Leviticus 23:15–22

Hey, hey, good morning. Good morning. Welcome to coffee and devotions. This is where every day you and I we get together We have a little bit of coffee. We get into God's Word and we grow in our love for the Lord together in this year 2023 Lord willing we'll make it from Genesis through Leviticus I'm so glad to be with you today while we have some coffee.
We'll pray and we'll get into God's Word Let's pray father we thank you so much For your word life, for breath, for food, for homes. Thank you for your Holy Spirit. Lord, we pray that you would please help us this morning. We need your spirit to teach us and to apply these words to our hearts. So Lord, help us, please. We pray in Jesus's name. Amen. Well, why don't we jump into God's word? We are at Leviticus 23, Leviticus chapter 23. And this morning we'll read verses 15 through 22. All right. So here we go.
And you shall count for yourselves from the day of the sabbath, after the sabbath, from the day that you brought the sheaf of the wave offering, seven sabbaths shall be completed. Count fifty days to the day after the seventh sabbath, then you shall offer a new grain offering to the Lord.
You shall bring from your dwellings two wave loaves of two tenths of an ephah. They shall be a fine flour. They shall be baked with leaven. They are the first fruits to the Lord. And you shall offer with the bread seven lambs of the first year without blemish, one young bull and two rams. They shall be as a burnt offering to the Lord with their grain offering and their drink offerings, an offering made by fire for a sweet aroma to the Lord. Then you shall sacrifice one kid of the goats as a sin offering and two male lambs of the first year as a sacrifice of a peace offering. The priest shall wave them with the bread of the first fruits as a wave offering before the Lord with two lambs. They shall be holy to the Lord for the priest. And you shall proclaim on the same day that it is a holy convocation to you.
You shall do no customary work on it. It shall be a statute forever in all your dwellings throughout your generations. When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not wholly reap the corners of your field. When you reap, nor shall you gather any gleaning from your harvest. You shall leave them for the poor and for the stranger. I am the Lord your God.
Well, we need to ask ourselves our normal three questions. A, what's this about? B, what's the best verse to summarize this? And C, what are we called to do in response to this? So what is this section about? Well, last time we were together, we talked about that wave offering, right?
Verses 9 through 14 was about the feast of first fruits. They were all to go on a Monday, and they were to offer most likely the barley, and wave that before the Lord, and bring some fine flour and oil, and wave that before the Lord, and then they were to bring some wine also. There's this Thanksgiving kind of ceremony at the beginning of harvest, trusting that God was the one who was going to bring the harvest.
Now in this section, now we're 50 days past that. You're going to find this referred to in the Bible different ways at different times. So some will call it a new grain offering. Sometimes it's called Pentecost. Sometimes it's called Harvest. Sometimes it's called Feast of Weeks. But no matter what, it's celebrated. on the first of Sivan, which is the third month of the Jewish lunar calendar. And so they're going to celebrate it, and this is bringing all the bounty of the harvest.
It starts with the dedicated bread, right? You're going to make these two-tenths of an ifa of bread. And then there's going to be a series of other sacrifices showing how wonderful the Lord was in his bounty and in his gifts, right? So they were going to bring those two breads. They were going to bring seven lambs of the first year, one young bull, two rams, one kid goat as a sin offering, two male lambs as a peace offering. And they were to wave that bread before the Lord. And it was to go to the priest. This was a holy convocation, right? All around them. God has redeemed them out of Egypt.
They're supposed to go into the promised land go into Canaan. It's not there yet. They're not there But he's warning he's telling them when you go there right this is what you're gonna do and they are replacing Canaanite sacrifices They're gonna be tempted when they go there. There's agricultural ceremonies already going on in the land of Canaan when they get there and But they're celebrating things like Baal dying in the fall and resurrected in the spring, right? This death and revival of Baal is what keeps the ag cycles going. And the Lord is saying, no, it doesn't.
I'm the one who's going to provide for you. I'm the one who redeemed you. You're going to keep my Sabbath. You're going to remember me. You're going to remember how I redeemed you. Every year we're going to do this and every year you're going to remember that I'm your covenant king. I'm the maker of heaven and earth. I did all of this in six days. It was all very good. I brought you up out of the land of Egypt and I'm the one who's going to provide for you.
And oh, yeah, by the way, when you make this hard with this Thanksgiving ceremony, right, we only get one Thanksgiving in America. Here you're essentially getting two Thanksgiving. Right. One is you're saying, Lord, thank you so much for the barley harvest to start with. The second is saying, Lord, thank you so much that the that the harvest is complete. This is wonderful. It's at that second. Thanksgiving feast that they're having, that they're able to rejoice.
And when they do that, though, God gives them a prescription for the 50 days that they're harvesting the fields. They're not allowed to harvest all of it. Because the Lord is generous and the Lord is gracious, and they need to be generous and gracious people. And so he says, the corner of your fields don't harvest that. You can go all around your fields, but leave the corners.
So that way, when there's strangers with you and you have abundance, they have something to rejoice in. When you're rejoicing because I'm gracious and generous to you, the poor people also need to be able to have something to eat also. And in this way, they're going to rejoice in their portion of my goodness as well, that I put them in a society that remembers that there are strangers and poor people with them.
That's what this is about, right? This is beginning the harvest cycle with a Thanksgiving feast and ending the harvest cycle with a Thanksgiving feast, always remembering, pointing their eyes to heaven and saying, thank you, Lord. We are sinful people, but you are a generous and redeeming God. I'm going to jump over from best verse. You can just let me know down in the comments if you want a best verse, but In my life, I need to remember this. I don't think we need to reinstitute these sacrifices.
Jesus Christ accomplished all of this, right? These ceremonial laws are those shadows that were pointing us to Christ. But in our hearts, we have the Holy Spirit that reminds us every time we take a bite of food, every time we receive anything from the Lord, that this is a gift from God. So how often do you thank the Lord? This is one of the most fun things to get to do. I would highly encourage you every day. Don't let a day go by. You don't stop and thank God for the good things in your life. I just got done preaching a little while ago about Philippians chapter four, verses six through nine.
And when he says, don't be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your request be made known to God. How thankful are we to the Lord? He's given us so much. I pray that you rejoice in who God is. Rejoice in his generosity. Remember others in those times of abundance. We can be so selfish sometimes. We need to lift up our eyes of heaven and remember every good and perfect gift we receive comes down from our Father in heaven. He's a wonderful God. Let's thank him now.
Lord, we thank you so much for this day. We thank you that you, the King of Kings, our redeeming Lord, has remembered us. And Father, we pray that we would follow after you. We pray that we would be a thankful people, and in that, that we would have joy. Thank you most of all for the gift of everlasting life. We pray these things in Jesus's name. Amen. May God bless you. May you rejoice in the Lord always. May your hearts be filled with thanks and may it overflow with generosity towards others. I'll see you next time. Bye.
Thanks for listening to this week's message from God's Word for You, a ministry of Sharon R.P. Church in rural southeast Iowa. We pray that the message would be used by God to transform your faith and your life this week. If you'd like to get more information about us, feel free to go to the website, SharonRPC.org. We'd love to invite you to worship with us. Our worship time is 10 a.m. every Sunday at 25204 160th Avenue. Morning Sun, Iowa, 52640. May God richly bless you this week.