Sermons

When the harvest was gathered in, the people of Israel built booths and lived in them. Yet just before this feast of thanksgiving comes the Day of Atonement, a day of fasting on which they were to deny themselves.

Before the joy of the harvest, a clean heart was required. Even after his victories, David kept examining himself and repenting. When Peter’s nets were so full of fish that they began to break, he did not give thanks but fell down and said, “I am a sinful man.” A vessel that is unclean cannot fully receive and enjoy the grace poured into it.

Repentance means leaving the place of sin, and thanksgiving fills that emptied place with grace once more. There is no Feast of Tabernacles without the Day of Atonement, and in the same way true thanksgiving grows deeper whenever it is built on repentance. It was in repentance that David received victory and Peter received a new calling.

At the Feast of Firstfruits, the first offering is made from the earliest barley to ripen on the plain of Gennesaret. Seven Sabbaths are counted from Firstfruits, and on the fiftieth day comes Pentecost, when the offering is made from the ripened wheat. Through the forty-nine days in between, the people of Israel had to count each day, longing for God to send the northwest and southeast winds.

Barley ripens only when the cold northwest wind blows, and wheat and fruit only when the hot southeast wind comes. The one who rules over that wind and rain is the Lord alone, so counting the days was itself a confession that they would rely on God and no other. Yet the people of Israel rejected God, asking for a human king like the nations around them. Just as Samuel had warned, thunder and rain fell in the very last week of the wheat harvest, a judgment that ruined the whole year’s crop.

Thanks must be given now, while blessings are enjoyed in abundance; it is folly to realize only after they are taken away that they were God’s grace all along. Jesus, too, rose from the dead on this Feast of Firstfruits and became the firstfruits. In the place God has given them, his people must bring their offerings with a willing heart and live without forgetting his grace.