Spring Feasts Past and their Meaning

The Jew­ish holiday

There are two basic views amongst the Jews regard­ing this feast. The first con­sid­ers it to Lev. 23:17, records that two “wave” loaves of bread of equal weight were baked with leaven. These two loaves were called the “first fruits.” The loaves rep­re­sent sin­ful man, not the Lord and the Holy Spirit, because leaven is used. It seems clear they rep­re­sent the bride of Christ made up of Jews and Gen­tiles, both with sin, unlike the unleav­ened bread at Passover which rep­re­sented a sin­less Messiah.

Jews read the story of Ruth on the Day of Pen­te­cost, even today. It is a story of love and devo­tion, it cen­ters around the har­vest. The story also relates the ingath­er­ing of Ruth, the Moabitess, a Gen­tile woman who came to know Naomi and her God, and was accepted. On the birth of the local church, the way was paved for both Jew and Gen­tile to accept and be accepted as a part of the fam­ily of God. The Kins­man Redeemer BOAZ — allowed a Gen­tile to grafted into Israel. Christ is ours.

The har­vest stops with the Fall har­vest. Sym­bol­i­cally Chris­tians are presently in the Sum­mer har­vest and must still be work­ing in the fields until the Lord of the Har­vest comes at the Sec­ond Com­ing and the Fall har­vest is reaped. be the con­clud­ing cer­e­mony of the Passover sea­son. The sec­ond idea sees it as an inde­pen­dent fes­ti­val. From a Bib­li­cal under­stand­ing of Pen­te­cost it is bet­ter to view it as the con­clu­sion of the fifty day Passover cel­e­bra­tion. To divorce it from Passover is to lose the spir­i­tual sig­nif­i­cance of the whole season.

The themes

The first major theme of Pen­te­cost is of rev­e­la­tion. On this day the Ten Com­mand­ments were given to the Israel (Leviti­cus 23:15–21), exactly fifty days after they had crossed the Red Sea. There­fore Pen­te­cost is the day that God revealed Him­self and His will to His peo­ple. The sec­ond major theme is the out­pour­ing of the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:8; 2:1–18). The res­ur­rec­tion of Christ took place on the Feast of First Fruits, fifty days later the Holy Spirit was given to His followers.

The out­pour­ing of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost

In Exo­dus 19:19 we read that there was a trum­pet blast that increased with strength. In Exo­dus 20:18 we read that the peo­ple heard great thun­der­ing com­ing from Mt. Sinai. The fol­low­ers of the Lord Jesus Christ expe­ri­enced spec­tac­u­lar man­i­fes­ta­tions also (Acts 2).

The Old Tes­ta­ment Pen­te­cost speaks of the birth of Israel as a nation, but in the New we see it as the birth of the Church. The bread that was used on this day was burned upon the altar (Leviti­cus 23:15–17), and we see the sanc­ti­fy­ing fire of the Holy Spirit falling on those in the Upper Room, some­times referred to as ‘the bap­tism of fire’ (Luke 3:16). Pen­te­cost was meant to lead Israel into a deeper rela­tion­ship with God and a greater under­stand­ing of His Word. This is pre­cisely what Pen­te­cost in the New Tes­ta­ment is all about.

Con­clu­sion

Pen­te­cost could not be cel­e­brated with­out Passover lamb being slain fifty days pre­vi­ously. The bap­tism in the Holy Spirit can­not be expe­ri­enced by those who have never come to Christ for sal­va­tion. There could have been no out­pour­ing of the Holy Spirit if the Lamb of God had not poured out His blood for us