Numbers 28:1-40 - The Feast Of The First-fruits

II. A RECOGNITION OF GOD 'S EFFECTUAL BLESSING ON HUMAN INDUSTRY , How much in the way of combined effort is suggested by the sight of a tiny grain of corn! What mighty forces are represented there—heat, light, air, moisture, soil—all acting on a living germ! And not only these. That grain also represents human industry, forethought, attention, patience, all crowned with the blessing of God ( 1 Corinthians 3:6 ). And if we look upon the grain now, we see the light of modern science brought to bear upon its growth and increase in addition to all the other necessary effort. We may be quite sure that God will bless all honest: intelligent, and sedulous effort to increase the fruits of the earth. After all these centuries, man hardly yet seems to appreciate the scope of that command, "Subdue the earth" ( Genesis 1:28 ). Man has rather learnt to replenish the earth with those who use it as a vantage ground whereon to subdue and devour one another.

III. To a Christian the feast of the first-fruits must ever bring to mind THE ALL - IMPORTANT EVENT WHICH HAPPENED AT THE FIRST PENTECOST AFTER THE ASCENSION or CHRIST . There was doubtless some weighty reason for choosing the time when the day of Pentecost was fully come as the time when the disciples were to be all filled with the Holy Ghost. There was a close connection, we know, between the Passover feast and the Pentecost feast. A complete week of weeks, a perfect period, intervened between that day of the Passover feast when a sheaf of the harvest firstfruits was waved before the Lord ( Leviticus 23:1-44 ), and the day of Pentecost, when the full meat offering was presented. Thus in this interval the harvest was gathered in, and then by the Pentecostal service it was signified that in the strength of the food which he had gathered man could go on for another year. And as God chose the Passover season, when the great deliverance from Egypt was celebrated, for that death and resurrection of Christ whereby he delivers his people from guilt, and spiritual bondage, and helplessness, so he chose Pentecost for the entrance of that Holy Spirit who makes the deliverance to be followed by such unspeakable positive consequences. The risen Saviour gives liberty to those who believe in him, and then he gives the Holy Spirit, that the right of liberty may not be a barren gift. What is even a free man without daily food? What advantage is it to a man if you liberate him from prison merely to turn him into a sandy desert? The forgiven sinner with his awakened spirit and new needs has the evident fullness of God's Spirit to which he may continually apply himself. God availed himself of the place which Pentecost naturally held in the minds of the disciples to teach them a great lesson. Hebrew Christians were not likely to give up their old times and seasons, and so the Passover feast was still further glorified by the recollection of Jesus dying for them, and the Pentecost feast by the recollection of how the Spirit had been poured upon all flesh. It is very certain that we do not sufficiently appreciate the practical significance of that memorable Pentecost. It ought to stand in our minds side by side with that other memorable day when the Word that became flesh first breathed at Bethlehem the air of this sin-tainted world. Is it not a matter of the greatest significance that after Pentecost the Holy Spirit of God was among men as he was not before? What a blessing, and yet what a responsibility, to feel that thus and then he came, and, as he came, still remains!—Y.