The Best is Yet to Come 1 Corinthians 15:20-26; Leviticus 23:9-14 Pastor Pat Damiani April 16, 2017 When Mary and I had our pool built right after we moved into our current home, that pool came with a lifetime structural warranty. But today that guarantee is of no value whatsoever because the company that built our pool went out of business several years later. Perhaps some of you have had similar experiences. You bought some product or service that came with some kind of guarantee, only to find that the person or company behind that guarantee left town or went out of business or they just didn t have the ability to make good on their promises. What Mary and I learned from that experience, and what many of you have probably learned from similar experiences, is that the guarantee is only as good as the person making the promise. So every time that we rely on a guarantee, the question that we always have to ask is this: How do I really know that this company or person really means what they say and that they have the longevity and ability to back up their promises? While He was here on this earth Jesus made a lot of promises to His followers. So it s only natural for us to ask those same kinds of questions when it comes to those promises: How can I be sure that I can rely on those promises? How can I be sure that Jesus really meant what He said and that He has the longevity and power to actually carry them out? This morning, we ll let the apostle Paul answer those questions. But before we do that, I want to ask you to think for a moment about all the promises that Jesus made while He was here on earth. While all of those promises are important, to me the most encouraging of all is the one He made just hours before He was arrested and crucified. It is the promise found at the beginning of John chapter 14 where Jesus told his disciples that He was going to prepare a place for them and that He would come back again and take them to that place so that they would be with Him once again. I m not sure the disciples understood the importance of that promise right at that moment, but I can assure you that after the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, that promise, probably more than any other, was what sustained them as they were continually persecuted as they proclaimed Jesus to a largely hostile world around them. That promise still gives tremendous hope to all of us who are disciples of Jesus over 2,000 years later. But how do we really know that we can count on that promise? Let s look at how the apostle Paul answered that question. 1 Corinthians chapter 15 is the longest chapter in the New Testament and it undoubtedly is also one of the most important. While the Corinthians did believe in a kind of resurrection, they didn t really believe the promise of Jesus that He was going to prepare a physical place where they would physically spend eternity in His presence. Although they believed that the soul was immortal, they denied the idea of a physical resurrection. So Paul writes this chapter to prove that there is a future for our bodies as well as our souls. This morning we only have time to read a short section of that chapter, but it is an important section that reveals that for a Christian. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. (1 Corinthians 15:20-26 ESV)
I want to call your attention to a word that we really don t use much today that Paul uses twice in this passage. In fact, it is a word that my spell-checker flags every time that I type it. It is the word firstfruits. Although we don t use that word very often in our culture, it was a very familiar concept for the Jews and we find it throughout the Bible. It is a concept that is closely related to that of the firstborn and in the Bible we find that both the firstborn and the firstfruits of all that was produced from the land were to be consecrated to God. So as a devout Jew, Paul would have been intimately familiar with the concept of firstfruits, and, even more importantly, the connection that the resurrection of Jesus had to the Jewish feast of the same name - the Feast of Firstfruits. Over the course of our journey through the Old Testament his year, we re taking some time to learn about the seven Feasts that God prescribed for the people of Israel because each one of those feasts points ahead to Jesus. Last week we participated in a model Seder meal in conjunction with the first two feasts the Feast of Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. According to the instructions given by God in both Deuteronomy and Leviticus, the Passover Feast is to begin at twilight on the 14 th day of the month of Nisan on the Jewish calendar. The Feast of Unleavened Bread begins shortly thereafter on the 15 th day of the month of Nisan and runs for 7 days. Since the Jews consider a new day to begin at sunset, that meant that Feast of Unleavened Bread began shortly after the Passover began and while it was still in progress and so the two Feasts are often linked together. I don t have time to go into all the details this morning, but a careful examination of the gospel accounts of Jesus death reveal that Jesus died on the 14 th day of Nisan at 3:00 p.m., the exact time that the Passover lambs were being slain in the Temple. And then his body was taken down from the cross and placed in the tomb at the beginning of the Feast of Unleavened Bread on the 15 th of Nisan. So it s not surprising, that as Paul has already hinted at in 1 Corinthians 15, the resurrection of Jesus also occurs in conjunction with a Jewish Feast the Feast of Firstfruits. In order for us to understand that connection and to make sense of what Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15 about Jesus being our firstfruits, we need to take a moment to describe the major elements of that feast. We ll begin with God s instructions for the feast in Leviticus 23: And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, When you come into the land that I give you and reap its harvest, you shall bring the sheaf of the firstfruits of your harvest to the priest, and he shall wave the sheaf before the LORD, so that you may be accepted. On the day after the Sabbath the priest shall wave it. And on the day when you wave the sheaf, you shall offer a male lamb a year old without blemish as a burnt offering to the LORD. And the grain offering with it shall be two tenths of an ephah of fine flour mixed with oil, a food offering to the LORD with a pleasing aroma, and the drink offering with it shall be of wine, a fourth of a hin. And you shall eat neither bread nor grain parched or fresh until this same day, until you have brought the offering of your God: it is a statute forever throughout your generations in all your dwellings. (Leviticus 23:9-14 ESV) In Israel, grains were planted in the fall. They germinated in the ground through the winter, shot up as soon as the weather got warm, and ripened in the spring, barley followed by wheat. The stalks were cut and stacked in sheaves for the harvesters to collect for thrashing. But harvesting or eating any of the grain was not permitted until a single sheaf was brought to the priests at sunrise on the day of the Feast of Firstfruits. Each Israelite who possessed a harvest observed the feast by bringing a single sheaf from the firstfruits of the barley harvest to the priest, who would then wave it before the Lord. This wave offering was prescribed by God as a symbol that God would ensure that the remainder of the harvest would be realized in the days that followed. When the Temple was still standing, the ancient observance of this feast was quite an elaborate ceremony that took place after sunrise on the prescribed date for the feast. The Talmud states that a group of Jewish pilgrims, carrying their offerings of the firstfruits, would be met at the edge of the city by a priest, who would then lead them in a joyful procession, with music, songs of praise and dance, up to the Temple mount. As the group of worshipers arrived at the Temple compound, the priest would take the sheaves, lift some in the air and wave them in every direction. This was a symbolic acknowledgement by the whole crowd of God's provision and sovereignty over all the earth.
Since the destruction of the Temple in AD 70, the wave offering by the priest in the Temple can no longer take place. Today, the primary activities are reading of prayers and blessings from the Siddur, a Jewish prayer book and reflecting on the symbolic meaning of the day. It is also the beginning of the count up to the Feast of Weeks, which occurs 49 days later. You ll notice that the Feast of Firstfruits was to occur on the day after the Sabbath. Since the Feast of Unleavened Bread was one week long, sometime in that week, there would be a Sabbath which is Saturday on our calendars. So that means that while the priest was waving the sheaves before God at sunset on the Sunday morning after His crucifixion, Jesus became our firstfruits by rising from the grave. The Feast of Firstfruits served three purposes within the Israelite community. I m going to touch briefly on the first two and then we ll spend most of our time talking about the third, which is the one that Paul focuses on in 1 Corinthians 15. Three Purposes of Firstfruits: 1. The offering of the very best The whole concept of the firstfruits is that it is not only the first, it is the very best. When the farmer went out to cut the single sheaf that was to be presented before the Lord, he took great care to make sure that it was the very best from among his crops. As we saw this morning during our offering time, that idea is important when it comes to our stewardship of the material resources that God has entrusted to us. We are to bring God an offering of our very best, and not just the leftovers. Up until that time, the people had to rely upon a system of sacrifices that could only atone for their sins temporarily. That is why those sacrifices and offerings had to be made over and over again. But as our firstfruits, Jesus, the perfect, unblemished Lamb of God, willingly gave Himself up to pay the penalty for our sins. 2. The making holy of the whole The sheaf that was brought as an offering to the Lord represented the entire crop. By offering that portion to the Lord, it set aside the entire harvest as being consecrated to the Lord and thus made it holy. As our firstfruits, Jesus is our representative before God and therefore He has made all who come after Him to be considered holy before God: For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:21 ESV) Because of our association with Jesus, we are positionally holy before God in much the same way that the entire harvest was represented and made holy by that single sheaf of barley that was waved before God. 3. The promise of a future harvest When the offering of the firstfruits of the crop was made to God, it represented a prayer to Him to watch over the future harvest that was about to commence. One of the main aspects of the Feast of Firstfruits is that it anticipated the future harvest that was represented by the single sheaf that was brought before the Lord as an offering. It is this third aspect of Firstfruits that Paul primarily has in mind in 1 Corinthians 15. We could summarize Paul s main point there like this:
Although Paul wrote this letter to the church in Corinth nearly 2,000 years ago to correct some of their misconceptions about the resurrection, it is a passage that we need just as much today as the day it was written. Even in the church, I think there is still a lot of confusion about exactly what happens to us after we die and the importance of Jesus as our firstfruits in that process. In the church, we frequently talk about going to heaven after we die. A popular evangelism program even suggest that we introduce the gospel to others by asking them If you were to die today, do you know for certain that you would go to heaven? But what Paul is suggesting here is that while heaven is certainly great, there is still something even better to come after that. And I know that I ve probably been guilty of adding to our lack of understanding here by using the term heaven inappropriately, so I m going to do my best to clear up any confusion that I may have caused in the past this morning. We tend to use the word heaven to describe a faraway place that is inhabited by non-material, ethereal disembodied spirits. And while that may be at least partially true, it doesn t give us the complete picture we need. In the Bible, heaven is a physical place, not merely a state of being. And while we re not give a lot of detail about exactly what heaven is like, we do know that it is the dwelling place of God and that there is constant worship taking place there. And it is also the first destination for the souls of those who die after having placed their faith in Jesus. But the problem is the way we talk about heaven is that we tend to assume that is the final resting place for departed saints. But As good as it will be to be in heaven, that is not our ultimate hope. It is not our final state of joy. And as I ve shared with you before, I m really grateful for that. Sure, it would be great to spend eternity as a disembodied soul, as long as I m in the presence of Jesus. But just think of how much better it will be to be with Him physically, to hear Him teach, to serve Him and His kingdom, to sit down and eat a meal with Him All those things require that I experience a physical resurrection in which this deteriorating shell that I live in now will be transformed by Jesus into the kind of physical resurrection body that Paul describes later in 1 Corinthians 15 one that will never wear out or get sick or suffer disease and one that will bring glory to God. I m especially intrigued by the idea that my body is going to be raised in glory. Think about that for a moment. God created me with a body and he created me for His glory and one day he is going to raise up that body, no matter how mangled, no matter how ravaged by disease, no matter how worn out, no matter how decayed and make it so strong and beautiful that when others look at me, they will see in my body the glory of Jesus Crist who made me, redeemed me and transformed my lowly body. And God is going to get all the glory for that.
The reason that we can be 100% sure that Jesus promise to prepare a physical place for us in which we will physically live in His presence is because He is our firstfruits. His physical resurrection proves that He means what He said and that He is more than capable of carrying out that promise. But that promise does not apply to everyone. The Bible is clear that only those who have placed their trust in Jesus alone as the basis for their relationship with God will get a new physical resurrection body in which they will live in the presence of Jesus forever. And, not surprisingly that trust in Jesus begins with believing that God did raise Him from the dead. The apostle Paul wrote about the necessity of that in his letter to the churches in Rome: if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. (Romans 10:9-10 ESV) The second requirement here is the one I just mentioned. In order to be saved and to participate in that future resurrection personally, you must believe that there is nothing you can do to save yourself and that Jesus death on the cross was sufficient to pay the penalty for your sins and that his resurrection proves that His sacrifice was sufficient to make you right with God. All that is part of believing in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead. The first requirement here is that you must also confess that Jesus is Lord. That simply means that you agree that you will no longer be your own boss, but that you ll relinquish control of your life to Jesus. That s what it means to make Him Lord. I am confident that many, maybe even most of you here this morning have made that kind of commitment to God through faith in Jesus alone. If that s the case, then you should be greatly encouraged this morning knowing that And in just a moment, we re going to close by reminding you what you have to look forward to. But for some of you this idea of saying yes to Jesus like that might be new or confusing. That s completely understandable. For others, you understand what that decision involves, but you ve just never taken the step to make that decision personally. If either of those situations describe you, then we re here to help you take the next step in your relationship with Jesus. But because that is such an important decision, we don t want you to make it lightly, so we re not going to ask you to just raise your hand or repeat some canned prayer. But we would like to talk to you more about how you can say yes to Jesus like that. And there are several ways you can let us know you d like to do that: You can talk to me after the service You can contact any of our Elders. Their contact information is in your bulletin. You can fill out the Connection Card on the flap of your bulletin with the appropriate information and give it to me or to one of our greeters before you leave. Right now, the Worship Team is going to come back up front and get ready to lead us in a closing song. While they do that I want to direct your attention to the screen, where the words from Revelation 21 and 22 will remind us of that best that is yet to come for those who have made Jesus their firstfruits. [Verses from Revelation 21-22 to play on screen]