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Leviticus 23:9-17; Leviticus 24:5-7.
By George Davison
And the meat offering thereof shall be two tenth deals of fine flour mingled with oil,
an offering made by fire unto the LORD for a sweet savour:
Leviticus 23:13
While we do not find one reference to the truth of the body of Christ in the Old Testament, we do find references to the company of whom this great mystery is true; and so, from these Old Testament Scriptures, I wish to follow what has already been said, that Christ will stamp His features on every family brought into blessing in the world to come and will thus fill the whole scene with the impress of His grace and of His glory.
The Sheaf of Firstfruits with which we begin, is one of the early pictures of the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ from among the dead. Higher up, in the feast of the Passover, we have in type the Lord going into death; but here we have His resurrection before us with many of the implications which flow from it. The first one to notice is, "When ye be come into the land," v. 10. This feast is evidently connected with the time when they crossed the Jordan and entered the land. As already noticed, the pre-eminent place where we have the answer to this in the New Testament is the epistle to the Ephesians. "Blessed . . with all spiritual blessings," would be the answer to "the land." That this began with the resurrection of our Lord is evident, and now He is crowned with glory and with honour at the right hand of God.
In the margin you will see a note that this Sheaf is really an "omer." In the giving of the manna you remember, God said, "an omer for every man." Whether one gathered much or little, it was all measured so that each one had his full quota, "an omer for every man." A full Christ for every man was the thought of God. At the end of that chapter, Ex. 16:33, we read, "Take a pot, and put an omer full of manna therein, and lay it up before the LORD." An omer then was the measure of Christ coming into this world to meet the need of man and in doing so, manifest the grace and glory of God. We read in this chapter, it was also an "omer" of firstfruits where we now have His resurrection. The One who descended into this world is the One Who ascended back to God in all His glory. This time, it is connected with "the harvest." The harvest for us is our association with Him as brought into all the blessings that are in Him in the presence of God.
There was also brought with this Sheaf a meat offering of "two tenth deals of fine flour mingled with oil." I do not know what these measures mean but one thought I have often connected with them is, that ten is the number of responsibility in man, love to God and love to man. While every other man failed to render to God what was His due and to his neighbour what was his due, one Man has completely answered to both, for our Lord never failed in either. Brought in here with the Sheaf, this meat offering would remind us that the Man who has gone to Glory as raised from among the dead, is the same Man Who ever glorified God in this world in every step of His pathway. The angel said of Him, "this same Jesus" as He went into heaven, and now He is the pattern of that new heavenly family as we read in 1 Cor. 15:48.