As we look around the world we live in today, we are likely to see a consistent theme in most places we look.
That theme is one of indulgence.
A theme that focuses on the self and only the self. It will spill out in a manner of ways such as materialism, idealism, and most of all, self-absorption. And a product of this kind of culture is an extensive accumulation of just too much stuff.
Take the internet as an example. We have access to an embarrassing amount of data that would have been unimaginable 40, 50, 60 years ago.
We can essentially from a foundational level of knowledge to some degree of whatever we like. We can essentially travel to anywhere we would like to depend on how much the finances stretch. We can essentially buy anything we would like from anywhere we fancy through businesses such as Amazon etc.
We can indulge in our stuff.
But how many of us are aware that this isn’t necessarily always a good thing? For one, we come into contact with an immensely overwhelming quantity of information to process through ads up to 1,600 a day! If we do the math this equates to 584,000 a year.
Madness.
However, if this isn’t bad enough, there is a second kind of symptom from an indulgence culture. That is ‘Choice Overload’ which has the clue in the name. Our brains basically become frazzled with the number of options it has at its disposal that it becomes dysfunctional. I’m sure some of us have had this experience or can think of someone who suffers from this.
From this understanding, the illogical conclusion can be made that there is a level of indulgence that an individual can get to, that leaves them in a greater state of dysfunction than they were before. In essence, the observation could be made that the people in our culture are now in an inward state of greater dysfunction, despite being in the midst of ever-increasing earthy resource.
Maybe architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe was right when he made the statement that less is more. If this principle came out of the world of architecture, then how much more valuable should it be to the human function?
Less is more.
Let us pause however and take a bit of a step back. If we are to potentially concur with this indulgent strain in culture to some extent, then we must look at its impact on how we live.
How does an obsession of accumulation affect a people’s lifestyle in a community?
Well if we are to begin adding a cost-of-living crisis, ever-increasing inflation, and salaries deliberation to this indulgence melting pot, we can find ourselves becoming marked. Marked with a need for security that leads to a restriction to both the people and things we once did before. In other words, the hands that were once lousily opened become increasingly clinched in hope to retain what is already there.
We become caught up in the consistent pursuit of more that only intensifies in an atmosphere of threatening lack.
‘I now try even harder to ensure I have enough to satisfy myself.’
‘I now put even more dependence upon my individual efforts to provide for myself.’
‘If I had to put this much effort to get myself this far, how much more must I have to do in a time of incoming lack.’
The self-dependency appears to only manifest and ultimately spiral to a point where the idea of sacrifice is in the box of old religious rituals. And the idea of relying on God to provide for us is an even greater foreign concept to the 21st century individual.
What we see is that the cultural lens tends to increasingly muddy our moral compass that is to be utterly based off God and how He teaches us to live. Therefore we must become realigned to what the word of God has to say about our actions with what we have under out stewardship. While this can include money, it can equally be the blessings in our lives that the Lord has graced us with.
But the question remains...
What would God say to us today about how we navigate this indulgent culture we are in? Would He be in the camp of ‘More, more, more, more? Or in the camp of ‘Get rid of everything’? Or somewhere in between?
Let’s take a dive into the Old Testament in Deuteronomy to see God’s heart for how we steward that which has been entrusted to us by Him.
Deuteronomy 26:1-2:
“When you have entered the land the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance and have taken possession of it and settled in it, take some of the first fruits of all that you produce from the soil of the land the Lord your God is giving you and put them in a basket. Then go to the place the Lord your God will choose as a dwelling for his Name.”
This passage finds itself in an interesting place in the Israelite story. God is promising to His people that He will exalt an obedient Israel to set them higher above any other nation that He has made. But it is equally in a time that is after the Israelites have entered into the blessing God had for them. Their lack of faithfulness to their God, who had led them out of captivity, prevented them from heading straight to the land of abundance. They had a tendency to become indulged in what was around them rather than who they were with.
But regardless, God gave them direction on how to handle the blessing they were going to have ownership of, and it’s here where we get introduced to the idea of first fruits.
First fruits can be something that the modern-day believer isn’t overly familiar with (I know I’m not!), but it is something that appears to carry significant importance. It can be summarised as the giving of a person’s first substance to God. The act of submitting the thing that God has given into our lives first, before we even begin to touch it. This was a literal process for those who were living in this timeframe. They were to take the first of their physical fruitsharvested and offer them as a pleasing sacrifice for the Lord to both delight and dwell in. It was a sacred first act on the soil of the Lord’s land that they now had possession of, and it clearly mattered to God.
It's at this stage that you might begin to question the relevancy of this contextual information in a culture of indulgence.
How does this impact how I steward that which God has given me?
How will this affect the actions I take in a self-absorbed culture?
How does this influence everything I’ve worked for up until this stage?
Firstly, it is clear to see from Deuteronomy 26 that everything the Lord desires from us is already His. This first fruits were harvested from the land known as the Lord’s in scripture. The fruit was grown and cultivated in the Lord’s possession, therefore was always already His before the Israelites could get their hands on it. However, as we run with this thinking pattern, I struggle to see the logic in giving something to someone that is already theirs. It’s like me coming into your house to grab an item that is yours, and then proceeding to give you that which you already had.
Makes perfect sense, right?
But the more I wrestle with the human need for logical thinking, the more I become open to what the Lord might have been doing through the first fruits. If we are to believe scripture’s revelation that the earth is the Lord’s and everything in it, and that He owns the cattle on a thousand hills, then my mind begins to be probed that this might have been for the people’s growth from a place of indulgence to sacrifice. I think maybe God was up to something more than being insecure and needing that which was already His. I think maybe God might have been wanting to do something in His people’s hearts while receiving the glory and honour He deserves.
He was training His people to handle abundance.
He was preparing their hearts for the overwhelming provision that the people of God are designed to live by. The idea of people to give the first and often best of their harvest straight to Lord as a sacrifice was to remove the temptation of becoming distracted in the blessing. See in a culture of consumption, the people of God are called to set the standard in how to handle their stuff. People sit up and take notice with how you manage the things that are in your life. And secular culture can trickle and rub off into our Christian cultures and ultimately muddy our perception on how to handle the fruits God has graciously sown in our lives.
The fruits in your life are to be a testament of the mark of God on your life.
Deuteronomy 26:9-11 puts it this way:
“He brought us to this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey; and now I bring the first fruits of the soil that you, Lord, have given me.” Place the basket before the Lord your God and bow down before him. Then you and the Levites and the foreigners residing among you shall rejoice in all the good things the Lord your God has given to you and your household.”
My goodness! This is gold when you have just looked at what we have previously discussed. The value in their remembrance of the faithfulness of God, makes it their greatest honour to joyfully place their basket as an offering before the Lord.
And it doesn’t stop there.
The people that were living among them at that time will take notice of the importance of giving their first fruits and actually respond in worship and rejoice in the goodness of God. The others will just watch and be so stirred by the offering they are watching being giving that they can’t help but rejoice in the Lord.
So we may proceed to the final question in this journey of first fruits that is:
What is the importance of this in the culture I live in today?
Well we started off this discussion by making the observation that are culture is one that loves to indulge and consume on stuff upon stuff upon stuff. That this fills us with a longing for accumulation that must be tamed in our lives.
As we recognise where we find ourselves today, we see in scripture that God longs to set His people free from desires that tend to distract us from Him. And through the recognition of the sacrifice of giving our first fruits, we can see that this not only reorientates us back to focusing on Him over our stuff, but equally it’s power to testify of the faithfulness of God causing those around to rejoice.
By you learning how to steward the first fruits of your life that God has given, a whole new way can be opened to cause someone to rejoice in the goodness of God. By us taking the blessings that He has entrusted to us and placing them in a basket as an offering before Him, others can have a greater revelation into the nature of the Lord finding reason to praise.
In a time where it makes the most sense to continue this unrelenting cycle of accumulation, why not be the one who continues to honour the Lord with your first fruits and send shockwaves through the rest of your community?
The simple act of giving that which is already the Lord’s, back to Him as an offering, may be the very thing that removes the veil that had prevented those around you from seeing the goodness of God.
And we see the very phrase of first fruits being used to describe Jesus in 1 Corinthians 15:20:
“But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.”
We can be encouraged that the very impersonation of the first fruits is someone who dwells within us, is closer than a brother, and calls us His friend. We have access to the first fruits that wakes us from our darkened sleep. Or in the words of Paul in Romans, wakes from our slumber in this hour we find ourselves in as we recognise Jesus as the personification of first fruits, the best and most valuable part of the harvest.
Jesus is the living embodiment of first fruits. The best and most valuable harvest there could ever be!
A final verse to cover the underlying question of ‘why’ we give our first fruits can be found in just 7 words in 1 John 4:19:
“We love because he first loved us.”
As we come to the end of our exploration of first fruits in scripture, we can come to the conclusion that we can only give him our first fruits, because He gave us His love first to us. Knowing our imperfection, He still decided to be the first love for our lives which is why nothing else put in that place can withstand the pressure of holding such significance.
We only have the capacity to do this because of the first love He has shown us. It’s why the statement can often be made that “it takes God for me to love God.” Essentially meaning that we can’t find the capacity in our own strength alone to give Him our first fruits, but rather the first love we have received from Him carries divine resource which ultimately enables us to give.
The act of giving our first fruits alone will not be enough in itself to break a cycle of indulgence in our culture. But when we give our first fruits out of the place of love for the Lord, that type of harvest causes people around to sit up and take notice.
Throwing money at problems might solve an earthy problem, but it will never be enough to shape hearts that are broken. It may look like the giving of first fruits but it fails to carry the substance from the Lord that changes a life.
The substance that causes ‘the Levites and the foreigners’ to rejoice in the goodness of God with the fruits he Has blessed you with to give to Him.
This is the power of the first fruits in our lives today.
A power that comes with a responsibility to steward well that which has been given to the believer.
A holy opportunity to expose those that reside amongst you to the goodness of the Lord.
Let us be found glorifying the Lord with all that we have that we may find the “place the Lord [our] God will choose as a dwelling for his Name” in our lives today.
Commenti