After the resurrected Christ is offered to God for His satisfaction, He is to be eaten and enjoyed by us, His people; Christ is to be dispensed into us with all the riches of His resurrection for our enjoyment. This is what the type of the Feast of Firstfruits shows us.
First, it is the Father who needs to be satisfied. He delights in Christ, and His Christ is the only thing that satisfies Him.
So Christ came to do God’s will, He accomplished God’s plan, spoke God’s words, and did God’s work. He then died as the Lamb of God to accomplish redemption and thus bring man back to God, and after three days He was resurrected, being approved and accepted by God in all He is and has done.
After Christ resurrected, He ascended to the Father in the freshness of His resurrection for the Father to be satisfied. God wants to enjoy the firstfruits, for these are fresh, new, living, and strong.
Christ didn’t allow Mary the Magdalene to touch Him when He appeared to her in the morning of His resurrection, for He wanted to first ascend to the Father for His satisfaction.
Just as the firstfruits were first brought to God for His satisfaction, so Christ in the freshness of His resurrection was ascended for the Father to be satisfied.
Christ was resurrected for our justification, and in resurrection He came into us as the life-giving Spirit to live in us a life of justification before God.
Objectively we are acceptable before God because we are in Christ by virtue of our faith in Him, and now subjectively we live a life of justification because the resurrected Christ lives in us a life that makes us acceptable to God.
Christ in His resurrection is not just in the heavens on the throne but also in our spirit imparting Himself as life into us for us to live one spirit with Him and have a life of justification.
Through faith in Him we receive Him and are objectively justified before God, and by living one spirit with Him, we live a life of subjective justification in which our living is in righteousness. Hallelujah for the resurrected Christ as the Firstfruits!
After being Offered to God for His Satisfaction, the Resurrected Christ is the Firstfruits us for our Enjoyment
The firstfruits of the Feast of Firstfruits, after being offered to God for His enjoyment, were to be eaten by the people of Israel (Lev. 23:14).
First God had to be satisfied by enjoying the firstfruits, and then us as His people can partake of these. This signifies that the resurrected Christ, after being presented to God the Father in His freshness for His satisfaction, is to be eaten by us, His people.
After Christ is offered to God for His satisfaction, He is to be dispensed into us for our enjoyment together with all the riches of His resurrection (see 1 Cor. 15:14, 17; Rom. 4:25; Phil. 3:10-11).
The reality of the resurrection is Christ as the life-giving Spirit, and as such a One Christ is dispensed into us constantly, everywhere, in any situation, and at any time. Christ as the life-giving Spirit is being dispensed into us in the freshness of His resurrection and with all the riches of His resurrection for our enjoyment.
The firstfruits are not just a principle or a type, but they are to be eaten and enjoyed both by God and by us.
The resurrected Christ wants to make us joyful, and the more He dispenses Himself in His resurrection into us with all His riches, the happier we will be. On the outside we may have trials and losses but in a paradoxical way, inwardly we are filled with happiness, because Christ is being dispensed into us to become our inner joy.
We need to learn to contact Christ, offer Him to God, and then He will share Christ with us for us to enjoy Him as the Firstfruits – and He does this by dispensing.
Our basic attitude when we come to the Lord is to be open vessels, for what we need, He is and He applies it to us by means of His dispensing.
Christ became our portion only after His freshness in resurrection had first been offered to the Father (see John 20:17).
Unfortunately, we unknowingly and unintentionally deprive ourselves of the experience and enjoyment of Christ in resurrection dispensed into us because we neglect the resurrected Christ as the Firstfruits being offered to the Father first, so there cannot be enjoyment on our side until God had His enjoyment.
There has to be more and more experienced brothers and sisters in the meeting who can lead the meeting in this direction or worshipping the Father by offering the resurrected Christ for His satisfaction.
This happens after the Lord’s Table meeting, and at such a time we are not aware of our need but of the Father’s need, offering Christ in His freshness to the Father. Hallelujah, after the Father is satisfied, we also can eat Christ in resurrection as our enjoyment, and He Himself becomes our life supply.
Only Christ in resurrection can be our life supply; whatever He is to us, He is in resurrection, as the resurrected Christ (see John 14:19; 6:53-57, 63). Because He lives, we also shall live; just as He lived because of the Father, so we eat the resurrected Christ and live because of Him.
When we are eating Jesus by contacting Him as the crucified and resurrected One through His word, and when we receive Him through the exercise of our spirit, we are actually receiving the resurrected Christ as our life supply.
This is what’s in His heart toward us when we try to approach Him. Everything we need, He is; the resurrected Christ is our faithfulness, our forbearance, our kindness, our humility, etc.
According to the type of the Feast of Firstfruits, what we enjoy and what is being dispensed into us is the resurrected Christ (Rom. 8:11).
Lord Jesus, keep us open to Your divine dispensing of all the riches of Your resurrection into us for our enjoyment. Thank You for dying for us and being resurrected to become a life-giving Spirit to impart all Your riches into us. Amen, Lord, we want to remain open as vessels to receive and contain Your divine dispensing for our enjoyment. You are the Father’s satisfaction and delight, and You are our enjoyment and our feast. Lord, because You live we also live, and we can live You because we eat You and partake of what You are!
Enjoying the Resurrected Christ and Becoming in Him the Offerings for God’s Satisfaction
In Lev. 23 we read concerning the Feast of Firstfruits, which is accompanied by three offerings: the burnt offering, the meal offering, and the drink offering.
The resurrected Christ is the reality of the Feast of Firstfruits, but He is not by Himself – it is not a stalk that satisfies God but a sheaf, so it is Christ together with some more.
We as believers in Christ are in Christ and one with Christ, and as we enjoy and experience Him, we become in Him the firstfruits for God’s satisfaction. Christ is the burnt offering, and He is such a One in us and with us in His resurrection.
He comes into us in his resurrection as a Lamb in His freshness, meekness, strength, and being without blemish; as He works Himself into us as the burnt offering in resurrection, Christ makes us what He is.
As we enjoy and experience Christ as the burnt offering, we become the meek, fresh, tender, strong, unblemished burnt offering lamb in Christ, with Christ, through Christ, and by Christ (never in ourselves).
Christ is also the meal offering; the resurrected Christ in His resurrected humanity comes into us as food for God. We share this food and we become in Christ, the resurrected One, Jesusly human in resurrection.
Christ is the drink offering; He is the cheering, life-energising wine, produced from His sacrificing life. When Christ died, he poured out His entire being for God’s satisfaction. This Christ cheered and delighted God, pouring out His constitution on the offerings.
Also, Christ is the wine we drink for our exuberance, enjoyment, and revival, until we ourselves become wine for God’s satisfaction. The ultimate end of an overcomer’s testimony – such as the Apostle Paul – is to be poured out as a drink offering upon the sacrifice and service of the saints; this will become our experience, and we will be indescribably happy.
On the other hand, the sheaf of firstfruits is a type of the rapture, of the overcomers. In Rev. 14 we have a portrayal of the living overcomers as the firstfruits, who are brought to God on Mount Zion not for warfare but for His delight and satisfaction.
We as believers in Christ need to grow in life and mature to be the firstfruits raptured for the Father’s satisfaction; our aspiration should be never to see death but be raptured alive to the throne on Mount Zion as firstfruits.
We need to cooperate with Christ as the sevenfold intensified Spirit working in us so that we may be matured in life. At the same time, we shouldn’t be distracted by trying to calculate when will the Lord come back and who is Antichrist.
Many believers tried to assess the year of the Lord’s return and they were wrong. We should focus on the resurrected Christ as the Firstfruits, focus on eating Christ and becoming in Him the offerings that satisfy the Father, and He will envelop us and work Himself into us until he will have to return to take us to God for His delight.
Our yearning is to be among the firstfruits by enjoying Christ in resurrection, offering Him to the Father, learning to receive His continual dispensing, and there will be an organic process going on in us, under His divine dispensing, which will make us even the same as He is!
Lord Jesus, we want to experience You as the resurrected Christ so that You may work Yourself into us and make us the same as You are, a burnt offering for God’s satisfaction, a meal offering for His enjoyment, and a drink offering poured out for His cheer and delight. Amen, Lord, work Yourself into us little by little and day by day until we become in You the offerings to the Father for His delight and joy. Grow in us, Lord, and mature us to make us the firstfruits that are taken to You for Your enjoyment. Amen, Lord, we are here not for ourselves but for Your satisfaction and delight!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by Ron Kangas for this week, and portions from, Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1991-1992, vol. 1, “The Central Line of the Divine Revelation,” pp. 535-536, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Crystallization-Study of Leviticus (2), week 9, The Feasts (2) – The Feast of Firstfruits, the Feast of Pentecost, and the Feast of Tabernacles.
- Hymns on this topic:
# Lord, I do love You, operate in me, / Be my salvation, save me constantly / To hold forth Your word, life to others afford; / Shining You, so radiantly, dear Lord. / Lord, I’m so saturated with Your joy / That I am drunken, You as wine enjoy; / I’d pour out my being, as a drink offering / Upon You, God satisfying. (Song on, Lord, I do thank You for another day)
# When the Lord was resurrected, / All religious things were through; / Christ is now our living temple, / Christ is all our offerings too. / With our Lord in resurrection, / Hallelujah, we’re released! / Pity all the old religion— / All our meetings are a feast! (Hymns #1281)
# Christ comes quickly for His grain, / Ripened firstfruits to obtain; / Unripe harvest will remain— / Ripen now! / From earth’s water grain must dry, / From the world your soul deny; / To mature the self must die— / Ripen now! (Hymns #1304)
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