Pentecost – The Festival of Shavuot

Date: May 16, 2015

Audio Sermon: Click on the play button below.

The festival of Shavuot (Pentecost) is one of the 7 annual festivals of Israel. It is also known as the Feast of Weeks or the Feast of Harvest. Moreover, Shavuot is one of the 3 Shalosh Regalim (“pilgrimage festivals”) where male Israelites were required to travel to the temple at Jerusalem. Shavuot is celebrated 50 days after the Day of First Fruits (15th of Nisan) in late spring at the time when the wheat was ready to be harvested. It is a special festival for Israel as it signifies God’s provision for his people following their deliverance and exodus from slavery in Egypt. It is traditionally held that God gave the Torah to Israel 50 days after leaving Egypt, and through the giving of manna and Torah in the wilderness, God provided physical sustenance and spiritual guidance for his people as they travelled toward the Promised Land.

There are very significant correlations between Shavuot in the Old Testament and Shavuot as recorded in Acts 2. As the wheat harvest was a symbol of the first fruits of the season, the death and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah was the first fruits of God’s redemption harvest of his people. While the giving of Torah on Mt. Sinai signified God’s covenant with his people, the giving of God’s spirit on Shavuot in Acts 2 signified a new covenant God made with his people.

While the first covenant was glorious, Jesus is now the mediator of a better covenant which has better promises, for the Lord has said, “I will put My laws into their minds and write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be My people” (Jer 31:33). But in this new covenant God’s laws are written on the believer’s heart through God’s spirit, and therefore, there is a paradigm shift in the idea of what it means to follow and obey the Lord. In this new covenant, believers now abide by God’s law out of a desire to obey rather than a necessity. Obedience is not something simply mandated as it was with Israel in the former covenant. Obedience now emanates from a motivation to do what is pleasing and right in the Lord’s sight.

We are part of a continuing harvest of God’s people that will find its consummation in the final coming and return of Jesus Messiah as the Lord and Savior of the world, who will change our mortal bodies to be like his glorious body and redeem us from the corruption of this world. Approximately 2000 years ago, the festival of Shavuot in Acts 2 changed the world and it continues to change us as we are led by God’s spirit to be faithful seekers and obedient children of the harvest. ~JW