God's Going To Cut You Down

Veteran in A New Field

1865

Winslow Homer

Oil on canvas

Yes, the title of this post is ominous and foreboding but the post itself will be the greatest pick-me-up you'll ever read in this life. 

The 'experts' are saying peak mortality or death of COVID-19 will be on Easter. At least for places like New York and New Jersey. The places hardest hit early on. There will be more bad news later but not of the magnitude we are now seeing. The day that we commemorate Christ’s Resurrection from the dead. This is just too ironic to be accident.

Paul, in 1 Corinthians, implies Jesus died on a 14 Nisan "sacrificed as a Passover lamb".

1 Corinthians 5:7 Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.

He was resurrected on the Jewish festival of the first fruits, on a 16 Nisan.

1 Corinthians 15:20 But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.

He was buried before sunset in accordance with the Scriptures and rose again the morning of the third day. Exactly as it had been planned by God. God had a schedule to keep and in keeping that schedule he showed the exacting perfectness of His well-timed plan. He did things exactly how and when He said he would. In this we see that God can be trusted to do all that he promised...including resurrecting us to new life if we only believe that he can and will.

In Feast of First Fruits the Hebrews via a Priest were to bring the first sheaves of the barley harvest and wave them before the Lord.

Leviticus 23:10-12 “…When you come into the land that I give you and reap its harvest, you shall bring the sheaf of the first fruits of your harvest to the priest, and he shall wave the sheaf before the Lord, so that you may be accepted. On the day after the Sabbath the priest shall wave it. And on the day when you wave the sheaf, you shall offer a male lamb a year old without blemish as a burnt offering to the Lord.

At the beginning of the day representative leaders of the people would cut the best barley sheaves that had been set aside specifically for this purpose and bring them to the priest. The priest would then present them to the Lord by waving them back and forth. The purpose of this was to consecrate the harvest to the Lord. 

The first fruits were representative of the entire harvest. This act reminded Hebrews that the land and all its harvest rightfully belonged to God. The people are just stewarding the land. They were also to sacrifice seven lamb without blemish. The offering is also to be presented with bread and wine.

As I said, Jesus fulfilled this feast when He became the first fruits resurrected from the dead. His beginning marked the beginning of the harvest of souls who have been set apart for God through the Jesus Christ even up until today. So to, it is not accidental that barley sheaf contains many stalks of barley bundled together. The Lord offered up Himself with others that day. The bodies of many of the saints also resurrected

Matthew 27:52-53 “The tombs also were opened. And many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many.”

Jesus was the human sheaf that God had set apart for the purpose of conquering death and providing eternal life for all those that acknowledge Him as savior. This includes those that believed before and after he came because it is by faith that man is saved to eternal life. (Hebrew 11:1-3 & 6)

In fulfilling the Feast of Passover Christ was crucified on the fourteenth day of Nisan. To fulfill the Feast of Unleavened Bread Christ was buried on the fifteenth day of Nisan. On the Sabbath Jesus rested in the tomb. On the sixteenth day of Nisan (Sunday) Jesus Rose from the dead fulfilling the entirety of the Feast of First Fruits.

Jesus then ascended to the Father as a presentation of First Fruit to the Father in Heaven so that the rest of the harvest would be acceptable in the eyes of the Father (believers). A great high priest offering the First Fruits on the exact day that they would’ve been waved wheat in front of the Lord at the throne of the Almighty.

This is clearly a message from God. The fact that we would begin the turnaround to recovery and living again on Easter is nothing short of paradoxical. You're naive and blind if you cannot see the correlation. This recovery of course will, in the long run be temporary because we all will meet our demise from some other form of disease or event later. What COVID-19 has revealed isn’t so much a cure or release from disease and death now. Instead, it is pointing us to something we need now that will have ramifications rippling down through eternity for us. It is pointing us to the death, burial of one individual in particular. The One who also rose the third day fulfilling all the Feasts of Israel. He fulfilled the Israelite prophecies also. These deaths all point to the only life that matters in the long game. Christ’s.

God will cut us all down. But we will all be raised in Him if we wish. We need only believe. We cannot live forever without first being cut down from this life/field and regrowing in a new one. We will assuredly be lifted to life in that new field in the end. Happy Easter folks. Yes. Easter is about dying. More importantly is about being Resurrected...and not just Jesus' Resurrection, but ours also. Death doesn't get the final say anymore. A new day is coming.

John 12:24 Truly, truly, I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a seed; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.

[Addendum: It is interesting to note the painting was done immediately following a war that decimated the male population of America and many of its citizens. A war that left hundreds of thousands cut down like grain in a field. The painting is of a solitary Union soldier cutting down wheat. His scythe evokes the Reaper, recalling the war’s harvest of death and expressing grief. A discarded military canteen in the foreground. A symbol of leaving behind the pointless death of war while gathering new life in the form of sustenance. In redemptive fashion is the bountiful wheat. Referring to death and life, the painting offers a powerful meditation on America’s sacrifices and its potential for rebirth. Just like Christ’s. The original now paradoxically resides in the Metropolitan Museum of Art...right in the middle of New York City which is about to have its peak death toll.]