SPEAKER_00: Good morning and welcome to your daily walk.
SPEAKER_00: This is Dan.
SPEAKER_00: Nehemiah chapter 10, which the sermon was about last Sunday, is a pivotal chapter where the people of Israel sign a written covenant to recommit their lives to God's law.
SPEAKER_00: One verse, Nehemiah 10.35, says that we assume responsibility for bringing to the house of the Lord each year the first fruits of our crops and of every fruit tree.
SPEAKER_00: For a long time, the idea of first fruits confused me.
SPEAKER_00: But simply stated, it's the idea that God's people, Israel, would bring their first fruits of the harvest to the temple each year and present them to the priest.
SPEAKER_00: Under the old covenant, God commanded the Israelites to bring the very first and best of their spring crops to the temple.
SPEAKER_00: And it was a way that the people would say to God, See here, I give you my first fruits, recognizing that you are God and that you own it all.
SPEAKER_00: In giving my first fruits, I am trusting you to provide the rest of the harvest.
SPEAKER_00: So of course, the example set by these faithful Israelites begs the question, are we bringing our very best to God?
SPEAKER_00: It's something we each have to answer.
SPEAKER_00: First, have we entrusted our life to Him, accepting His Son Jesus as our King and Savior?
SPEAKER_00: But also, have we given Him the best part of our day?
SPEAKER_00: And by that I mean, is God and our commitment to Him the very first thought when we wake up?
SPEAKER_00: Do we offer God our resources and time, remembering, like the Israelites, that everything is His to begin with?
SPEAKER_00: At the Feast of First Fruits, the annual spring festival commanded in Leviticus 23, a priest would wave a sheaf of the new harvest before the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And this act consecrated the entire harvest to God.
SPEAKER_00: Interestingly, the Apostle Paul speaks of Jesus as being a kind of firstfruits in 1 Corinthians 15, where we see an order to God's harvest.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is the first fruits, and later, at his return, the rest of the harvest, or all who belong to Christ, will also be raised to eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that beautiful to see how Jesus fulfills in his own life so many of the things we see in the Old Testament?
SPEAKER_00: Well, thanks for listening and have a great day.