Let’s read some Scriptures. Again, for those of you who are here for the first time in the evening, we are looking primarily from the book of Leviticus at the feasts—the seven feasts prescribed for the children of Israel.
All of these feasts are wonderful pictures of the Lord Jesus. Even to study the offerings connected with the feasts is, in itself, a very precious study. I am taking a very simple look at the feasts, as they represent something the Lord would want us to enter into in fullness as Christians: fellowship—fellowship in fullness.
As I was reading and studying these feasts, I thought to myself, you know, it is a wonderful picture of the fullness of fellowship. Too often, as Christians, we think in terms of fellowship as just fellowship between me and the Lord. But the grid of fellowship, as I mentioned last night, is actually quite comprehensive, as the Spirit moves between brethren, revealing the Lord Jesus, and also moves vertically in our relationship to the Lord.
So I am hoping that this simple study of the feasts will help us see the Lord Jesus in times when we are gathered together in fellowship. So there in Leviticus 23, let us pick up now with the two feasts we want to look at tonight, beginning in verse 9.
Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying,
Speak to the sons of Israel and say to them, When you enter the land which I am going to give to you, and you reap its harvest, then you shall bring in the sheaf of the firstfruits of your harvest to the priest.
He shall wave the sheaf before the Lord for you to be accepted; on the day after the Sabbath the priest shall wave it.
Now on the day when you wave the sheaf, you shall offer a male lamb one year old without defect for a burnt offering to the Lord.
Its grain offering shall then be two-tenths of an ephah of fine flour mixed with oil, an offering by fire to the Lord for a soothing aroma, with its drink offering, a fourth of a hin of wine.
Until this same day, until you have brought the offering of your God, you shall eat neither bread nor roasted grain nor new growth. It is to be a perpetual statute throughout your generations in all your dwelling places.You shall also count for yourselves from the day after the Sabbath, from the day when you brought in the sheaf of the wave offering; there shall be seven complete Sabbaths.
You shall count fifty days to the day after the seventh Sabbath; then you shall present a new grain offering to the Lord.
You shall bring in from your dwelling places two loaves of bread for a wave offering, made of two-tenths of an ephah. They shall be of fine flour, baked with leaven, as firstfruits to the Lord.
Along with the bread, you shall present seven one-year-old male lambs without defect, and a bull of the herd and two rams. They are to be a burnt offering to the Lord, with their grain offerings and their drink offerings, an offering by fire, a soothing aroma to the Lord.
You shall also offer one male goat for a sin offering and two male lambs one year old for a sacrifice of peace offerings.
The priest shall then wave them with the bread of the firstfruits for a wave offering with the two lambs before the Lord. They are to be holy to the Lord for the priest.
On this same day, you shall make a proclamation as well. You are to have a holy convocation. You shall do no laborious work. It is to be a perpetual statute in all your dwelling places throughout your generations.
When you reap the harvest of your land, moreover, you shall not reap to the very corners of your field, nor gather the gleaning of your harvest; you are to leave them for the needy and the alien. I am the Lord your God.
And then we want to turn to Acts 2—just a few verses to bring us into remembrance of this marvelous moment in history.
And when the day of Pentecost was being fulfilled, they were all together in one place.
And suddenly there came from heaven a noise like a violent rushing wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting.
And there appeared to them tongues as of fire distributing themselves, and they rested on each one of them.
And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit was giving them utterance.
And then let us go to 1 Corinthians 1, verse 4.
I thank my God always concerning you for the grace of God which was given to you in Christ Jesus,
that in everything you were enriched in Him, in all speech and all knowledge,
even as the testimony concerning Christ was confirmed in you,
so that you are not lacking in any gift, awaiting eagerly the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ,
Who will also confirm you to the end, blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.
God is faithful, through Whom you were called into fellowship with His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
And then over to 1 Corinthians 15—two portions in this section, beginning in verse 20.
But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who are asleep.
For since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead.
For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive.
But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; after that, those who are Christ’s at His coming.
Then comes the end, when He hands over the kingdom to God the Father, when He has abolished all rule and all authority and power.
For He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet.
The last enemy that will be abolished is death.
And then down to verse 42.
So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown a perishable body; it is raised an imperishable body.
It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory.
It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power.
It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body.
If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body.
So also it is written, The first man, Adam, became a living soul. The last Adam became a life-giving Spirit.
However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural; then the spiritual.
The first man is from the earth, earthy; the second Man is from Heaven.
As is the earthy, so also are those who are earthy; and as is the heavenly, so also are those who are heavenly.
Just as we have borne the image of the earthy, we will also bear the image of the heavenly.
And then finally, those wonderful verses in Psalm 133, a Song of Ascents.
Behold, how good and how pleasant it is
For brothers to dwell together in unity!
It is like the precious oil upon the head,
Coming down upon the beard,
Even Aaron’s beard,
Coming down upon the edge of his robes.
It is like the dew of Hermon,
Coming down upon the mountains of Zion;
For there the Lord commanded the blessing—
Life forever.
Our Father, we come to You tonight, and we are so thankful that You are faithful, having called us into fellowship with Your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
Oh, Lord, we could not, in any conference, plumb the depths and the width and the height and the breadth of this fellowship that we have entered into through Thy precious Son. But we pray, Lord, even as we are gathered together tonight and looking somewhat at the feasts, that You might give us some picture—something in our minds—that helps us realize the blessedness of this place, even this place where You have commanded life forevermore.
And so help us even tonight, by the Holy Spirit, in the fellowship in Christ Jesus our Lord, in Whose name we pray. Amen.
We are called into the fellowship of God’s Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. I read that little section there in 1 Corinthians because, as is the case with the church as it fellowships together, the dimensions and the fullness of the fellowship that is our privilege are often something we come short of.
We come short because we do not realize the principles upon which we can fellowship in fullness. Notice how Paul very kindly spoke to the Corinthians in his introduction, thanking God for the grace of the Lord and the testimony of Christ that was seen in their midst. He mentioned that they were not behind in the gifts of the Spirit, nor in knowledge, nor in ministry, and that they were eagerly awaiting the return of the Lord Jesus.
But then Paul says, if I might put it this way, “But you see, your fellowship needs to be with the Son, Jesus Christ.” If we read on in chapters 2, 3, 4, and even into chapter 5, we see that the fellowship among the Corinthians had taken a horizontal plane.
They were more aware of their gifts than they were of the presence of the Lord; more aware of the different ministries of Apollos, Paul, and Peter than they were of the presence of the Lord in these ministries. They had become horizontal because they were carnal. They were not entering into the more spiritual and precious dimension of the fullness of fellowship, but were rather sort of battering around at each other down here on this earthly plane.
Well, you see, that hinders fellowship. Their flesh was hindering fellowship. Their boastfulness over their gifts of the Spirit was hindering fellowship. Paul, in his precious and loving way, was presenting the cross to the Corinthians in the ways of their immaturity and fleshliness, that they might enter into fullness.
Indeed, they had fullness. We remember that passage in 1 Corinthians 14: when you gather together, somebody has a revelation; somebody has a dream; somebody has an interpretation; somebody has a tongue. They did not come short when it came to getting together.
Unlike some of us, who put on the timid face and dare not say anything as we are gathered together, lest we be exposed as fools, perhaps, for whatever reason—the Corinthians were all out front. They were sharing and competing with each other: “Sit down. I have a word. I sayeth the Lord.” They were really having at it with each other.
But Paul saw life in that. You know, there is life in those gifts, in that knowledge, and in that ministry. But if the cross is not brought to bear on their fleshliness, then that life becomes contentious and divisive.
So Paul, as he does in 1 Corinthians and in the other epistles, is trying to bring the saints into the fullness of fellowship that comes when the Lord Jesus is able to express Himself fully.
We have forever before our eyes, I think, the church in the early chapters of the book of Acts. They had no idea what they had entered into, but they were so full of life. They sensed their oneness, and they sensed the presence of the Lord Jesus everywhere they went. Their fellowship was so rich. They continued steadfastly in fellowship. They could not get enough of fellowship. It was so precious.
How does that compare to sometimes what we call fellowship? It means going over where there is some Kool-Aid—or, I guess today we do not drink Kool-Aid—and having a couple of cookies over at the cafeteria. Then we say, “We will have a time of fellowship,” which means we will find out who won the World Cup match tonight, or whatever. It does not really have too much to do with the Lord.
Fullness of fellowship—how do you describe it? We all want fullness of fellowship, but what is that like? I am suggesting it is like feasting.
Israel was made up of individuals, let us face it—all sinners, all, in the book of Judges, doing what was right in their own eyes. But the Lord says, “Now I am ordering you, on these particular occasions, on these feasts: stop working. Grab your family, come together, and stand as one. That is the testimony I want on these occasions of feasting.”
You can take that negatively if you want: “Oh man, I would so much rather be working.” Today, the movies that come out, especially holiday movies, are all about what it is like to go to a Christmas celebration with the family you cannot stand, or what it is like to celebrate Thanksgiving with your hated relatives.
This is the idea we have now of holidays. A perfect holiday is me doing what I want to do by myself, or maybe with somebody else who likes doing what I like to do. This is how independent we are—how sinful we are. It has always been that way.
But the Lord says, “Now on these occasions you are going to have to deny yourself and get together with the whole crowd.” Here they are singing the Songs of Ascents, and they finally get to Jerusalem and say, “Oh, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity.”
Now, they say that, and maybe it is half by faith—I do not know. The mothers are already tired from dragging the kids up there. You know, those little buggies are hard to push uphill. You ascend from Jericho three thousand feet to get up to Jerusalem, and all that pushing a buggy and feeding the hungry husband—and what kind of fun is that?
Well, there is purpose in quitting your work, purpose in gathering together, and purpose in being one. It is this: the Lord considers the children of Israel one people. That is the testimony He wants—gathered together as one.
“Remember the great saving things that I have done. Remember Me in the Passover. Remember Me in Pentecost. Remember Me in the Feast of Booths. Remember Me and all that I have done. Do not forget these things. Let it be a Sabbath to you. Cease from your own business and cast your eyes upon the things I have done.”
That is the testimony that I order. “At these times of year, you shall have a holy convocation. Stop your work and do what I am telling you to do.”
For Christians, we have a perpetual feast. We do not have to go up to Jerusalem. We can gather together. I cannot believe that anybody who is in here tonight, actually listening to me on a beautiful Friday night, could have any other desire than to continue in fellowship with the saints. This is our privilege, Christians.
The temptation is sometimes just fellowship with the Lord, but as we emphasized last night, no, we must fellowship with one another. As a matter of fact, the Lord has made provision that we cannot come into a fullness of knowing the Lord unless we know the brothers and sisters. There is something for us of the Lord in one another.
Now, I will not comment on people in extraordinary situations, when they are jailed for their faith or in some place where the Lord can do amazing things in revealing Himself. But as a general rule, He has decided, “If you really want to get to know Me, you are going to have to fellowship together with other brothers and sisters. In this fullness, I will reveal Myself.”
How does He reveal Himself? We are looking at these feasts and seeing this life that is presented in them. In Leviticus 23, if you go back there for just a moment, and if you care to count, you will see that there are eight convocations that the Lord calls His children to—eight moments when they are to be called out together. Convocation means to call out together.
The Lord wants to speak to His people. He says, “Gather together; I want to speak with you on these occasions, on these feasts.” We have already looked and seen that the first convocation the Lord prescribes is not a feast in the usual manner—it is a Sabbath.
Yet this Sabbath, this desisting from work, this taking holy time with God, is the basis upon which all the other feasts have their meaning. You will notice tonight, even as we read about the Feast of Firstfruits and the Feast of Pentecost, that they involve Sabbaths. They involve rest. They involve the presence of the Lord in time when all ceases and there is the Lord.
So the very first holy convocation is this: if we are going to really have fullness of fellowship, it has to start within ourselves, where we have entered the rest and we are resting in the rest.
Put it in theological terms: now we are in Christ, and we are resting in the rest because Christ is in us. It is not just that we are in Christ and Christ is in us, but we are in Christ and Christ is in us as our sufficiency.
You will remember in the book of Hebrews, the problem was that the all-sufficient Christ had not been grasped by these Hebrew Christians. So they were restless in the rest. They were in the promised land, but they were not resting.
So it is with Christians who do not know the Sabbath, who violate the Sabbath, who have the life within them but ignore that life within them. They do not care for it. They do not take it seriously. They do not worship in it. They do not spend time just thinking about the Lord and the preciousness of this life that they have.
If you violate the Sabbath, well, you have nothing to give anybody. He has placed that life within us. That life has to be guarded, laid hold of, developed, and fellowshipped.
It is as if the Lord said, “You have been saved by grace. Welcome back to the garden.” And you say, “Oh, it is so good to be back in the Garden of Eden. Lord, I do not have time to talk with You in the cool of the day. I have a lot of things to do. I am cultivating some new plants over here.”
The Lord says, “No, no, no, no. I want you back in the garden, first of all, to meet with Me in the cool of the day—the Sabbath.”
Blessed are those saints who obey the Sabbath. It is not the day or a specific time; it is a living reality with the Lord.
Now out of that first convocation come these feasts. The first feast mentioned in Leviticus 23, a feast as we commonly know it, is the Passover. We see that this is the first feast and the primary feast upon which all the others are built.
If we are not saved by the precious blood of the Lamb, we have nothing to fellowship. But Christ is the Passover Who was sacrificed for us. We have been saved from death by His precious blood. We have been redeemed. We have been bought with a price. We belong to Him now.
We are no longer in Adam; we are now in Christ. We are on a whole new ground. The enemy really cannot get at us if we realize that ground and stand in that ground under the precious blood.
But we mentioned last night: not only under the blood, but sharing the Lamb one with another in the feast of the Passover. Even as, in this world, death is reigning more and more, yet for the saints we are sharing the Lamb of God with one another and growing thereby. What a precious privilege this is. We should enter into the feast.
You remember Paul specifically said, “Christ our Passover has been sacrificed for us. Therefore, let us celebrate the feast.” But he brought up the second feast, which we touched on last night: the Feast of Unleavened Bread.
If we are to enjoy the feast of Passover, we also need to enter into the Feast of Unleavened Bread. What is that? If it was just the feast of Passover that we had to celebrate, then we are all saved, we are all under the blood. So why do we not have more fullness of fellowship?
It is for the very problem that the Corinthians had: their flesh gets in the way. They are babes in Christ, carnal, doing their own things. They do not realize how flesh hinders fellowship.
Instead of passing the Lamb around, I am passing the Lamb around with my own special sauce. It is called Dana sauce. It has a certain New York flavor to it, you know what I mean? Some people like New York flavor. Most people out here do not really like it too much, and it causes division.
“We do not want that sauce. We just want the Lamb.” The trouble is, nobody can just give the Lamb. You might give the Lamb with Southern sauce. You might give the Lamb with Northern California sauce—whatever kind of brand your own sauce is. But see, that is the whole problem. If we are going to fellowship together, we have to be careful with that sauce.
We have to deal with our flesh and not let flesh stand in the way. There we are, fellowshipping together, and inevitably we come up against a rub.
Two people are in conflict because they both wanted to share testimony, but somebody took too long and the other one could not share. Well, now see, that hinders fellowship.
Or people feel they have been hurt by somebody, and now every time they go to the meeting, they look like some kind of sad-sack character. They are in the meeting pouring water on fellowship life because they are sitting there, and everybody can see they are looking sad, hurt, and mean. They are hindering fellowship.
Some people are not passive-aggressive like that. Some people speak right up and start to argue. The next thing you know, all the life goes out of the meeting. We all sense tension. Some people say, “I hate tension. Tension is not from God.”
But unless we deal with our flesh, fellowship is not going to get very deep. So what happens to a lot of people is that as soon as the reality of the Feast of Unleavened Bread comes into our fellowship, we go to another fellowship where it is all just Passover.
There is a lot of provision for places where there is no cross. Just go join in. Go bowl in the alley, or go worship with the saints. Go listen to it, or get it on tape, or just do whatever you want. There are no conditions here. “It is all grace, it is all grace.”
You know what? That fellowship is not full. The Jews could not just have the Feast of Passover and forget about the Feast of Unleavened Bread. They all came together. It was a week-long celebration together, with unleavened bread, remembering the Passover Lamb.
That is where we got to last night, and now tonight we are going to press right on. Let us make a little comparison here.
The Passover Lamb and the blood of Jesus Christ are God’s side of our fellowship. He has provided that so that we can fellowship. He has provided that so that we can be one. It is already there. It is our provision. It is our foundation.
But now, on the human side, we need to be willing to take up our cross and deny ourselves. The Feast of Unleavened Bread is sort of our response. “You are bought with a price. Now you are no longer your own. Now glorify God in your body.”
There is something in the fullness of fellowship that involves what the Lord has done and our response to it.
During that same week of Passover came this third feast that was kind of thrown in, and to the Jews it was quite a minor feast: the Feast of Firstfruits. Why? Because there were just some priests up there in the temple waving these sheaves of barley before the Lord.
Now, it was important to the barley farmers, because it was a prayer that God would bring in the full harvest within fifty days. But that Feast of Firstfruits was just a sort of minor thing. They had another good eat. They went back out to the Chinese restaurant for that occasion too, so they enjoyed the feast.
Actually, the truth of the matter is, according to the Jewish rabbis, most of the Jews did not stay all seven days of Passover—only the really religious ones, mostly from Judea, stayed for the week.
The people from Galilee stayed for Passover, then they stayed for the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the opening convocation, and then they stayed for the Feast of Firstfruits. Along about Tuesday or so, they gathered up the kidaloos and headed down the road back to Galilee. The end of the Feast of Unleavened Bread was another convocation, but they could do that some other time.
So you see, this Feast of Firstfruits, for the Jews, was a bit of a throw-in. When you read the Scriptures, you see that not too much is given to it in the Old Testament. But what an absolute blessing this feast is for us as Christians.
The two feasts we are studying tonight, the Feast of Firstfruits and the Feast of Pentecost, make up the four feasts that speak of Jesus’ first coming.
These first four feasts in the springtime, ending in Pentecost, have to do with all the Lord accomplished in His first coming. There is the precious blood of our salvation; there is the Feast of Unleavened Bread by the work of His cross; there is resurrection ground seen in the Feast of Firstfruits; and there is the Holy Spirit seen in the Feast of Pentecost.
These four are the representation of feasts involving His first coming. The ones we find in the seventh month, which we will touch on tomorrow night, have to do with His second coming.
We see that these two feasts we are studying tonight, Firstfruits and Pentecost, could not be observed when they were first commanded. Why? Because they were harvest feasts, and you had to be in the land—you had to be in Canaan.
Until they got into Canaan, they could not harvest their products. They had no firstfruits to bring in, and they had no final harvest to bring in. They had to wait until they were in the land.
These two feasts have to do with harvest, in a sense, and wonderfully, they were literally fulfilled in the Lord Jesus. The Passover was literally fulfilled by the Lord Jesus. The Feast of Firstfruits was literally fulfilled, and so was Pentecost.
What do we mean by “literally fulfilled”? If you notice there in Leviticus 23, for those who are studying and learning these things for the first time, verse 11 says, “He shall wave the sheaf before the Lord for you to be accepted; on the day after the Sabbath the priest shall wave it.”
That may just sound like some verses that have no meaning until you realize what they are saying. After the Passover, they waited for the Sabbath—that is Saturday. Then, the day after the Sabbath, early in the morning, the priests went into the holy temple to wave those sheaves of barley as the firstfruits and the promise of the coming harvest fifty days hence.
Even as the priests were waving those sheaves in the house of God in 30 AD, Jesus literally rose from the dead—the firstfruits of those who would come after Him. He was the firstfruits of resurrection.
The priests had no idea what was going on, but they must have felt that it was a particularly spiritual occasion somehow. As they waved the barley and made their offerings, they said, “Oh, God, we thank You so much for this harvest that we have in beginning. This is a handful and a promise of the full harvest which is to come.”
Even as they said that, our Lord Jesus rose again from the dead—resurrected, never to die again. The firstfruits literally happened in Jerusalem. What a wonderful thing.
So we read those verses in 1 Corinthians 15. Jesus is the firstfruits before the throne of God. He is resurrected. It means some things for us.
The Feast of Firstfruits was a feast of promise, right? It was a barley sheaf that was a promise of a full harvest to come. There is a sense in which, when we enter into the Feast of Firstfruits, there is a promise involved in that.
What is the promise for us as Christians? We do not fellowship in this enough, but here is the truth of the gospel. It is at least twofold.
Number one: because Christ was raised from the dead by resurrection, we will be resurrected. That is a wonderful promise. It has already been done through Jesus, and the promise is that those who believe in Him will also be raised in resurrection life. I am looking forward to that.
But the second thing is also wonderful, and to see the picture completely, we have to realize this: Jesus was raised with resurrection power, raised ever to be a Man—body, soul, spirit.
Regardless of any kind of crazy fairy tale, or something you saw by watching one of these crazy movies, when we find ourselves together with the Lord, we are going to have a body—a body, a soul, and a spirit. We are going to be human beings, glorified.
We are not going to have a corruptible body. We are going to have an incorruptible body. We are not going to have a weak body. We are going to have a glorified body. It is going to be wonderful, but we will all be human beings.
You will recognize me, and I will recognize you. How? I have no idea, because some of you I only recognize with your glasses on. The Lord will have done your laser thing by then, and we will all be properly trim, or whatever the case may be. I have no idea.
But you are going to be a human being, and I am going to be a human being. We are not going to be Casper the Friendly Ghost. Neither is Jesus some kind of ghost flitting around up there. He is a Man in the glory—a recognizable human being.
Of course, He is completely glorified, emanating life, light, love, and radiance in a way that we cannot comprehend. But so we will be, because when we see Him, we will be like Him. But that includes a body.
So do not believe that you are going to be up there on cloud number nine in your pajamas. You are going to have a body, and you are going to have some work to do with that body. You are going to have a resurrected body that will be able to do it. It is wonderful—sons in glory.
All of this the Feast of Firstfruits speaks of. Just the thought of it brings us into a kind of fellowship. You better get used to one another. Start liking one another. You are going to be around each other.
But here is the point. As we are talking about the Feast of Firstfruits and trying to apply it to our present life, here is the wonderful truth which we all realize, although we cannot enter into the fullness of it: it is not just a promise of that which is to come when we are raised from the dead. It is a present spiritual reality.
We live on resurrection ground. That is the blessing of fellowship. Fellowship is on resurrection ground.
It is hard to even describe what that means, but I am studying the book of Acts in these present days, and I am noticing how much the resurrection was in the thoughts of the early witnesses. They kept saying, “No, no, no, this is not me. Jesus is raised from the dead. I told you that. What you see among us is because He is risen.”
It is almost as if, could I put it reverently, the Lord could not be spotted, but everybody realized He was raised again and somewhere in Jerusalem. Everybody had a sense of expectancy when they gathered together.
That is the whole point. Why did they gather together in those early days in the early church? Because when they gathered together and got their eyes closed, suddenly Jesus was there in resurrection. It was very real to those people who had seen Jesus in the flesh. Maybe it is not so real to us, but it should be.
Our Lord Jesus is raised from the dead. He is alive—very much alive. There are some Christians who pray to God and believe in Jesus, but they do not really realize He is alive, and that He sensitively knows you, waiting to talk to you and for you to talk to Him.
Resurrection ground is our new life. Paul says this extraordinary thing, and I wonder when Paul came to a fullness of understanding of these things that he shares with us in Ephesians. There he was in jail, and the Lord kept showing him deeper and deeper things.
Here he is sharing the gospel with us—not just salvation, but that we are quickened together in Christ, raised up together with Christ, and made to sit in the heavenlies together in Christ Jesus.
There is a wonderful picture of our present state of fellowship. Do we know this fellowship, sitting together in the heavenly places in Christ? This is our resurrection ground now. It is a higher way of life. We are not supposed to be living down on the old plane we were living on before we were saved.
Are we in the heavenlies? We like to quote that. Maybe once in a while you feel that way, that you are in the heavenlies, but you are not sure if it is because you had a fainting spell or what.
But how about when we are together? Are we in the heavenlies together in Christ? Resurrection ground.
The Feast of Unleavened Bread, which says, “Put away the old leaven,” is not meant to stand alone. The very next day comes this grand news that we live on resurrection ground. You cannot allow the cross to deal with you without resurrection coming through the other side.
It is the life of the Lord Jesus that is the fellowship that we have together, and this is on resurrection ground. He is alive. “I am the resurrection and the life.”
I do not want to paint a picture that leaves the impression that every time we get together, some kind of whirlwind comes and all our hair stands up on end, and something miraculous happens every time. If you start running after that, you will end up running right off the cliff.
Our fellowship together is a walk by faith and not by sight. It is not all grand bells and whistles and spiritual experiences, but there are practical times when we experience, “I am the resurrection and the life.”
How do we experience, “I am the resurrection and the life”? Basically, we only experience it when we are at the point of death.
I do not know if you fellowship with brothers and sisters who come near to death sometimes in your meetings, but I have to say I have been there. Have you ever been to a prayer meeting that almost died? It was almost listless to death.
People came in to pray out of duty, a sense of responsibility. The list grew kind of long there. Then we gathered, and pretty much everybody came in right from work. We gathered, sort of as the old man, as it were, dutifully ticking off a bunch of prayers.
The prayer meeting gets going, and then you notice people slouching off. You hear muffled snoring. There are those faithful ones who press on through, and in the vacuum they are likely to pray ten or twelve times while others remain silent. It is all sort of going to the dogs, and you think the prayer meeting is all but dead.
You are ready to pronounce the exhumation—you know, put them in the ground, whatever it is, the last rites. And suddenly, somebody sees it.
We were praying about some problem we have, and somebody sees it from the heavenly point of view. It is like life comes into the meeting. You can almost hear the Spirit come in. We all say, “Wow.”
That which we called the problem—“Oh Lord, please take that thing away from us. We do not even want to know about it; it is such a problem”—suddenly somebody sees it from the heavenly point of view. “The Lord is showing us His victory through this.”
They have a verse, believe it or not, to claim with this heavenly perspective. The rest of us sense, “Amen,” and suddenly there is that sense that something has clicked. Something has been bound; something has been loosed; and life comes into the meeting.
After the meeting, we say, “Oh, was that not a wonderful prayer meeting?” Well, we almost died before that resurrection came.
That is how we have to persevere a lot of times. Maybe you go to a prayer meeting on Wednesday night, or whatever night you meet, and all you have is heavenly experiences. But for most folks, it is warfare. Just to come in on personal resurrection ground is quite a feat, no less to see something from a heavenly perspective.
Usually, you know that the person who has seen something has spent some time praying over the matter. Am I giving away a secret?
The common thing that happens so many times in our meetings is, “Okay, what is our list? Oh, we have this, we have this.” Somebody says, “Well, let us pray for the state of our nation.” Everybody goes, “Oh yeah.”
Then somebody says, “Well, how do we pray for that exactly?” Everybody says, “Well, I do not know. Let us just be as negative as we can be. Ask for general mercy or something.” We have no idea. We have no Scripture to lay hold of. We have no thought regarding how to take hold of something like that. It remains a nebulous thing.
But then there is somebody who has actually been praying about it and says, “You know what? I was praying about the state of our nation, and the Lord gave me this verse.” We all say, “Yeah, yeah, we can go that way.” You know what I am saying? That is life.
We often find that we are almost at the point of death sometimes. We persevere, and the Lord brings us through to life. Oh, He is so faithful.
Sometimes, of course, we come to worship meetings. Oh, it should be the high point of our life, should it not? How come it is heavy so many times?
Worship is earthy. People are kind of scratching out little prayers, but hey, I recognize that prayer. That guy prayed that same thing last week. Then we try to liven it up by trotting out our favorite hymns, but even that does not work.
Maybe we even sense that the enemy is sitting on that worship time, and we just do not know what to do. It is just not happening. “This is lousy worship. Oh boy, the people who like those old hymns have taken over, and now we are dead.”
Or the young people are going away with all the feely-feely choruses. “Oh boy, no substance in this worship.” Whatever. We are just at the point of seeming almost dead.
Then one of the priests—we are all priests—but one of the priests, before coming to the meeting, was on their knees. They found a song in their heart and a way that they could respond to the Lord as a result of things in their life that week.
They bring into the midst of our wandering worship just the right song. Do you not love it when there is just the right song? Not the favorite song, but just the right song.
Suddenly it is like everybody wakes up. “Oh yeah.” We start to sing it. Maybe it is a song of victory, and suddenly the enemy flees. Maybe it is that prayer after the song that just makes us realize what a privilege we have before the Lord’s table.
Resurrection ground.
Many times, you know, in Bible studies, we have gathered around the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We have trotted out little sayings, and people are talking Bible. The guy is leading the Bible study, and you say, “You know what? I think I read that in Watchman Nee last week, word for word.”
It is just all words, and we have gotten technical. We have actually lost our place in the Bible because we were wandering off somewhere far out of the realm of anything the Bible wants to say to us about Jesus.
Then, once again—I will say this time, a sister—she studied those verses before we had the Bible study. Not like most of us, on the fly, or maybe on your BlackBerry: “Zoop, zoop, okay, I am ready for that chapter.”
But somebody studied about it. They thought about it a little bit, and actually something happened in their life that they could apply a verse in that chapter to. They bring it in, and it opens the whole Bible study up in this life.
There are three simple examples, but what I am trying to say is this: the more you and I individually come into a meeting of fellowship on resurrection ground, the more life we have.
Why is it just that there are only a few? Really, we should be ashamed sometimes of how ill-prepared we are to meet with the Lord our God. We never even gave it a thought.
We fly in there, and the brothers say, “Okay, we have to start with something. Who has a hymn?” A guy just rolls open a page. “There we go—420.”
But no, it has been thought about. A song has been thought about. I like the way we opened here tonight. I like the way Jeremy opened tonight. He thought about something. This wisdom bringing life—that is a wonderful way to start.
When Jeremy opened with that little living beginning, it was not like we all flew out of here and said, “Woo!” But we felt life.
As you become responsible about that Sabbath in your life, we are going to touch a fullness of fellowship on resurrection ground. May it be that we have such experiences of that, that it forever spoils us from dead meetings.
There is a larger church context out there that provides a sort of ready-made, instant worship and Bible study that you can enter into without any effort at all. But I am telling you, in the long run, you may enter that. It is sort of like we are looking for life, and down comes this giant space star. Everything is repackaged, and you just enter into it.
Your hair goes up, and the song is so wonderful. The guy preaches a message that has no cross to it or nothing. You say, “Yes, it is wonderful.” You meet twenty-five hundred other young people your same age, and you say, “Hey, I am coming back to the space star.”
But after ten years, you have not grown at all. You have not found a hymn. You have not offered a prayer yourself. You are just up there rooting for the guys in the front doing all the work. We have it pre-made already now. This is a prefab worship job.
You know, I like a thousand watts of worship too. But I think the Lord wants us all on resurrection ground, with something to contribute out of this life, and not just responding to what others have come up with.
In these last fifteen years, there have been some tremendous worship songs that have really come out. We were singing some of them tonight—wonderful songs. I have no problem with these songs. When they are truly Christ-centered and have substance, I like them myself.
But we cannot always have radical worship where we just get lost up in some huge space star for a while. No, here is resurrection ground: you are alive, and you have contributed something to the life. So now we are all alive. This is the fellowship that is full.
That leads us, of course, right into the next one, which is the Feast of Pentecost—another feast that was literally fulfilled, as we read in Acts 2.
There were Jews in Jerusalem to celebrate that feast. It is very interesting there in the Greek: there is an interpretation you could make which says, “And when Pentecost was fulfilled.”
They had been celebrating Pentecost for a thousand years. It was a harvest celebration. The barley had come in, the wheat had come in, and they had peace offerings to give and a wonderful feast. “Thank God for the harvest of the wheat and the barley.”
Since this was one of the three feasts where you had to come three times a year as a male with an offering, a thanksgiving offering, the Jews soon came to a deeper understanding of Pentecost.
Most of you probably know that it is a tradition that the Jews believed that, after leaving Egypt, fifty days later they ended up at Sinai, where God gave the Ten Commandments. Whenever they celebrated Pentecost, the fifty days, they celebrated the giving of the law by God through Moses.
This became a basis and foundation of their covenant and of their nation as one. They were one under this covenant, the Torah, that was given on Mount Sinai. This is what they celebrate even today. You say, “What do you do at Pentecost?” They say, “We celebrate the giving of the law.”
Of course, here it was for these one hundred and twenty waiting in the upper room. On the day of Pentecost, when it was time for its fulfillment, a rush of divine life came from Heaven.
Let us never forget: the Holy Spirit is God Himself, Who was poured out upon these one hundred and twenty. Something began that was absolutely unbelievable. We are to enter into this feast.
Of course, we are talking about the Lord giving us the Holy Spirit. This is our fellowship in Pentecost. I know that word has been taken and made denominational, but we are all Pentecostals if we understand it in its right terms.
These miracles that happened on the day of Pentecost have happened to us as well. That is why the New Testament talks about the fact that our fellowship is the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.
How do we fellowship with God the Father? Through the Holy Spirit. How do we fellowship with Jesus Christ? Through the Holy Spirit. How do we fellowship with one another? Through the Holy Spirit.
It was on the day of Pentecost that the Holy Spirit was poured out, and we received this wonderful Holy Spirit. We see it in at least three simple ways that every one of us knows.
First of all, as was promised, those who waited were clothed from on high with power to witness to the resurrected Lord Jesus.
They knew the Lord had been raised again. They had met Him over a period of forty days. But how were they going to witness that to the people in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the uttermost part? How do you witness to that? Do you just say, “Well, you have to believe me. I saw Him”?
No. The Lord poured out His Spirit as testimony to the fact that He is resurrected. He is the Messiah and the Lord, Who is sitting at the right hand of the Father, and this is what you now see and hear.
Of course, to the Jews, this was a fulfillment of what would happen when the Messiah was crowned as King: that He would be a Messiah of the Holy Spirit. This all made a lot of sense to them. Maybe we do not see the connection immediately, but there it was.
They were empowered by the Holy Spirit. Our fellowship is in the power of the Holy Spirit. Our testimony to the resurrection of Jesus is in the power of the Holy Spirit. We cannot avoid this clothing that has been sent from Heaven and laid upon all who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.
But even more wonderfully, here they were invested with this power, witnessing to the Lord Jesus and His resurrection, and three thousand people were saved.
At that same moment, the Spirit was poured out for the first time in the history of humanity—save for the Lord Jesus Himself—and the Holy Spirit came inside to dwell. Men were born again by the Spirit.
Suddenly, this Spirit, God, came inside lives. This indwelling Spirit fulfilled all that was told us in John 14, John 15, and John 16. He came as a Comforter. He came to teach us the things of Jesus. He came to lead us.
This precious Holy Spirit has become such a part of our lives that we take it for granted. We should never take that for granted—the indwelling Holy Spirit.
Just think of one thing: the comfort of the Holy Spirit. There have been some times when, on a trip of ministry out into the far reaches somewhere, I have been absolutely alone in an airport for thirty-two hours because of this and that. But I have never been alone, because the Holy Spirit dwells in me.
There are people that you might even know, especially if you are a young person, who are afraid to turn off the radio, television, or cell phone because they cannot stand the loneliness they feel, even in the midst of a crowd.
How could we take that for granted? I always sense this presence leading in life, or cramping my life, or convicting me, or encouraging me. There is One Who dwells within us.
Let us join that feast of fellow ones who have also received the Spirit, because that is how we fellowship the Lamb with one another: by the Holy Spirit. This indwelling presence is so precious, so valuable, so willing to hang in there with us despite all we go through.
There He is, given on the day of Pentecost. Oh, what a fullness of feast we could have if we would enter into this fullness.
Not only were we clothed with power from on high, and not only did we receive this indwelling Holy Spirit, but we were baptized in one Spirit into the body of Christ.
Can you imagine how strange it felt when Peter stood up to preach and the eleven stood up? They said, “Oh, why did I just stand up?” It was because the eleven were one. They were members of one body, and they intuitively knew it.
Paul was probably the one who saw this revelation, certainly the one who shared it the most in the Word: the body of Christ. If you talked to somebody the day after Pentecost, back in 30 AD, and asked them, “Well, did you know you are the body of Christ?” they would say, “What are you talking about?”
You would say, “Well, do you not know that because of the Spirit, you are one with your brothers and sisters?” “Oh yeah, I know that. I cannot explain it. I do not know how you explain it, but I know it.”
It is so much better to know it than to be able to explain it. We have been made one. That is why the Lord forces us to get along: because we are one in the Spirit.
The fact of the matter is, forget the teaching about the vine and the branches. He is the vine; you are the branches. It is not a teaching. This is a reality. We are the body of Christ. We are individually members of Him. We are all together in one.
We all may be very different, but is it not interesting? We all have the same treasure in us. If we can ever get the chips off our shoulders so that treasure comes out, we say, “Hey, that is my brother. Hey, that is my sister.”
We are one, made one by this baptism of the Holy Spirit.
How do you describe this fullness of fellowship, this Feast of Firstfruits, this Feast of Pentecost? How do you describe it? Could I just take it back to Psalm 133? To me, that describes it.
“Oh, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity.” We did not make the unity. We do not have to keep the unity. It is just there.
“It is like the ointment upon the head, coming down upon the beard, even Aaron’s beard.” Oh, but we have a greater than Aaron now: the Lord Jesus, the Messiah, our High Priest.
When He sat down at the right hand of the Father, the Father said, “This is the greatest moment in the history of the world since You died on the cross.”
Now, because of what You have done—the Father said, please, this is just imagery—the Father took this huge container that only God the Father could hold and turned it over on top of the Lord Jesus’ head.
Down came the oil upon the Lord Jesus as the Head, down off His beard and down onto the body. There was an anointing on earth. This is the fullness of fellowship.
I remember one time I first started seeing some people in Raleigh, North Carolina, and I was still a wild Indian. I was, you know, a pastor of something—I do not even want to get into it.
Anyway, I talked to somebody who was fellowshipping in a smaller meeting, and I would say, “Yeah, well, you know what? These folks need the baptism of the Spirit.”
The guy said to me, “Well, how are you going to get the baptism of the Spirit?” I said, “Well, you go to Jesus to baptize you, and you ask Him for the baptism of the Spirit.”
He said, “Well, what do you think about this? Do you think He would baptize in His Spirit if we really got under His throne? Do you not think the oil would just come off His head and come down upon us?”
I said, “Hmm. I never thought of that before.”
But the more we, as brothers and sisters, when we gather, are under the headship of our Lord Jesus, the more there is the reality of the Holy Spirit that pours down upon us.
It is not a matter of denying in any way that you should personally pursue those spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy according to the Word of God. I have nothing against people finding the fullness of the Holy Spirit. I am just talking about when we come together.
It is a shame when we come together as Spirit-filled individuals, and the sum of our parts is less than we are. Something is missing.
We need to be under the throne, where the Lord can reveal Himself and move upon the body—just being under that beard of the Lord Jesus, where the oil can come down. Oh, this is the blessing.
Then it says it is like the dew of Hermon, the dew that descended upon the mountains of Zion. But we have better than the dew of Hermon. We have this precious Holy Spirit on resurrection ground.
It is there for us, nurturing our Bible studies, nurturing our times of prayer, nurturing our fellowship with one another on whatever kind of basis. When we live on resurrection ground, there is that dew of Hermon. It is God’s blessing.
Listen: “For there the Lord commanded the blessing.”
Who could resist being in a place where the Lord commands the blessing? Every one of us has been surprised by His blessing at some time or another. But how about the place where the Lord commands the blessing?
Even chaim—life forever. Hey, I think we are in that place already.
Feasting in fellowship, feasting by the Holy Spirit. Paul just says it as a matter of fact, but oh, may it be our reality when we fellowship together.
“Do not get drunk with wine; that is dissipation. Here is what you do: be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.”
Whoa, what a meeting. Singing and making melody in your heart, being joyful in all things, giving thanks unto God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. There is a Spirit-filled meeting right there—psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, some full of the Spirit.
When I went to seminary, the first year I went, we were all Baptists, you see. One of the guys that snuck into the seminary—I do not know how he did it—was Assembly of God.
One Sunday he said, “Danny, have you ever heard of Revival Hour?” I said, “I have no idea.” He said, “Well, it is a special gospel program on the radio, run by C. M. Ward, the Assembly of God, and he is down here in Louisville.” That is where I went to seminary.
He said, “Do you want to go hear him?” I said, “Hmm, sounds good. Be on the radio? I am in.” So we went down to this Assembly of God church and snuck in the back, you know, being Baptists. You do not want to get up too close.
They started the thing. They had the radio program, the choir sang, and he preached the gospel. But do you know what lasted with me? That was forty or fifty—this is a long time ago.
Do you know what I still remember? I remember that when we just got in the door, the leader said, “Okay, now the radio is going to start in five minutes. Why do we not sing a song before the radio show starts?” He said, “Let us sing ‘When We All Get to Heaven.’”
Now, I had been a Baptist by then at least two years. I had only been a Christian two years, but I had heard the Baptists sing “When We All Get to Heaven,” and it did not sound anything like this.
These folks cut open and sang like they were going out in the next bus. They really wanted to go to Heaven. We Baptists were not even sure if there was a Heaven, or whatever.
I do not know what it was, but I will never forget that Spirit-filled singing. They sang “When We All Get to Heaven.” That is the first time I ever heard it sung so wonderfully, so full of heart.
Sometimes I wonder if we do not err on the Baptist side when we are singing. We are just kind of… Who wants to go out on that bus?
Full of the Spirit, singing to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your hearts to the Lord. Oh, praise God.
I love it when we have fullness of fellowship: under the blood of the Passover Lamb; feasting with the unleavened bread of sincerity and purity; knowing that the Firstfruits have risen from the dead, and that we now can live in fellowship on resurrection ground.
And knowing that we can fellowship because of this Holy Spirit Who has been poured out so freely upon us. There, the Lord commands the blessing.
Under the Son, under the Lord, there is the blessing—life forever.
Lord, may that be our portion. Oh, do show us how to live in the fullness of fellowship, we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.