me. You are a Christian when you are following Christ, period. You're not a Christian because you come to church one day out of the year. You're following Christ. And following Christ doesn't necessarily mean you come to church either. How's that for putting it the way it is? But you're following Christ, which means you are studying Him. And “Him” is not a pronoun limited to one book or one half of a book. It's the whole thing. ♪ ♪ So, we've been in a study now, I think 17-plus weeks, looking at through the lens by way of the New Testament, looking into the Old Testament.

We started with looking at the tabernacle, its furnishings, we moved on to the offerings, and now we are kind of in the set times. And it all ties together, but I've been trying to say this over and over and over again. And maybe you'll hear me repeat it a few times, even in this message today. You've got repeatedly things that are; they are types of our Lord. They are pictures. They are things that when we read them, let's just put ourselves in the Old Testament saints' shoes for a minute and there is no New Testament, just for a second, we would only be seeing one dimension, what God said to Moses, “These are the directions.” That's all we would see, all we would know; we wouldn't know that there's more.

So not just the practical application, but we, reading the full book can see the prophetical application and fulfillment in many of these things, pointing to Christ. Now if I sound repetitive on this, it's because this is what this book does. A lot of people say, “Well, I don't, I don't bother with the Old Testament because it's the Old Testament.” That is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. I'm sorry, but that is. Without this Old Testament, even reading the New Testament doesn't really make sense. You know, if you're reading “Jesus, born of a virgin,” ah, okay, but if, if you're reading the Old Testament and you can see that there were prophecies foretold that our Lord would be born of a virgin, that certain things foretelling, that's why you need the Old Testament. You can't do away with it, and why would you? It's only those people who really don't understand why it's here or they are adherence to the old way.

They are still slaying saber-toothed tigers, even though the saber-toothed tiger doesn't exist anymore. So we, we've been looking at, we started with the Sabbath, Passover, the Feast of Unleavened Bread, marking the beginning of Israel's feasts, commemorating the deliverance of Egypt, out of Egypt's bondage and the first harvest of the year. Now the New Year would later be marked out in the fall season, so we have two New Years to deal with eventually, but I'll explain that in a minute. All of these set times, all of them, first and foremost in their practical setting, were to remind the children of Israel that time, as well as attorney; eternity, as well as everything else, belonged to God. Now, see, sometimes I think these people were really fortunate because, well, they were. They had the direct sight of everything that happened.

We are living generations after and we are having to, by faith, take everything that's here. They got to see firsthand. So if you think about it, if you lived in that day, you might be a little bit better off in some respects, unless you were the stiff-necked, rebellious children of Israel, but you might be better off in that there was some type of connection. I mean, imagine if you were in Egypt's bondage and you saw the plagues poured out and you saw the most powerful ruler in the then-known land basically succumb to the words of God, letting the people go.

I mean, something tells me it'd be a little bit different than how we are in today's day and age, very distracted, it's take it or leave it. We're all in this very, “I'm not sure it really happened, did it happen that way?” And so to really assess why God made these set times, which I've said already, the set times have a connection or a correlation to Israel's history or in general the history, for example, the Sabbath takes you right back to creation. But much of these set times as we begin to study them, we see that God is saying, I want you to remember something in perpetuity, your deliverance out of Egypt's bondage. And why is that important? Because you could read this, just reading the Old Testament here and say, “Okay, I got it already; they, God delivered them out of Egypt's bondage.” But what if Egypt's bondage is God delivering you out of a life basically with no God, full of sin? If that's, then it would be remembered. It would be something you'd keep thinking of and you'd be grateful for that God opened your eyes, that He found you.

That's called prevenient grace. So when God says to remember their deliverance over and over again, yes, He's talking about that specific act, but we who are reading this should remember two things. It's a double; it's a double whammy for us. The first one is that God made good on His word to deliver the people. He said they would go in to a land that was not theirs, they'd be strangers in that land. They'd come out of that land, greater in number, richer, etc., which they did. And then you've got the double whammy for us as Christians, understanding God has called many out of the darkness into His light and that is the same as being delivered from Egypt's bondage. Your, your eyes have been opened.

So don't think, don't just read it in a one-dimensional way. Now on the fifteenth of Nisan, which is the equivalent to our April, depending on when it falls, but usually it's equivalent to April, the Feast of Unleavened Bread began. It went for seven days; no leaven could be consumed. And we read often a term, if you've ever seen━how many of you have ever seen a Passover booklet called a Haggadah? Okay, so it's a little booklet and basically it's, we'll call it the synopsis of the deliverance story, okay? But what's interesting is the Haggadah, the name on there, “festival” or “festivity,” we don't tend to think about this, but the Passover was referred to that. And in fact, there's a passage in━let's see if the brain's working good here━in Exodus, I'll read it to you if I can find it. Okay, here. So Moses is talking to Pharaoh and he says━“And afterwards Moses and Aaron went in, told Pharaoh, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness.” Now why is that interesting? Because that word is we'ahogu, which is very much, because it's a Semitic language, it's very much like the Arab word hajj.

They're just pronounced differently. So we have that same concept, a “pilgrimage,” or “wandering,” if you will. And these feasts or set times, don't think that they just happened like God said, “Okay, we're going to have a party now.” They were all to tie back, as I said, either in creation, Israel's history, things that God wanted the children of Israel, and after that, us, we who are of the new dispensation, to think on, believe, and obviously this is where I'm going with this.

So we're tying the old feasts and showing how they connect into the New. The law instructed the children of Israel that when they entered the land; this is always missed; when they entered the land, the Promised Land, the land that God said they would enter into and reap the harvest, that they would bring a sheaf of the first grain to the priest who would weave it before the Lord on their behalf. And there's something that I don't know why it's missed often, but I have it open in front of me and I'll read it to you as well from Leviticus 23 and verse 10, “Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them,” listen carefully, “When ye be come into the land which I give unto you, and shall reap the harvest thereof, there ye shall bring a sheaf of the firstfruits of your harvest unto the priest.” So clearly, a lot of times people think━first, how could you do a harvest and practice a real true harvest if they wandered for 40 years in the desert? Hello.

So I mean, you could probably harvest some things, but you're constantly moving. So He clearly says, “When you come into the land which I give unto you,” and that's key to understand how this would become regulated and obviously everything in the law becomes regulated. So by yielding and offering their firstfruits of their harvest to God, the first of it, they acknowledge that they were dependent on God for the harvest yet to come. And this is the other thing I'm finding people━you only know what people mess up when you start to read what people have, in good intention, I'm sure, penned. There's a lot of confusion about Firstfruits that is the gathering of the first of whatever and the feast of ingathering, which happens as we'll call it the full-orbed, full-blown harvest at the end of the season, okay. There's, there are differences here. So this particular Firstfruits would have been observed with somber tone.

The sheaf was to be waved on the day after the Sabbath. What we New Testament folks, I refer to this in my message on the Sabbath as the Lord's Day because it's the day the Savior rose. And the apostle Paul refers to Christ, in 1 Corinthians 15:20, as “the firstfruits of them that slept”" So this act, if you will, of our Lord's, of basically of dying and resurrecting and ascending, but the death and Resurrection portion, the Firstfruits hallowed the harvest from which it was taken. So I want you to think on why Firstfruits is important. Now, don't get me wrong, the late Dr. Gene Scott taught on Firstfruits and made it an integral part, if you will, of giving in this church, which people would basically first of the year and whether it's your first paycheck or the first of anything usually, and that's how it was taught.

I'm not saying that that ought not to be done, but there's something actually, in my opinion, infinitely more important than that, and I'm going to tell you what it is. If let's just say we go to glean the firstfruits of whatever is coming up and we're choosing the choicest and the best, it is a type. We're saying; we're not saying, “Oh, I hope that the rest of the harvest is going to be like this.” The firstfruits that we would be offering to God in the agrarian society would definitely be the expectancy of the rest of the harvest.

Does that make sense? Good, because now I want you to think about what Paul wrote when he said, “Christ is the firstfruits of them that slept.” For the Christian, we should expect, it shouldn't be; I don't know why I've done how many funerals and I still see people doing this very same thing, not understanding their faith. And that to me is the greatest, if you want to know what a crime is, that's a great crime because Christ died, went first as the first Goer. We have a right; we'll call it the right of expectancy that we too will be like Him. We too shall rise. That's the concept that for me, the most important concept of Firstfruit to recognize that something like this had not happened before. And don't get Lazarus confused in the mix. Lazarus was called forward to show Christ had the power over the grave and over death, but Lazarus still had to die.

So he's called out of the dead. Deliberately we know that the passage tells us that he was in the grave, and it's either Mary or Martha says, “You know, by now he's going to be stinking. It's been, so”━you know, it's well beyond the third, fourth day now. And that was deliberately put in there because you could not be considered certifiably dead unless three days had passed.

So we know Lazarus was certifiably dead when Christ called him out of the tomb, but that is not the Resurrection. He did resurrect from the dead, but he'd still have to die again, a normal death, and then like everyone else, hate to say it like this, but Lazarus is not like, he's not an exception, like everybody else, all must die. And this is why that expression that says, “Unless a grain of corn go into the earth.” It takes something essentially that looks dead to bring life. So here we have Christ as the first Goer and what was removed, and you're looking at these feast times, what was removed, the impediment, was the ceremonial impurity, and I'll explain what I mean by that.

The relation that the Firstfruits sustain the harvest is one thing, but remember the steps that had to be taken before. So if we understand the laws of the offerings that we looked at, and we kind of string this together, I hate to say it, like beads, it becomes clear that these times were set up with special times before or after one could be cleansed. Let's just say if you were making a sin and trespass offering, and then this would be offered or this would be celebrated. So God had a way of basically making sure everyone could be included if you went by the prescribed method, which we're looking into right now.

And if you're curious to know, Leviticus 23 spells it out. You've got a couple of passages in Exodus, Exodus 23, I believe━don't quote me on that, but I believe it's Exodus 23 as well. And then in Deuteronomy and Numbers, you've got some kind of extra material there, so yours to kind of pick apart. But when I, and you're going to hear me repeat this throughout this message. If the same relationship that the children of Israel had to the harvest, that is the Firstfruits, the expectancy, the, “Okay, we offered, we took the Firstfruits and we offered the best to God”" we are following the same pattern as Christ is the Firstfruits.

We should be expectant. Not “I expect and it may not happen.” No, that's the first harvest of the Resurrection; we are all going to follow that harvest. There's only one criteria, that you remain connected in faith and trust in Christ. We will all be in that harvest. So it's important to understand, or if you want to say, “If He's the Firstfruits, we will be the harvest,” that is the expectancy of the hope that's promised to the believer. Now the apostle Paul also wrote, “He was delivered for our offenses, raised for our justification.” So God laid upon Him, you've heard me say this before, all the iniquity of us all, and it would not have been a finished work had He not, had God the Father not laid that all upon the Son. As for Christ, the law had no further claim to urge penalty or to exact. Hence, He could be raised up from the dead to take His life again. Remember, He said, “I take my life, no one takes it from me.” So even though; see, these are the things that I, sometimes I have to stop and just scratch my head.

Jesus said, “I take my life, I lay it down, I can pick it up again,” essentially. So it makes no sense to me when I hear our Jewish brothers and sisters get very offended when we talk about the act of crucifying Christ. And the reality is, if you think about it, Christ had to die one way or another. If, if His plan, what He says, something's wrong with the world and only His death could fix it, He had to die one way or another. And it always comes down to this, people with lack of understanding will get very offended when we say the religious leaders basically urged Pilate, and the religious leaders were the ones kind of angling for this. Back to my message and my notes here; like the wave offering, waved to be accepted for the people by God, I'd say that Christ also became the wave offering, not accepted by God, but accepted for us by God. There's that little addition that makes everything count. The Firstfruits was the earnest of the upcoming harvest, a pledge that the harvest would be gathered, and there's also a special set time for that, that God says, “And this is harvest time.” So, if we want to talk about this particular Firstfruits, we can't, in this particular subject, we cannot not talk about the Resurrection, because that is how we connect to the New Testament over and over again.

And several times you'll, you'll hear me mention, especially about it, the apostle Paul will mention Firstfruits. So, it's important to understand the connection there starts at the Resurrection. And if you remember the only sign when they came to Him, they said, “Give us a sign. He said, “There'll be no sign except the sign of Jonah,” which was to say, “three days and three nights,” or at least being in the giant fish's belly, only to be spewed out alive, which if you think about it, we're not going to take this too far to the extreme. But that was Christ basically saying, “You want to know what My guarantee is? Now, your guarantee is Firstfruits. Mine is the sign of Jonah.” And you can take that however you want, but Jesus to us, Jesus is the new covenant. He's not just representing a covenant; Jesus is the new covenant, much like the old when it was given, a promise that God would make good on His word, so here Christ is telling these people, basically, “The only sign you're going to get is the Resurrection,” which Paul calls Christ “the firstfruits of them that slept”" He's the first of his kind.

So forgive me for making a circle here, but just as we are connected to the first Adam in our fallen condition, because of nature, condition, etc, we are indeed condemned. It's a death sentence, being born in Adam, in the first Adam, but being born again into the second Adam or the last Adam, which is Christ, brings life. It is the, we'll call it the reconciling or the making right, what was in the beginning, we have now access to the Father by this avenue, the one named Jesus Christ. And not only that, not just access, but the promise. This is the whole amazing thing, in my opinion, about studying these set times. See, these people didn't have a promise of eternal life or immortality. They didn't have that promise. They knew that the first parents had given it away.

We have that promise though, which makes wanting to know about this Firstfruits. As I said, you can talk about the giving part of it, the component of giving, which is important. But I'd like to start with the most important, which is what, why we're here: “If Christ has not risen, our faith is vain.” And I'm not interested in having the discussion with people. Let me just say it now, so I get it out of the way and, and you know, you can be angry with me later if you want, or you can be angry with me now. I do at both. Don't say you are a Christian. Don't parse words with me. Don't play games with me. You are a Christian when you are following Christ, period. You're not a Christian because you come to church one day out of the year. You're following Christ. And following Christ doesn't necessarily mean you come to church either.

How's that for putting it the way it is? But you're following Christ, which means you are studying Him. And “Him” is not a pronoun limited to one book or one half of a book. It's the whole thing. That's what makes you a Christian; you're following Christ, you're learning about Him. It's like saying, “Yeah, my family.” Well, if you spend time with them and you live under the same roof or your blood, born blood, or; but there has to be a connection there to say that. You're not going to go to a stranger out there on the street and say, “Ah, that's my, that's my family over there.” That person's going to be looking at you and saying, “Call 8-1-1.” Not 9-1-1, 8-1-1.

Do you know what that is? 8-1-1 is the number you call before you dig a hole, courtesy of the power company. All right, so what makes the difference here? These people didn't have the promise of Resurrection, but we were given that. Christ said, “I need, A) to go away that I might send the Holy Spirit.” Number two, He had to go away showing basically that this was the pattern planned by the Father. His public ministry would give enough time, demonstrate enough miracles, explain enough about why He came. And then the rest was left back, if you think about it, the rest was left back with humankind, “Now you go out there, you teach, you go make disciples, you go make learners of every nation.” He didn't say, “I'll come back and I'll do that work for you.” He said, “Now you go out and do it.” Just as the first Adam was told to go and tend and till the earth, we in the second or last Adam are still tending and tilling the earth, but it's in the human form that we do it, not working and laboring for the ground.

So there's a lot of, I'm sorry, just a lot of confusion. It's very frustrating for me because I find people, even some who have a good intention, would like to tell you that, “You know, if you come on Easter, it's enough.” That's just a show. How would you like to be married to somebody and you only show, you only come home once a year? It's kind of like that, okay? I don't think that's a marriage, by the way; anyway, enough of my opinions here. So we know, by the way, why Paul wrote, “For we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him,” because we shall be like Him. That is the promise of Firstfruits, and this is why this is so vitally important. The same Spirit of God that opened up the believer's spiritual eyes, that raises us from the death of sin and the life of righteousness in Christ, descends upon a lifeless body.

Now the Spirit's already in the person, but there's also that, what I call the, that the helping Spirit; and don't quote me on this, I'm just trying to make this as clear pictorially as possible, that takes the final, final claim on what is inside the believer. So that means whatever the person's person was, plus the Spirit of God. You remember, I taught on this many years, the part payment, the arabon, it's called in the Greek. Now that ticket is turned in for the whole person, not just, “Hey, I tag you with my Spirit because you belong to Me,” but the whole individual. That means everything in my memory bank, all that I━not this shell, but everything that I am at the point of death basically is released with the Spirit to be with God until a new body, until the time that a new body will be granted to every single believer in Christ. So here's the kind of, we'll call it the litmus test.

I'm curious to know how many people actually believe, don't answer me; I'm curious to know how many people actually believe what I just said because you know, people actually believe that it's very clear to me that we deceive ourselves all day long. You know, you, you, you can be a biohacker, you can be engaged in fitness, eat the cleanest diet, have the best mental health. And when God says it's your time, it's your time. You don't get to bargain. You don't get to plea deal. It is what it is. So this is what is all equally baffling. If you knew and understood, which I hope that every creature that's born on the earth can come to understand and know that there's a terminus to life.

Don't think I'm talking like the grim reaper. This is actually a message rooted in extreme hope and certainty of what's said here that I wouldn't be looking at that day and saying, “My God, no, help me for I'm not ready to go.” No, when that time comes, the expectancy, because I've known; I'm sorry to say this, it's going to sound a little bit funny when I say this, but I've known the Firstfruit for a long time.

And I'm not trying to be blasphemous when I say that. So if I've known Him for a long time and I've built my relationship on that, then when I come to that hour, that moment, I have the expectancy and it's not something that may or may not happen. This either happened, He either died and rose up or He didn't. Now that, I think we've settled in many messages on the Resurrection. So if a person has settled that and you believe that this is absolutely true, that a man, all-man/all-God died, was put to death and rose from the dead, then the expectancy for you and for me should be just like these children of Israel with the Firstfruit of the harvest. They went in there looking for the choicest and the best, presenting it first to the priest as a wave of offering and presented to the Lord with expectancy, that the rest of the harvest, not━and expectancy is a bad word because it leans towards, is there a possibility that it may not be as good as the things that we offer to God, but in fact it's the promise that what we rendered to God at the first, the rest of it, it's putting God first, God takes care of the rest of the rest, but the rest will be just as bountiful and just as good.

And that's why it's important to make these connections between those Old Testament saints and we who believe in Christ, we who faith and trust Christ for our salvation. So I'm going to try and paint a little picture here that gives some understanding because there's a lot, you know, in these feasts there's a lot to think about. Of course there is the sowing of seed, the caring for, ultimately the harvest that would be reaped. And I can tell you as someone who has just recently started growing a lot of food, it's hit and miss. You plant a seed and you can hope and pray, but trust me, the passage says, “Thou shall not kill,” I've probably killed a couple of hundred plants of late, okay? Some people have that green thumb and some people don't.

But imagine this is, you can't just go down to Publix or Vons. You're in the desert, wherever you are, this is your food supply. This is, if it's messed up, you're all going to starve. I want you to think of it in that respect. So going to get those, planting the seeds, taking care to tend and then seeing the first harvest, the first thing that comes out of the ground would be almost, silly, but miraculous. And if the rest of the crop came out like the first part, that'd be even more miraculous, but that's the promise of what God basically was saying, “Put Me first, I'll bless and take care of the rest.” Now the prosperity people get a hold of this and they milk, manipulate, and twist the heck out of that verse to make it mean something that it doesn't.

And you're never going to hear me talk to you about something like that because I don't do that. That's not what God promises either. God's blessings, if you're really interested, you've probably received more and I've probably received more in terms of blessings than most people I know, and they're not tangible. They're not tangible. To be able to stay in the faith. Look, we're living in an age of crisis and chaos and craziness. To be able to stay connected in faith, still look unto Him, still have the sense that I belong to Him no matter what's going on in the world I'm okay because He's got me and I've got Him! Now at the temple time, because remember it said, “When you come into the land,” so I'm going to jump to the temple time. But at the temple time, messengers of the Sanhedrin, those dirty rats, they would go out from Jerusalem on the evening of the feast and they would bind all of the tall standing corn and bundle it to make it easy to be taken up.

See, they had all these little ways of getting around God's rules and regulations and this is one of them by the way, it's kind of interesting. And no wonder why God said, “Enough.” If you keep trying to find ways to sneak around God's back, I think God eventually is saying, “I saw all of it. I didn't just see one time, I saw it all, you children of Israel, you,” all right? Sometimes it's hard to say what you want to say. All right, later at the time of the temple, the grain would be threshed with rods so that the barley corns were not injured. After this it would be parched over an open flame, winnowed in the wind, and that would remove the chaff. Finally the barley corn would be milled and put to an extensive sifting process until it was sifted finely. And to show you how; sorry, how nutty this was, according to the writings in the Talmud, the sifting would go on and on and on and on and on and on until a temple inspector/priest could plunge their hands into the flour, remove the hand without any flour adhering, and then it would be ready.

But I mean the procedure that they did just went on and on and like overkill. But anyway, that, that's their business, not mine. So the sixteenth of Nisan, the Firstfruits were presented to the Lord, an omer of barley, which would equal approximately five pints, was mixed with three quarters of a pint of olive oil and a small amount of frankincense was sprinkled upon it. This was the Firstfruits offering. It was then waved before the Lord by the priests in accordance with Leviticus 23:11-13. Firstfruits was a national observance, not just a singular. So each family at this set time would have to bring their Firstfruits. Every family, one set, one set offering for each family unit, right? So you're not; if you have five people in the family, five people aren't offering Firstfruits.

It's offering from that household, from that family. We have a clearer picture recorded for us by the time of the temple than we do in the tabernacle because it clearly tells us that it says, “When ye enter into the land,” they had not yet entered into the land. And if we were looking at what happened at the time of the temple, there would have been a lot of buzzing, a lot of mulling around, a lot of chatter going on right outside of the temple with people probably repeating Psalm 150 and verse 1, “Praise God in His sanctuary.” Perhaps on the inside you might hear sounds of Psalm 30 being sung out, if you will, “I will extol thee, O LORD; for thou have lifted, you have lifted me up, and have not let my foes rejoice over me.” Essentially there would be some type of psalm before entering and then upon entrance, something worshipful and joyous to the Lord.

That's how they would do it. In the court of the priest, the flames would be seen dancing feverishly from the altar in a trail of smoke that would be ascending. In the court of the Israelites, a steady stream of men could be seen on the steps of the temple, presenting their offerings to the priest. So if you get the whole picture, you know, we tend to maybe have images of things, but we tend to think of the temple really does give the fullest embodiment of this, people lined up with their offerings on the steps waiting to get in. I mean that's pretty powerful if you can imagine and envision what I'm talking about. Now today's modern Judaism, Firstfruits are not offered because there is no temple. Only a ritual survives today of counting the days, perhaps marking them off on a calendar. And this is where, again, I'm going to say things that are controversial, but I'll just say them.

Because there's no temple and there's therefore no priest, but why would you not offer an offering? See, this is where I get a little bit like, okay, there's no more temple for you, but in this day and age where there's synagogues, okay, and there's places of worship, if you are going to be slaying saber-tooth tigers, right? Does everybody know what I mean when I say that? Okay, good. Because if I have to explain it, I will; I don't want anybody to go, “What the hell is she talking about, saber-toothed tigers?” They're extinct, okay? No, there's one at the back of the room. So my point is this, it's mind-boggling to me that Christians and Jews are reading the same book, and the book didn't say, “Now you'll stop.” Okay, I get it, at the fall of Jerusalem, everything ceased. But now you've got places of worship, so why, why wouldn't you do that? “Oh, because we don't live in an agrarian society anymore,” okay, but there's other ways to present Firstfruits, and we've exercised them here for probably at least 40 years.

So there's a lot of things. I don't know, is this as selective, how we're going to worship? Do we, do we engage in selectivity? How do we decide what we worship and what we don't? What we say, “Oh, we don't do that anymore. We just mark it on the calendar, but we don't do that anymore.” I don't understand. And don't, you try to understand because it won't make sense to you either. So first things, first things in general, are very important to God. If you remember, just take the passage of the children of Israel in Egypt's bondage, the firstborn.

So when we think about firsts, that's important. And the first, when I speak of Firstfruits, yes, the harvest is one, but the Firstfruits, first things, Christ coming out of the grave, I'd say, “Put these two things on a very equal plane and understand,” and this is what I think is very important. First things with God matter, and I think they still matter today. Not so much as you're firstborn versus your thirdborn, or if you; whatever it is that's first, but the concept of putting God first.

That still matters to God. See, there are things I can say to you, God has not changed. It's we who have changed, and that's a big problem because I don't think, if people are not being taught a template; that doesn't━don't be a box checker, but if you “put God first, He takes care of the rest” is a concept that basically summarizes Firstfruits. And the promise is to expect no less than what was offered could, in this case, let's say, whatever your crop was; that the rest of the crop would be likewise.

There wouldn't be bugs, it wouldn't be destroyed, it wouldn't be rotted; fill in the blanks, okay? Now in the New Testament, there are no less than seven mentions of Firstfruit, but they deal directly with Christ or with followers of Christ. So the apostle Paul spoke of Epaentus as the firstfruit of Achaia or Achaia in Romans 16:5. He also refers to a Stephanas in 1 Corinthians 16:15. And the difference, because they're both, both being referred to as the firstfruits of Achaia, but one of them is of an individual, the other is of Stephanas, of he and his household, which also must be understood like this, because a lot of it was church in the home.

So it could have meant not Stephanas and his family alone, but the church around him in his house as well. So that's ambiguous, we can't know exactly, but one is to an individual, one is a family. Paul also used the Firstfruits in referencing what was pinched from the dough to teach that if the Firstfruit is holy, then the lump is also holy. He says that in Romans 11:16. By this he means if God chose whomever He chose, say Abraham or Jacob, then the whole lump, that means the whole, all the children of Israel, let's; if we're using that reference, okay? Paul also used the term Firstfruits in relation to the Holy Spirit and the fruits that are manifested within the believer. So all of these components are important, because what they paint is a picture of the whole Christian, of what we are to be focusing on as believers. We're not to be focused on, you know, a thousand different things.

Our focus is, look unto Him, the Author and Finisher of salvation, Jesus Christ. And if we're going to talk about how that focus remains, it's kept by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit helps us, guides us, teaches us, instructs us, help, helps us to even learn while we are being taught. You know, I was reading a message in my office and the message said, “I finally found you again. I lost track of you for several years.” But this person also went on to say how when they were watching, they tuned in and they tried to understand, and it was like I was speaking a foreign language, and now they've learnt more in the last six months.

And the person says in their message, “Maybe I just; it wasn't God's time yet for me.” And that's exactly it. I know because many of you are just like that. I'm like that. I've shared with you my anger. Why couldn't God have opened my eyes sooner, right? But that was part of God's plan. He knew the timing to be harvested, at least to be picked or opened up, right? Because that's what He does. He knows how to do it. We talk about the deposit of the Spirit in each believer. I just referenced as a type of Firstfruit. And much later in the book of Revelation, we'll encounter the 144 preachers of righteousness who will be sealed just prior to the opening of the seventh seal; all these numbers are important, 12,000 from each tribe sealed from God's wrath at the very start of the day of the Lord.

And that expression alone becomes important because these 144,000 will be preaching to people and there will be what we'll call a final harvest, an end harvest. That will be it. That's the final call, like you're in a bar, “Last call for alcohol,” “Last call for salvation happening right here with 144,000 peppered throughout the earth. That's it. That's your last call.” And I, I would really love for people to read that passage and don't read it like it's a cartoon or it's some caricature that maybe will happen. No, that's, that's what God said is going to happen in the future. And by the way, we're, we're far enough along in the world to see what's going on to know that most of the stuff that is being foretold of in the future, for us is coming to pass. So, I don't know, you know, when God has a pretty good track record of, of making things that he says happen, happen, you've got my attention. I don't need to be convinced or coerced into believing what is blatantly obvious.

So these 144,000 are called Firstfruit. They will be the guarantee that God has not cast away all His people or the ones that didn't answer immediately forever. But rather that God will purify the remnant, just as was prophesied by Daniel, in Daniel's seventieth week. Now I know I'm probably saying stuff that some may not be familiar with and that's okay, stick around and we'll eventually get to it. But this is how the apostle Paul makes a bold claim when he says, “All Israel will be saved.” That is in Romans 11:26. If you read that passage carefully, it makes perfect sense that he's talking about a final harvest that will occur.

It makes perfect sense to me. And I, I hate to sound redundant and repetitive, but in the book of Zechariah, it explicitly says, “They will look upon him whom they have pierced and they will mourn,” meaning they will recognize that the very Savior that they said is “A fraud, it's a lie, it's not true. And we're waiting for our Messiah who's not your Messiah” will go, “Uh-oh, my bad. He was the one all along.” Can you imagine that? I mean, I can, I actually have to feel sorry for people who have been so closed in their thinking that they couldn't read the Old and see the description of the One who came in the New.

It's Him; there aren't two Messiahs, there's only One. He was here and He's coming back and God's going to give those people who rejected Him a second chance, which is why when we read passages that talk about all the people coming to the mount to worship, again, don't think that's a caricature. Why is Israel such a big deal? For the right reasons, not all the ones that a lot of people in ministry try to make it a Zionist movement or they try; no, because the Bible says, “In this little swath of land, basically where I started I will finish.” Don't, don't get more hung up on the land or the people, and the people who are there now won't even be there, likely when He returns. And I won't tell you why either. And it has nothing to do, and it has nothing to do with the rapture either. So leave that one alone. The Firstfruits, like Israel's other springtime feasts, has its fulfillment, fulfillment in Christ's first coming, but perhaps the more important emphasis should be, but now Christ is risen from the dead, has become the Firstfruit of those who have fallen asleep.

And we know that Jesus rose from the dead━I told you I'd be repeating a lot, which I'm doing━which makes the fulfillment of that feast as it's applied to Him. Just put a period there because He did come out of the grave. The Resurrection is a guarantee of harvest of souls that will be like Christ. The fact is that there is life after death, not just we just cease being.

Daniel says something pretty profound. Remember, Daniel, he's not known for these things, but his 70 weeks and all the messages within his book are New Testament, or as New Testament as you can get. He says, “And many who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, some to shame, and some to everlasting contempt,” which means all. Check this out. The resurrection or the resurrected life if you will; oh, you're going to love this, all will be resurrected. All. But not all will be resurrected with Christ. Would you like me to say that again? All will be resurrected, but not all will be resurrected with Christ. Some will be resurrected to eternal damnation. That's also resurrected life that lives on in perpetuity in torment. “Oh, I don't like that.” Well, I didn't write those words, so don't, don't come complaining to me. But, you know, even Christ said something that was pretty shocking in His day.

He said, “Do not marvel for the, for the hour is coming in which all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come forth, some to resurrected life and others to condemnation.” That's John 5. So even out of the mouth of our Lord, He even says this. Don't think everybody gets a ticket and you're all going to paradise. Some are going to get a ticket to “Coffee Break's Over”; that, the ones that laughed, I know how long you've been around, okay? I know where you live. So there's always been two parts to the harvest, and there will always be two parts to the harvest, the wheat and the chaff.

And that sums it up for you. Some will inherit and receive eternal life, dwell with God forever, and some will inherit eternal punishment. And those that belong to Him, that have trusted Him, that have looked to Him their entire time of knowing Him; and that could be a day, a year, a lifetime, they will be resurrected in the same fashion, the same way as He was. So let me take a minute now to wrap this up because I'm really out of time. The main reason for preaching these messages is to demonstrate God didn't just set out in the Old to put together a whole bunch of nonsensical, ceremonial, “Now, these are these routines we do at a set time.” They were all pointing to the future.

They were all pointing to Christ. I explained to you how Christ; we talked about the Sabbath, and we are Sabbathing in Christ daily. I talked to you about the Passover when God said, “Celebrate this, basically in perpetuity as a memorial.” Well, we are, because how could you not do two things? Remember the children of Israel's deliverance out of Egypt's bondage, and then remember your own deliverance out of this world flesh and devil bondage. Now your eyes are open and you can be able to celebrate and to rejoice and to be glad in the Lord. So when I say, without, as I said earlier, without the Old Testament, we wouldn't have the full picture of why it matters.

And if you want to put kind of the exclamation mark, Paul says in Romans 8:29, essentially that we are the first, in terms of brethren or sistern, we are the first of many, the body of believers. So it becomes clear that the church of Jesus Christ must continue until the final harvest of souls comes. Now I cannot tell you how long that time will be. The Bible's very clear, no one knows the day of the hour, but there are signposts.

There are things we can see happening in the world, and wars and rumors of wars. That doesn't mean the end is here. Trust me, when there are definitive signposts along the way that must happen that will tell you the time is nearer and nearer and nearer when these things happen. Some of these have not happened yet. That's why I said to you, there's a lot of craziness going on. There's a lot of weird stuff going on.

There's a lot of scary stuff going on, but the end is not tomorrow. Don't, don't walk out here going, “Oh my God, we're doomed tomorrow, tomorrow.” It's not like that. And I'd say to you, if there's anything that should be a takeaway from this message, and I'm, I don't engage in the antics of evangelists, but if anything is a takeaway, especially for people who are not so familiar in listening to me, it would be take the time now while you have the time. The Bible says redeem the time. Take the time now to begin learning about Him, learning about who He is, His ways, His message, His words, not to study them and repeat them like a rote computer, but that His words and Christ may dwell richly in you, that when the day comes, you're not scrambling to figure out what you need to do. You know what; you've already done it, you've already taken care of business. And I'm sorry to say it like that, but just to be as colloquial as possible so there is no misunderstanding.

It is, it is truly, it confounds me that people, if, if people say, “Well, it must be in the last days,” or “It must be close,” well, then why aren't you pressing in closer with God? That's going to be the thing that keeps all of us, I hate to tell you, sane, calm, and with the clarity of vision to know what to do while the stuff is hitting the fan. So I would say to you in, in an age which people don't seem to be that concerned, the church is very important, not the building, but as the Greek calls it, a people that belong to the Lord.

And if we who are trusting Christ, and I'm going to say it this way, you know there's a Scripture that says, “Taste and see that the Lord is good.” We have been partakers of that goodness. We have tasted what the Lord has in store for those that trust Him. Then it is indeed just like the Firstfruit, we can say, “This offering of Christ stands,” in, in terms of our version of time, “as the expectancy promised,” not, “I'm not sure it's not going to happen,” for you and for me.

Put a period there. Don't be trying to figure out “How much more, what more can I do?” That's the other problem that people engage in, “What more can I do?” Now, one last footnote here and then I'm done. We have a lot of people that will give a Firstfruit offering. And listen, I'm really a strange bird when it comes to money, and I say that because I believe that when we read the New Testament there's great clarity and understanding. God does love a hilarious giver. God loves the spirit of the person; we're not just talking about money, we're talking about somebody who says, “Sure, I'll help you out.

Sure, I'll give you a hand,” that generous nature. So when I say to you, Firstfruits is not just about everything that I've talked about, but it is also about understanding, presenting the first of whatever comes into your hand, and you can't just, where, where do you give it to God? Well, you can't, but the Bible says you bring your tithes and your offerings to the storehouse, wherever you get your spiritual food. And I still believe that's a good way of saying, “I'm putting God first”" That, that's like something that, I hate to say it like this, but it actually costs you something. And I had to learn this from our good friend, Ray Sidney. He said, “You know, you shouldn't give anything away for free,” he was referring to the people in Japan, “because then they don't think it has any value.” And I thought, “That's kind of odd, but okay, if that's your, if that's your mindset.” But if you think about it in God's book, for how much it costs for God to send and give His only begotten Son, and we who take it so casually, I think the concept of Firstfruits is brilliant, because what it does is it says, you know, we don't work to get in, we don't labor in works of the flesh, but it does say, “I'm, I'm giving my first to God, which is my best and my first.” And that could be in dedicating your child, could be any number of things, but I'm not specifically talking about Firstfruits in giving right now.

And I'd say to you, there's nothing wrong with that, as long as the person's doing it for the right reasons. Don't give with strings attached. Don't give and say, “Yes, but I, I'm hoping that if I do this, this will happen.” If you're doing Firstfruits for the reason I said, which is putting God first and He takes care of the rest, then I applaud you and I think it's a good thing.

Any other motives for doing it are the wrong motives and I don't agree with them. Now, I know that's a little bit strange, the way I just worded that, but what I'm trying to tell you is, I'm the person who's known for, I think in all of ministry, there, there might only be one person that does this and it's, it's this person right here who sends back offerings to people who don't get it. And I'm talking about people who have been abusive to me in the past or they think they're going to tell me how to run the church or how to conduct or whatever. I don't want your money. We're not; this is not that type of church.

I'm not here to take your money or grab your money or do anything with your money, because it's not your money anyway; it's God's, ha, ha. But what I am saying to you is I can give you structured ideas that if they're carried out right, they, I believe are good in God's eyes and if they're carried out, like anything else, if they're carried out for the wrong reasons, like people who give to get, if that's your mindset, you're not giving to God.

You're doing some investment scheme or you're doing some trading deal with God. But if you're really giving, this is God's, the rest God lets me keep and He puts His stamp of approval on it. He blesses me for that very reason. Now, I can't tell you what else to do, but I can tell you in these feasts as we've been looking at them, I love this one in particular because going back to the whole message I just preached, it tells me if you and I have that same expectancy, like those people that took the first of their crop, and we should have that expectancy, then there's no reason in the world why whatever we face, whatever we deal with, whatever sickness comes under our dwelling, whatever pitfalls may happen, whatever this country goes to hell in a handbasket, which it's halfway there right now, but I've connected myself to God, I'm not letting go.

I'm going to be just like Jacob/Israel. I may be a little bit crippled right now, but I'll be God-damned if I let go because I know He's the only one that can take me through this. He's the only one that can take you through all of this. So wouldn't you, you'd think you'd want to do your best. In that respect the Firstfruits speaks volumes to me. I hope it speaks to you. We'll continue on with these, but for today that's my message. You have been watching me, Pastor Melissa Scott, live from Glendale, California at Faith Center.

If you would like to attend the service with us, Sunday morning at 11am, simply call 1-800-338-3030 to receive your pass. If you'd like more teaching and you would like to go straight to our website, the address is www.PastorMelissaScott.com.

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Check out Part 2 of this series here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0eZBocog1IDo you suffer from Fear, Worry, and Anxiety? Well in this message Pastor Greg Laurie shares with us God’s Answer to Fear, Worry and Anxiety! Its found in the Bible in Matthew 14 and JohnThank you for watching, for more on Greg Laurie and to get daily devotions delivered right to your phone visit us at Harvest.org

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