Devotional Gems by Jolene: Pentecost

Tuesday, March 14, 2017

Pentecost

PENTECOST

Part eight of fourteen in Commanded Holy Days Importance Today series

Exodus 23:16: “Celebrate the Feast of Harvest with the first fruits of the crops you sow in your fields.”

Revealing His plan for human salvation, Yahweh established Holy Festival Days around the harvest season. As His people harvested their crops, God harvests people for His eternal Kingdom. These Feasts build upon one another. Together, they reveal increasingly more about God’s awesome plan.

Passover showed His plan of Christ being the LAST Passover lamb offering His life as payment for human sin. Every Believer-in-Christ is forgiven and offered eternal life. The Feast of unleavened Bread teaches us to remove and avoid all sin. We fill that sin gap with obedience to God. Attitudes and actions begin supporting God’s will.

Obedience is obviously a choice.

Pentecost builds a foundation upon this choice.

Let’s investigate the many names God calls the Feast of Pentecost. Coming from both meaning and timing, the Feast of Harvest represents first fruits. (See lesson linked below). The timing is May or June, around the harvest gathering spring grain in ancient Israel. That’s why Jews wear green to celebrate this Feast.

Everyone who tithes knows that God only honors first fruits. Peoples’ offering money that’s left after paying all the bills isn’t obeying the commanded tithe. In fact, God HATES leftovers!

Also called the Feast of Weeks in Exodus 34:22, this name comes from counting seven weeks plus one day, (50 in all), after the Feast of Unleavened Bread. This determines when it falls each year (Leviticus 23:16). The original Greek for fiftieth is Pentekostos¹. Jews prefer calling this Holy Day Feast of Weeks, or Shavuot. This Feast marked a great event—when God revealed His Law on Mt. Sinai.

But more than giving the Law, Pentecost shows a great miracle. The first Pentecost in the early Church after Christ’s resurrection was when God poured out His Holy Spirit on 120 Believers (Acts 1:15). “They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them.” (Acts 2:3). That’s why Christian Believers wear red on Pentecost.

Take Home Nugget

Leviticus 23:9-14 ends with, “This [Firstfruits] is to be a lasing ordinance for generations to come, wherever you live.”

Those Holy Spirit tongues of fire enabled the Disciples to speak in the various languages of people who gathered from many nations to Jerusalem. Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Galileans, those from Mesopotamia, Judea, and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia could understand what was being said in his native language! And no, they weren’t drunk, as some people accused them in Acts 2:13!

Holy Father, baptize me in Your Spirit with the sacred language of “Tongues”. I’m asking this in Jesus’ Name. Amen.