He hasn't slept in two nights. He's older now, but he's heading back to where the disaster started. He's on the road home to meet the brother he robbed twenty years ago. He robbed his brother of everything, not just money, but his future too.

And the message just came up the line. His brother is coming to meet him. And his brother was a thug, always bigger, always stronger, and he never showed up alone.

The report also said his brother was armed.

It's too late to run. It's too late to hide. Unless something happens, it's over.

His mind races for solutions. He tries praying... but he gives up on that fast. He's not going to pray away his brother's fury.

He decides his only way out is money. Lots and lots of money.

He decides his only way out is leverage. He will try to buy his tomorrow with the spoils of his yesterday.

It's a long shot, but it's all he's got.

He calls in his guys, loads them with bags of cash, and sends them out to find his brother. The amount of money is staggering. Even he is blown away by how much fortune he has amassed. So be it. He'll pay any price to soften the blows sure to come.

"Maybe I can buy him off. Maybe when he sees the money, he'll let me live.

"Maybe forgive me? Maybe even accept me?"

Impossible, he knows.

He tries to sleep but he can't. He's waiting for dawn's showdown to come.

When the sun comes up, he does the only thing he can do. He walks out to meet his fate.

This is not a story from yesterday's urban warfare. It's one of the oldest stories in the world. But it reads like a soap opera.

Because many of us today have someone we wronged, someone we owe, someone whose forgiveness we are trying to earn before we dare look them in the eye.

And for many people—maybe for most people—that includes God. We've wronged him. We owe him.

In our story, the frightened man's name is Jacob.

The brother he owes, the one coming for him, is Esau. Twenty years ago, Jacob stole his brother's birthright, and then he stole the blessing that went with it. Jacob conspired. He schemed. He lied. He pulled off an epic heist.

And then he ran. Jacob built a life in a far country, married, grew rich, raised children. And now he is coming home, and he's haunted by a debt that never got paid.

Leviticus brings us back to the third book in the Bible. This is one of the five books of Moses, together called the Law.

Leviticus especially is the book of the religious laws of God's people. The offerings. The sacrifices. The priesthood. The civil regulations. And the thing we are most interested in, the Festivals.

Leviticus chapter 23 outlines 7+1 annual festivals across the calendar of the Jews.

The Festivals
The Feast of Passover (Leviticus 23:4-5)
The Feast of Unleavened Bread (23:6-8)
The Feast of Firstfruits (23:9-14)
The Feast of Pentecost (23:15-21)
The Feast of Trumpets (23:23-25)
The Day of Atonement (23:26-32)
The Feast of Tabernacles (23:33-44)

Each festival is detailed. Their rituals are explained in multiple places in the Bible. And together they add up to a cycle of reminders that God's people have special rights and privileges before Him. God's people have an inheritance that nobody else has.

So our series is called: Birthright.

Once you know your Birthright and really embrace it, you face a question:
What miracles would happen if you really believed you are who God says you are and you really embraced what God says you have?

We are taking each festival one by one. Today we come to number three on the list. The Feast of Firstfruits.

My title today is: UNREJECTED

And strange enough, this brings us back to an early morning showdown between two estranged brothers.

Sure enough the frightened man sees his brother in the distance... he's impossible to miss because he's brought with him 400 men. Heavily armed men.

This is the man he robbed, the man he cheated out of his birthright and blessing, the man who had every reason to walk up and wring his scrawny neck.

The man he was sure had rejected him forever.

When the brother—his name is Esau—sees Jacob, the conniver, he starts running. But not for the reason you might expect.

In fact, he runs for the reason you would least likely expect.

"But Esau ran to meet him, and embraced him, and fell on his neck and kissed him, and they wept." (Genesis 33:4)

Esau comes running, tears streaming, arms open wide. He throws his strong arms around Jacob's neck, pulls him in, and kisses him. And the two estranged brothers stand in the road holding each other, embracing each other, and they weep.

Twenty years of guilt and shame melting away.

Four hundred warriors looking on. It doesn't matter. Just two long-alienated brothers, without a word, reconciled.

This is a moment for the ages. It's epic. It's a picture of love and grace that no one saw coming.

If that's not amazing enough, it gets even better. Hold that thought, and let's go back to the feast of Firstfruits... and figure out what on earth it has to do with Jacob and Esau.

The Feast of Firstfruits
The Bible describes 5 key elements for the Feast of Firstfruits.

THE LAND. This feast could only be kept in the Promised Land. (Leviticus 23:10)
The law of Moses triggered this feast with the words: When you come into the land which I give to you, and reap its harvest..."

In other words, when you get to the Promised Land.

This feast was not for slaves in Egypt. It was for people who were set free, at home, standing in the inheritance God had promised them.

People who had been rejected so long that acceptance sounded too good to be true.

The meaning of firstfruits is specifically meant for believers in Jesus.

THE SHEAF. The firstfruits were literally the first batches of produce that were harvested in the season. (Leviticus 23:10)
The very first grain you harvested off the field, you brought that before God.

You brought that sheaf of bundled grain to the priest and the priest took it from there.

THE PRIEST. The priest, not the farmer, presented the sheaf. (Leviticus 23:11)
The Bible says "The priest shall wave the sheaf before the LORD." The farmer stood back and watched.

The farmer stopped working and the priest started working.

THE WAVE OFFERING. The sheaf was lifted up, not burned, and waved around. (Leviticus 23:11)
This is what God's people called the Wave Offering.

Unlike the sacrifices that were consumed on the altar, the sheaf of Firstfruits was lifted high before the Lord, presented, accepted, and then given back to be enjoyed.

Yes, there was a lamb sacrifice with the offering of the firstfruits, but the firstfruits itself was given back.

When Moses wrote the law, he didn't give much detail about how the priest was supposed to wave the sheaf.

As the centuries rolled on, the Rabbis taught that the priest was to wave the sheaf forward and backward, up and down, to the four corners of the compass. They were drawing a map of the universe, declaring God's grace rules over every dimension of space.

But as Christians, when we look at that vertical and horizontal motion, we can't help but see another shape. We see the Cross—the absolute intersection of heaven's vertical grace and earth's horizontal rescue.

THE SYMBOLISM. The offering symbolized "acceptance" before the Lord. (Leviticus 23:11)
"He shall wave the sheaf before the LORD, to be accepted on your behalf; on the day after the Sabbath the priest shall wave it." (Leviticus 23:11)

The noun at the heart of this word is רָצוֹן (ra-tson), which comes from the verb רָצָה (ra-tsah), meaning "to be pleased with," "to delight in," or "to receive with favor."

The main symbolism is "acceptance." The offering of firstfruits represents acceptance with God.

Grammatically, there are two ways to interpret this verse.

The first way says that the waving of the firstfruits is HOW you got accepted by God. It's conditional. If you bring your first and best to God, then God will accept you. And if you don't, he won't.

The translators of the English Standard Version took this view:
"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." (Leviticus 23:11, ESV)

I grew up being taught that the acceptance by God was conditional: you have to give God your first and best all the time or else he won't accept you. His acceptance was conditioned upon MY sacrifice, my giving, my working, always, continual, never ending. This was an exhausting way to live.

So I really dug into this verse this week, especially in to the fine points of the Hebrew grammar. We are literally talking about how to interpret one Hebrew letter here, and the question is whether to interpret it:

...so that you may be accepted... OR
...since you have been accepted...

The translators of the NKJV and KJV take this view when they simply say, "For your acceptance."

The standard Hebrew Lexicon (under לְ, section 5, part f) notes that the lamed can express the cause, ground, or reason for an action. In these cases, it is translated as "on account of," "because of," or "in view of."

Using this category, this word can be translated:
"...and he shall wave the sheaf before the LORD on account of / in view of your acceptance."

It's not conditional, you gotta do this or God won't accept you. It's the opposite of conditional... the condition has been met! You get to do this to remind your brain, remind your emotions, remind your psychology that because of the sacrifice of the Lamb of God, you have been permanently, unalterably, and eternally accepted by God once, for all, and forever.

And the sooner your psychology gets the memo, the better.