Unlike every other feast in
God’s calendar,
Shavuot
(Pentecost)
is held not a specific date but a
specified DAY: Sunday.
Passover is always on the 15th of the first month, Nisan, Yom Kippur is always on the 10th of the seventh month, Tishri, but the date of Shavuot changes from year to year. It is always supposed to land on a Sunday—the day after the seventh Shabbat. God said to start counting the days and weeks after the Shabbat after Passover, but unfortunately the rabbinic authorities took it to mean something else and so many times start the countdown on a day other than a Sunday, and thus land on the wrong day too.
Never mind.
You can see the biblical instruction here below:
it’s supposed to lead up to a Sunday, the
Sunday of Pentecost,
the biblical
Feast of Weeks
Seven weeks—fifty days--
are to be counted according to God’s instructions in
Leviticus 23:
“You shall count seven full weeks from the day after the Sabbath,
from the day that you
brought the sheaf of the wave offering.
You shall count 50 days to the day after the seventh Sabbath.
Then you shall present a grain offering of new grain to the Lord.”
(Leviticus 23:15-16)
Today Jewish people celebrate the giving of the Law at Shavuot,
since the Sinai event happened
50 days after the night of Passover, according to
Exodus 19:1.
People stay up all night to read
the Torah and there is a
great celebration of dairy products
(in the light of the Jewish tradition of keeping milk and meat separate, based on the commandment
not to boil a kid in its mother’s milk).
But despite all appearances and Shavuot traditions in Israel today—and as glad as I am that cheesecake is celebrated each year
in all its glory--
this is not really a festival about dairy products.
WHAT DOES THE FEAST OF SHAVUOT MEAN?
So the Jewish people have been “Counting the Omer” since Passover,
which is the countdown to Shavuot.
Or perhaps we should say we have been
counting up, rather than down?
Because counting the days is inevitably
leads to a build up of expectation all the way up to Shavuot,
which means “weeks” in Hebrew, hence the name “
the Feast of Weeks”.
Passover celebrates the time the
angel of death passed over
the
Hebrew houses,
and the
Feast of Tabernacles
remembers the
desert wandering in tents,
but what is
the Feast of Weeks all about?
If one only looks at the Bible rather than Jewish tradition, Shavuot seems to be missing an obvious reason for its existence in contrast to other festivals, but make no mistake, the Feast of Weeks is infused with great significance.
Its meaning continues to unfold
with God’s ongoing story of salvation.
Its main anchor point is Passover, in that it is intrinsically
linked to counting the time since Passover and the
Exodus event.
After counting seven weeks down to the Sunday of Shavuot, the original biblical instructions involve celebrating with animal sacrifices
as well as grain and
drink offerings,
and a
good rest
The fruits of the land are celebrated,
and it seems to be some sort of
harvest festival.
Somewhat randomly, after delineating the required
sacrifices and wave offerings, this verse appears:
“And when you reap the harvest of your land,
you shall not reap your field right up to its edge,
nor shall you gather the gleanings after your harvest.
You shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner:
I am the Lord your God.” (Leviticus 23:22)
This commandment is in keeping with the
theme of harvest,
but seems misplaced in the chapter on biblical feasts.
However, the themes of the poor and the sojourner
end up playing a significant part in the
true,
prophetic meaning of the feast.
It was thanks to this verse that the Moabite Ruth
was able to
find the gleanings of the field to survive,
and in doing so,
met her kinsman redeemer, Boaz.
A love story
between Jew and Gentile…
it should be no surprise then that
the story of Ruth has become a significant
feature of Shavuot.
Moreover, the theme of Jew and Gentile
comes into greater focus
in the New Testament, when the Feast of Shavuot
comes into fulfillment--
except that in the New Testament, written in Greek, Shavuot is translated as
Pentecost
THE HARVEST IS RIPE
Pentecost comes from the Greek word for
50 (pente)
after the instruction to count
50 days, 7 weeks.
Here’s how it was rather famously celebrated
among the
disciples of Jesus:
When the day of
Pentecost arrived,
they were all together in
one place.
And suddenly there came from heaven
a
sound like a mighty rushing wind,
and it
filled the entire house
where they were sitting.
And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and
rested on each one of them. And they were all
filled with the Holy Spirit
and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.
(Acts 2:1-4)
Just as John the Baptist foresaw, Jesus baptized His disciples with the
Holy Spirit and with fire!
And it is interesting that John’s words were also in the
context of the harvest,
as he goes on to talk about the
winnowing fork, the wheat and the chaff
(Matthew 1:11-12).
Jesus often described evangelism and the
flourishing of the word
of
God in our lives in agricultural terms,
using the metaphor of
seeds and crops, harvest and harvesters.
He said the fields were white
and all that was needed was the harvesters.
He was not wrong.
Look what happened just 50 days after His resurrection:
Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews,
devout men from
every nation under heaven.
And at this sound the multitude came together,
and they were bewildered, because each one
was hearing them speak in his own language.
And they were amazed and astonished, saying,
“Are not all these who are speaking
Galileans?
And how is it that
we hear,
each of us in his own
native language?
Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia,
Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia,
Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors
from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians--
we hear them telling
in our own tongues
the
mighty works of God.”
And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another,
“What does this mean?” (Acts 2:5-12)
Three thousand people came
to faith that day!
Peter
stood up to address
the crowd and enormous
numbers of people
from many nations believed
in Jesus,
right there and then.
This was essentially the
birth
of the church.
The gospel was for all nations, Jew and Gentile.
The Holy Spirit was suddenly available to all
people, men, women, slave and free.
True fellowship with the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob
was now possible for anyone who wanted to be include
in the New Covenant with Israel, promised in Jeremiah 31:
“Behold, the days are coming,
declares the Lord,
when I will make a new covenant
with
the house of Israel
and
the house of Judah,
not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I
took them by the hand
to bring them out of the land of Egypt,
my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord.
For this is the covenant that I will make with the
house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord:
I will put my law within them,
and I will write it on their hearts.
And I will be their God, and they shall be
my people.
And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying,
‘Know the Lord,’
for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,
declares the Lord.
For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will
remember their sin no more.”
(Jeremiah 31:31-34)
The New Covenant
(New Testament) was with Israel, but
all nations were now
invited
to be grafted in!
It was a bit of a culture shock at first,
and it took some
work getting used to, but suddenly,
at
Pentecost,
The Feast of Shavuot,
everything changed.
The God of Israel opened up a new and living way
for everyone to
come to Him through that New Covenant
in the
Messiah’s blood
and His Spirit could now
be
poured out on all flesh.
Now, the Law could be written on our hearts!
God’s Spirit could now indwell each and every believer,
helping us to live His way.
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF
50
The number 50 signifies
freedom.
The fiftieth year is the
year of Jubilee,
when all debts are cancelled
and
slaves go free.
It shouldn’t be surprising then that the events of the Law
being given at Sinai at Shavuot and the
Holy Spirit falling at Pentecost occurred
50 days
after the earth-shattering events
of
the Exodus and Calvary respectively.
Let’s go into that a bit more. Backing up: Seven weeks are counted for the Feast of Weeks (Shavuot) which is 50 days (Pentecost).
Whether it’s checking off days before you get to go on vacation,
chalking up days till a
prisoner
gets released from jail,
or days till Christmas on an advent calendar,
counting down builds
anticipation and hopeful expectation.
God deliberately created this drama,
this dynamic,
and wove it into the Feast of Pentecost.
We see this even as
Jesus tells His disciples to wait:
And while staying with them he ordered them not to
depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father,
which, he said, “you heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the
Holy Spirit not many days from now…
But you will receive power
when the Holy Spirit has come upon you,
and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem
and in all Judea and Samaria, and to
the end of the earth.”
(Acts 1:4-5,8)
Jesus had risen from the dead and was among them, teaching them for forty days. That’s well over a month! And then He told them to wait another ten days, until Pentecost. Forty plus ten. Forty is a very significant number in Scripture, representing gestation—things reaching their zenith. Whether it’s pregnancy or punishment, it’s often a season of development until maturity and fulfillment. So why fifty? Why the extra ten days? First of all, ten is an important number in its own right.
Ten signifies authority,
completeness of order, responsibility,
holiness…
consider the Ten Commandments,
for example. Then fifty: fifty represents freedom! The fiftieth year is the jubilee when all things are restored and set free.
Now the Lord is the Spirit,
and where the Spirit of the Lord is,
there is freedom
(2 Corinthians 2:17)
SHAVUOT AND JUBILEE JOY
Even before the liberation that came with the Holy Spirit, the Law itself, the covenant of Sinai, was a radical expression on freedom in its own right. Consider the very first words after the Ten Commandments, as God gives the Law to Moses in Exodus:
“Now these are the rules that you shall set before them. When you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall serve six years, and in the seventh he shall go out free, for nothing.” (Exodus 21:1-2)
The very first rule is about slaves,
and how they should be
set free.
For nothing. As much as the Old Testament Law might seem primitive to many New Testament followers,
it was a radical departure from the
tyranny and slavery
of the cultures around them.
The Law laid down the infrastructure of a fair and free society.
Os Guinness is a thinker who has written much about the
extraordinary and liberating nature of the
Mosaic covenant, calling it
a “Magna Carta” for humanity.
He observes that there is a form of separation of powers, by which even kings are subject to the law since the prophets had the right to call them out according to its standards.
The law brought in a new degree of equality, the value of human life, and many other fundamental principles which form the basis of Judeo-Christian societies in the West. In short, God’s law was given to enable people to live freely. He took His people out of slavery in Egypt, but they had to learn to be free. God gave them the handbook. At Shavuot.
We are learning,
through trial and many errors,
that the law of God is good. Monogamy and fidelity might sound restrictive, but they in fact lead to liberty. God’s law takes into account our sinful nature and enables the best possible society given the fact that our tendency is towards evil.
For example, it is expected that the Israelites would
trade and prosper,
but it was also expected (because of greed and selfishness)
the land
would be overworked and
farmed beyond repair,
so God legislated a shabbat every
seven years,
the “shmita” year,
where the land could rest.
Also, left unchecked, wealth would inevitably end up in the
hands of the few,
and others becoming poor and oppressed.
So it was built into the law that every so often there
would be a big reset where lands,
property, and freedom would be returned every 50 years.
This was the law of Jubilee.
“You shall count seven weeks of years, seven times seven years, so that the time of the seven weeks of years shall give you forty-nine years… And you shall consecrate the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you, when each of you shall return to his property and each of you shall return to his clan.
That fiftieth year shall be a jubilee for you;
in it you shall neither sow nor reap what grows
of itself nor gather the grapes from the undressed vines.
For it is a jubilee. It shall be holy to you.
You may eat the produce of the field. In this year of jubilee each of you shall return to his property. And if you make a sale to your neighbor or buy from your neighbor, you shall not wrong one another. You shall pay your neighbor according to the number of years after the jubilee,
and he shall sell to you according to the
number of years for crops…
You shall not wrong one another, but you shall fear your God, for I am the Lord your God. Therefore you shall do my statutes and keep my rules and perform them, and then you will dwell in the land securely.
(Leviticus 25:8-18)
The Hebrew word for Jubilee (yovel)
comes from the root word יָבַל
to bring, lead, carry, conduct, bear along, much as the wind carries things along, or as the Holy Spirit rushed like a powerful wind bringing change at Pentecost.
But the word Jubilee itself (יוֹבֵל) is connected with the shofar,
the ram’s horn, and the
joyful sound of the trumpet
announcing freedom.
We also think of a “horn of plenty” which very much
sums
up
the biblical pronouncement
of
rejoicing in the harvest.
SUNDAY AND THE SPIRIT OF FREEDOM
In Shavuot we have two tiers of
freedom and revolution
in
God’s manifest purposes
on the earth.
In the first 50 days
since Passover in giving the Law, God creates His covenant people. He gives the Law and invites Israel to respond. They agree to the terms, and now the tribes of Jacob were no longer just an ethnicity,
they became a faith community.
This is essential to understand. Jewish people not only belong to a tribe, but a faith, and this is the handiwork of God (Exodus 24:3, Isaiah 43:1).
It is unique.
And if keeping God’s Law is the basis for a
free and flourishing society,
how much more the Spirit of freedom!
Then fifty days after Calvary God
pours out His Spirit
and establishes
His church
God establishes another faith community, but this time including all the families of the earth. Now we can enjoy a new level of freedom in the New Covenant, with the Holy Spirit available to all. We can walk in God’s ways because His law is engraved on the hearts of all those who believe. But now here comes the another dimension of freedom entirely. The freedom of the Spirit. Jesus explains to Nicodemus how it is with those who are born again:
“The wind blows where it wishes,
and you hear its sound,
but you do not know where it comes from
or where it goes.
So it is with everyone who is
born of the Spirit.”
(John 3:8)
Moses communed with God for
40 days
on that
mountain
before returning with the stone tablets,
just as Jesus tarried
40 days with His disciples
teaching
them about the kingdom.
The critical events involving blood and sacrifice
were behind them
(Passover and the cross)
and God was building up to
something new and wonderful.
This is why Pentecost had to fall on a Sunday.
In the Bible, the first day of the week is the Sunday and the
final day is the Shabbat.
Sunday is the beginning, and the start of a new week.
It is the first day of
creation
It signifies creation and new beginnings. God formed the people of Israel as faith community and then formed the church at Shavuot, on a Sunday.
The day of Shavuot may be fixed but the date is not. It is determined by wherever the Passover falls.
This also means that
the gap
between Shavuot and the Feast of Trumpets
is an unspecified period of time.
Given that we see the Spring feasts fulfilled in
great measure by the first
coming of Jesus,
it makes sense that the unknown date of His return is mirrored by the indeterminate gap between the end of Shavuot and the Fall feasts.
Even so, there is a season and a time frame that can be known.
We recognize the times and seasons,
and can see that the glorious return of Jesus is imminent, when
He really will make
all things new!
But while we wait expectantly, we know
God will pour out His Spirit for a great end time harvest--
all over the world, and in Israel itself.
When the Holy Spirit comes in power, we become
aware of our sin and our need to repent…
and times of refreshing can come like the wind.
Come Holy Spirit, come
God’s calendar,
Shavuot
(Pentecost)
is held not a specific date but a
specified DAY: Sunday.
Passover is always on the 15th of the first month, Nisan, Yom Kippur is always on the 10th of the seventh month, Tishri, but the date of Shavuot changes from year to year. It is always supposed to land on a Sunday—the day after the seventh Shabbat. God said to start counting the days and weeks after the Shabbat after Passover, but unfortunately the rabbinic authorities took it to mean something else and so many times start the countdown on a day other than a Sunday, and thus land on the wrong day too.
Never mind.
You can see the biblical instruction here below:
it’s supposed to lead up to a Sunday, the
Sunday of Pentecost,
the biblical
Feast of Weeks
Seven weeks—fifty days--
are to be counted according to God’s instructions in
Leviticus 23:
“You shall count seven full weeks from the day after the Sabbath,
from the day that you
brought the sheaf of the wave offering.
You shall count 50 days to the day after the seventh Sabbath.
Then you shall present a grain offering of new grain to the Lord.”
(Leviticus 23:15-16)
Today Jewish people celebrate the giving of the Law at Shavuot,
since the Sinai event happened
50 days after the night of Passover, according to
Exodus 19:1.
People stay up all night to read
the Torah and there is a
great celebration of dairy products
(in the light of the Jewish tradition of keeping milk and meat separate, based on the commandment
not to boil a kid in its mother’s milk).
But despite all appearances and Shavuot traditions in Israel today—and as glad as I am that cheesecake is celebrated each year
in all its glory--
this is not really a festival about dairy products.
WHAT DOES THE FEAST OF SHAVUOT MEAN?
So the Jewish people have been “Counting the Omer” since Passover,
which is the countdown to Shavuot.
Or perhaps we should say we have been
counting up, rather than down?
Because counting the days is inevitably
leads to a build up of expectation all the way up to Shavuot,
which means “weeks” in Hebrew, hence the name “
the Feast of Weeks”.
Passover celebrates the time the
angel of death passed over
the
Hebrew houses,
and the
Feast of Tabernacles
remembers the
desert wandering in tents,
but what is
the Feast of Weeks all about?
If one only looks at the Bible rather than Jewish tradition, Shavuot seems to be missing an obvious reason for its existence in contrast to other festivals, but make no mistake, the Feast of Weeks is infused with great significance.
Its meaning continues to unfold
with God’s ongoing story of salvation.
Its main anchor point is Passover, in that it is intrinsically
linked to counting the time since Passover and the
Exodus event.
After counting seven weeks down to the Sunday of Shavuot, the original biblical instructions involve celebrating with animal sacrifices
as well as grain and
drink offerings,
and a
good rest
The fruits of the land are celebrated,
and it seems to be some sort of
harvest festival.
Somewhat randomly, after delineating the required
sacrifices and wave offerings, this verse appears:
“And when you reap the harvest of your land,
you shall not reap your field right up to its edge,
nor shall you gather the gleanings after your harvest.
You shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner:
I am the Lord your God.” (Leviticus 23:22)
This commandment is in keeping with the
theme of harvest,
but seems misplaced in the chapter on biblical feasts.
However, the themes of the poor and the sojourner
end up playing a significant part in the
true,
prophetic meaning of the feast.
It was thanks to this verse that the Moabite Ruth
was able to
find the gleanings of the field to survive,
and in doing so,
met her kinsman redeemer, Boaz.
A love story
between Jew and Gentile…
it should be no surprise then that
the story of Ruth has become a significant
feature of Shavuot.
Moreover, the theme of Jew and Gentile
comes into greater focus
in the New Testament, when the Feast of Shavuot
comes into fulfillment--
except that in the New Testament, written in Greek, Shavuot is translated as
Pentecost
THE HARVEST IS RIPE
Pentecost comes from the Greek word for
50 (pente)
after the instruction to count
50 days, 7 weeks.
Here’s how it was rather famously celebrated
among the
disciples of Jesus:
When the day of
Pentecost arrived,
they were all together in
one place.
And suddenly there came from heaven
a
sound like a mighty rushing wind,
and it
filled the entire house
where they were sitting.
And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and
rested on each one of them. And they were all
filled with the Holy Spirit
and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.
(Acts 2:1-4)
Just as John the Baptist foresaw, Jesus baptized His disciples with the
Holy Spirit and with fire!
And it is interesting that John’s words were also in the
context of the harvest,
as he goes on to talk about the
winnowing fork, the wheat and the chaff
(Matthew 1:11-12).
Jesus often described evangelism and the
flourishing of the word
of
God in our lives in agricultural terms,
using the metaphor of
seeds and crops, harvest and harvesters.
He said the fields were white
and all that was needed was the harvesters.
He was not wrong.
Look what happened just 50 days after His resurrection:
Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews,
devout men from
every nation under heaven.
And at this sound the multitude came together,
and they were bewildered, because each one
was hearing them speak in his own language.
And they were amazed and astonished, saying,
“Are not all these who are speaking
Galileans?
And how is it that
we hear,
each of us in his own
native language?
Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia,
Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia,
Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors
from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians--
we hear them telling
in our own tongues
the
mighty works of God.”
And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another,
“What does this mean?” (Acts 2:5-12)
Three thousand people came
to faith that day!
Peter
stood up to address
the crowd and enormous
numbers of people
from many nations believed
in Jesus,
right there and then.
This was essentially the
birth
of the church.
The gospel was for all nations, Jew and Gentile.
The Holy Spirit was suddenly available to all
people, men, women, slave and free.
True fellowship with the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob
was now possible for anyone who wanted to be include
in the New Covenant with Israel, promised in Jeremiah 31:
“Behold, the days are coming,
declares the Lord,
when I will make a new covenant
with
the house of Israel
and
the house of Judah,
not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I
took them by the hand
to bring them out of the land of Egypt,
my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord.
For this is the covenant that I will make with the
house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord:
I will put my law within them,
and I will write it on their hearts.
And I will be their God, and they shall be
my people.
And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying,
‘Know the Lord,’
for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,
declares the Lord.
For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will
remember their sin no more.”
(Jeremiah 31:31-34)
The New Covenant
(New Testament) was with Israel, but
all nations were now
invited
to be grafted in!
It was a bit of a culture shock at first,
and it took some
work getting used to, but suddenly,
at
Pentecost,
The Feast of Shavuot,
everything changed.
The God of Israel opened up a new and living way
for everyone to
come to Him through that New Covenant
in the
Messiah’s blood
and His Spirit could now
be
poured out on all flesh.
Now, the Law could be written on our hearts!
God’s Spirit could now indwell each and every believer,
helping us to live His way.
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF
50
The number 50 signifies
freedom.
The fiftieth year is the
year of Jubilee,
when all debts are cancelled
and
slaves go free.
It shouldn’t be surprising then that the events of the Law
being given at Sinai at Shavuot and the
Holy Spirit falling at Pentecost occurred
50 days
after the earth-shattering events
of
the Exodus and Calvary respectively.
Let’s go into that a bit more. Backing up: Seven weeks are counted for the Feast of Weeks (Shavuot) which is 50 days (Pentecost).
Whether it’s checking off days before you get to go on vacation,
chalking up days till a
prisoner
gets released from jail,
or days till Christmas on an advent calendar,
counting down builds
anticipation and hopeful expectation.
God deliberately created this drama,
this dynamic,
and wove it into the Feast of Pentecost.
We see this even as
Jesus tells His disciples to wait:
And while staying with them he ordered them not to
depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father,
which, he said, “you heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the
Holy Spirit not many days from now…
But you will receive power
when the Holy Spirit has come upon you,
and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem
and in all Judea and Samaria, and to
the end of the earth.”
(Acts 1:4-5,8)
Jesus had risen from the dead and was among them, teaching them for forty days. That’s well over a month! And then He told them to wait another ten days, until Pentecost. Forty plus ten. Forty is a very significant number in Scripture, representing gestation—things reaching their zenith. Whether it’s pregnancy or punishment, it’s often a season of development until maturity and fulfillment. So why fifty? Why the extra ten days? First of all, ten is an important number in its own right.
Ten signifies authority,
completeness of order, responsibility,
holiness…
consider the Ten Commandments,
for example. Then fifty: fifty represents freedom! The fiftieth year is the jubilee when all things are restored and set free.
Now the Lord is the Spirit,
and where the Spirit of the Lord is,
there is freedom
(2 Corinthians 2:17)
SHAVUOT AND JUBILEE JOY
Even before the liberation that came with the Holy Spirit, the Law itself, the covenant of Sinai, was a radical expression on freedom in its own right. Consider the very first words after the Ten Commandments, as God gives the Law to Moses in Exodus:
“Now these are the rules that you shall set before them. When you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall serve six years, and in the seventh he shall go out free, for nothing.” (Exodus 21:1-2)
The very first rule is about slaves,
and how they should be
set free.
For nothing. As much as the Old Testament Law might seem primitive to many New Testament followers,
it was a radical departure from the
tyranny and slavery
of the cultures around them.
The Law laid down the infrastructure of a fair and free society.
Os Guinness is a thinker who has written much about the
extraordinary and liberating nature of the
Mosaic covenant, calling it
a “Magna Carta” for humanity.
He observes that there is a form of separation of powers, by which even kings are subject to the law since the prophets had the right to call them out according to its standards.
The law brought in a new degree of equality, the value of human life, and many other fundamental principles which form the basis of Judeo-Christian societies in the West. In short, God’s law was given to enable people to live freely. He took His people out of slavery in Egypt, but they had to learn to be free. God gave them the handbook. At Shavuot.
We are learning,
through trial and many errors,
that the law of God is good. Monogamy and fidelity might sound restrictive, but they in fact lead to liberty. God’s law takes into account our sinful nature and enables the best possible society given the fact that our tendency is towards evil.
For example, it is expected that the Israelites would
trade and prosper,
but it was also expected (because of greed and selfishness)
the land
would be overworked and
farmed beyond repair,
so God legislated a shabbat every
seven years,
the “shmita” year,
where the land could rest.
Also, left unchecked, wealth would inevitably end up in the
hands of the few,
and others becoming poor and oppressed.
So it was built into the law that every so often there
would be a big reset where lands,
property, and freedom would be returned every 50 years.
This was the law of Jubilee.
“You shall count seven weeks of years, seven times seven years, so that the time of the seven weeks of years shall give you forty-nine years… And you shall consecrate the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you, when each of you shall return to his property and each of you shall return to his clan.
That fiftieth year shall be a jubilee for you;
in it you shall neither sow nor reap what grows
of itself nor gather the grapes from the undressed vines.
For it is a jubilee. It shall be holy to you.
You may eat the produce of the field. In this year of jubilee each of you shall return to his property. And if you make a sale to your neighbor or buy from your neighbor, you shall not wrong one another. You shall pay your neighbor according to the number of years after the jubilee,
and he shall sell to you according to the
number of years for crops…
You shall not wrong one another, but you shall fear your God, for I am the Lord your God. Therefore you shall do my statutes and keep my rules and perform them, and then you will dwell in the land securely.
(Leviticus 25:8-18)
The Hebrew word for Jubilee (yovel)
comes from the root word יָבַל
to bring, lead, carry, conduct, bear along, much as the wind carries things along, or as the Holy Spirit rushed like a powerful wind bringing change at Pentecost.
But the word Jubilee itself (יוֹבֵל) is connected with the shofar,
the ram’s horn, and the
joyful sound of the trumpet
announcing freedom.
We also think of a “horn of plenty” which very much
sums
up
the biblical pronouncement
of
rejoicing in the harvest.
SUNDAY AND THE SPIRIT OF FREEDOM
In Shavuot we have two tiers of
freedom and revolution
in
God’s manifest purposes
on the earth.
In the first 50 days
since Passover in giving the Law, God creates His covenant people. He gives the Law and invites Israel to respond. They agree to the terms, and now the tribes of Jacob were no longer just an ethnicity,
they became a faith community.
This is essential to understand. Jewish people not only belong to a tribe, but a faith, and this is the handiwork of God (Exodus 24:3, Isaiah 43:1).
It is unique.
And if keeping God’s Law is the basis for a
free and flourishing society,
how much more the Spirit of freedom!
Then fifty days after Calvary God
pours out His Spirit
and establishes
His church
God establishes another faith community, but this time including all the families of the earth. Now we can enjoy a new level of freedom in the New Covenant, with the Holy Spirit available to all. We can walk in God’s ways because His law is engraved on the hearts of all those who believe. But now here comes the another dimension of freedom entirely. The freedom of the Spirit. Jesus explains to Nicodemus how it is with those who are born again:
“The wind blows where it wishes,
and you hear its sound,
but you do not know where it comes from
or where it goes.
So it is with everyone who is
born of the Spirit.”
(John 3:8)
Moses communed with God for
40 days
on that
mountain
before returning with the stone tablets,
just as Jesus tarried
40 days with His disciples
teaching
them about the kingdom.
The critical events involving blood and sacrifice
were behind them
(Passover and the cross)
and God was building up to
something new and wonderful.
This is why Pentecost had to fall on a Sunday.
In the Bible, the first day of the week is the Sunday and the
final day is the Shabbat.
Sunday is the beginning, and the start of a new week.
It is the first day of
creation
It signifies creation and new beginnings. God formed the people of Israel as faith community and then formed the church at Shavuot, on a Sunday.
The day of Shavuot may be fixed but the date is not. It is determined by wherever the Passover falls.
This also means that
the gap
between Shavuot and the Feast of Trumpets
is an unspecified period of time.
Given that we see the Spring feasts fulfilled in
great measure by the first
coming of Jesus,
it makes sense that the unknown date of His return is mirrored by the indeterminate gap between the end of Shavuot and the Fall feasts.
Even so, there is a season and a time frame that can be known.
We recognize the times and seasons,
and can see that the glorious return of Jesus is imminent, when
He really will make
all things new!
But while we wait expectantly, we know
God will pour out His Spirit for a great end time harvest--
all over the world, and in Israel itself.
When the Holy Spirit comes in power, we become
aware of our sin and our need to repent…
and times of refreshing can come like the wind.
Come Holy Spirit, come
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