Firstfruits and Pentecost: Foreshadow of Deliverance

I really did intend to have this article written around Pentecost, especially since this is the message that I gave as a sermonette on Pentecost! But now, as I find so many other articles begging to be written in my mind, it's time that I eat my vegetables first and finish this up. As I pointed out in the first part of this series on firstfruits, the firstfruits were commanded to be brought before God at two different times: once on the Feast of Firstfruits and then again on the Feast of Weeks (i.e., Pentecost). The Feast of Firstfruits occurs during the Days of Unleavened Bread, the primary theme of which is deliverance from sin, just as God historically had delivered Israel from Egypt during those days. Perhaps it should not be surprising then that the offering of firstfruits, which occurred both on the Feast of Firstfruits and on Pentecost, was also a reminder of God's deliverance:

Deuteronomy 26:2-10
“You shall take some of the first of all the produce of the ground... and say before the Lord your God: ‘My father was a Syrian, about to perish, and he went down to Egypt and dwelt there, few in number; and there he became a nation, great, mighty, and populous. But the Egyptians mistreated us, afflicted us, and laid hard bondage on us. Then we cried out to the Lord God of our fathers... So the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand... and now, behold, I have brought the firstfruits of the land which you, O Lord, have given me.’

While the message of deliverance in the firstfruits may be clear for the Feast of Firstfruits (during the Days of Unleavened Bread), how does this deliverance factor into the message of the Day of Pentecost as we understand it in the New Covenant? In this article, I'll examine the link between the Feast of Firstfruits, the Day of Pentecost, and the theme of deliverance that unifies their incredible message!

The Holy Spirit, our... Midwife?

 The life of a Christian can be put into a rough correspondence with the events of the Exodus, and this imagery is especially helpful for us during the Passover season. I've written previously about the similarities between Pharaoh and the "old man" written of by Paul (Romans 6:6, Ephesians 4:22), and this post is along the same lines. The "old man" is the person that we were before repentance and baptism. As much as we would like to be a 100% new person who doesn't sin anymore after baptism, it just doesn't work that way! We are still physical beings, and we have to struggle against the flesh and bring it into subjection to God. Occasionally, the Old Man gets the upper hand, and our spiritual lives wane - in effect, we go back to bondage in spiritual Egypt.

God allowed Israel, His people, to suffer slavery in Egypt for over 400 years. Even while they were slaves, God watched over them and allowed their population to grow larger and larger, working to fulfill a promise made to Abraham. Eventually, the Pharaoh came to see Israel's increasing numbers as a threat, and so he devised a plan to keep their population under control. 

Exodus 1:9-11
And [Pharaoh] said to his people, "Look, the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we; come, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply, and it happen, in the event of war, that they also join our enemies and fight against us, and so go up out of the land." Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them.

What Do the Days of Unleavened Bread Mean for Christians?

Among the Holy Days of Leviticus 23, God commanded Israel to celebrate the Feast of Unleavened Bread every year. They were specifically commanded to remove the yeast from their homes for 7 days and to not eat anything leavened with yeast for those 7 days. This yearly festival was primarily a commemoration of the Exodus, and specifically of the fact that God brought Israel out of Egypt by His power:

Exodus 13:3-8
And Moses said to the people: “Remember this day in which you went out of Egypt, out of the house of bondage; for by strength of hand the LORD brought you out of this place. No leavened bread shall be eaten... And you shall tell your son in that day, saying, ‘This is done because of what the LORD did for me when I came up from Egypt.’"

God devastated and overcame the power of the Egyptians with the plague of the firstborn (the Passover plague) and then led Israel out of Egypt on the day after Passover, which is the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. As a matter of fact, the first words that Moses and Aaron spoke to Pharaoh were about this Feast:

Exodus 5:1
Moses and Aaron went in and told Pharaoh, “Thus says the LORD God of Israel: ‘Let My people go, that they may hold a feast to Me in the wilderness.’”

The Feast of Unleavened Bread clearly focuses on deliverance - so what point is God trying to make by asking us to not eat leaven during these days?

First, recall that Israel was commanded to leave Egypt in haste - they couldn't delay their leaving in order to give the bread time to rise, so God told them not to put any yeast in it. Yeast is a living organism that grows in bread and releases gas, which cases the bread to puff up over time as the yeast grows and spreads. They were supposed to be eager to get out of Egypt! The deliverance symbolism of the Feast is obviously made manifest because of God's act of deliverance, but the Israelites were to commemorate the event by eating unleavened bread in order to symbolize their willingness and readiness to receive that deliverance.

The Israelites had a problem with not trusting God to provide for them, and, as a result, they frequently wanted to go back to slavery in Egypt. In light of what the unleavened bread was supposed to mean for them, it's not surprising that the one of the fond memories that the Israelites had about Egypt was the bread that they ate there:

Exodus 16:3
And the children of Israel said to them, "Oh, that we had died by the hand of the LORD in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the pots of meat and when we ate bread to the full!"

The Israelites were so unappreciative of God's deliverance that they were not satisfied with the unleavened bread which symbolized that deliverance - they wanted to return to Egypt, where they ate leavened bread in bondage!

All of these things are written for our learning. Today, Christians are still commanded to eat only unleavened bread for 7 days. We observe the Days of Unleavened Bread to commemorate that God has Passed Over our sins and redeemed us from slavery in spiritual Egypt, which is the way that leads to death. The reason that we eat unleavened bread is to remind us of the urgency with which we are called to stop living under the control of sin. Just like the Israelites were not permitted to wait around in Egypt for the bread to rise, so also Christians are not permitted to continue in their sins. The New Testament teaches that sin is like yeast:

1 Corinthians 5:6-8
Your glorying is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Therefore purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened. For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us. Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

Just like yeast lives in the bread, spreading and growing until the entire loaf is puffed up, so also sin lives in us, spreading and growing until we are thoroughly captive to it. If we delay in purging out our sins, they will spread like leaven in our lives until they completely control our us. Therefore, we must not compromise! When God reveals to you that you are doing something wrong, you must be READY and WILLING to change! 

We are called to eat the "unleavened bread of sincerity and truth." If you are not ready to stop sinning, then you are not sincere. If you say that you are ready to stop sinning but you willingly going back for "one last fix," then you are a liar and have not abided in truth. 

The primary message of the Days of Unleavened Bread of Christians is that God has brought us out of sin by His power, which is displayed in the Passover sacrifice. As a result of that deliverance, we must be totally ready to accept our salvation by willingly and eagerly following God out of sin, symbolized by eating unleavened bread - putting away sin before it has a chance to grow and corrupt us.

For more information on why Christians should celebrate these Holy Days, as well as how to celebrate them, see God's Holy Day Plan: The Promise of Hope for All Mankind.