The Meaning of The Day of Pentecost

Since most of us in the Western world live in cities and towns, we're not really connected much to the land, the way the people of ancient Israel were. And that's why it's sort of hard for us to understand sometimes when we study the Holy Day seasons, how much those seasons were wrapped around the growing seasons and the harvest seasons in ancient Israel.

And, of course, in different parts of the country, those seasons are totally different. So, in some parts of the country, it's hard to even understand, for people to understand, because their seasons are different. But the Holy Days are centered around those growing seasons and those harvest seasons.

And so, when we go through the study of the Holy Days, we're always studying, you know, the harvests. We're always studying what they were growing, because in those physical seasons, we are able to understand a lot of spiritual truths that God is teaching us. You know, during the Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread, we talked about how that was the beginning of the barley season. And during the Days of Unleavened Bread, there was a very interesting and very important activity that took place. We're going to talk about it in a minute, that we often don't spend much time talking about. We don't recognize, because it wasn't a holy day.

It was an offering. And since we know that the offerings are not commanded for us to do today, many times we ignore them. Where the truth is, those offerings teach us. All those offerings teach us something about God and teach us something about Jesus Christ. So, every one of them is important. So, during the Days of Unleavened Bread, they were to do what is called the Wave Sheaf, which is a unique offering.

There's nothing like it at any other time. And one of the important things of the Wave Sheaf offering was that after they did this Wave Sheaf, they were to count 50 days. And they were to keep what is called the Feast of Weeks, because they were to do seven Sabbaths plus one day on the morrow. So, they were to do seven Sabbaths, and they end up with 50 days. And so, in Greek, it's petit cost. Count 50. And the most common way that it's talked about in the Jewish world today is the Feast of Weeks, if you translated it, Shavolt.

It's the Feast of Weeks. So, they were to count 50 days. It's the only of the feasts that they were to count. All the other ones, they were told, you know, on the 15th day of this month, on the 10th day of this month, on these days you're supposed to do this. This one, they had to count.

Now, when we go back and we look at the meaning of these, of Pentecost, and I want to talk a little bit about Pentecost. I want to talk about counting it, but tying in the counting of it with the meaning of it, with the importance of it. Why was it 50 days? How did they count it? And what importance it is for us today as the Church, because Pentecost, like all the other Holy Days, has an important, great meaning for the Church that they did not understand in ancient Israel.

Ancient Israel did not understand the complete meaning of the Holy Days. For one thing, until Christ came, they did not understand that the Passover was a person, right? So they didn't understand the Passover in its fullest extent. They didn't understand the Feast of Unleavened Bread in its fullest extent. They didn't understand the Day of Pentecost in its fullest extent, in the way that you and I can understand it, because we live after the first coming of the Messiah. So we have information they did not have. And when we go through this information, it's going to help us understand why we keep it the way we do, why we emphasize the things that we do, why we count it the way that we do, because we're going to see how the Old Testament teaching fits in with the New Testament teaching.

And just like I did before the Passover in Days of Unleavened Bread, where I showed that how we understand certain aspects of the Passover in Days of Unleavened Bread are explained not in the Old Testament, but the New Testament, in the fulfillment of Christ. So we'll see that our understanding of Pentecost in some ways comes from, yes, the Old Testament, but it's incomplete. The complete understanding comes from the New Testament.

Now, when we go back to the time of Christ, there was a controversy on when they would keep Pentecost. And we know that the Pharisees kept it differently than the Sadducees. And the reason why is the Pharisees kept, you know, when do you start counting 50? Well, when do you do the wave sheep? And we'll go look at it in a minute. They were to do it on the day after the Sabbath.

That's where they were to do the wave sheep offered. Well, the Pharisees said that Sabbath was the Holy Day, the first Holy Day of the Day of Unleavened Bread. So they started counting from the sixteenth. You know, the fourteenth was the Passover, the fifteenth was the Holy Day. They started counting from the sixteenth. The Sadducees, on the other hand, said, no, that Sabbath means the Sabbath in the middle of the week, in the middle of the days of Unleavened Bread. And therefore, they started counting from Sunday. There was also a third group that goes way back to ancient times.

Basically, it's an Ethiopian group today. It's not widely believed. But they actually started counting the wave sheep on the day after the last Holy Day. So if you start counting it as the Pharisees did, on the day after the first Holy Day, then you end up that it's always on, side to the sixth, the third month of the year. If you start doing it, counting it on the day after the last Holy Day, Pentecost is always on the side of the twelve.

If you start counting it on the day after the Sabbath, in the middle, it ends up falling on a Sunday, but never on the same date. You understand? It falls on the same day, but never on the same date. The other two countings always fall on the same date. The other counting, it always falls on a different date for the same day. Now, obviously, in our fellowship, we keep and do what was considered the Sadducees way of counting.

Why do we do that? Because we follow the Sadducees? No. I'm going to show you why we did it. We'll look at the Old Testament, but then more importantly, we'll look at the New Testament. Because every part of the Old Testament teachings has to have a fulfillment in the New Testament. If it pictures Christ somewhere along the line, Christ has to do something. If the Passover pictures Christ, Christ had to die on the 14th of Aviv. It was that simple. And He kept His Passover with His disciples at the beginning of the 14th. So that's why we do it.

It's the same way when we go into Pentecost. How do we come to the conclusions that we do? And if some of you go way back to the Radio Church of God, or the early days of the Worldwide Church of God, we kept Pentecostal of Monday for years and years, which is not really biblically supportable. But we came to some conclusions from some Old Testament passages, and we ended up keeping it on Monday for many, many years. We changed that, one, because we were able to see that that's not what the Old Testament says, but we also changed it because of the New Testament passage. So we'll go through that today, too. So let's go to Leviticus 23. So most of the Jews today, following the tradition of the Pharisees, because the only group that survived are the first century Jewish groups that really survived, were the Pharisees. They are the Orthodox Jews today. The Sadducees were basically made up of... predominantly they were priests, and they controlled the Temple. When the Temple was destroyed, the power of the priesthood was destroyed. And so the Sadducees no longer had much influence on the development of Judaism. Judaism became... interesting enough, the Pharisees were not ordained priests, or even ordained elders. The Pharisees were a movement among people, they gained great power, and eventually became the dominant force in Judaism. And of course, remember, it's important for us to remember something. Judaism today, or Judaism in the first century, was horribly flawed. We get fascinated with Judaism because our roots go back to the Jewish people, the Israelite people, and they are the people of God. And there's a great plan for them in the future. But we also must remember, when Christ founded the Church, there reached the point where God was no longer working directly through those people the way He had been in the past. And Pentecost helps us understand that. Once again, I'm not erasing the fact that there's a plan for those people, there's a future for those people, Christ is coming back for them. I'm not discounting what He did with them in the past. I am saying, when He created the Church, He deliberately said, I am now working with all peoples I call into my Church.

And remember, we went through two-serve series here about six months ago, one of them went through Israel and prophecy and the Church and prophecy. And we went through there in Romans, where Paul deliberately says there is a remnant of those Israelites, and that there are all these Gentiles, all these other people being brought into the Church. So the Church is a very specific part of the plan of God. And we'll look at how Pentecost teaches us a little bit about that. Let's go to Leviticus 23, the famous chapter that outlines all of God's Holy Days and Feast days. Verse 1, it says, "...and the Lord spoke to both the same, speak to the children of Israel, and say to them, the Feast of the Lord, which ye shall proclaim to be holy convocation, these are my feasts." These are not the Feast of the Jews, by the way. So the argument that we don't have to keep the Holy Days because of the Feast of the Jews is not true. These are the Feast of God. And the first one is mentioned. Verse 3 is the Sabbath. Six days shall you work, or shall work be done, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of solemn rest, a holy convocation. You shall do no work on it. It is the Sabbath of the Lord in all your dwellings. That these are the feasts of the Lord, holy convocations which you shall proclaim at their appointed times, holy convocations. The people were commanded to assemble together to worship God, to keep these Holy Days. You are here in the holy convocation, invited by God to keep His Holy Day together with other holy people. He says, On the fourteenth day of the first month of twilight is the Lord's Passover. So He is the Passover on the fourteenth. And on the fifteenth day of the same month is the Feast of Unleavened Bread. To the Lord, seven days you must eat unleavened bread. On the first day you shall have a holy convocation, and you shall do no customary work in it. But you shall offer an offering made by fire to the Lord for seven days. The seventh day shall be a holy convocation. You shall do no customary work in it.

So here we have the Sabbath mention, and then we get to the days of Unleavened Bread, where there are two days that are called holy, days you should not work, and days that are holy convocations.

Then verse nine, we have what seems to be odd in all these instructions about the Holy Days, because we have the most detailed instructions about any offering or sacrifice to be done during any of the holy days. And it's actually not done on any Sabbath. It's done during the days of Unleavened Bread. Verse nine, And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, Speak to the children of Israel, say to them, When you come unto the land, what shall they give you, at Reapits' harvest, that you shall bring a sheaf of the firstfruits of your harvest to the priests? Now, it doesn't say what the harvest would be here, but once they got into the area that's now modern-day Israel, what was ripe at this time? What was the firstfruits of this time was barley. So this also became known as the Feast of the Barley Harvest, or the Wave Sheaf of the Barley Harvest, because this is where the barley harvest was beginning, and they were to cut this. Now, any of you that work in agriculture know you can't predict exactly when things are going to grow. I always wondered about that, you know, because the barley harvest sometimes won't grow exactly the way it's supposed to.

So I read someplace that in the temple they actually had a little plot of barley. They had a barley harvest no matter what was going on, so they could do this at the time they were supposed to. Because if there's no barley, what do you do? Postpone the Wave Sheaf offering? Well, to do that, you have to postpone the days of the Living Bread. So what do they do? Well, they made sure they had barley. Makes sense. He said, He shall wave the sheaf before the Lord to be accepted on your behalf or the day after the Sabbath, and the priest shall wave it. And he shall offer on that day when you wave the sheaf of the ale lamb of the first year without blemish as a bird offering to the Lord. And he goes on and talks about all these other things they're supposed to do, all these details about this Wave Sheaf, a special offering once a year, and it's different than other offerings. And they were to take this grain, and the priest was to take and hold it up, the sheep. They would take grain, they would tie it together, and they would wave the sheep of grain, and they would offer it to God. According to some Jewish tradition, they could not eat any barley until this happened. Until they had their barley accepted by God, the crops could be, and so they would bring and they would wave this on the day after the Sabbath.

Verse 15, And you shall count for yourselves from the day after the Sabbath, from the day that you brought the sheep of the Wave offering, seven Sabbaths shall be completed. Count fifty days to the day after the seventh Sabbath, and then you shall offer a new great offering to the Lord.

Now, this is where the controversy begins. Which Sabbath is this? Is it one of the annual Holy Day Sabbaths, or is it the Sabbath in the middle or during the days of the mother of bread?

The words themselves actually don't give you an answer.

Now, you can read what the Pharisees taught and what is taught by modern Judaism. You can read people that keep it a different way. Of course, there's a whole group of Catholics that keep with Sunday, and they count it totally different. I haven't figured that thing out at all.

You know, they come up with this whole different way of counting things and coming up with what Pentecost means. But, you know, if we stick to the Bible, we come up with these three ways of counting it. The third way that it's the day, the last day of 11 bread, is basically discounted by almost everybody because of the understanding that this had to happen during the days of 11 bread. To remove it from the days of 11 bread, removes it from the meaning of the context of what it's put into. So, if we look at this, you have to make decisions. The Pharisees decided it's the first day of 11 bread. The Sadducees, the priests said, no, it's the Sabbath. So, in the temple, they would actually do the wave sheaf on Sunday after the Sabbath. But the Pharisees would say that that was wrong. If we look at this, the only indication we have is we start with the Sabbath in verse 3. Now, remember, the Bible is written very specifically so that we will come to certain conclusions. Verses 15 and 16 are confusing and that they don't give you an exact explanation. But we do know that the first and last day of 11 bread are deliberately not called Sabbath in this passage. They're called Sabbath every place else, but they're not called Sabbath in this passage. They're called holy convocations. The word Sabbath doesn't appear. So, when you get to verse 15 and it says, you shall count for yourselves for the day after the Sabbath, the only Sabbath reference in the passage up to this point is the weekly Sabbath.

It's the only Sabbath reference you have. And then it says, count seven Sabbaths. That has to be the weekly Sabbath. So, if you look at that context, if you come to the conclusion, well, it has to be the weekly Sabbath because it's the only reference that's there. Verse 3 is the Sabbath. Verse 16 is obviously the Sabbath. So, why is verse 15 a different day when the first and last days of the love of bread are deliberately not called Sabbath in this passage where they are so called Sabbath in other passages? So, that was the Sadducean argument. So, today, even among people who keep, Christians who keep the holy days, there's this constant argument. You follow the Pharisees or do you follow the Sadducees? We don't follow either. We don't follow either. Our decision is not made because it's what the Sadducees did, nor is it made because we were, you know, well, the Sadducees, the Pharisees couldn't do anything right. That's not our argument at all. We look at this and say we have a circumstantial argument, but of itself, I mean, I think it's the stronger of the argument, but of itself, it doesn't prove the other argument's wrong. We have to be honest about things. It's a stronger argument, but it doesn't prove the other argument wrong.

So, we'll have to look at other scriptures to try to tie into this.

And there are other scriptures people tie in, but there's only a few that are actually relevant.

Now, I want to bring out a couple points here that become very important then when we start moving through this wave sheath, which connects, by the way, the Passover and Daisels Oven Bread, the Pentecost. This is a connection that ties the two together. This wave sheath, we know, okay, what does it picture? What does it symbolize?

Well, it symbolizes Jesus Christ, because all the offerings symbolize Jesus Christ.

So, He is the Passover. He fulfilled the Passover exactly with His blood, right? His death.

Yes. We also know that He fulfilled then all the offerings that were of blood.

But what in the world did He do that was a wave sheath?

Now, remember, the wave sheath is the first of a certain type of harvest, the barley. And it must be accepted by God. The priest must wave it, and it must be accepted by God. Remember those things. We'll come back to those. Verse 17 now. So now, on this 50th day, this Feast of weeks, the Feast of Harvest is called, because it has to do with the harvest too, and the Pentecost, as we say from the Greek, you shall break from your dwellings two waves of loaves of two tenths of an ephah. And they shall be a fine flower, and they shall be baked with leaven. They are the first fruits to the Lord. Pentecost was also a celebration of firstfruits, just like the wave sheath, but it's a different kind of firstfruits. The firstfruits that are offered by the wave sheath is barley. The firstfruits that are offered at Pentecost is wheat, the beginning of a different harvest. And notice that once the grain cut and offered, they were baked in the loaves of bread.

There's all kinds of ideas what those loaves need, and that's very interesting, but we'll come back to that in a minute. I'm not going to go through the loaves in detail, but we'll talk about them in a little bit. So it's a different celebration of a different firstfruits. Now, this would have been so obvious to those people. They had their spring barley harvest, and they knew that in the temple, the Sadducees got up and offered, or the priests, they offered their... because not all priests were Sadducees, not all Sadducees were priests, so the priests would offer this wave sheath, and it was accepted by God, and they were blessed. And then, as time went on, they got into the beginning of summer, and the wheat started to come up. And the first was the wheat now, but it wasn't waved before God. It was to be baked in the loaves and brought before God. Verse 20.

Now, it talks about here, by the way, they have to kill lambs, they have to kill... there's all these other goats that they have to kill. There's all these other sacrifices they do on the day of Pentecost. Then the priests shall wave them... this isn't stocks, this is the meat of the offering, this is the bread, this has to be offered to God, it has to be waved before God, accepted by God.

The priests shall wave them with the bread of the firstfruits as a wave offered before the Lord with the two lambs, and they shall be holy to the Lord for the priest. And you shall proclaim on the same day that it is a holy convocation to you, and you shall do no customary work on it, and it shall be a statute forever in all your dwellings, throughout your generations. And then the next couple verses are about harvesting. Harvesting your crops, but leaving foam for the poor. Then it goes on to the Feast of Trumpets. But here's all this information about the wave sheep and Pentecost that have to do with these two different types of two different kinds of firstfruits. One is offered to God as great and barley. The other is offered to God mixed with the killing of these animals, and this meat, and these loaves of bread are waved before God. So both are presented before God for acceptance. But they're two different kinds of firstfruits.

Once again, in that land, everybody would have known what that meant.

That's how they grew up. That's how they fed themselves.

You and I would have to get out of H.E.V. and we're going to wave some whatever this is, some GMO stuff. We're going to wave this before you...

We're just engaged from this, so we don't know. This was normal. This made sense to these people. This is the world they lived in. And we have to go back into this world sometime to really understand what they were doing. And a lot of times what we do, in all honesty, we keep trying to impose 21st century American thought into the Bible. And every time we do, we end up with 21st century American theology instead of sometimes biblical theology.

Now, there's one other thing, or two things I want to bring out here. What does the number 50 mean? Why is 50 important? And is this arbitrary? Well, there's another number 50 that really means something in Israel. And it was the 50th year, the year of Jubilee. Every 50th year, they were to go through a cycle, and this was to be proclaimed on the Day of Atonement, in which all debts were erased, and all land went back to the original families. It was the year of Jubilee. It was the year of breaking of bondage. In fact, in Ezekiel, it's literally called the year of liberty. The year of liberty. The number 50 in the Bible, numbers sometimes have beatings. The number 50 had to do with freedom and liberty.

Freedom and liberty. So, Pentecost has to do with freedom. Now, we know that the Days of Unleavened Bread have to do with freedom, right? Ancient Israel coming out of Egypt, Christians coming out of sin. So, how in the world does Pentecost have to do with liberty? What does it have to do with freedom? It's interesting, in the Old Testament, you really can't find any answers to that. You only find an answer to that in the New Testament.

So, we'll show that in a minute. Now, when we talk about this beginning of first fruits in Pentecost, Pentecost was a season. I mean, it was a day, but it marked the beginning of something, the beginning of a whole summer of first fruits. Go to Deuteronomy chapter 26. Deuteronomy chapter 26.

And sometimes we get into these details, so you're not asleep yet, right? I hope you're still with me. Deuteronomy 26 verse 1, And it shall be, when you come into the land which the Lord your God has given you, as an inheritance, that you possess it and dwell in it, that you shall take some of the first of all the produce of the ground, which you shall bring from your land that the Lord your God has given you, and put it in a basket, and go to the place where the Lord your God chooses to make his name abide, in other words, at the tabernacle. And ye shall go to the one who is the priest of those days, and say to him, I declare today to the Lord your God that I have come to this country, which the Lord swore to our fathers, and to give us. And the priest shall take the basket out of your hand, and set it down before the altar of the Lord your God. So, throughout the summer, there was a constant stream of first-roots coming into the tabernacle that entered the temple.

And these first-roots were bought and given to God as a gift, used inside the temple of the tabernacle, basically to feed the priests.

First-roots were coming in all the time. Pentecost would have really marked the beginning of this season. All I mean, if your garden came in early, you might have given your first-roots before Pentecost. But the point is that this was the beginning of the official, just like the wave sheath was the beginning of the official barley harvest.

But the barley harvest may have actually started a week before or a week later.

Because of weather, you know how it is. You have rain. You know, my grass, I thought, was dead. We had rain. And of course, some of it's not grass. I don't know what I have growing in my yard.

It's green. Okay? So we leave it there because it's better than dirt. But I'm not sure what it is. But all of a sudden, overnight, stuff started to grow all over the place.

Right. Now, the barley harvest didn't start on a certain hour of a certain day.

But it officially started at a certain point. Just like this officially started, Pentecost was the official declaration. Just like June 22nd, the beginning of summer.

Well, I've been in San Antonio where the summer started on February 22.

But it does officially start to June 22. You see what I mean? So, these holy days were official declarations of things that were happening in their lives. What was actually happening sometimes was a little different than what was officially being declared. But they understood that. Just like you and I understand that seasons and times and weather can change things sometimes. It doesn't change the fact that summer is basically three months. Winter is basically three months. I mean, that's the norm. Not every year is the norm.

So they would begin... This was the official beginning of, okay, the first fruits would come in all summer. So, I'm still confused. I go back to Leviticus 23, and I can see why we count the way we do, but okay, I can see why the Jews count the way they do. The Ethiopians, that's a little bit more difficult. But, okay, we can see that. People discuss that. They argue that. We look at all these numbers. We look at, okay, 50 means freedom. And all these, you know, this wave sheaf offering that pictures Christ, and it's the first fruits, but then there's another first fruits.

How do we put all this together?

First of all, let's look at counting.

We have to always look for the New Testament fulfillment of the Old Testament types of Christ. We know that Jesus Christ, you know, the 14th fell on a Wednesday, right?

Jesus died on a Wednesday. We know He was resurrected at the, you know, towards the end of the Sabbath. He was actually resurrected on the Sabbath, which just makes such perfect sense.

If the Sabbath is the day of God, which is God's day of redemption and reconciliation, then Christ will be resurrected on the day of redemption and reconciliation.

But that's another subject. I'll give a sermon on that sometime, too.

It's on my list of sermon ideas to give. One of the things we'll do tomorrow, by the way, at the meeting, just a side point here, is we'll ask for ideas for sermons and even sermonettes for the speakers that things are in your mind, maybe some things you would like covered, so that we can try to cover those things for everyone. Let's go back to this.

So we know that the first day of Unleavened Bread, which is a Sabbath, was on the 15th, correct? Which was Thursday. Friday comes along. Now, in accordance with if you believe that the wave sheaf had to be offered on that Friday, is there anything in the New Testament that's fulfilled on that Friday? Nothing happens. Nothing happens.

So there's silence in the New Testament. The Sabbath comes. Jesus is resurrected.

John 20. John chapter 20. We have to look at how the Old Testament is fulfilled and that helps us take care of debates and problems. If it all pictures Jesus Christ, we find where Jesus Christ was the fulfillment, and that answers our problems. John 20.

Let's pick it up in verse 11.

This is Sunday morning. Mary goes to the tomb, and of course, Jesus has been resurrected. He's been resurrected for hours. Remember, they went before sunup, so the sunrise service is pagan. It has no concept in the Bible. He was resurrected before sunup Sunday morning, because he'd been resurrected the evening before when there was still the Sabbath.

She goes to the tomb, and Jesus is gone. She doesn't understand what's happened.

Verse 11. Mary stood outside by the tomb weeping, and as she wept, she stooped down and looked into the tomb, and she saw two angels in white sitting. What did they have in the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain? And they said to her, "'Womah, why are you weeping?' And she said to them, "'Because they have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.'" I just can't imagine the confusion and pain she's going through.

I don't know if he died, but now she thought they had stolen his body.

And when she said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know it was Jesus. And Jesus said to her, "'Womah, why are you weeping? Who are we seeking?'" And she's supposing him to be the gardener. So obviously Jesus either appeared differently to her, or the shock of seeing him was so great. You know, I suppose if someone died, you thought died walked into the room, you wouldn't say it's him. You would say it's somebody else, right?

She's supposing to be the gardener. He said to him, "'Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.'" And Jesus said to her, "'Barry.'" And she turned and said to him, "'Robonai,' which means to say, teacher, but it's greater than the word rabbi. This is when this word is used. It means teacher of teachers.

And Jesus said to her, "'Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to my Father.

But go to my brothers and say to them, I am ascending to my Father, and your Father, and to my God, and your God.'" Now, Jesus had been already accepted as the Passover Lamb.

There is something else he had not yet fulfilled.

He had not yet been the wave-sheath.

He had not yet been the wave-sheath. He has to ascend and be accepted.

I can't imagine what that ceremony was about, but I can tell you it was amazing.

It was amazing.

And if you were to think about it, that very same day, what's happening in the temple?

The priests are doing the wave-sheath on her.

To be accepted by God.

The answer to our question is answered entirely by the one who is the wave-sheath, and the one who the sacrifices of Pentecost is all about.

See, to me, there's no question.

If you believe Jesus Christ is the full will of these things, you have nothing, you have nothing on Nice at 16, and you have nothing occurring on the day after the last day of 11th bread that is Christ, but you have something amazing happening on the day after His resurrection.

On the day after His resurrection, don't hold on to me. I have not fulfilled all this yet.

I have to ascend to the throne of my Father. We have one more ceremony to go through here.

I must complete. What would He must complete? Why did He ascend to the Father immediately after His resurrection?

Something wasn't done yet.

We have to ask, why in the world would He do this? Why in the world did He wait?

You're talking about hours and hours where He had ascended to the Father. Why?

Why? Because the way He's offering tells us how it's going to be done.

Remember, those things all picture Jesus Christ. It tells us how it's going to be done.

And this is why we always keep Pentecost on the Sunday, 50 days after the Sabbath in the middle of the day of 11th bread.

So now Jesus fulfills the Passover Lamb. He is now the first of the first fruits.

But there's a whole different kind of first fruits. A whole different kind of first fruits that are offered way before God of Pentecost. 1 Corinthians 15. 1 Corinthians 15.

I just think this is so profound. I mean, the more you study the Holy Days as reflections of the work of Jesus Christ, boy, the more profound the Holy Days become. Because we're not trapped in the lesser understanding of the ancient Israelites, but we see what they were doing were all types and symbols of the reality that we are part of. They're all symbols of the reality that we're part of. They didn't know when they did the wave sheaf that was on the side.

They didn't know when they offered to use those two loaves of bread. It wasn't the church.

They didn't know that. Any more than they do, that when they sacrificed the lamb on Passover, that that was the Messiah.

To them, that simply pictured the fact that God saved them from Egypt.

They didn't understand the rest of it.

And that's why the more you study even all the sacrifices, and then you read what the New Testament teaches about Jesus Christ, you see over and over and over again, those sacrifices picture all elements of His work. Let God, through the life of Christ, reveal to us the real meaning of the holiness.

First Corinthians 15, the resurrection chapter, verse 20. But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep, the first fruits of the dead, by a resurrection, accepted by God as that first fruits on the day after the Sabbath in the middle of the days of 11 bread. And you start counting 50 from and you get to a second set of first fruits.

Verse 21, For since by man came death, by man also came the resurrection of the dead.

For as an animal by, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.

By each one in his own order, Christ the first fruits, and afterward those who are Christ at His coming. So Christ is the first fruits, and then there's another group that comes later.

Now we start realizing there's more than one resurrection.

But Pentecost doesn't tell us anything about the second resurrection. You have to wait till the fall, only days to learn about that. What Pentecost tells us is that there's a second group of first fruits. Remember, first fruits aren't the great harvest. They're a small harvest.

The great harvest comes at the end of the year.

You ever have a really good year? I can remember we had a garden one year that produced faster than we could eat it. And you say, wow, we wish it would have produced this much in June.

You know, here it is in August, and all this stuff just growing.

There's growing seasons in Pennsylvania are a little different than here. You get three growing seasons here for different things. You just don't grow anything with two feet of snow on the ground.

So you got... but the soil up there, too, is such... and there's so much water that when you have a good year, it grows. I mean, it really grows. So we have the second group, first... or let's look at James 1.

Because now we're getting into the concept of Pentecost, the second group, James 1.18.

James makes a very interesting statement here. He says, we're breaking into the middle of a thought, but we'll be able to pick everything up here. Of his own will, he brought us forth by the word of truth that we might be a kind of firstfruits.

We're not the same as Jesus Christ, as we didn't come from heaven.

But we, speaking here of the church, are a kind of firstfruits.

The beginning of a harvest. The firstfruits aren't the only harvest. Now, you ever have a bad year where the firstfruits are all you get? I see that happen, too. That's not a good year.

You get that first little firstfruits, and then everything dries up.

But in God's plan, this is a great harvest. We talk about that harvest every year. When?

Feast of trumpets, David Tomit, Feast of tabernacles. What were those days all about? The great harvest in ancient Israel. That's when all the food, that's when they stored everything in their barns. That's why he said, bring all your food and have a big feast. They could eat during the Feast of Tabernacles like no other time of the year because why? They had food all over the place. It was the great harvest. Pentecost isn't about the great harvest. Pentecost is about two loaves of bread. The first one was a little sheaf. The second one was two loaves of bread, a kind of firstfruits. That's what Pentecost is about. He talked about freedom, liberty, to number 50. I still don't see how freedom or liberty is part of Pentecost. Okay, we see Christ is the wave-sheaf. We figure out now why you count for the Sabbath after, in the middle of the days of the 11th bread, because Christ is the fulfillment. We work backwards. It all fits perfectly. We understand that. We understand He is the firstfruits. We understand that the church is a type of firstfruits, because we're in the first resurrection, as we just read in 1 Corinthians. Okay, what does the 50th have to do? Let's look at Acts chapter 2, because a week from tomorrow, or tomorrow after the Sabbath counting ain't. No. See? Anyways, next Sunday.

Acts 2. I want to see if you're awake.

Acts 2 verse 1. Well, to me, this is so simple. The counting of Pentecost, the discussion of Pentecost, gets so complex. It's so simple. All the holy days are simple. When you actually understand what God's doing, they're profound. Someone will probably read this on the day of Pentecost. When the day of Pentecost had fully come, they were always one accord in one place, and suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing, mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them divided tongues of fire, and it sat on each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. And they were dwelling in Jerusalem. Jews developed men from every nation under heaven. We also know there were some others there that weren't Jews, a few that were fossilites from the names that were given. What do we have here?

We understand from Passover that we have to have a substitute for us. The UNI are so corrupted that we cannot have eternal life unless there's a substitute for us. The law of God demands our death. Jesus Christ was that substitute. During the days of out of the bread, we take in this unleavened bread of truth and sincerity, right? That we do know also pictures the mind of Christ, you know, all the time. So taking in Christ, the problem is we're still not able to break free of our sins because they're still inside of us. 50 days later, after the wave sheet, after Jesus Christ was accepted, what did He do to create the next set of first roots? He poured out His Spirit, and He gave us freedom. Without God's Spirit, you and I will simply go back into slavery.

Christ can die for us. We can be trying to live by the mind of Christ, the way of Christ, but unless He gives us His Spirit, we'll simply go back into slavery. It's that simple.

That's why this is about freedom. It is the next step in the plan. It ties the freedom of coming out of slavery to the freedom of being God of slavery. It's one thing to come out of slavery. It's another thing not to be a slave. This ties us into not being a slave. We have the Spirit of God to overcome our sins. We have the Spirit of God to give us the power to do what we're supposed to do in an evil world. We have the Spirit of God that fixes our marriages. We have the Spirit of God that fixes our relationships. We have the Spirit of God that fixes our damaged emotions. We have the Spirit of God that gives us the power to do what you and I cannot do. It is freedom. And it all happened because 50 days before that event, a wave sheaf was accepted by God.

And now the number 50 has real importance, because it has to do with our freedom. It has to do with taking away of our chains. It has to do with us becoming the children of God.

But this is just the beginning of the harvest season, and this tells us something else.

You and I have been called to be first-roots. But as we are called to be first-roots, and all these analogies get mixed together, we now participate in a harvest. You and I participate in a harvest.

Look at John 4. We are being harvested. Every time a Christian dies, you know what's happened?

That Christian is being harvested.

Because what's their next waking moment? The resurrection.

When they literally become first-roots. This harvest season is going on a long time, and they had no idea it would go on for over 2,000 years. They had no idea.

There's a long, long harvest season.

As God keeps calling and working and preparing, not the great harvest, but the first-roots.

Christ the first-roots, then the kind of first-roots, as James calls us. John 4.34.

Jesus said to them, my food is to do the will of him who sent me and finish his work.

Do not say there are still four months and then comes the harvest.

Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields where they are already white for harvest. He said, just don't look ahead to the time when you literally become a first-root. Look around and look at what God is doing in preparing other first-roots.

God has other first-roots to prepare.

And preparing them is a whole lot more than doing a television program.

I'm not saying it's not important. I mean, if it wasn't important, I wouldn't be doing it. But it's a whole lot more than that.

People are harvested because they learn to have a relationship with God because, yes, they're given information. Yes, they're taught. And then they come and they become part of a community. When you get into Acts 2, you find out that when the Holy Spirit was poured out of one of you and they became the Christian community, the church is in a building and the church is in a place where you just go once a week. To count the church once a week and put on a nice show to everybody. You know, there's great unity in churches where people give shows.

Where people become a family, boy, is it a mess.

And I've always believed a church has to be a family, so every place I go, I make the church a mess.

That's right. When you get to know each other, it's like, wow, I get the weirdest family members.

But you can pretend that you're not. You come to the church once a week, or you can come to the church on Holy Days, and you can shake each other's hands, and you can talk a little bit about the Bible, and a little bit about the Spurs, and a little bit about this and that, and you can not really know each other. You can do that. I've seen people do that for 40 years.

That is not what we're supposed to be. If you read Acts chapter 2, after the Holy Spirit that was poured out, the result of that is the church became a community.

And you get to Acts 3, 4, 5, and 6. By the time you get to Acts chapter 6, they were already having a huge fight over themselves. That's what we find interesting. By Acts chapter 6, the whole church of Jerusalem, that the Holy Spirit had just been poured out upon, was having a big fight between the Hellenists and the Jews. The Hellenists were Jews, but they were Jews who had been really... they spoke Greek. They had a lot of Greek culture that they had accepted, because Greek culture had sweat throughout the Middle East, because the Ptolemies were the solutions. And so, we had this big fight over the Jews who were, consider themselves, Hebrew Jews, and the ones who could deserve themselves, sort of Greek Jews. Interesting. If they became a community, they begin to have problems. But that's where we have to go. That's what Pentecost is, the firstfruits coming together to become the people of God.

We have people that have to come here. We have people we have to reach, even if they don't come here. We have people that we have to tell them about God, who may become firstfruits, who never even come to our congregation. But if they do, we have to learn to accept them and bring them in, and help them become firstfruits, too. And that's the job of every one of us. We can't take this job and just say, okay, that's the job of the pastor. Not true. It's all of our job.

How much do we pray about this? How much do we pray that God reaps His harvest? How much do we pray for laborers? It says in verse 36, And he who reaps receives wages and gathers fruit for eternal life, that both he who sows and who reaps may rejoice together.

For this saying, it is true, one sows and another reaps.

I send you to reap for that which you have not labored, and others have labored, that you may enter into those labors. He said some people will do one thing, some people will do another, but in the end, firstfruits are being harvested. Firstfruits are being harvested. They are being prepared for that resurrection when we all become two loaves of bread.

That's what represents all the people of God.

And that part of the plan of God is fulfilled. And of course, once Pentecost is completed at that stage, it's still not done. We still have trumpets and a tobit and a tabernacle. The eighth day, the last great day, we have all those things to do yet. God has all those things to do. That's why the Passover isn't over. There are still billions who have to accept.

Jesus is the Passover. It's not done yet. It's not finished. How can it be done away with?

Pentecost isn't done away with. There's still harvest time. There's still work to be done.

Now, we have to be about our Father's business, too. It's not just inward. It must be outward also. We learned that through the Feast of Pentecost. The Holy Days supply us with vital understanding of the continuity between the Old and New Testaments.

It's interesting to read commentaries from Christians about the Holy Days.

They seem strange to them. They just seem like all these harvest, almost pagan. In fact, I've seen commentators actually say that the Holy Days of Israel were just pagan things, which is blasphemy. They were given by God, and we've seen them just expand and exploded in the work of Jesus Christ. So, we've seen now that this is a simple answer. It is a simple solution. It's simplicity. Look for the answer in Christ, and we know when we're supposed to do the things we do. Remember, ancient Israel's final great harvest took place in the Fall. God's great harvest isn't now. The whole world isn't called today, but the whole world isn't lost today, either. It's not their time. The great harvest comes at the end. But by observing Pentecost, we celebrate the work that God is doing now in the church era, during the great summer of preparation for the final harvest. And we look forward to this final harvest, because that's the time where the harvest will include all of humanity. So, I hope and pray that all of you have a very wonderful and needed feast of Pentecost.