Leviticus 19:23-25 ESV
“When you come into the land and plant any kind of tree for food, then you shall regard its fruit as forbidden. Three years it shall be forbidden to you; it must not be eaten. And in the fourth year all its fruit shall be holy, an offering of praise to the Lord. But in the fifth year you may eat of its fruit, to increase its yield for you:I am the Lord your God.
The first fruits. Forbidden as was the fruit in the Garden. We as the body of Christ are buried with him. He rose after three days. The fruit becomes holy in time, the 4th year.
You may eat its fruit
This passage may shed light on the Garden. The Garden is presented in Leviticus as the promised land. This time the fruit trees are planted by man. The seeds are from The Lord, but it is up to man to them. As in the Garden, fruit is forbidden to be eaten, though here there is a known timeframe. There was probably one in the Garden, a time when Adam would be judged ready, but Adam did not obey God.
The three years may be significant for it is the number of days that Christ was dead before being raised by the power of God. We are buried with Christ and are raised with, transferred into the kingdom of God, or the promised land. We are then made holy as we begin to bear the fruit of the Holy Spirit. We become the first fruits of the harvest, holy to God. The fruit then is ready to be eaten and the trees will bear fruit for all the nations.
Leviticus 20:22-26
You Shall Be Holy
“You shall therefore keep all my statutes and all my rules and do them, that the land where I am bringing you to live may not vomit you out. And you shall not walk in the customs of the nation that I am driving out before you, for they did all these things, and therefore I detested them. But I have said to you, ‘You shall inherit their land, and I will give it to you to possess, a land flowing with milk and honey. ’ I am the Lord your God, who has separated you from the peoples. You shall therefore separate the clean beast from the unclean, and the unclean bird from the clean. You shall not make yourselves detestable by beast or by bird or by anything with which the ground crawls, which I have set apart for you to hold unclean. You shall be holy to me, for I the Lord am holy and have separated you from the peoples, that you should be mine.
In this passage we see a similar phrase used in Revelation, "vomit you out". There in the letter to the church of Laodicea we encounter this wording because they are neither hot or cold, He is getting ready to vomit, or spew them them out of His mouth. They would lose their inheritance.
The promised land would no longer be theirs. They would face expulsion much like the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden.
That gives insight to the Garden's meaning. God created the Garden to have people separated to Him. The Garden was in the world but was not the world. It was a world filled with people and Adam was to tend to it as he obeyed God. He failed to do that.
The New Jerusalem becomes the restored Garden of Eden which will descend from heaven into the new earth populated with those born from above. God's purpose is accomplished. The nations will come to worship and give glory to God. There will be no need for a temple for God dwells with man in the new city. We will serve Him as holy priests, and we will be with Him.
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