First Fruits

Because the first step is huge.

That's what we see in the Torah by the mitzvah of Bikurim.

The mitzvah of Bikurim is a very it's a strange mitzvah.

I'll tell you why it's strange.

It's a nice mitzvah but a strange one.

And maybe there are things better than it that come out later.

But you have to know that the first is very, very special and very powerful.

That is the message of the Bikurim.

There it's referred to by three other names.

In the Old Testament it's called Feast of Weeks, Feast of Harvest, and Day of Firstfruits.

But it is called Pentecost in the New Testament.

And there three times it is referred to as such.

Soon the church will be completed.

And the church is represented by the typology of the four spring festivals of the Lord, Passover, Unleavened Bread, First Fruits, and Pentecost, or Shavuot, as Pentecost is called in Hebrew.

And then prophetic events concerning the rapture of the completed church and the redemption of regathered Israel will occur.

All of these future events are represented by the remaining three Levitical fall festivals.

The seven convocations of the Lord have been rehearsed annually by the Jews.

And as the Hebrew for Christians website informs us, the biblical year officially begins during the month of the Passover from Egypt.

In fact, the spring holidays of Passover, Unleavened Bread and First Fruits recall Israel's deliverance from Egypt and also represent our greater deliverance from sin through the merits of the death, burial and resurrection of Messiah, who is our great Passover Lamb of God.

Yeshua was crucified on the eve of Passover as the Lamb of God.

An Avela is an animal which dies without being slaughtered.

and thirdly a limb which is separated from it while it is alive that is considered tome so if somebody touches that he will become tome just like the limb which comes from a live chaya or a live behemoth and the truth is there are many other halachas which apply to all animals the mission just gives a couple of examples in order to bring out the point The third Perek of Bikurim is really the Perek which goes through the process of how one would separate Bikurim and what exactly they would do with that Bikurim.

So the Perek begins by asking, And designate those fruit as Bikurim.

Says, One would go down into his field, And if he sees a fig, which has ripened, and the truth is, even if it has just begun to ripen, as soon as the fruit has begun to grow, it can already be designated as bikurim.

So even though for most halachas, a fruit is only considered to be a fruit once it's fully grown, it's learned from a posuk that the fruit can be designated as bikurim even before they reach that stage of being considered a fruit.

And the reason why you tie a string or a reed over there is so that you can remember and you can recognise which one you declared to be bikurim.

There are lots of fruit on the tree, so if you don't mark which one you declared bikurim, you could easily get confused and not remember which one is the bikurim fruit.

Okay, on the other hand, Rebbe Shimon says, despite this, meaning, even if you did already separate the Bikurim when they were young, and you went through this whole process, nevertheless, you need to go back and declare those fruit to be Bikurim, after you detach the fruit from the ground, because Rebbe Shimon learns from another Pasuk, which says that... you should take the bikurim from the first fruit which ripen.