Num 15:18-21, "Speak to the sons of Israel, and say to them, 'When you enter the land where I bring you, then it shall be, that when you eat of the food of the land, you shall lift up an offering to the Lord. 'Of the first of your dough you shall lift up a cake as an offering; as the offering of the threshing floor, so you shall lift it up. 'From the first of your dough you shall give to the Lord an offering throughout your generations. 
In this morning’s reading we come to a most interesting truth that is at the heart of our relationship with God. Cutting to the chase, it is the manner in which we view Him with regard to our daily sustenance on this earth. This age has twisted our perception and perspective of who God is and who we are in terms of our day to day sojourn on this earth. The very history of our country has, at its’ core, a foundational aspect that has adulterated our minds and our conceptions as to the place of God and ourselves in the determination of how we live today.
One of the many keystones of our founders was the idea of inherent self-reliance and self-government. There are positive aspects to this, as in the elimination of the abuses of one person as a dictator over a nation. We are governed by the majority rule of those people who vote in elections, choosing representatives who are responsible for the manner in which laws were made and enforced. 
However, as with anything that man does, there are trade-offs. One of the hidden consequences of this self-governing nation is that we have lost the sense of God as our King and our Provider. We do not really understand how much is tied into the reality that we are to appreciate and to live our lives under the recognized and revered acknowledgement that everything that we have and are and hope to be is as He so directs and guides and rules in our lives.
This passage, this section of scripture, was written to the second generation, the children who were under the age of 20 at the time of their parent’s apostasy to God. It would be Joshua and Caleb who would lead the children into the Promised Land. At that time of fulfillment, they were to readily acknowledge and cherish the truth that God was the One Who was directing their every path and that everything that they had and ate was directly from His hand and not of their own doing.
This is the core truth of our life on this earth. We are fully and absolutely dependent upon the grace and the lovingkindness and the mercy of God to make it through every single day. All that we have is because He has given it to us. It is not a matter of what we have been able to do for ourselves. The so-called New England work ethic of self-sustenance and self-determination has instilled a lie into the very essence of our hearts as to our consideration of God.
What was it that the Children of Israel were to do when they ate of the bounty of the Promised Land? They were to take the first fruits and offer it to God as the heart-felt acknowledgement that He was the One Who had given them the food that would keep them from starving. He was the One Who blessed them with the bounty of the harvest. His sun and His rain and His direct intervention and His grace and His mercy were the reality of why there was food to eat and the bountiful plenty to enjoy. 
This was not a new idea for God’s Chosen Nation. It was part of the required service of honor that they were to do willingly unto the Lord as detailed in Ex 23:19a. Ex 23:19a, You shall bring the choice first fruits of your soil into the house of the Lord your God.... Note that they were to willingly bring in the finest of the first fruits as the detailed recognition that what they had received all belonged to God and was from Him. Therefore He deserved the very best of the flock, of the harvest, of all that they had. 
This was reinforced again in the Book of Leviticus, in Lev 2:14, where the quality of the offering along with the responsibility to bring the offering to the Lord was detailed. Lev 2:14, 'Also if you bring a grain offering of early ripened things to the Lord, you shall bring fresh heads of grain roasted in the fire, grits of new growth, for the grain offering of your early ripened things. 
This was the combined declaration of the people giving God the honor as both God and as Provider. They brought to Him the first fruits, only the best of the first fruits, because they considered Him to be the source of all their good sustenance and provision. 
This attitude and realization that God deserves the first and the best because He is the One Who provides it all, has been lost in much of our current society. We tend to think of God in terms of an Overlord Who just manages the general pulse of our eternity while minimizing His day to day work in our lives. So often, we give ourselves the credit for the livelihoods in which we are engaged, no longer accounting it all unto God. Our thoughts and our ideas reflect the attitude that we are self-made individuals, accountable only to ourselves for the food of which we partake and the shelter which we enjoy. We will say grace at meals, but not with the sense that we truly know that God is the Provider. It is because we have been taught to do so as habit or as a custom to always recite our memorized prayers at the meal table.
There is no true reckoning on our part that God is to be thanked, not out of habit, not out of custom, not out of obligation, but with sincerest thanksgiving because He truly is supplying our every need. We are to be filled with gratitude and awe at the fact that He would even consider such as ourselves in His whole plan and purpose. He truly is our Heavenly Father and not just some cosmic entity to whom we give casual regard! As such, He takes care of His children and we should be so honoring to Him as were those Children of Israel who first entered the Land of Promise. They recognized that the land belonged to God and that He had deigned to allow them to enter and to live off the tremendous bounty of His land.
We find this whole aspect reinforced in Lev 23:10. Lev 23:10, "Speak to the sons of Israel, and say to them, 'When you enter the land which I am going to give to you and reap its harvest, then you shall bring in the sheaf of the first fruits of your harvest to the priest. 
As so stipulated, they were to present their very first and best of the harvest, the first-fruits, to the Lord immediately in order to show that they understood their filial relationship with God. They were working His land under His ordination with the pleasure of His loving gaze and His mercy and His grace upon them. What they gathered for the needs of their day to day life was under the willing benevolence of The Lord. Accordingly, to show their gratitude and their love for His so gracious and so generous provision, they kept the best of the first fruit apart for His priests to offer in the temple because He deserved nothing less than the very best of the land.
Later in this same chapter, Lev 23:17, the people were further instructed to the fact that they were to bring to the Lord the best of their labor as signified by the fine flour that they were to use. Lev 23:17, 'You shall bring in from your dwelling places two loaves of bread for a wave offering, made of two-tenths of an ephah; they shall be of a fine flour, baked with leaven as first fruits to the Lord. 
It was a costly and labor intensive process to grind the flour into the fine consistency required. It was generally the grind of flour that was reserved for the higher Escalon of society. Yet they were to so honor the Lord by bringing that finer and more costly grind to Him as was appropriate for their Lord and Master.
This element of the heart of consideration of God as worthy of only the extraordinary and the costliest and the most excellent was further stipulated in Numbers Chapter 18, where the Lord detailed for His priestly order what He expected to be given from the people. This would be the priest’s sustenance and inheritance for their service as His ministers unto the nation. Beginning with verse 7 in Numbers 18, All the best of the fresh oil and all the best of the fresh wine and of the grain, the first fruits of those which they give to the Lord, I give them to you. 
Then again in verses 12+13, Num 18:12+13; All the best of the fresh oil and all the best of the fresh wine and of the grain, the first fruits of those which they give to the Lord, I give them to you. The first ripe fruits of all that is in their land, which they bring to the Lord, shall be yours; everyone of your household who is clean may eat it. 
And then, in verse 19, as it is all tied together for the priests in the just requirement of the offerings from the people, Num 18:19; All the offerings of the holy gifts, which the sons of Israel offer to the Lord, I have given to you and your sons and your daughters with you, as a perpetual allotment. It is an everlasting covenant of salt before the Lord to you and your descendants with you." 
The holiness of the gifts was tied to the fact that they were offered by the people with utmost regard for the Lord. They were the very best of the best because that was what God required and what God deserved. This was the heart and soul of the reason that the people so cherished the Lord as their Provider and their Sustainer and their Sovereign and their Savior. On that basis, He deserved nothing but the very finest of all that they had because He was the One Who had made it available for their use and their provision.
Consider the reinforced commandment and encouragement of Deut 26:1-11. Please open to it and read along with me. Deut 26:1-11, "Then it shall be, when you enter the land which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance, and you possess it and live in it, that you shall take some of the first of all the produce of the ground which you shall bring in from your land that the Lord your God gives you, and you shall put it in a basket and go to the place where the Lord your God chooses to establish His name. And you shall go to the priest who is in office at that time, and say to him, 'I declare this day to the Lord my God that I have entered the land which the Lord swore to our fathers to give us.' "Then the priest shall take the basket from your hand and set it down before the altar of the Lord your God. And you shall answer and say before the Lord your God, 'My father was a wandering Aramean, and he went down to Egypt and sojourned there, few in number; but there he became a great, mighty and populous nation. 'And the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, and imposed hard labor on us. 'Then we cried to the Lord, the God of our fathers, and the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction and our toil and our oppression; and the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm and with great terror and with signs and wonders; and He has brought us to this place, and has given us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. 'And now behold, I have brought the first of the produce of the ground which Thou, O Lord hast given me.' And you shall set it down before the Lord your God, and worship before the Lord your God; and you and the Levite and the alien who is among you shall rejoice in all the good which the Lord your God has given you and your household. 
   	Notice that the very reason for this offering was to show that they recognized that God was the One Who had brought about their release from slavery and their prosperity in the land which He had given them. There is nothing in this passage about the efforts of their own work and the brilliance of their own devices. Everything has God at the core and as the One Who has made their lives blessed in His land flowing with milk and honey.
	Later in the history of the Lord’s people, after their return from captivity, the Prophet Nehemiah again brought to the forefront the fact that the first-fruits belonged to the Lord and to His priests. Neh 10:37, We will also bring the first of our dough, our contributions, the fruit of every tree, the new wine and the oil to the priests at the chambers of the house of our God, and the tithe of our ground to the Levites, for the Levites are they who receive the tithes in all the rural towns. 
    	The Prophet Ezekiel also encouraged this truth and even added the reality that, as the people abided by this relationship that would so honor God, they would also bring the blessing upon themselves. Ezek 44:30, "And the first of all the first fruits of every kind and every contribution of every kind, from all your contributions, shall be for the priests; you shall also give to the priest the first of your dough to cause a blessing to rest on your house. 
	James, in James 1:16-18, brings to the forefront this consideration that everything comes from God and belongs to Him. This should be the very nucleus of the manner in which we regard all that God bestows and with which we are so blessed. James 1:16-18, Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren. Every good thing bestowed and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation, or shifting shadow. In the exercise of His will He brought us forth by the word of truth, so that we might be, as it were, the first fruits among His creatures. 
	It is not just the things that we have, although those elements are fully included. It is the very breath that we take, supplying our bodies with needed oxygen, the every beat of our heart, pumping life-giving blood throughout our circulatory system, and most importantly and especially, the very life that we have in Jesus Christ. By Him, the greatest gift and blessing that God could ever give, we are brought into the living relationship with God that has ever been His plan and purpose in our being created. 
Accordingly, we should never be entrapped with the essential propaganda of this age that we do not need God, that we can make it on our own through complete self-reliance and self-endeavor, and self-motivation. All that we have and ever will have is only by the grace and the mercy and the provision and the blessing of the Love of God. We need to recognize Him as our source and our Essential Sustenance, as Our Everything. In that truth, we need to bring to Him the very best of the first-fruits of the life that He has given us in Jesus Christ. So be it!
"Speak to the sons of Israel, and say to them, 'When you enter the land where I bring you, then it shall be, that when you eat of the food of the land, you shall lift up an offering to the Lord. 'Of the first of your dough you shall lift up a cake as an offering; as the offering of the threshing floor, so you shall lift it up. 'From the first of your dough you shall give to the Lord an offering throughout your generations. Amen.

This morning’s benediction is Ps 113:3. From the rising of the sun to its setting The name of the Lord is to be praised. Amen.