Here is hoping all have a wonderful holiday weekend. No, not Memorial Day (though I certainly hope that is blessed, as well), but I’m referring to that other holiday that is celebrated this weekend. It happens to be a favorite of mine (tongue firmly in cheek at this point) as it is known as, “The Feast of Weeks”. No, it’s not a holiday I invented to celebrate just within the confines of my family, but it’s one of the seven Hebrew feasts of the LORD outlined in Leviticus 23. The Hebrew word for the feast is “Shavuot”, and it is the fourth of the seven feasts.
For those possibly not aware, this calendar of feasts that God gave Moses and Israel not only serve as the yearly reminders of what He had already done, but each of the feasts are also filled with deep, rich prophetic foreshadows of the Lord’s comings....plural. There is a natural break in the feasts, four of them occurring in the spring, and three in the fall. Shavuot is the last of the spring feasts, coming after Passover, Feast of Unleavened Bread, and Feast of First Fruits. The spring feasts were all fulfilled in Messiah Yeshua’s (Jesus’) first coming. Separating the two groups of feasts is summer – which is the period we are now in (and have been since the first century). The remaining three speak of our Lord’s still-future second coming – Feast of Trumpets (Yom Teruah), Yom Kippur, and finally Succot (Feast of Tabernacles).
But, this weekend is Shavuot....the Feast of Weeks. This was (and is) the time of celebrating God’s giving of the Law to Moses on Sinai. It took place seven Sabbaths from the day after the Feast of First Fruits Sabbath, which was three days after the Passover.
Passover, as we know, was when the blood of the lamb was painted on the doorways in Egypt to cover that home so the life of the firstborn would be spared. We know this to be a picture of THE Passover Lamb – Jesus Christ – whose blood was “painted” onto another kind of wood so that all who call upon His name -- painting the doorway of their hearts with His sacrifice -- would be saved from out of this world. Feast of Unleavened Bread began on Passover and went for a week – this feast prophetically speaking of the Lord’s body not seeing corruption while in the grave...no leaven. Three days after Passover comes the Feast of First Fruits, which foreshadows Messiah’s rising from the grave in complete and utter victory over sin and death.
The New Testament tells us that Jesus walked with them for forty days (Acts 1:3) and then gave instruction to wait in Jerusalem for the Spirit to come, which we know happened as recorded in Acts 2. We know this day as Pentecost. But, Pentecost didn’t begin as an observed event that day the Spirit came upon them in Jerusalem. Pentecost was already a day yearly observed by the Jews. The Greek word is Pentekoste, and it simply means, “the fiftieth day”, which is what you come to seven Sabbaths after the day after First Fruits – seven weeks plus one extra day is fifty days. Pentecost is Shavuot, the Feast of Weeks.
God chose the day of the giving of the law to be the day of the sending of His Spirit.
If you look to Exodus 32, you see the consequence that day brought – when Moses came down off the mountain. Without going into all of it, let’s just look at this one verse; “And the children of Levi did according to the word of Moses: and there fell of the people that day about three thousand men” (Ex 32:28).
Looking at the consequence of that same feast day, but when the Spirit was given on Pentecost, we read, “Then they that gladly received his word were baptized: and the same day there were added [unto them] about three thousand souls” (Acts 2:41).
When the law came, about three thousand were killed. When the Spirit came as a prophetic fulfillment of the feast, about three thousand came to eternal life.
“...for the letter kills, but the spirit gives life” (2 Cor 3:6).
Saturday is Shavuot – Pentecost. Who else but God can write such a book? He is so awesome, all praise to our Lord.
Happy Feast of Weeks!
In Messiah,
Lee
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Replies
My blessing, Gerard and Alika.
When Paul writes that the law is a shadow and Christ the substance, it's really exactly that. Not just a shadow, but a foreshadow. If we were to stand at a street corner, a shadow beginning to appear from around the corner would tell us someone is coming. The OT does this throughout...or, God does it through the OT. "Someone is coming", it says over and over. Jesus is in the feasts, the Genesis narratives, the levitical law, the means of cleansing from leprosy, scapegoat, arks, seeds, etc., etc. It's all about Him and the more that reality comes to light, the more the Word of God comes alive. It's simply an astonishing book.
In Messiah,
Lee
@Lee thanks man good post.
I did not know these things, it was exhilarating and exciting to see the connection between the Old and New Testament Holy Days! Thank you for sharing this, it is a great boost to my faith whenever these kinds of astonishing mysteries of the Bible are made known to me:)