Feast of the Sheaf of First Fruits: Jesus as the Sheaf
Feasts of Israel Series: Part 10
When you come into the land which I give to you, and reap its harvest, then you shall bring a sheaf of the first fruits of your harvest to the priest. He shall wave the sheaf before the Lord, to be accepted on your behalf; on the day after the Sabbath the priest shall wave it
(Leviticus 23:9–11, NKJV).
While Israel was able to celebrate Passover and even the Feast of Unleavened Bread during their wilderness wandering, it would be forty years before they observed the Feast of the Sheaf of First Fruits.
That’s because, while they remained in the desert, Israel was missing an important component to the celebration—a harvest. Passover was initiated in Egypt, but God arranged the timing of their deliverance to coincide with the start of their future barley harvest. Once they arrived in the Promised Land, they had fields to plant. And from those fields would come the offerings required for the Feast of the Sheaf of First Fruits, scheduled a few days after Passover.
After they fulfilled their responsibility to give God His portion, God promised to bless the rest of the harvest. Working on much the same principle as with the tithe, if the first fruit was deemed holy, then so was the rest of the crop (Romans 11:16). In this case, God’s share appeared in the form of a sheaf—a clump of barley stalks tied together in a bundle–which they waved up and down and back and forth before the Lord.
This ritual not only blessed the fruit of their fields, it also foreshadowed an even more important harvest God had His eyes on—one reaped from a field of human lives.
To see that His human ingathering would be rich and full, God needed to see a sheaf of the first and best of mankind lifted up before Him. If an acceptable first fruit could be found, the whole crop of souls God gathered in could also be blessed.
A First Fruit Better than Barley
Which makes the timing of Jesus’s resurrection so very interesting.
Because the Feast of Passover was based on a lunar calendar, it could fall on any day of the week. Once that day was determined, the Feast of the Sheaf of First Fruits was scheduled to be celebrated the day after the next regular weekly Sabbath. If Passover fell on a Monday, for example, the Feast of First Fruits would occur six days later, on the following Sunday.
It just so happened (wink, wink) that the year Jesus died, Passover landed on a Friday. The disciples hurried to get his body into the tomb before the setting sun marked the beginning of the Sabbath.12 That meant Sunday would be the Feast of the Sheaf of First Fruits. So, the same morning the priests were waving the barley sheaf, the disciples were discovering Jesus was no longer in the tomb.
“Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits… But each one in his own order: Christ the first fruits, afterward those who are Christ’s at His coming” (1 Corinthians 15:20–23 NKJV).
If Gentile believers hadn’t made a concerted effort to separate from all things Jewish so many years ago, we’d be celebrating Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection differently. Instead of Good Friday, we’d recognize Passover. Instead of Easter, we’d celebrate the Feast of the Sheaf of First Fruits. However we celebrate, we know one thing for certain: because He was accepted as God’s first fruits of the earth, we too are accepted in the Beloved. And that’s a good reason to rejoice.