Pentecost Was The Completion of The Wheat Harvest

“Many churches today remind me of a laboring crew trying to gather in a harvest while they sit in the tool shed. They go to the tool shed every Sunday and they study bigger and better methods of agriculture, sharpen their hoes, grease their tractors, and then get up and go h … More

Harvest

Pentecost, the feast of weeks, was an agricultural feast which celebrated the completion of the wheat harvest. This was celebrated seven weeks, plus one day, after the “feast of first fruits” of barley, had been waved.  The word “Pentecost” means “fiftieth” and was also called the “Feast of Harvest“ (vv. 15-16). Instead of the priest waving sheaves before the Lord, he waved two loaves of bread baked with leaven.  The bread was leavened with sourdough from bread of the preceding barley harvest. The fulfillment of this image is recorded in Acts 2, when fifty days after Christ’s resurrection, the Holy Spirit came and united the believers into the church, which was symbolized here by the two loaves (Jews and Gentiles). There is leaven in the two loaves because there is sin in the church.

Along with the waving of the two loaves, thirteen animal sacrifices were offered to the Lord. These consisted of seven lambs, a young bull, two rams, a kid goat and two more lambs for a peace offering. The feast only lasted one day, in which the people were not to work but were to bring Him an offering from the harvest He had generously given them (v. 22), (Duet. 16:9-12). Since Pentecost marked the end of the grain harvests, the responsibility of the Israelite to leave gleanings in his field was stressed. Because of this commandment Ruth was able to glean in the field of Boaz (Ruth 2).

Application

All of these feasts and offerings of animals that we read about in Leviticus may seem to be just like a ritual, but God had a purpose in each thing that He required. I need to be very sensitive to the fact that God doesn’t ask me to do things that have no purpose. He always has a reason for the things that He allows or brings into my life. I should never just try to grit my teeth and bear it but should always be trying to learn the lesson that God wants to teach me through every circumstance of life. I want to be involved in gathering the harvest.

Leviticus 23:15-22 (English Standard Version)


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