Ten days after Jesus ascended up into Heaven (Ascension Day) the Holy Spirit will come to indwell everyone who is trusting in Jesus. This will happen on a day called Pentecost. Pentecost was a Jewish festival or holiday that people would celebrate fifty days after the celebration of Passover. Pentecost was also called the Feast of Weeks. It was a harvest festival where the nation would bring grain as an offering to God. Over these last ten days of Eastertide we will look at this world changing event known as Pentecost, and the beginning of the Spirit led Church that resulted.
Pentecost and the Feast of Weeks.
Exodus 34:22. You shall observe the Feast of Weeks, the firstfruits of wheat harvest, and the Feast of Ingathering at the year’s end.
Leviticus 23:15-16. 15“You shall count seven full weeks from the day after the Sabbath, from the day that you brought the sheaf of the wave offering. 16You shall count fifty days to the day after the seventh Sabbath. Then you shall present a grain offering of new grain to the Lord.
Pentecost is the day that Christians celebrate Jesus sending the Holy Spirit to come live in our hearts. When the resurrected Jesus ascended into Heaven, he sent the Spirit to Earth. This happened on the day of Pentecost.
But before Pentecost was that, it was something else. It was the beginning of a big festival or feast in Israel, the Feast of Weeks. Look at our verses from Leviticus again. It says count seven full weeks from the day after the Sabbath. When it says Sabbath here it means the Passover Sabbath (do you remember what Passover was?). So from the day after Passover the people should count seven weeks. Then the Feast of Weeks would begin. Seven weeks is forty-nine days, so on the fiftieth day (that’s what Pentecost means, fifty) the feast would begin.
Why seven weeks, you ask.
Well, in the Bible seven is the number of perfection or completion. There are seven days in a week. God rested on the seventh day of creation. Joshua marched around Jericho for seven days (do you remember that story?). Naaman dipped himself in the Jordan river seven times in order to be healed of leprosy (what about that story?). Good things come in sevens, so after seven weeks the people would celebrate something good.
The harvest.
Then you shall present a grain offering of new grain to the Lord.
Chances are you probably don’t think about the grain harvest too much. When your family needs bread it goes to the grocery store and buys another loaf. But in the Old Testament they all grew their own grain and made their own bread. Without the harvest they would die. No grain. No food. No life.
Now let’s add God into our equation: No God. No grain. No food. No life.
Each year, God sent them the grain harvest and so each year they would celebrate with a big festival of thanksgiving to God. At Pentecost, each family would bring tow loaves of bread as an offering to God, to say thank you to God for giving them life. The priests at the Temple would wave the loaves in the air, and then they would eat the bread (eventually). The Feast of Weeks was very similar to our American Thanksgiving. We make food, give thanks to God, and then eat.
By now you’re probably wondering what does all of this have to do with the Holy Spirit? Why would Jesus send the Spirit to us on Pentecost at the Feast of Weeks when everyone was celebrating the harvest?
Because, like the harvest of grain, the Holy Spirit is a great gift from God. Just like the farmer had to wait for his grain to come up from the ground, the Disciples had to wait fifty days after Jesus rose from the dead for the Holy Spirit to come down from Heaven. But when he did…wow!
Like we said, Pentecost came after seven weeks. The number of perfection. The Holy Spirit is perfection. He is completion. He is the fullness of God (he is God) in us. When you have the Holy Spirit, you have God living inside of you. Teaching you. Guiding you. Loving you. Everyone who trusts in Jesus receives the Holy Spirit, just like every farmer that trusted God for the harvest would receive their grain.
One last thought. When the people offered those two loaves of bread to God at Pentecost, it was only the beginning of all the grain that would come. Hundreds of loaves would be baked. And in the same way, the Holy Spirit in us today is just the beginning. There is so much more to come with God. Right now, a perfect God lives in us in a broken world, but one day we will live with God in a perfect world. Perfect God. Perfect you. Perfect world. Amen.
You: In what ways can you tell that you have the Holy Spirit?
You with Jesus: By the Holy Spirit we have God and his fullness with us all the time. How can this truth make you kinder and more courageous today?
Prayer: Father, thank you for all of your gifts including our food, but thank you most of all for the gift of the Holy Spirit in me giving me your love. Amen.
TLICfamily 