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Begin to read this evening in the book of Leviticus in chapter twenty three. The book of Leviticus in chapter twenty three, starting at verse nine. And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel and say unto them, When you become into the land which I give unto you, and shall reap the harvest thereof, then you shall bring the sheaf of the first fruits of your harvest unto the priest. And he shall wave the sheaf before the Lord to be accepted for you. On the morrow after the sabbath, the priest shall wave it.
And in the day when ye wave the sheaf, ye shall offer a he lamb without blemish of the first year for a burnt offering unto the Lord. And the meal offering thereof shall be two tenth parts of an ephah of fine flour mingled with oil, an offering made by fire unto the Lord for a sweet savor. And the drink offering thereof shall be of wine, the fourth part of an hin. And ye shall eat neither bread nor parched corn nor fish ears until this selfsame day, until ye have brought the oblation of your God, which is a statute forever throughout your generations in all your dwellings. You shall count unto you from the morrow after the Sabbath, from the day that you brought the sheaf of the wave offering.
Seven Sabbaths shall there be complete, even unto the morrow after the seventh Sabbath shall ye number fifty days, and ye shall offer a new meal offering unto the Lord. You shall bring out of your habitations two wave loaves of two tenth parts of an ephah. They shall be of fine flour. They shall be bacon with leaven for first fruits unto the Lord. And ye shall present with the bread seven lambs without blemish of the first year, and one young bullock and two rams. They shall be a burnt offering unto the Lord, with their meal offering and their drink offerings, even an offering made by fire of a sweet savor unto the Lord.
And he shall offer one he goat for a sin offering, and two he lambs of the first year for a sacrifice of peace offerings. And the priest shall wave them with the bread of the first fruits for a wave offering before the Lord with the two lambs. They shall be holy to the Lord for the priest. And he shall make proclamation on the self same day, there shall be an holy convocation unto you. You shall do no servile work. It is a statute forever in all your dwellings throughout your generations. And when you reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not wholly reap the corners of thy field, neither shalt thou gather the gleaning of thy harvest.
Thou shalt leave them for the poor and for the stranger. I am the Lord, your God. God give us good understanding of his holy word. I thank you for your kindness and patience and your generosity that you have given me an extra occasion on Thursday, God willing, whereon to address you. That will mean that I shall be able to reward you for your generosity by similar generosity on my part and let you out nearer nine o'clock this week than it was last week. If we would understand now the feasts of the Lord that lie in front of us after the Feast of Unleavened Bread, we must prepare to be to station ourselves where the record itself stations itself when it first gives the commandments regarding these feasts.
Verse ten of our chapter that we have just read says, speak unto the children of Israel and say unto them, when you become into the land and shall reap the harvest thereof, which tells us quite clearly that when these ordinances were given, the Israelites were not yet in the land. They were still journeying. They had been redeemed from Egypt. They knew what it was then to keep the Passover. They would celebrate also the, um, feast of unleavened bread, for it went inextricably bound up with that Passover. They would know, in a word, by their experience, what is meant by redemption, and redemption from bondage, and redemption from the wrath of God.
But now they were journeying and had not yet arrived, and there is about these words all the excitement of the anticipation of entering in one day into the whole purpose for that original redemption. What would it be like when at last they got to the end of their journey and entered into their inheritance just to possess an inheritance, they'd never had one before. They scarce owned their own bodies in Egypt. To have their own place, be it a a a two-room bungalow and just a square inch of land, but to be able to call it your own and be able to sow your carrots and reap the inheritance, what a thing it would be.
And they journeyed, I'm sure, with great expectation and thrill. Many of them did. Alas, alas, alas, alas, the record tells us that some of them, having been redeemed out of Egypt, forgot there was an inheritance to go to. And I'm not quite sure that we ought to throw very big stones of criticism in their direction, are you? It is possible for us sometimes, having been redeemed by the blood of Christ, knowing ourselves free from the wrath of God that we shall never come into condemnation, to forget that there was a purpose behind our being redeemed, and that redemption was only the necessary beginning.
And then to be redeemed and not enter into the purpose for that redemption is a sad frustration. They then journeyed looking towards the purpose of redemption, namely to enter into their inheritance and to reap the harvest of that inheritance. They were told, as we reminded ourselves on the first occasion, that when they got there, the reaping of their harvest would fall into two parts. There would be the reaping of the corn harvest. But lovely as that was, it wouldn't be everything.
There would, after an interval, be the reaping of the grape harvest. And so indeed it came to pass. And came to pass every year they were in the land, there was the reaping of the inheritance that was in two parts, reaping of the corn harvest, reaping of the grape, grape harvest. When they came into the land, of course, then for the first time they sowed their corn, watched it grow up with interest. They were told that when the, uh, fresh corn came through the ground and grew up into the air, they were to take a sheaf of that corn as it was green and offer it as first fruits to the Lord.
Reasonable enough request, wasn't it, from God Almighty? That they should offer the first of what they got back to him. Of course, it was as difficult then to make a living as a farmer as it is now, because always has been, at least so the farmers tell us, difficult to make a living as farmers, and you couldn't afford to throw too much away. But then the divine mind reasoned that this was but a reasonable thing to expect from them. For hadn't God redeemed them, they wouldn't have had an inheritance at all. They would have reaped nothing. And all their glorious inheritance and all the harvest they owed to him.
Small request, wasn't it? That they should give the first fruits of their harvest to the Lord. There's more request too for us, surely, if we have known redemption, to regard ourselves and all we have being given us by God, and therefore God has first claim on it. Not good enough really to give the fag end of my life to God, is it? Not good enough to go about my spiritual things as though they were merely a hobby that I do if and when I don't have anything more important to do.
Or reasonable to see that I wouldn't have had a life and I would have had a nothing, had it not been for God and his great redemption in Christ, and that I own him as the divine landlord of all I have. So therefore by right has a claim on the first of everything I've got. The reaping of their inheritance then proved to be a great joy and persisted in being a joy for many years. But as we again said on the first of our occasions, as the years went by and the process repeated itself, the prophets began to inquire whether or not these annual feasts of the Lord had more significance in them than just their agricultural significance.
And God answered those prophets with clear visions and statements to the effect that, yes, these yearly feasts, so many of them attached to agricultural seasons, also were prophecies of a much greater inheritance and blessing that God designed that they should reap in the centuries to come. And we shall look now for a moment, so as to set our study in focus, of one of those passages in which God outlined to the Israelites the fe- the the significance that these feasts would have in a coming day. Let us look at the last chapter, if you will please, of Zechariah at this moment.
The fourteenth chapter of Zechariah. Which begins thus, behold, the day of the Lord cometh when thy spoil shall be divided in the midst of thee, for I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle, and the city shall be taken, and the houses rifled, and the women ravished, and half of the city shall go forth into captivity, and the residue of the people shall not be cut off from the city. Then shall the Lord go forth and fight against those nations, as when he fought in the day of battle, and his feet shall stand in that day upon the Mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east, and the Mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof toward the east and toward the west, and there shall be a very great valley.
Expositors galore have pondered these words, and some have decided that they are to be understood solely metaphorically. I see no reason in Holy Scripture for not taking them literally. For here God is speaking through his prophet of that glorious event when Jesus Christ shall come in all his power and glory. He shall come as literally as he went, and his feet shall stand in the Mount of Olive in that day. The battle that shall be fought shall put down the beast and his minions, and be the beginning of the reign of Jesus Christ our Lord.
Part of the subsequent events are then told us in verse sixteen: And it shall come to pass that every one that is left of all the nations which came against Jerusalem shall go up from year to year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernacles. So here we have an express statement in Holy writ that when our Lord returns and sets up his kingdom, this feast of tabernacles shall take on such significance that it never had before. It shall be celebrated not merely by the nation of the Jews, not merely by that nation now restored to God and believing in Jesus as Messiah, but it will be celebrated by the world over, and all shall send their representatives to Jerusalem to celebrate that feast.
Glorious then as it was merely in the day when it was celebrated by Israel as an agricultural festival. It began to take on prophetic value, pointing to the end of the age, pointing to the time when Messiah would come, pointing to the time when he would establish his reign and in restore Israel the whole earth be blessed. What a feast of rejoicing that would be. And Isaiah, as we read on our first occasion, he too was used of God to paint in some of the blessings that then would happen when death should be swallowed up in victory and every tear be wiped away, and God make the nations a feast of fat things, of wines on the lees, well prepared.
It is because of that, that we living in this Christian day are entitled to see more significance in these annual feasts of Judah and Israel than mere agricultural festivals. For God's purpose with Israel turned out to be not merely to take them into Canaan so that they should reap corn and great harvest. God's purpose for them was to give them an inheritance so vast that it should form the very reign of Messiah when he came to set up his kingdom. At that level, we see significance even in these earlier feasts of First Fruits and Pentecost.
The farmer watching his crops grow in the springtime, might well fall to wondering and marveling at the miracle of nature, how that the corn that had fallen into the ground and died would nevertheless rise again. And poets like the author of the book of Job had pondered that kind of thing, and they had said, you know, if you cut a tree down and leave its stump, sometimes it will sprout again. But man dieth, and man wasteeth the way, and man giveth up the ghost, and where is he? Shall he live again? The glorious answer has been given us.
And we perceive this wonderful thing that the God of creation has so engineered his lowly physical creation that it shall become an object lesson of higher and more important categories. So did it happen that our Lord Jesus came into our world, and at a Passover time he was crucified. Three days after that, he was in the tomb Three days, three days after that, says Holy Scripture, Christ rose from the dead, and now is Christ risen from the dead, the first fruits of endless life.
As by man came death, by man also came resurrection of the dead. And the answer is clear, the answer has been given. Yes, just like the corn goes into the ground and lives again, so there is a resurrection for humankind. Indeed, as we shall remember, in the famous chapter one Corinthians fifteen, when Paul comes to describe exactly how that resurrection will take place, he borrows agricultural similes, doesn't he? As Paul went round on his preaching tours in this synagogue and that marketplace around the Roman Empire, of course he came across all sorts of objectors, and they said to him objections that very often thereafter he wrote down in scripture.
Said they, you talk, Paul, about, um, a resurrection body. You say men are going to be raised, but in what body do they come? Yes, we're not lacking pundits in our own day, are we? Who ask similar questions. They say, you're going to tell us that all the bodies that ever died are all going to be raised? Where is God going to get the phosphorus from, they say? Don't you know that the body has to have a certain amount of phosphorus in it? And of course, when people die, the phosphorus goes out into the ground, and then it goes through the daisies and up into the cattle and elsewhere, and into us eventually. Uh, do you know that there's a strictly limited supply of phosphorus, they informed us, and if all the people that have ever lived and then died were to rise all at once, where's God going to get the phosphorus from?
Seems to some people an insuperable difficulty, as though the whole, the Almighty was hard up for a little phosphorus. It isn't so. He made the stuff in the first place, didn't he? The difficulty is not where's God going to get the phosphorus from. The difficulty lies in the question of relationship. What is the relationship of the body that's put into the ground to the body that shall be? To illustrate it, mark the term, to illustrate it, Paul in one Corinthians fifteen calls upon various things that we can see in nature.
He says, now look, uh, uh, look at the farming world, for instance. You sow a bare grain. What you get out is different from what goes in, fairly markedly different. You sow a bare grain, so of a browny, yellowy color, some of it all wrinkled, and what you get out is something at first fruit time beautifully green and luscious. You put one grain in, you get forty out. You put a bare grain in, you get a thing that comes out and it's got a bit of a sheath on, and uh, it has a lovely bloom on it, uh, and some of them have spikes and havens and goodness knows what else.
So different from what went in. And yet, you try getting some out without first putting something in. Now, what you get out is different, and yet there is a vital connection somewhere between what went in and what came out. We're used to that kind of thing in nature, aren't we? In fact, we're used to it in our own bodies. You aren't altogether the same as you were forty years ago, or perhaps, you know, however long it is ago that you used to be. Um, they who know more about these things than I could ever hope to tell me that the cells in our bodies are constantly changing, except for they in our brains.
And we are not what we used to be altogether. And yet somehow, marvel of creation, we retain our identity, although, though the physical cells change. Let us be content to leave those mysteries there. God knows how to do it even in our bodies at the moment, so we retain our identity, and yet, and yet, and yet on our physical side there is much that is different from what we used to be. If we can see it happen with the corn, that there is a living link somewhere between what goes in and what comes out, though what you get out is vastly different.
So we are to understand, and meanwhile believe it until we see exactly what it means, that there is a connection between what goes in and what comes out. And you say, why bother about it? Well, because if you would understand what the Bible means by resurrection, then you must get hold of this point. The Greeks thought, Plato for instance, and he got it from the Pythagoreans, doubtless, and through him it crept into a lot of Christendom, particularly in the medieval age, and survived there yet. Plato taught the survival of the soul. He talked about a never-dying soul.
Methinks the gospel preachers have been listening to him. A never-dying soul. And Plato thought that the body was a very poor thing, really, and that the wise man, being a philosopher, would keep as far away from the body as he possibly could. Because if the soul got too mi- much mixed up with the body, the soul would get tainted, and then after death the soul would have to go to a kind of purgatory to get cleansed. And from those foolish and wrong notions have sprung generations and centuries of misery for people. As they got it into their head that the human body was something evil, something infradig, and the true spirituality was in keeping away from it.
Forbidding to marry, being harsh to the body. Ain't nonsense. God made the body. And he not only made it, but he has determined that we shall have bodies eternally. And God has given to the human body that supreme complement. God himself has been manifest in flesh. And it is a wonderful thing to contemplate that in the process of redemption, the Godhead itself has been changed. And our blessed Lord shall retain his holy but glorified body eternally.
The human body is a wonderfully glorious thing. Oh, what shall it be when we reap the inheritance of it? A body like unto his glorious body. All the poets and the artists, and the artists in particular, have raved, uh, about the glory of even our present human bodies, haven't they? They select the better specimens of us, I know, when they want to paint it, but they have, uh, painted in its prime. They have remarked its superb beauty. But even at its best, it has been but a natural, a soulish body of the earth, earthly.
Descendant from Adam. A living soul was Adam. Now the new body will be a different kind of thing. For the second man, the Lord from heaven, is not just a living soul, but a life-giving spirit. As we have borne the image of that earthly, so we shall bear the image of that heavenly. Human still. You say, is it possible for a human to have a different kind of a body and still be human? Yes. There is, says Paul, as he draws once more his analogies from nature, there is in this world a thing called flesh, a substance called flesh.
You call it flesh, whether it is human flesh, or animal flesh, or the flesh of fish, or the flesh of birds, it's all flesh. But here again come the medics to remind us, yes, but though it's all flesh, it's, it's very different flesh, isn't it? You can't get the flesh of a pig and just graft it onto a human just like that, because these are different kinds of flesh, but the flesh. So there can be different kinds of human body, and there shall be. The body that now we have, a soulish body, a natural body. Eh, shall we shall one day have a body like unto our Lord's body, a spiritual body, a body of glory.
Now then is Christ risen from the dead and become the first fruits of them that slept. But let us observe now, for we must be realists, that thus far in the program we have arrived simply at the first fruits and not the full harvest. There are some dear Christians out there abroad who tell us that because Christ died for us and we have redemption through Christ, we can claim as believers not only the forgiveness of our sins, but that we can also claim physical health.
Because it is bought for us by the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. And that therefore, if ever we grow sick, we have a right to claim healing from God. And if we don't, it is because we are perhaps unspiritual. That is utterly wrong. Totally unscriptural, and in the end, cruel. You have observed, haven't you, that all Christians die?
Why is that? Because they suddenly grow unspiritual. If we could at this moment claim healing of the body, uh, because of the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, we shouldn't die, should we? And they who become sick is not necessarily because they have become unspiritual. Let us see what Saint Paul says on this very matter. You remember the verses, for instance, in Romans eight, and the one of them goes like this, that even we which have received the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for our adoption to wit the redemption of our body.
Not yet the redemption of the body. Still the groaning, even though we have received the first fruits of the Spirit. Or see it spelled out in so many words in those earlier verses in that chapter, Romans eight. If Christ is in you, the body is... Now, what is it? If I am in Christ, and Christ is in me. Now, how does that affect my body, my physical body? My body is... And the passage is quite clear. The body is dead because of sin.
The spirit is life because of righteousness. But if the spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he that raised up Christ Jesus from the dead shall quicken also your mortal bodies through his spirit that dwells in you. We shall notice that here the apostle calls our bodies mortal, and that remains true. Mortal means subject to death. When we become Christians, it is true we receive Christ, and Christ is in us. That doesn't mean that in that moment our bodies are changed from being mortal to immortal. They remain mortal.
Because of the fall, we were born with the sentence of death hanging over our head. Every babe born into this world is thus born, except for Jesus Christ, our Lord. The Lord doesn't come, the child will grow up, decline, and die. Because of sin, original sin. And when I come to Christ and Christ is in me, does that alter that sentence of death on my body? No. If Christ is in me, the body is dead because of sin. And we might as well face the fact that if the Lord doesn't come one of these days, we shall in fact die.
The sentence will be carried out. Yes, it is the fact that sometimes God, eh, according to his gracious and good purpose, sometimes does heal us, and sometimes he uses means to heal us, and sometimes he dispenses with the means and heals us without any means, and then we say a miracle has been done, and we thank the Lord for it. But we cannot claim such miracles as of right. And if God doesn't grant them, we have no reason to think that it is because we are unspiritual.
But while we therefore still groan within ourselves, nevertheless, this wonderful thing is true, that we have in our bodies at this very moment, says Saint Paul. We have the spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead. He already dwells in our bodies. And the power that shall one day transform your body and turn it into a body like the body of Christ's glory, the power that shall do it is already in you. A wonderful thing.
I cannot tell you what mechanisms they are that in the end carry the identity of the human personality. It's not just the poor old brain, is it? For the worms will eat that as they'll eat all the rest. And it isn't therefore the mechanism of memory, where it's where, whether it's the electrical side of our memories or the chemical. The br- the worms will feed on that likewise. What mysteries there are about us. But whatever those elements are that carry the continuum of personality alongside it.
Oh, how wonderful, is already planted God's Holy Spirit, nor merely alongside, but says holy writ, you are in him, and he in you. And the roots of our personality already have been changed, no longer dependent on this failing flesh, but rooted in the eternal spirit of God himself. Christ, therefore, is risen from the dead, first fruits of them that slept. Now, would you look at the chart a moment? And you'll see this feast here of first fruits led on to its own harvest, which took place here.
Yeah? So I bid you step back into the world of agriculture for a moment. Jewish agriculture now, in the year hundred BC, righto? And this first fruit, barley, taken green, found its harvest here, as the barley turned, uh, brown and they harvested it. Yeah. But when you thought about that, I must ask you now to come back to Finicky, nineteen seventy five, to the Christian era, and I think of a bigger first fruits. I think of Jesus Christ, our Lord, on that historic third day when he rose from the dead, becoming the first fruits of them that slept.
Ah, yes, when shall that harvest be? When shall the great harvest of the dead be, of which he was the first fruits? Well, not on Pentecost. No, no. The harvest of that first fruits as of our Lord shall take place here, of course. When the Lord comes, and the trumpet shall sound, and the dead in Christ shall rise, and, uh, we which are alive and remain shall be caught up to meet the Lord in the air. But before we leave this question of first fruits here, there is another side of our Lord's resurrection to be considered, is there not?
He is first fruits for us as to his body. He is now in glory, and we one day when he comes, when the trumpet shall sound, we shall be in glory. He's first fruits in another sense. Allow me to remind you of what the writer says in Hebrews chapter six, using not the term now first fruits, but forerunner. The first fruit says that a harvest is coming on behind. A forerunner says that a whole cattle cave is coming on behind. And Christ has risen from the dead, and he has entered in.
What's the significance of it? Why says Hebrews, follow him in your mind's eye as he enters in through the veil into that unseen world beyond, and know this, that he has entered for us. His entry is by way of being a forerunner, informing heaven that there is a vast cavalcade coming on behind. Now, it is a thing about forerunners that you can know from the way in which the forerunner is treated, how the cattlecade will be treated.
When President Ford proposes to go to China, he doesn't just turn up one afternoon on spec that the Chinese Prime Minister will welcome him, because if the Prime Minister of, uh, of China was out of sorts and didn't welcome him, that would be such a blow in the face to, uh, the learn- the learned President. Yeah. So the president takes the, uh, precaution of sending a forerunner who goes and sees the Chinese, and if the Chinese say, yes, we rather like the look of you, then, uh, it's safe for the president to come on behind. And Christ is risen from the dead and gone in, a forerunner for all those who are coming on behind.
Ah, my brother, what you want to know, what you should be concerned about is how has the forerunner been treated? Have you any idea and concept how Jesus Christ our Lord was received when he went up into glory? Because he made it known in the very moment he entered that he was entering not merely for himself alone, but on behalf of all that great harvest should come on behind. And the glorious fact is this, that he has been received with open arms and sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high, and in nineteen hundred years has not been asked to budge one centimeter.
Oh, I'd like it. When our Lord went back to heaven, he didn't just go creeping around the door, afraid in case somebody noticed him. He went and sat down on the right hand of the throne with the majesty on high. God, who knew that he came representing you, has received him. Oh, what a first fruit. Oh, what a forerunner. I can well picture in my mind's eye those holy Jews of the ancient world, can't you? As they reaped this sheaf of first fruits and bound it, and then we're told they had to wave it before God.
Look at this God. Simple, wasn't it? The sheer joy of having the first fruits of a harvest that, uh, proclaimed that there was a big harvest coming on behind. They were told, for God ever descends to our humble state, to to wave it before God. Well, God could see it anyway, couldn't he? But you know what your child does when he wants you to look at something, if you don't look at one, he waves it in front of you. Yeah. And so Israel's priests stood, and they solemnly waved this sheet before God, look at this God. Ha. Don't you feel like that? Ah, Jesus Christ, our blessed Lord, and I stand here in the wilderness, and I wave him before God.
I say, God, look at him! And it's me as is waving him, and I'm coming on behind, Lord, and you've accepted him, and in him you have accepted me. In Israel then, this first roots, oh, we're back now, sorry, the changing about from Finicky to Israel and Israel and Finicky, it's worse than one of these package tours, isn't it? But now back, eh, time clock and all that, back into the literal Israel, uh, thousand BC, back to agriculture, and back to this first roots.
And in the process of time, namely fifty days afterwards, after the waving of the first fruit sheaf, they came to the harvest itself. There can you see the lovely waving barley crops, the wind blowing on them, and the barley tables and all that, didn't it look lovely? And now the time come to put the sickle in and reap it. But when they reaped, then operations were immediately suspended. No one ate any of that corn until they had, uh, thrashed some of it, milled it, and of that first batch of freshly ground corn, they made two cakes, and they offered them as first fruits.
Getting a bit complicated, isn't it, to have two lots of first fruits in one night? But I suspect now you'll see the difference. This was first fruits, it was a sheaf, all green, you see, before it had ripened. This was a first fruits of 2 cakes at the actual harvest time, when the farmer went in and he, he cut some of the ripened corn, and uh, then he thrashed it, and uh, then he took it to the miller, and he ground it, and then he gave it to his wife, and she baked it, and they made two cakes. Well, of course, there's more than two cakes in any one harvest, isn't there? I hope so. Uh, thousands of cakes. They've been made, they, they would be making cakes all the rest of that year out of the corn they got in that harvest.
But right there and then, in the harvest time, the first lot was taken, made into cakes, and they offered those cakes to God as the first fruits of what should be two cakes made with leaven, plus the appropriate sacrifices once and again. First fruits. On the day of Pentecost. It was no accident, of course. It was no accident. Fifty days after our Lord rose from the dead, Jerusalem was shaken by the sound of a rushing and a mighty wind, and the Holy Spirit came down from heaven.
What for? Well, uh, to form, if you like, first fruits of what our inheritance is going to be. I have already quoted to you the words from Romans eight wherein Paul describes Christians as we who have the first fruits of the Spirit. If you like to change the figure, in Ephesians chapter 1, we are told that the, we are sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, which is an earnest of our inheritance.
For already, at the spiritual level, we are able to reap, even we, the first fruits of a great inheritance that yet shall be. We do not have to wait until we get home to glory. We can have now and enjoy now the earnest, the token in advance, the first fruits of all that vast inheritance that God has planned for us. We journey through the wilderness. Saint Peter would remind us that there is a very real sense in which our inheritance lies ahead.
We have been begotten again unto a living hope, unto an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and that fades not ye- away, reserved in heaven for us, and we are journeying thereby. Ah, but we may have and enjoy first fruits of that inheritance. Even while as yet as to our bodies we are dying and mortal me- men and women, we have God's Holy Spirit, the first fruits. Therefore, let us think now, in the closing moments of our study tonight, of the tremendous significance of the coming of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost.
I want to read to you some words from our Lord's statement in John chapter sixteen, in which he told his disciples while he was yet with them. It is expedient for you that I go away. For if I go not away, this is verse seven, the comforter will not come unto you. But if I go, I will send him unto you. This tells us quite clearly that when the Lord Jesus was here on earth, the Holy Spirit had not come.
And moreover, it tells us that he would never have come if the Lord Jesus had remained here. He hadn't come. Now, when our Lord Jesus went away, then he came. You say, why do you emphasize that? Because we must try and grasp the tremendous significance of the coming of the Holy Spirit. What we mean by the coming of the Holy Spirit. Some people talk of the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost as if it were just a little bit more, a heightened degree of what had already been happening down the centuries.
That is not true. That is not adequate. In Pentecost, we are in the presence of an indescribably large and significant, unique historical event. Passover of Jesus Christ our Lord. Yes, we come into its benefit, but as we look back over centuries, we see a Passover that was a unique historic event, never to be repeated. As we look at first fruits, we look at a resurrection that was an utterly unique thing.
Never a resurrection like that one before. It stands as one of the outstanding unique events in all human history, the resurrection of Christ as first fruits. And when we come to Pentecost, fifty days after that resurrection, we are likewise in the presence of a unique historic event, the like of which had never happened before. Oh, we mustn't underrate the marvel of the coming of the Holy Spirit. Yes, he had been in the world before, acting hither and acting thither. He had clothed himself with Gideon, as the Old Testament picturesquely says.
He had come upon David and upon Saul. Ah, yes, but in the sense of Pentecost, he had never come before. Then you say, what do you mean by coming? Let's take an analogy with our Lord. We are told that no one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, has declared him. Very good. Well, then I ask, who were those men that came to Abram's tent in the heat of the day and talked with Abram?
For there came three men. Two of them were angels, of course they were, they went off eventually to Sodom. The other one Abraham addressed as the Lord. And the Lord stood yet before Abraham. Who was it? Well, God, no one has seen at any time. So the personage that Abraham saw must have been the blessed person that we call the second person of the Trinity. And he had visited Abraham in those pre-incarnate days, centuries before Bethlehem.
But though he visited Abraham and visited the father and mother of Manoah and visited Jacob, yet, when Bethlehem happened, he, when he came at last to Bethlehem, his coming to Bethlehem was not just one more of those early visits. It was a something utterly distinct and different. He came now in kind, staying here. In human form. So he could say, I have come from the Father, and I am with you, and again I'm going to leave you and go to the Father.
He had come into our world. Oh yes, there was a sense in which he could say, the Father is always with me. And yet there was another sense in which he was absent from the Father. He had come from the Father and was about to return to the Father. We do well to see that Bethlehem is a unique thing, and when we talk of the coming of the Savior to Bethlehem, we are talking about a unique thing. God become flesh, tabernacling among us. In that very sense, says our Lord, the Holy Spirit is going to come.
If I don't go away, he won't come. He is with you already, but when he comes, he shall be in you. Tonight, as we think of that ancient feast of Pentecost, uh fifty days after first fruits, that ancient agricultural feast turns our mind to that unique Pentecost, unique in all history, when God the Holy Spirit came and took up his residence in human form.
I ought to say in human forms, didn't I? Whereas our Lord came in a human body, the Holy Spirit has come to dwell in human bodies. First roots. Earnest. What a lovely thing it is. Guaranteeing the full payment. He's come, my brother. Not coming and going and coming and going with the ups and downs of my fluctuating spiritual experiences, but here, come.
Resident. Not coming and going with the fluctuation of my emotions. But The resident Come. never to leave me until he has me, body and all, in glory. Oh, the wonder of his coming. We are sealed, says the Holy Spirit, says the Holy Spirit through Paul the Apostle, sealed with the Holy Spirit himself, who is the payment in advance, the security payment, the earnest that guarantees to everyone who has him the final full payment of the inheritance.
I say, I- I- I'm now going to, I've improved greatly tonight because it isn't ten past nine yet, and uh, so that's a great improvement. I just want to leave you with a question. Moses was a wise old boy, wasn't he? Hmm. Why didn't he put Passover here? How did Moses know to get it in the right order? You might care to ponder the question, and when you come to its decision, see what implications it has for the inspiration of Holy Scripture.
Even, my dear young folks, for otherwise lonely and not very well frequented parts of an obscure book like Leviticus, and yet just as inspired by divine wisdom as any part of Holy Writ. Shall we pray? O God, with what wonderful things thou hast surrounded us, who were beggars and slaves, groveling and in chains.
We praise thee this evening for our redemption. But, oh God, we praise thee even more now as we think of these wonderful things that thou hast done. And that we stand at this point in history when we could look back on them as historic facts already accomplished. Not even hopes for the future, but facts. That Jesus Christ, that true man, that literal man, has risen from the dead, and that one day we shall have a body like him. And for that thy Holy Spirit has come, and that thou has marked his coming so clearly in thy word, for the tremendous implication that we have within our hearts, within our very bodies, that gracious person who is God, the Holy Spirit.
That we are inseparably linked with him, and through life, and through death, if need be, and on into the glorious age that lies beyond, he shall bring us until he has brought us home to God. Oh God, we do praise thee for these wonderful things. Help us to meditate on them. By thy spirit make them increasingly real, that already we may begin to reap the harvest of that glorious inheritance that thou hast secured for us in Jesus Christ, thy son, in whose name we offer thee our evening praise.
Amen.
