Are You Counting the Days?

A couple! Oh, his voice carries a lot more than mine does, so... Anyhow, it's been a wonderful day. I want to thank everyone who's had a hand in making this work. Some of the fellows hauled PA equipment and set it up and tweaked it and made it work. Others worked with the offering and others have had parts here in front of the congregation. Others have shared their musical talent and all of us minded our manners as far as I saw down in the dining hall. So it's a good day! We had 108 here this morning. We usually have a few that filter out in the afternoon, usually down just a little, because some just physically can't make the whole day. Let me go ahead and get started. How many of you saw the movie that came out about 12 years ago called Cast Away with Tom Hanks? Cast Away. Who did he work for? FedEx. The plane went down out in the Pacific. He was a lone survivor and ended up on an island. At one point during that movie, it shows him in this cave that he found.

There was actually a spring where he had some fresh water, but he was in that cave and on one of the walls, he had a stone and he was marking the days. Marking the days that he was cut off from his family, from society. He was marking time. We've probably all read stories of prisoners who mark the days until their release, or have fulfilled their commitment to society, or stories of those in prisoner of war camps or concentration camps who marked the days. We kept, we keep a festival today that is a culmination of marking off days. It's intrinsically woven into the fabric of this day of, well, I won't give you the name.

You help me. We've got several names for this festival. What's one of the names? Feast of Weeks, alright, there's one. Feast of First Fruits, that's another. Pentecost is another, yes, Feast of the Harvest. Those are four real quick in the Hebrew, the Hebrew word Shavuot. You may see in some calendars it'll say Shavuot, although they reckon it differently. I'll talk about that here a little bit later. There are those who start on the first holy day of Unleavened Bread, Abib, or Nice, and the 14th. So count the 16th as day one, and then they go forward, and then it comes out to the third month, Sivan, or Sivan, the sixth. And it's a date on the calendar, which the Church of God has never done, because we read in there that God says, count 50 days. Why would He say, count the days, unless we had to reckon it from that particular, as it turns out, Sunday that falls within Unleavened Bread, because sometimes you have the holy days falling in a certain way, and you need nowhere to start. So we are very familiar with the terms Feast of Weeks and Day of Pentecost.

I want to give credit where credit is due. I saw a sermon given by Mark Mickelson, one of our Council members, and got a lot of good ideas from some of the material he covered that I want to share with you in this final message here today. But weeks, counting weeks, or counting 50 days, we're familiar with those. And on this festival, we have so many topics.

We haven't even scratched the surface here today. Those of you who were in Gadsden yesterday, Mr. Ashley got off on that area of the Jewish tradition being that the law was given on this day, and followed through with some pretty good evidence. We've always believed that, but it's not that we can find it in the Scripture and just thoroughly nail it down, that the law was given on Pentecost. But he made a pretty good argument for that.

Giving of the law, or in the New Testament, the writing of the law on our hearts by the gift of the Holy Spirit. We also celebrate the establishment of the church. We haven't even broached that, or very little today. The gift of the Holy Spirit, the setting aside of the first fruits, the ongoing process of bringing in the harvest, as Mr. Robbins just referred to. So we have all kinds of topics. But let's take the word Pentecost. What does that word mean?

From the Greek. The Pentecost has to do with five and a multiple of five, and the cost, the counting process, so the counting of fifty. And on this particular day, we come to the culmination of a process whereby God told us, you start at a certain date and you start counting the days. And it's interesting that that Hebrew word back in, we'll be back shortly in Leviticus 23, where it says, you count these days, count these weeks.

That Greek word speaks of making that mark, and it's a process. It's something that is public that you, as a people, mark these days off. Fifty days. We've been counting the days. Turn with me back to Leviticus 23. The fascinating chapter, the one book in the Bible, where all of the festivals are addressed. And it is a matter that it's equally fascinating to me that as you look at the festivals, you've got one day that is devoted to Passover.

And you have, how many? You have three verses focusing on the days of Unleavened Bread. If you go later in the chapter and count them up, the Feast of Trumpets has three more verses. The Day of Atonement has seven verses. You add those up, you've got fourteen. And yet, when it focuses on the Feast of Weeks, the Feast of the First Fruits, it has fourteen verses devoted just strictly into this day, and a lot of it is how to count.

I've titled this message, Are You Counting the Days? Are you counting the days? Because as Mr. Davenport mentioned this morning, the Holy Days of God always look forward. They are forward-oriented. And we've counted the days we come to this particular festival. We gather here together before God and with each other. We give thanks to God. We give an offering to God. We worship God. But there's something about this day that reminds us the early harvest continues. And we continue marking the days. And we continue looking to a time of a full and complete realization when we literally will be, the new creations that we referred to this morning.

But in verse 9, we begin reading of this particular day, or at least how to determine this particular day. Verse 9, And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them, When you come into the land, which I give to you, reap its harvest, then you should bring a sheaf of the first fruits of your harvest to the priest. He shall wave the sheaf before the Lord to be accepted on your behalf, on the day after the Sabbath, the priest shall wave it.

Now, as it goes on, it talks about counting. It says to count seven Sabbaths. And the Hebrew word literally is Shabbat. You count seven Sabbaths. And that's why we differ from Jewish practice and the practice of many, where they choose the first holy day of unleavened bread, which might be a variety of days during the week, which means when you get to the sixth day of the third month, it may be a variety of days of a week as well.

But the way we figure it, we count seven Sabbaths, and the morrow after, you have this annual Sabbath. So our Pentecost, and I believe we're right on, is always a Sunday, always a Sunday when we gather here. So you bring that sheaf, the first thing you do. And the first grain to become ripened is the barley. The barley ripened first, and when there was this certain amount, you cut their different traditions, whether it was literally a sheath that had been cut, or whether they took a certain amount, beat it out, parched it, and then offered it.

But the point is, before you begin the general harvest, you get this first of the first fruits, which of course, as we know, the wave sheaf offering represented Jesus Christ. The first, and then everything that followed in the spring harvest for 50 days, pictured the calling of God of His people across the ages, because we've got the Old Testament era, and we've got the New Testament church.

And that's a process that continues. And yet we still, we look forward, we look onward. Well, as it says here, verse 12, you should offer on that day when you wave the sheaf a male lamb. The grain offering is mentioned in verse 13. It is to be mixed with oil. So this is, again, as we've understood it, this is the Sunday that falls within the seven days of 11 bread.

And that's day one. And you start counting the clock. And you go forward. Well, verse 14, you shall neither eat bread nor part grain nor fresh grain until the day that you have brought an offering to your God. It shall be a statute forever throughout your generations and all your dwellings. And you shall count. Now, if you want the Strong's number, the Strong's concordance number is 5608, 5608. Safar. Safar, a primitive root, it says, properly to score with a mark as in making a tally or a record. That is by implication to inscribe and in the process to enumerate.

And so there is the marking off, the keeping of a tally, keeping of a record day by day. You shall count for yourselves from the day after the Sabbath, from the day that you brought the chief of the wave offering. Seven Sabbaths shall be completed. And again, that's where the Hebrew word literally is, Sabbath. Some want to say, well, it just means weeks. And that justifies that they can have it on the sixth day of the third month, which might be in the middle of the week.

But it's seven Sabbaths shall be offered. Count. Again, tally. Make those score marks. Fifty days to the end or to the day after the seventh Sabbath. Then you shall offer a new grain offering. And that's where we are today. Seven Sabbaths have been complete. And now the day after we appear before God and we bring this offering.

Because you see, the barley harvest began to be brought in. Somewhere close to two, maybe three weeks later, generally, as a rule of thumb, the wheat harvest kicked in.

And they continued on for those weeks. And then in theory, it's complete. And they gather at the end of the process, exhausted from the long hours, exhausted from the hard work. And they've been checking off one day after another, dreaming of the time when we reach this day. And we can appear before God and say, thank you for what you have given to us. Thank you for your blessing. But also, bring of that blessing and give some to God. We'll see a little later a part of it was. They were told, in the context of this day, don't harvest the corners. If the reapers drop anything, leave it behind, because you're also to share with those among you who have needs. So that's woven into this counting fifty as well. And then verse 17 speaks of the two wave loaves of two tenths of an ephah. Fine flower, baked with leaven, they are the first fruits to the Lord. And as we've understood it, the two loaves, you've got the church in the wilderness, the Old Testament age. God chose some here and there. And then we have the New Testament age. God continues to call different ones. And collectively, we are the first fruits. It goes on with other sacrifices of that particular day.

Verse 21, you shall proclaim on the same day that it is a holy convocation to you. You shall do no customary work on it. And it shall be a statute forever in all your dwellings throughout your generations. And so this weekend we have a double Sabbath, a weekly Sabbath with a high Sabbath. Verse 22, when you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not wholly reap the corners of your field when you reap, nor shall you gather any gleaning from your harvest.

You shall leave them for the poor and for the stranger, I am the Eternal, your God.

The counting process was to be specifically acted out. The counting and the marking is a part of the significance of this day. And today is a culmination of marking off seven weeks and a day.

Growing up as a lad, of course, many in this audience remember when our country began sending out the space, reaching out the space. And you had the mercury shots. I don't remember how many, but as a lad in school, you know, it was slightly, it's like the day stopped. There's a spaceship going off today. And then the Apollo shots. Excuse me, then the Gemini, then the Apollo. And then the space shuttle. And you've seen it, I've seen it, the countdown. And in that case, they are counting down. T minus 25, T minus 24, 22, and they're counting down. And then it was liftoff.

We have other examples. We have ladies carrying children. They haven't quite born yet. And so they're counting the weeks. Well, how far along are you? Well, I'm 18 weeks. We have rites of passage in growing up, like when we turned 16. I remember I couldn't wait till that time. I had my driver's permit, but then I got to go and not just take a written test.

But take the driver's test. And I counted the days until my dad took me over to the county seat. And I got to take that driver's test and get a license. And I was a real person for the first time ever. You know how that is.

A couple planning a marriage. They're going to be marking off time. They're going to be counting down. So we're familiar with these things in our society. This past Wednesday, we forwarded on a letter that came from the chairman of the council, Robin Weber. Let me just read a little bit. He said, Now our membership approaches the Feast of Pentecost with eagerness and joy of knowing that we have been blessed with the gift and seal of God's Holy Spirit.

This festival was designated by God to be anticipatory in nature as we count down seven Sabbaths plus one day from Unleavened Bread to once again appear before our Maker. And he said, My question is, how expectant are you as we approach this day of incredible meaning?

And he went on and talked about the excitement, the anxiousness that the early disciples would have felt. You think of that early church with all that they had been through, how they had seen their Lord and Master go be presented in Jerusalem. And then he was teaching them and they were there keeping the Passover, the new symbols were given, chapters of teaching that night. They moved on out toward the Garden of Gethsemane. They saw Him betrayed, taken captive. They were aware of what He had gone through, of the crucifixion, and the fact that this one that in their mind they really thought was there to restore the kingdom of Israel at that time. So they saw Him die and His dead remains be removed by Joseph of Arimathea. Had to have been it. Challenging time, scratching their heads, wondering what went awry. But lo and behold, beginning on that first day of the week, the ladies went there to the tomb while it was still dark. The tomb was open and He was already gone. And then He began appearing to them. Acts 1 tells us for this period of 40 days, He appeared to them. And then He said, wait, stay right here in Jerusalem until this power from on high comes on you. And then Acts 2 took place as they're gathered there together. It says they're in Jerusalem. It says they're in the house where they were gathered. But you know, when 3000 ended up being baptized, we wonder what house was that. It had to be the temple area, maybe some of the covered porticos around. But this sound of a great mighty rushing wind. And then the sight of these tongues that appeared as fire lighting upon the people. And you look at what happened to Peter that day and what a dramatic difference as the Spirit of God came upon Him. He was a completely different man. But back in the Old Testament, the priests were responsible for scoring the marks to count the days until Pentecost. And today we continue to mark the days because, you see, it never ends. We get to one holy day. We look to it. We anticipate it. We celebrate it when it comes. We rejoice before God. But you know something's wired within us that tomorrow you're going to start picking up the phones and make a reservation to go to the Feast of Tabernacles, and that's not until September. And we'll get through the Feast, and it won't be long. We'll be thinking, well, when's Passover this year? The plan of God always focuses our eyes ever onward. But counting 50, I was doing a study to see if I could find any parallels between something else that Old Testament Israel was told to do that involved counting 50. What would that be? Anyone have an idea? Jubilee year? Yes. And the wording is rather similar. Instead of counting off weeks of days, you count off weeks of years. And you count off these seven year cycles. And then the next year, the 50th year, you have a celebration beyond anything you can imagine. Sadly, history doesn't record ancient Israel ever. We don't even have a record of them keeping that first seventh year of the year of release, let alone the first Jubilee. We have no record that they remain faithful that long. Let's turn over to Leviticus 25. Just a couple of chapters over. Leviticus 25. And here we have instructions. First of all, begin speaking about the seven year cycle and what we call the land Sabbath. 25 verse 1, And the Lord spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai, saying, Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them, When you come into the land which I give you, then the land shall keep a Sabbath to the Lord.

Six years you shall sow your field, and six years you shall prune your vineyard and gather its fruit. But in the seventh year there shall be a Sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a Sabbath to the Lord.

You shall neither sow your field nor prune your vineyard. What grows of its own accord? And we often will call that the crop that comes back as a volunteer crop. We may have had a field where there was wheat harvested the year before, and you either let it lie fallow, or you turn it under, and yet in the combining process there's all this extra grain more of it than you realize that leaks out and all over that field.

You've got grain, you've got wheat coming back up. But what grows of its own accord for your harvest you shall not reap. I think the intent there is in a formal manner as far as the way you did the previous six years, going in with your crews like in the book of Ruth and having the reapers move through. Nor gather the grapes of your untended vine, for it is a year of rest for the land. And the Sabbath produce of the land shall be food for you, for you, your male and female servants, your hired man, and the stranger who dwells with you, for your livestock and the beasts that are in your land.

All its produce shall be for food. Seven year cycles. And just like we read in chapter 23, a part of it was the seventh year you don't go through and harvest the way you normally would, and what comes up of its own is food for you, your servants, strangers, and livestock, or rather, livestock and wildlife. Let the land rest. Now, my family, when I was a lad growing up on a farm, we had a number of smaller fields.

And as we came to God's church, we began looking at that and asking questions, and we were counseled. Because, you know, all of this is written to be done as a national process. The whole agrarian society of the nation was supposed to keep the same cycle. Not possible in this day and age. You know, a lot of men who farm, they rent land from somebody, and that landowner wants somebody putting in a crop that year.

You don't have control over that, but even on your own land, we were counseled, well, why don't you lay out certain parts? And so here was a certain part. We would just let it lie, or we would plant a legume on it. And maybe late in the year, let the cattle run and graze on it. Next year, move over into another area, another area, and just kind of slowly, over a period of several years, allow portions of the land that would add up to all of the cultivated acreage layfowl and rest.

We have a little bit more added over in Deuteronomy 15. Let's go to Deuteronomy 15, because here it adds a little bit more that during that year of release, that seventh year, all debts were to be forgiven. Wow! What a marvelous blessing that would be! How badly our society needs something like that. We have a whole nation and a debt beyond anything we can imagine. We have individuals in debt beyond anything that they can ever have hope of recovering from. Deuteronomy 15, verse 1, at the end of every seven years, you shall grant a release of debts.

So to put it in more modern terminology, borrowing a phrase from the game Monopoly, every seven years you get a get-out-of-jail-free card. And if you're in Hock, up to the eyebrows, or maybe just to the knees, you have that lifted off of you. Now, I know many read the book here that was kind of making its rounds in the Church of God community this last year, The Harbinger by Jonathan Cahn. And I thought one of the most fascinating parts of his book, although there were areas that I took exception with, and I think he forced interpretations in there, but one of the most fascinating parts was that he tied it into this year of release, this year when you forgive debts.

And when the stock market fell in 2001, you know, at the time 9-11, the stock market was shut down for days, and then it reopened, and he just went through the floor. That just happened to be on the Hebrew calendar, the last day of the sixth month, the day before the Feast of Trumpets.

And it was the last day of that year that you were to set all debts free. And seven years later, we had things like Freddie MacFanny May and the housing crisis, and once again, on the 29th of Elo, the last day of the sixth month, the day before the Feast of Trumpets, the bottom fell out once again.

And I think God's trying to tell this country something. So it makes us wonder what's going to happen on Elo the 29th of 2015. Well, it won't be long. We'll have a chance to find out, won't we? Well, interesting. With the year of release, the forgiveness of the release of debts, this is the form of the release. Every creditor who has lent anything to his neighbor shall release it. He shall not require it of his neighbor or his brother because it is called the Lord's release.

Of a foreigner, you may require it. So it's interesting here that there were certain freedoms and certain privileges that took place only within the company of Israel. Kind of like the Spirit of God is only poured out within this scattered body of Jesus Christ, the Israel of God scattered all over this world. You shall give up your claim to what is owed by your brother, except when there may be no poor among you, for the Lord will greatly bless you in the land which the Lord your God has given you to possess as an inheritance.

Only if you carefully obey the voice of the Lord your God to observe with care all these commandments which I command you today, for the Lord your God will bless you just as He promised you. You shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow. There was a time when Great Britain, when the United States, when Canada... There was a time when some of these countries were the great lending nations of the world, and now we're among the greatest debtor nations of the world, and it has to do with the blessing of God, whether we have it or whether we don't.

The weather goes on talking about the poor among your own gates in verse 7. And in verse 8, you shall open your hand wide to Him and willingly lend to Him sufficient for His need, whatever He needs. And bewareless there be a wicked thought in your heart saying, the seventh year, the year of release is at hand, and your eye be evil against your poor brother, and you give him nothing, and he cry out for the Lord against you, and it becomes sin among you. So there are a lot of places where God is very concerned, very concerned that we take care of those, provide for those who have needs. And we gather here today, and you and I are the undeserving recipients of the most fantastic blessing that any human being could ever dream of.

We've been given the Spirit of God. We've been given a down payment on eternity. We've been given the most fantastic future to dream of and look forward to and to anticipate. We gathered here this morning. We passed baskets. We threw envelopes in. But you know, inside those envelopes, we had the wherewithal to go out and to preach the gospel of the Kingdom of God, to provide seeds, whether it's in the form of a telecast or of an Internet presence, or of a printed magazine or booklet, and give those things away free, no charge, as Jesus said, freely receive, freely give.

And it's always been a hallmark of the church of God to give away no charge, gratis, the pearl of great Christ. As God sees fit to call someone now, because unless God draws a person, we just will go out here and talk to the wall somewhere, because it's not going to happen. The Kiel and Elise commentary on the Old Testament on these verses 6 and 7 said, The meaning is that what grew of itself was not to be reaped by the owner of the land, but that masters and servants, laborers and visitors, cattle and game, were to eat thereof from the field.

The produce arising without tilling or sowing was to be common good for man and beast. It was to belong to the poor and the needy, but the owner was not forbidden to partake of it as well.

We're not through with the Jubilee. That's just one seven-year cycle, one week of years. Let's look in chapter 31. Deuteronomy 31.

And begin in verse 9.

It speaks a bit further here about the year of release. Deuteronomy 31 verse 9.

Women, little ones.

Let's go back to Leviticus 25.

Continue a little bit there.

Leviticus 25.

We read down through verse 7, and in verse...

I made it to Deuteronomy 25. I should keep going.

Leviticus 25.

We read 1 through 7.

And then it goes on. It's not through. In verse 8, you shall count. Same word. Score those marks as you count the years. In this case, count seven sabbaths of years for yourself.

Seven times seven years. And the time of the seven sabbaths of years shall be to you 49 years.

And remember, each time there was a seventh year, it was a year of release. It was a land sabbath. You let the land lie rest.

And you see, it was an act of faith. It was an act of faith because the Israelite trusted God that God would bless them so much the previous year.

And by the way, the previous year was year six, which was the third tiniest year.

But the God would bless them so much that they could lay aside and have more than a plenty to get through the seventh year, even though they weren't going to put the normal crops in the fields.

49 years. Verse 9, you shall cause the trumpet of the jubilee to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month. On the day of atonement, you shall make the trumpet to sound throughout all your land.

So we've got a number of pieces or parts of holy days in the fall that are gathered here together when you would come to the jubilee. You take the musical instrument of trumpets, you blow it on the day of atonement, and the reason you're blowing it is to announce freedom to proclaim liberty throughout all the land. And the jubilee is one of the great types of what the Feast of Tabernacles pictured. The kingdom of God. A time of completely and totally being freed from the shackles of a lifetime. Of completely realizing the promise of God, of which we only have a down payment. We have the most wonderful start, but it is just that. It's a start in a process. It shall be a jubilee for you. Each of you shall return to his possession, and each of you shall return to his family. You talk about the ultimate get-out-of-jail-free card. Somewhere along the course of time, imagine your family had property. Maybe you were lazy, but maybe events, storms, all kinds of things. Warfare. Maybe you got so far in the hole that you had no other choice but to sell off what you had and try to survive. If that was the 19th year of a 50-year cycle, don't you suppose for the next years you'd be looking forward, looking to the time, dreaming of the time when the jubilee came and you would get that ultimate get-out-of-jail card. Because what this is saying is your family's land comes back to your family. Even if you, the one that sold it, dies, it still comes back to your descendants. I can't help but think that that animated Israel, but again, sadly, we have no record that they ever kept even one of those. So, continuing here.

At 50th year, verse 11, shall be a jubilee to you, and it you shall neither sown nor reap what grows of its own. It will gather the grapes of your untended vine, for it is a jubilee. It shall be holy to you. You shall eat its produce from the field.

In the year of jubilee, each of you shall return to his possession. If you shall anything to your neighbor or buy from your neighbor's hand, you shall not oppress one another. According to the number of the years of the jubilee, you shall buy from your neighbor, and according to the number of years of crops, he shall sell to you.

Verse 17, therefore you shall not oppress one another, but you shall fear the Lord your God, for I am the Eternal, your God. You shall observe my statutes and keep my judgments and perform them. Well, we won't read all of this, but essentially, think of every time when a year of release came along, it had to do with personal liberty. You were set free. Our country, this country, in its infancy, had what was called indentured servitude.

You might have someone over in an old country in Europe who didn't have the funds, and he could sell himself into seven years of servitude, to have passage across the Atlantic to get to the new world. But see, he was somebody's servant for that seven years.

Interesting that it was seven years. I wonder where they would have got that idea from. I wonder, did anyone read the Bible at the beginning of this country? And in seven years, they're free. And basically, that's when they'd pick up maybe a family, maybe an individual, and they'd move out west, and they'd go to the frontier, because the frontier is where poor people could go and get a fresh start and begin clearing off and getting a new start to their own property, build their own home, and to become the master of their own life and their own destiny.

But the 50th year, the 49th year was a year of release. You didn't farm the land that year. The 50th year is the Jubilee year. You didn't farm the land that year. And so, at the end of that seventh cycle of seven weeks of years, you really had to have faith in God. Maybe that's why we don't have a record of them keeping one. That God would bless them in those years leading up to it, so much so that they'd have wherewithal to survive in year 49 and year 50 and into year one of the next Jubilee cycle until they had long enough to get that crop in and start getting produce.

So it was an act of faith. The Jubilee pictured restoration of property. The Standard Bible Encyclopedia on their topic, Jubilee year, it's interesting. It brings out these points, the restoration of land and personal liberty, and it also made the comment that the Israelite could enjoy the simple life. I like that, the simple life. But here it is, every seven years, as you're marking off these years, every seventh year that rolls around, you're not going to be out— and this was an agrarian society—you're not going to be out there telling the field.

You have time for your family. You have time maybe to build onto the house, build up the fences, do things that we all let go, and just have a slower, simpler life, an easier life. The number 50 appears also in the Old Testament with regard to the service of Levites. We read a while ago about the Levites who bear the Ark of the Covenant. And carrying the Ark of the Covenant was nothing, probably, compared to all the work they went through of all of the bulls, all of the sheep, the goats, that they had to offer.

Heave them up on the altar. Clean up the mess. Haul off the ashes. Keep the altar of incense burning. But God says when you're 50, you get lighter duty. You get to rest. Don't you suppose a Levite who's 48, 49—and you know things just don't work the same way that they used to. He's looking to. He's marking off the time when I hit 50. I hit 50 ages ago, I know. But at that time, I sent an email to the Director of Ministerial Services to remind him that I turned 50. And I quoted the Scripture about the Levites getting lighter duty, and I asked him, when should I expect to have fewer congregations and to be freed from my duties as camp director?

I got a reply back, too. It said, and I quote, don't push your luck. So, but we had a good laugh. We had a good laugh. Further in the chapter, Leviticus 25, it mentions verse 44, As for your male and female slaves whom you have, from the nations around you, from them you may buy male and female slaves, moreover you may buy the children of strangers who dwell among you and their families who are with you, which they beget in your land, they shall become your property.

Well, I won't read all these verses, but there was a distinction. If you had an Israelite as a servant, you let him go. If it was from a foreigner outside of Israel, they become your property. Well, I'm getting sidetracked here on the Jubilee a bit too much. But you will remember when Jesus came into his ministry, he went back home, he went to Nazareth, the Sabbath day, he went to the synagogue, he stood up to read, he was given the scroll of Isaiah, and he read those words.

In fact, why don't we just look there in Luke 4 very quickly. Luke 4. And his reading begins with verse 18, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me. Because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor, he has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, the recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.

Now, you have to go back to Isaiah 61 to realize he rather abruptly stopped in the midst of a quotation. But it wasn't yet time for the following phrases. The acceptable year of the Lord. What else can it look to but the Jubilee? Without keeping a Jubilee, look at our country's history. Not just our country, but many countries, the western world.

We go back to the late 1700s. You had events taking place just say in France. You had the French Revolution, you had the storming of the Bastille, you had the assassination of the last king, Louis XVI, and Marie Antoinette. You had events that laid the groundwork so Napoleon could rise up and seize power.

If you go 30 years later, the 1830s, we likewise had a time of great economic distress that began sowing seeds of frustration. There were issues brewing here in this country that brewed until the Civil War. 1780s again. 1930s, 50 years later, each of these is 50 years apart. A depression. A depression that our country didn't come out of. Frankly, it took World War II to stimulate the economy and put everyone back to work. The 1930s, and that decade gave the world people like Adolf Hitler and other tyrants. 1980s, seems like we dodged a bull at that time.

But we had some remarkable leaders in so many countries, like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. In Canada, it was Brian Mulroney at that time. You had some remarkable leaders. It won't be long. We'll be looking into another 50 years. Another 50 years passing by. We live in a country that has 50 states. Can't prove a thing, but it just strikes me as being more than coincidence.

Leviticus 23 again. I think we already read this, but verse 22. When you reap the harvest, you shall not wholly reap the corners, and you won't gather the gleaning. You leave them for the poor and for the stranger. I am the eternal your God. Within the Scriptures describing Pentecost, God provided for the strangers of the land and for the needy of the land. That they too could have some kind of provision, some kind of freedom, some kind of benefit.

He repeatedly told them in discussing Holy Days, I want you to remember that you were slaves back in Egypt, and the way you were treated, you do not treat other people that way. We count 50. We count toward completion. We count toward release from bondage.

We've been given the Spirit of God, yes, but we still have a struggle. There's this other guy within all of us, and he's going to rear here to her ugly head every time we turn around. And there's a struggle, there's a battle that takes place between our ears. And we're going to need that Spirit to put off the old and to put on the new. We gather today on the Feast of Harvest, the Feast of the First Fruits, the Feast of Weeks, the Day of Pentecost, and one more time, we've marked off the days to 50. And in one sense, we stop counting. But in another sense, we never stop counting. We always look forward. Today, we have paused to rejoice, to assemble, to worship, to give God a little offering to say, Thank you, Father, for all that you've given to us. But we still look forward. We look forward to what is ahead. Romans 13 took me a while to get to the New Testament, but Romans 13. And reading verse 11, I'll read it to you as it appears in the English Standard Version. Romans 13 verse 11, it says, Besides this, you know the time that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep, for salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed.

And so, let us pray every day to thank God that we are one day and one year closer to the return of Jesus Christ. And during that Passover service, Jesus spoke of not drinking the fruit of the vine with Him again until He drinks it with Him anew in His Father's kingdom. Let us thank God and ask God to speed the time when we can have that Millennial feast that Jesus spoke of and sit down and share not only with each other, but with the King of Kings. And let us look forward and pray for a time when everyone is set free from the shackles of a lifetime.

When everyone is given a down payment, a little partial payment, a beginning earnest payment of the full realization that we will experience whenever Jesus Christ returns and the saints are transformed or the dead in Christ brought up out of the grave to be with Him. And let us look forward to the full realization of that prophecy of Joel. So long ago that Peter quoted that day of a time when God said, I will pour out my Spirit upon all people. That day He started with about 120, and then 3,000 were added. And then it says different places in the book of Acts that the numbers of the disciples were multiplied. And we can trace pieces of the puzzle here and there for 2,000 years. And yet we gather here, and we're a little tiny flock. And there are so many people out here completely and totally oblivious to what this day means. We've been given a taste, a down payment, a freedom, but we continue counting. Again, Mr. Weber asked the question in his letter, How expectant are you as we approach this day of incredible meaning? And so we close the day, and I merely ask you on this day of Pentecost, Are you counting the days?