FIRST FRUITS 2024

Join us in celebrating God’s third appointment: First Fruits – Sunday 28th April 2024. “…it is a statute forever throughout your generations in all your dwellings”. (Leviticus 23:14 ESV)

The Israelites were required to bring a first fruit offering as a token of gratefulness and recogition to God for His provision. Only after this sheaf of barley, the first fruit had been offered by the priest, could the people eat from their barley harvest for that year throughout the nation.

Once the priests offered the Omer of barley, God commanded that a special count begin. “You shall count seven weeks. Begin to count the seven weeks from the time the sickle is first put to the standing grain“. (Deuteronomy 16:9 ESV)

Each day was counted for the next forty-nine days (seven weeks). Then on the fiftieth day, God’s next great appointment on His calendar would begin – Shavuot which is also known to us as Pentecost (which means ‘fiftieth’ representing the counting of fifty days from Firstfruits).

First Fruits points us to the prophetic fulfilment of Jesus’ resurrection. “But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.” (Corinthians 15:20-23 ESV)