This Is Why We Must Celebrate The Harvest (Deuteronomy 26) A Sermon by Elise Beatrice

This Is Why We Must Celebrate The Harvest (Deuteronomy 26)

A Sermon by Elise Beatrice - 19 May 2025

So, we are reading Deuteronomy 26

“When you enter the land the Lord Your God is giving you as a special possession and you have conquered it and settled there, 2 put some of the first produce from each crop you harvest into a basket and bring it to the designated place of worship—the place the Lord your God chooses for His name to be honored. 3 Go to the priest in charge at that time and say to him,

“‘With this gift I acknowledge to the Lord your God that I have entered the land He swore to our ancestors He would give us.’ 4 The priest will then take the basket from your hand and set it before the altar of the Lord your God. 5 “You must then say in the presence of the Lord your God, ‘My ancestor Jacob was a wandering Aramean who went to live as a foreigner in Egypt. His family arrived few in number, but in Egypt they became a large and mighty nation. 6 When the Egyptians oppressed and humiliated us by making us their slaves, 7 we cried out to the Lord, the God of our ancestors. He heard our cries and saw our hardship, toil, and oppression. 8 So the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a strong hand and powerful arm, with overwhelming terror, and with miraculous signs and wonders. 9 He brought us to this place and gave us this land flowing with milk and honey! 10 And now, O Lord, I have brought you the first portion of the harvest you have given me from the ground.’ Then place the produce before the Lord your God, and bow to the ground in worship before Him. 11 Afterward you may go and celebrate because of all the good things the Lord your God has given to you and your household. Remember to include the Levites and the foreigners living among you in the celebration. 12 “Every third year you must offer a special tithe of your crops. In this year of the special tithe you must give your tithes to the Levites, foreigners, orphans, and widows, so that they will have enough to eat in your towns. 13 Then you must declare in the presence of the Lord your God, ‘I have taken the sacred gift from my house and have given it to the Levites, foreigners, orphans, and widows, just as you commanded me. I have not violated or forgotten any of your commands. 14 I have not eaten any of it while in mourning; I have not handled it while I was ceremonially unclean; and I have not offered any of it to the dead. I have obeyed the Lord my God and have done everything you commanded me. 15 Now look down from your holy dwelling place in heaven and bless your people Israel and the land you swore to our ancestors to give us—a land flowing with milk and honey.’”

I asked the Lord, “Lord, You sent me to read this. Does this apply to us today? Just like the unleavened bread festival, the Lord said it applies to us; He also said this one applies to us.

People would refer to this as a tradition. But if the Lord says that this applies to us even today, then, even if it is a tradition, it is God’s law He ordained that has become a tradition. Like, it is our tradition to follow the Bible, right? The Christians must follow the Lord’s regulations and respect God’s principles and live their lives by the Lord’s ways, which becomes their tradition, it becomes who they are, right? So, Christians are called Christians because they live a life pleasing to the Lord. True Christians must live a life pleasing to the Lord, and their behaviour and lifestyle must be pleasing to God, not away from His principles. You can call it the tradition of the Christians because they follow the Lord Jesus Christ and His Commandments and do His Father’s will. At least, it is how a true Christian must live. So, the Christians are those who must live to please God and to reflect in their behaviour the beautiful Characteristics of the Lord Jesus Christ and follow His teachings, abide by His words that help us to live according to His ways.

So, if the Lord is telling us that these Tithes and the Harvest apply to us, then we must understand why they apply to us. Why is it important to God that we also do this today?

There is more to it than that. And when people understand the meaning behind the Harvest, just as the Lord taught me the real meaning behind the Festrival of Unleavened bread and why we should celebrate it even today. The same applies here, that if we understand truly what this is about, we will understand, “Oh, we should’ve always been doing it. It is something we should’ve always been doing. We should never have stopped, we should never have just referred to it as a tradition of the Israelites, because being the servants of the Lord, and being the children of the God of Israel, it does not just become ’a physical Israelite matter,’ but it becomes a matter for all the spiritual Israelites.

I mean, since through our Lord Jesus Christ, we are actually adopted by God, the Father, Who Is the God of Israel, that makes us, the Christians of today, who remain truthful to the teachings of Christ, the spiritual Israelites. We will never be the physical Israelites, because we were not born in Israel. However, every Christian who accepts Christ and God adopts them, and they become His sons and daughters, through His Son, Jesus, we become the spiritual Israelites. And what God is seeing is that if we’re His children, we should listen to Him even today. It is not just a matter of the physical Israelites.

The Lord is explaining to me what this truly means. I don’t live in Israel, I don’t understand even the culture of the Israelites, but the Bible is here, and the Lord is the One inspiring me and teaching me for me to understand.

So as we can see here, when He is saying,

“When you enter the land the Lord Your God is giving you as a special possession and you have conquered it and settled there, 2 put some of the first produce from each crop you harvest into a basket and bring it to the designated place of worship—the place the Lord your God chooses for His name to be honored. 3 Go to the priest in charge at that time and say to him, ‘With this gift I acknowledge to the Lord your God that I have entered the land He swore to our ancestors He would give us.’ 4 The priest will then take the basket from your hand and set it before the altar of the Lord your God.”

If we’re reading this today, we may say to ourselves, “This doesn’t apply to us because we never entered the land of Canaan, and we never cultivate anything in the land of Canaan for us to donate to priests.” But we are just looking at it superficially. We must understand the meaning behind the Land of Canaan and why it is so important.

The Land of Canaan is symbolizing a place that belongs to God. Israel is symbolising God’s people. In order to settle in the land of Canaan, they cannot settle with evil in it; they must first clear the land of all evil.

And that is prophesying how God will come down and first clear the earth from sins before bringing the New Earth, and it will be a land flowing with milk and honey. So, they had entered the land of Canaan and were now in the land God had promised them. That land of Canaan is a place that is flowing with milk and honey, a place that sin cannot enter it, a place where they will be resting, and that is symbolising Christ, in whom we rest.

In Psalm 95:11, God expresses His righteous anger and declares that those who tested Him in the wilderness would not enter His Rest, referring to the Promised Land. The ‘Rest’ He spoke about, as I understood, is not just a physical place but His Son Jesus, in whom we rest and find peace. Christ, Who is our promised Land, God’s promised Land for those who listen to His Son, Jesus Christ, for in Him, everything is beautiful, in Him, we’re safe and saved. In Him we produce good fruits and live eternally. He is the Land flowing with Milk and Honey, for in Christ, we never go hungry, never go thirsty, for He provides abundantly. It is why God, the Father, did not let anyone who practised sin in the wilderness enter the Land of Canaan, just as He will not let sin enter the New Jerusalem. For sin cannot enter God’s perfect Rest; Christ. But all children who are not old enough to know right from wrong can enter Christ, who is God’s Rest. This is why the children are the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven, and unless we are like little children, as the Lord Jesus says, we cannot enter the Kingdom of God.

Psalms 95:11

So, if we are loving sin, practising sin, we cannot enter Christ. If we disobey the Father, we cannot enter His Son, His perfect REST. Refusing to listen to His Son, as commanded by the Father, means refusing to do His Father’s will.

God cannot settle where evil is. That’s why, when He comes again, He will first drive out all evil, and once satan is in his bottomless pit, and his false prophets and antichrist are already in hell, He will bring the New Jerusalem down to Earth, to the clean Earth.

The Israelites had been in the wilderness for forty years, and now, finally, they were in the land, where they could actually plant crops and harvest them. So, it was important that God decreed this, that they should bring the first Harvest to Him to acknowledge all the great things He has done. God rescuing them from the land of Egypt and bringing them to the Land of Canaan is foreshadowing and symbolising how God rescues us from the world and journeys with us through life in the wilderness, where many sufferings, trials and tribulations, attacks and oppressions happen, and only those who listen to Him and walk alongside Him make it to the Promised Land, flowing with milk and honey and perfect rest, and we will reign on Earth with Christ for a thousand years.

When Christ comes again, He will perform lots of mighty wonders in order to get satan off the Earth, and to defeat all His enemies and to put satan in the bottomless pit. That will be again the next time we will see God’s mighty wonders, God at work. It will be a time people will hear about. Everyone will witness that from all over the earth, just like in that time in Egypt, everyone who was in the world had heard of God’s mighty power in the land of Egypt. So, this is why it is important that once they settle in the Land of Canaan, they should bring that first Harvest to God to thank Him for all the great things He did. And if we, today, remove ourselves from this, it’s like we don’t belong. It’s like we may call God our Father and that He adopted us, but we don’t want to be part of what He does.

God’s mighty wonders in the land of Egypt freed the Israelites from the land of Egypt. That is symbolising all believers who are trapped in the world and will be delivered by God. When Father God used Moses to save His people physically, He would use Christ to save His people spiritually. And once we are saved spiritually, given that we accept that salvation and repent of our sins and live for God, then that salvation will remain. Because Christ saved us spiritually, even us today, we will enter that land of Canaan when Christ comes again.

If Christ had never died on the Cross to save us spiritually, we would be nowhere near the land of Canaan. The land of Canaan is not just a physical land; it’s also symbolising the spiritual land, the spiritual land that only God will bring to earth. God alone can bring Heaven to earth.

So, if you believe the Book of Revelation and the prophecies, and that you are part of it, then you cannot ignore this, which is helping you to understand that the physical salvation God did in the past foreshadows the Spiritual Salvation that takes us all to Heaven, when we receive it and listen to our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.

The land of Canaan symbolises the New Earth. So, it is of vital importance that we follow God wholeheartedly and seek to live in the Lord and by His words.

Thank You, Lord, for this.

Thank You for the meaning and the inspiration that You gave me about the Land of Canaan being the perfect Rest, flowing with Milk and Honey; it is You, Lord Jesus, because in You, we live in a place flowing with milk and Honey. Lord Jesus, thank You very much for Your grace. It’s an honour for us to be part of the things that You do, to love the things that You do, to love what You love, Lord, and do our parts. Yes, Lord, it is an honour for us to do the things pleasing to You. Oh, Lord, thank You so much, my Jesus, thank You. In Your Holy Name, Lord Jesus, I pray. Amen.