The Feast of Weeks

Introduction

Illustration: I have a few different names. To my friends and family I’m Josh. To the government I’m Joshua. I won’t answer to that name if you call it out to me, not because it bothers me but because I’m not used to it. To my kids I’m Dad or Daddy. Those are all me. In the Bible there are a few people with more than one name. God has lots of names in the Bible. When it comes to the Festivals, they also have a few names.

Today we’re going to be looking at a festival that is given no less than three different names in different places in the Bible. This can sometimes be confusing. When God first commands the feast in Exodus He calls it the Festival of Harvest. It’s also called elsewhere “The Feast of Weeks” because it takes place seven weeks after Passover. In the New Testament it’s called Pentecost because Pente means 50 and it’s fifty days after Passover.

Here is the description of this festival from Leviticus:

Leviticus 23:15–22 CSB

“You are to count seven complete weeks starting from the day after the Sabbath, the day you brought the sheaf of the presentation offering. You are to count fifty days until the day after the seventh Sabbath and then present an offering of new grain to the Lord. Bring two loaves of bread from your settlements as a presentation offering, each of them made from four quarts of fine flour, baked with yeast, as firstfruits to the Lord. You are to present with the bread seven unblemished male lambs a year old, one young bull, and two rams. They will be a burnt offering to the Lord, with their grain offerings and drink offerings, a food offering of a pleasing aroma to the Lord. You are also to prepare one male goat as a sin offering, and two male lambs a year old as a fellowship sacrifice. The priest will present the lambs with the bread of firstfruits as a presentation offering before the Lord; the bread and the two lambs will be holy to the Lord for the priest. On that same day you are to make a proclamation and hold a sacred assembly. You are not to do any daily work. This is to be a permanent statute wherever you live throughout your generations. When you reap the harvest of your land, you are not to reap all the way to the edge of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Leave them for the poor and the resident alien; I am the Lord your God.”

Now you may have noticed right away that there is a similarity between this one and the Feast of Firstfruits that I talked about last night. In fact it can be a little confusing, because in both cases they are told to bring their firstfruits. The key is understanding that they are from different harvests. The Festival of Firstfruits is the Barley Harvest and the Festival of Weeks is the wheat harvest. They also share a core theme, which is that both celebrate God as provider and teach us to prioritize thanking Him.

So the question is, what sets this festival apart from the others? Like an Ogre, this festival has layers. Those who haven’t seen Shrek in the room are very confused. For your sakes I’ll say like a parfait, this festival has layers. So to not repeat myself from Friday let’s take a look at a different aspect of what this Festival means.

We’ll look at its connection to the Law of God. We’ll see that for the Israelites when they were given the festival in the past it coincided with God giving the Law to them on Mount Sinai, and can help us to remember the importance of sustaining ourselves on God’s Word daily. We can see for us in the New Covenant the Holy Spirit is given on the Feast of Weeks, and that now we live according to the Spirit and not just to a written Law, as a reminder to rely on God’s Spirit to enable us to live as we ought. Finally we will see that this points forward to a day when we won’t need the law anymore, because God will make us perfect and we will no longer be able to sin.

What it Was: God Gives the Law

Illustration: As a parent one of the most difficult things I have to do is enforce the rules. My kids don’t like the rules. Sometimes the rules spoil their fun ideas. I don’t enjoy telling them no and being a stick in the mud. Probably some of you can relate to this feeling. But imagine if I didn’t enforce these rules. If I let my children do whatever they wanted to do. That would be really dangerous. Especially as a parent of more than one child rules are important, because they protect my children from their own worst ideas and they protect them from each other.

And really that’s the whole reason we have laws, isn’t it? I know we could argue about the effectiveness of this law and that law all day, but laws exist to protect us from our own worst ideas and to protect each other. A world without laws would be chaos and would be ruled by whoever is strongest and most able to force their will onto other people. That’s not really the world I want to live in.

God similarly doesn’t want His people to be lawless. If we look at the context of the first feast of weeks we see that the dates can be lined up with the time it took the Israelites to flee Egypt, arrive at Mount Sinai, and have Moses fast for 40 days and 40 nights on the mountain before coming down with the law. Though Scripture doesn’t explicitly say the law was given on the 50th day, Jewish tradition connects the timeline from Passover to Sinai as the moment when Israel received the law. This is why throughout history the Jewish people have come to associate the Feast of Weeks with the giving of the law to Israel.

Now it’s first importance is to do with the harvest of wheat, but like I said in the introduction this feast has layers, and I covered the idea of giving God your firstfruits when we talked about the feast of firstfruits. The connection is a bit tenuous to the giving of the law except for a few reasons. The first is the reminder when this festival is described in Deuteronomy at the end that God freed them from slavery and that they should follow His statutes.

Deuteronomy 16:9–12 CSB

“You are to count seven weeks, counting the weeks from the time the sickle is first put to the standing grain. You are to celebrate the Festival of Weeks to the Lord your God with a freewill offering that you give in proportion to how the Lord your God has blessed you. Rejoice before the Lord your God in the place where he chooses to have his name dwell—you, your son and daughter, your male and female slave, the Levite within your city gates, as well as the resident alien, the fatherless, and the widow among you. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt; carefully follow these statutes.

The second reason why I believe connecting this to the law makes sense actually has to do with my second point, which is the Holy Spirit coming on the day of the Feast of Weeks. We’ll get into the details in the next point, but this makes the connection to the law line up better.

But it makes sense to still ask at this point, why would God line this up? What does the giving of the Law at Sinai have to do with the Festival celebrating the harvest of wheat? To answer that question let’s look at the one unique feature of this feast. When you think bread at a Jewish festival what first comes to mind? Unleavened bread. During the Feast of unleavened bread they ate bread without letting it rise first to represent fleeing Egypt in haste. Yet during this festival they presented leavened bread to God. They took their time and let it rise. This was how they usually ate bread. Not a unique preperation, but the same way they ate bread every day. Their daily bread. What does Jesus say about bread in the New Testament?

Matthew 4:4 CSB

He answered, “It is written: Man must not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.”

This is why those little daily devotionals are called “Daily Bread.” Just like our bodies our sustained by our daily food, our spirits are sustained by God’s very words. What were the words of God given to the Israelites? The law. So then if the law was given at the Feast of Weeks it was given as the daily bread of the Israelites, and the association between the two means that every year they celebrate God providing them with food to eat they also celebrate God giving them the Holy Law to live by.

So my friends, we should take this opportunity to celebrate and thank God for our daily bread. The Scriptures that He gave us should also be what sustains our spirit. We don’t live according to the Old Covenant any more, but we still live by God’s Words written in this book. So if we want this to be our daily bread we have to actually consume it daily. So if you haven’t yet built a habit of reading your scripture every day let this be an opportunity to resolve once again to challenge yourself to do so. Let’s not wait for New Years, like we’re sometimes tempted to do.

We need to also remember however that we don’t just read the Scriptures and try to make ourselves live perfectly by them. That was the heart of the Pharisees. Instead there was a new feast of weeks in the New Testament, which brings us to our present experience of the feast, the giving of the Holy Spirit.

What it Is: God Gives the Holy Spirit

Illustration: So getting back to my kids and rules, at a young age you need to constantly enforce rules and just tell them what they can and can’t do, but that’s not the ultimate goal. Some day I want my kids to grow into wise adults who make good choices not just because of someone else’s rules.

God as our Father wants the same for us, sort of. Except instead of the life span of an individual God is looking at the course of all of human history, and instead of reaching the age of maturity He’s waiting on the redemption of mankind from their sins. Israel was given a law to follow, and Paul compares it to a schoolteacher, preparing them for what was to come. What was to come? Jesus was sent to die for our sins and make a way for us to become truly alive and enter into a relationship with Jesus. Then Jesus teaches His disciples for 40 days, just as Moses spent 40 days on Mount Sinai, and then they wait around for just over a week until the Feast of Weeks, otherwise called Pentecost. Here’s what happens then:

Acts 2:1–21 CSB

When the day of Pentecost had arrived, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like that of a violent rushing wind came from heaven, and it filled the whole house where they were staying. They saw tongues like flames of fire that separated and rested on each one of them. Then they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues, as the Spirit enabled them. Now there were Jews staying in Jerusalem, devout people from every nation under heaven. When this sound occurred, a crowd came together and was confused because each one heard them speaking in his own language. They were astounded and amazed, saying, “Look, aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? How is it that each of us can hear them in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites; those who live in Mesopotamia, in Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts), Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the magnificent acts of God in our own tongues.” They were all astounded and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But some sneered and said, “They’re drunk on new wine.” Peter stood up with the Eleven, raised his voice, and proclaimed to them, “Fellow Jews and all you residents of Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and pay attention to my words. For these people are not drunk, as you suppose, since it’s only nine in the morning. On the contrary, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: And it will be in the last days, says God, that I will pour out my Spirit on all people; then your sons and your daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, and your old men will dream dreams. I will even pour out my Spirit on my servants in those days, both men and women and they will prophesy. I will display wonders in the heaven above and signs on the earth below: blood and fire and a cloud of smoke. The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the great and glorious day of the Lord comes. Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

Do you see the parallels? Just as the Jewish people were quite possibly given the law on the first Feast of Weeks, the disciples receive the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. The role of the Law has been replaced by the role of the Spirit. Jesus said in John 14:25-26

John 14:25–26 CSB

“I have spoken these things to you while I remain with you. But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and remind you of everything I have told you.

We no longer follow a strict code of 614 laws like the Israelites did, keeping dietary restrictions and other symbolic laws while not fully understanding their significance. We live on the other side of the cross and the resurrection, and God has given us His Spirit so that we can understand the spirit of the law instead of just the word of the law, and so that we can live as people principally of love not of law.

So I stand by what I said last point about the importance of reading our Bible daily, but that is not the entirety of the Christian life. To be a disciple of Jesus we need the Spirit to live in us and bring His commands to life in our hearts. So then my friends are we filled with the Spirit? Jesus promises the Spirit to all who believe, so then if you believe in and follow Jesus the answer is yes. You do have the Spirit. The question is will you follow His lead? Let’s pledge not only to read God’s word but to ask His Holy Spirit to give us the power we need to live by it.

Yet even this is not the end of the story. We have the Holy Spirit’s help now to live in the light and follow Jesus, but a day is coming still in the future that this feast is pointing us towards.

What it Will Be: No More Law

Illustration: Imagine if I told you they were passing a new law which forbids jumping to the moon? That would be silly, right? Because that’s impossible. Or what if I told you to sign a petition against licking elbows? You can’t do that by the way. It’s impossible.

There’s no point in making laws against the impossible. No one is going to do it anyway, so why waste the effort. Well what if I told you that for this same reason, there will be a day in the future when we don’t need any law at all? Well in order for that to be true we would have to live in a world where it’s impossible to hurt each other or ourselves, wouldn’t we? Well that’s the future vision that the Bible has for us. When? Well Jesus, by strange ‘coincidence’ refers to the end times as a harvest, doesn’t He?

When explaining the parable of the wheat and weeds Jesus says this:

Matthew 13:37–43 CSB

He replied, “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man; the field is the world; and the good seed—these are the children of the kingdom. The weeds are the children of the evil one, and the enemy who sowed them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels. Therefore, just as the weeds are gathered and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will gather from his kingdom all who cause sin and those guilty of lawlessness. They will throw them into the blazing furnace where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in their Father’s kingdom. Let anyone who has ears listen.

Just as the Feast of Weeks celebrates a harvest, a future harvest is coming. At the first Feast the Israelites received God’s Law. In the New Testament during the Feast the church received the Holy Spirit. What will happen at this final harvest, at the culmination of the Feast of Weeks? In that day we won’t need a law at all any more, because we will all be made perfect. Why have a law if no one can do wrong? This is the image behind

Jeremiah 31:34 CSB

No longer will one teach his neighbor or his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they will all know me, from the least to the greatest of them” —this is the Lord’s declaration. “For I will forgive their iniquity and never again remember their sin.

Friends, we won’t need to read the Bible in a future where we live in the constant presence of the Word of God Himself, which is who Jesus is according to John chapter 1. We won’t need to pray because we will see God face to face. We won’t need a law because we will be finally made perfect.

According to Romans 8:29

Romans 8:29 CSB

For those he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, so that he would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.

It is our destiny to be conformed into the image of Jesus son. This should be a huge encouragement to all of us. God always keeps His promises, so we can rest assured that we will get there. On the tough days when you feel like you aren’t making progress remember that God will bring you to perfection. God is going to sanctify us throughout our lives but our future is the perfection we can’t reach in this one. So take heart my friends, one day you will be perfect if you are in Christ.

Conclusion

So you can see that while the Feast of Weeks shares its main message with the Feast of Firstfruits about giving thanks to God for all that He provides for us, it’s corellation to the law of God gives it a second powerful meaning for all of us. For the Israelites it was a reminder of the law that God had lovingly given them to guide them as a nation and help them to live by their principles, which we can do today if we study God’s word. For the church it reminds us of the giving of the Holy Spirit and His role in guiding us to all truth, and helping us to live according to the Spirit instead of just a code of laws. Finally a day will come in the future when we no longer need a law because God will finally cause us to become perfect in the final harvest and sin will become a thing of the past.

So my question for all of us today is this: What is your relationship with God’s law? Is it a light unto your feet and a guide unto your path? Are you letting the Holy Spirit help you to grow every day into becoming more and more like Jesus? And are you looking forward eagerly to the day when you can live a perfectly righteous life with God forever? So my main challenge to us is to have our attitude be one of grateful surrender to the Will of God in our lives every day.