Weeks (Pentecost)
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Fifty days or seven weeks and one day on from the Waving of the First Sheaf is the Festival of Weeks. In the New testament this festival has the more familiar name of Pentecost from the Greek word pentakosioi meaning 50. Thus this festival,as we have seen, is the fullness or completion of the Waving of the First Sheaf. Then there was one sheaf waved before the Lord. At Pentecost two loaves were waved before the Lord. Jesus is no longer alone. The head is joined by the body.
Yet as we study the scriptures we find that Pentecost itself is also called a festival of first fruit (Lev 23:16). Its own fullness or completion is the Festival of Tabernacles in the seventh month. How can there be two festivals of first fruits and two fullnesses? Simply that is the way God works. An end is not an end but the beginning of something greater. A seed when it has grown multiplies itself by producing more seeds, and each new seed multiplies itself by producing more seeds again.
Each new dimension is the fullness of a lesser dimension. Compared with a point a line is a fullness. Compared with a line an area is a fullness. Compared with an area a solid is a fullness. So we move from glory to glory and from the Holy Place to the Holy of Holies. Each fresh blessing is the seed of a further blessing.
Fifty days after the first Passover in Egypt, the children of Israel came to Mount Sinai. What God did there was hardly less dramatic than what he had done in Egypt. He descended on the mountain in fire. There were thunderings and earthquakes and a voice like the sound of a trumpet. All this was a prelude to the giving of the 10 commandments to Moses.
The day of Pentecost in the book of Acts had many similarities. The two events were obviously connected. There were the sound of a rushing mighty wind, tongues of fire, and the descent of the Holy Spirit.
The events at Sinai were the beginning of the old covenant and relate to the people of Israel. The day of Pentecost was the start of the new covenant and relates to the spiritual people of God.
Pentecost is strongly associated with the gifts and power of the Holy Spirit. On that day for the first time, as far as we know, people spoke in tongues. In the following days, wonderful healings took place, words of knowledge revealed hidden sin and prison doors were miraculously opened. It was a glorious time of divine manifestation. God's hand was visible among his people.
As well as gifts there were ministries. Paul, writing to the Ephesians, speaks of apostles, prophets, pastors, teachers and evangelists. Today we have both true and false versions of these ministries. What a blessing they are when they truly come from God! Paul makes it plain that they are vital for a sound foundation in God's people. He states their purpose in Ephesians 4: 12-14, '.. to prepare God's people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming.'
Happy is the church or fellowship that has God-given ministries and God-given gifts, and does not rely on the world's techniques and business methods and entertainments to keep itself from collapse and disintegration.
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