The Feast of the Sheaf of Firstfruits: Bundles of Fruitfulness

Feasts of Israel: Part 11

The sheaf of firstfruits being waved in the temple wasn’t the only bundle of barley to be reaped. The rest of the harvested grain dotted the landscape like tepees in the fields.

The first mention of sheaves in Scripture is the endearing story of Joseph’s dream in Genesis 37:5–9. Joe was Jacob’s favorite son (a fact that engendered no little envy among his eleven brothers). He told them he’d seen them in a dream, bundling the grain together as they worked the field. Suddenly his sheaf stood upright and his brothers’ sheaves bowed before it. His siblings immediately understood the dream to mean they were going to become subservient to little Joe. Their resentment set off a chain of events that eventually sent the whole family to Egypt for four hundred years, created the reason for Passover, led to their trek across the desert, resulted in their final return to Canaan, and allowed them to finally start observing all these feasts.

But back to the sheaves. Notice that the ones in Joseph’s dream and the sheaf in the Feast of Firstfruits had something in common. Each bundle represented not a group of people but an individual. In the dream, each sheaf stood for a brother. In the feast, the sheaf symbolized the one and only Messiah (see the previous blog).

What about us?

If these sheaves typify individuals, then what about the other sheaves—the ones yet to be stacked in the fields after the firstfruits had been brought in? Could these not imply a connection to a different kind of harvest—one where God gathers individual souls into His barn?

If we, like Jesus and Joseph, are sheaves, then God sees us as potential bundles of fruitfulness. We might think of our effectiveness as a single stalk of barley with but a few kernels of grain, but He sees bounty in us.

Think of it this way. Scripture lists several spiritual qualities as fruits and others as gifts (see Galatians 5:22–23, 1 Corinthians 12:27–28, or for example). Fruit is the end product but gifts act as tools directing the production of our particular fruit. When you look at these lists, do you tend to recognize one or two as your major talents and trivialize your effectiveness to produce the others? Think again. How often does life give you opportunities to flourish in a multitude of ways.

Bundles of fruitfulness

For example, to one person, I am a nurturer. To another, I’m a steady companion. To this one, I’m a teacher. To that one, a servant. I’m not even just one thing to one person, though. The one I counsel today I may encourage tomorrow. Even hour by hour, my fruitfulness can multiply. If I have to admonish someone this morning, I can be cheering and defending them this afternoon.

Paul wrote about being all things to all people in 1 Corinthians 9:22. He was thinking like a sheaf. He expected to serve as many gifts to many people. We too, in the harvesting hands of our Father, should anticipate a career of bundled fruitfulness in the world.

The great sheaf of the Feast of the Sheaf of Firstfruits is, of course, Messiah. But those of us still in the field are destined to be like Him (1 John 3:2). Let’s stop seeing ourselves as spindly stalks of barley with a sprinkling of seeds. We are fruitfulness in bundles, packaged to feed a hungry world.