Deuteronomy 26:1-5

The book of Deuteronomy is Israel’s attempt to recount the history of their becoming a mighty nation and the covenant people of God. In chapter 26, Moses gave the young nation detailed directives on how they are to enter, possess, and settle into the land that had been promised to them, forty years ago.

Now, they are unapologetically following the God of their freedom. With all of the displays of omnipotent power, anyone would conclude that God has been good to Israel. He kept all of His promises, including the one that Israel was about to enjoy.

As the Israelites are about to enter into the Promised Land, Moses says:

When you have entered the land the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance and have taken possession of it and settled in it, take some of the firstfruits of all that you produce from the soil of the land the Lord your God is giving you and put them in a basket. Then go to the place the Lord your God will choose as a dwelling for his Name and say to the priest in office at the time, “I declare today to the Lord your God that I have come to the land the Lord swore to our ancestors to give us. The priest shall take the basket from your hands and set it down in front of the altar of the Lord your God. Then you shall declare before the Lord your God: “My father was a wandering Aramean, and he went down into Egypt with a few people and lived there and became a great nation, powerful and numerous. Deuteronomy 26:1-5 (NIV)

We may have assumed that the first thing that Moses would tell them to do was to worship. We may have assumed that they should then set to building houses and defenses around the land. We might have even thought that the best reflection of gratitude would be to possess the land and then praise God.

But Moses says that the first thing that they are directed to do is to gather the firstfruit of the land and offer it to God. Don’t eat first. Don’t plan to worship first. Don’t think about how to put God first. Just respond by gathering the firstfruits as a way of acknowledging that all of the blessings are blessings from God.

But the question that we have to ask ourselves today is: “When did that change?” When did God go from deserving the firstfruits to maybe not even being offered anything from the fruit that he let us pluck? When did God move down the list?

Many of us don’t conceive of our fruit as spiritual. We have become convinced by our culture that it is evil to even think about money, let alone consider that before we enjoy or spend our money that we should be honoring God with our money.

Satan has worked a diabolical agenda on us. He has weakened us by focusing us on worship as the main priority over giving. We have been convinced that as long as we worship, we’re alright. However, giving is a core aspect of our faith and should be our first response to God, even before worship.