The early church celebrated three major holidays. They celebrated Christmas as the time of Christ’s birth…the celebrated Easter as the time of Christ Resurrection and they celebrated Pentecost as ________________________________________________

It is not as easy as just filling in that blank; we know that the Holy Spirit came on that day in in-filled the believer. That day is universally thought to be the birthday of the Church. Something you may not know though was that the feast of Pentecost had already been in place for 1500 years before Jesus arrived. The coming of the Holy Spirit didn’t created the day of Pentecost…..for some reason God chose to send his Holy Spirit on the feast of the Pentecost. Jesus died on Passover. If you know your Old Testament you know that Passover started clear back when the Israelites were leaving Egypt and in final plague the angel of death Passed Over the Israelites and took out the first born of the Egyptians. Jesus death didn’t start the feast of Passover. For some reason he chose to die on the Feast of Passover.

Those two great “coincidences are just the tip of the ice-burg! There is more…. Let me try to unfold this amazing truth to you:

The Jewish festival year began/begins with the feast of Passover. It is, by divine command to be held at the beginning of spring.

(Leviticus 23:4-6) "'These are the LORD's appointed feasts, the sacred assemblies you are to proclaim at their appointed times: The LORD's Passover begins at twilight on the fourteenth day of the first month. On the fifteenth day of that month the LORD's Feast of Unleavened Bread begins; for seven days you must eat bread made without yeast. (NIV)

God’s calendar was not a solar calendar like we use with January first being the first day of the year.

God’s calendar was based on the phases of the moon rather than the earth revolutions around the sun. Each month would start with a new moon reaching a full moon in 14 days and the month’s end would come on the 28^{th day. The first full moon of the year was the beginning of spring and the beginning of the new year. Did you ever wonder why Passover and Easter Sunday comes sometimes in April and sometimes in early May. It’s because it is not, and can not, be based on our solar calendar with 30,31/days/month but is based on a 28day cycle of new moons, full moons…and as you know that cycle shows up in other areas of life as well… including the rising a falling of the tides and seas.}

The whole move to the sun calendar was unfortunately set up by people who thought the sun was something more than just a close star. God even established his days based not on the sunrise but on the “moonrise“.

(Genesis 1:5) … And there was evening, and there was morning-- the first day. (NIV)

Back to Passover… on this day, because of the blood of a sacrificed lamb, the Hebrew nation was delivered from bondage. This began a yearly process of sacrificing a male lamb, without blemish, ((Ex 12:5) that culminated in the sacrifice of Jesus who would finally deliver all men from the bondage of satan. John the Baptist said of Jesus:

(John 1:29) The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, "Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! (NIV)

This is very important; Jesus died specifically on the 14th day of the first month of the year… remember this:

The LORD's Passover begins at twilight on the fourteenth day of the first month. (Leviticus 23:5)

Jesus purposely died on Passover!……. And at sundown the feast of Unleavened Bread

began….

On the fifteenth day of that month the LORD's Feast of Unleavened Bread begins.

Leaven throughout the Bible is often used as a symbol of sin and evil. That was the symbolism of eating un-leaved bread….purity. It was no accident that the Jewish people were used to eating unleavened bread for seven days after the Passover. It was setting them up to understand (supposedly) that when the Final Lamb was sacrificed, He would bear all the sins of the world and leave people with the potential of freedom from sin.

(1 Corinthians 5:7-8) Get rid of the old yeast that you may be a new batch without yeast-- as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and wickedness, but with bread without yeast, the bread of sincerity and truth. (NIV)

There is so much symbolism in the Jewish Passover feast that most still do not understand.

You remember from our Seders here in the past the matzo had to have stripes on it and it had to be pierced. You remember how they hide the matzo under a cloth and then bring it back into the light at the end of the ceremony. They had been doing that ceremony for years and God was literally, on the day doing that exact same thing with his Son, striped, pierced and buried….

So…Jesus died on Passover, went into the tomb at the beginning of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, at whatever point during that seven days the calendar reached Sunday, that was always to be the beginning of the third feast…. The Feast of First-fruits.

So on that particular year Jesus died on Passover, was buried on Unleavened Bread, and rose on First-fruits! What was so significant about Jesus rising from the dead at the beginning of the feast of First-fruits. First-fruits was a time when every Israelite would bring the first of his barley crop and present it to God. Nobody was allowed to eat any of the new crop until the first sheaths had been presented to God. It was to symbolize the fact that it was God who replanted the earth and brought the dead, buried, grain into new life, was causing it to rise out of the seemingly dead earth. Someone along the line named the feast Easter, after the Babylonian goddess, Ishtar, the goddess of fertility. We picked the word up in English.

For obvious reasons; we are much better off to call the day Resurrection Day or….. First-fruits. The word first fruits is important because it implies that there will be second-fruits, and third-fruits, etc. On Resurrection Sunday Jesus rose, so did a whole bunch of other people.

(Matthew 27:53) They came out of the tombs, and after Jesus' resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many people. (NIV)

They were obviously supposed to prove a point…they were the second-fruits; but on that day the entire Church rose again as well.

(1 Corinthians 15:22-23) For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive. But each one in his own order: Christ the first-fruits, afterward those who are Christ's at His coming. (NKJV)

Every Jew knew what came next…After the Sunday of First-fruits they would begin to count: 49 days… seven full weeks until the Feast of Harvest…more commonly called the Feast of Weeks because God commanded it to last 49 days plus one.

This was the beginning of the summer wheat harvest. Again not one grain of the wheat harvest was to touch a persons lips until they had offered the first fruit of the harvest to God at the feast. God’s directions for the harvest were painstakingly clear:

(Leviticus 23:17-21) From wherever you live, bring two loaves made of two- tenths of an ephah of fine flour, baked with yeast, as a wave offering of first-fruits to the LORD. Present with this bread seven male lambs, each a year old and without defect, one young bull and two rams. They will be a burnt offering to the LORD, together with their grain offerings and drink offerings-- an offering made by fire, an aroma pleasing to the LORD. Then sacrifice one male goat for a sin offering and two lambs, each a year old, for a fellowship offering. The priest is to wave the two lambs before the LORD as a wave offering, together with the bread of the first-fruits. They are a sacred offering to the LORD for the priest. On that same day you are to proclaim a sacred assembly and do no regular work. This is to be a lasting ordinance for the generations to come, wherever you live. (NIV)

The deeper I dug into this, the more interested I became. Even the attitude one was supposed to have during this week of “shavuot” was spelled out in Scripture. The feast of Passover and Unleavened Bread were solemn occasions. The Israelite was supposed to remember, even relive those awful days of bondage in Egypt and their sin before God as represented by the un-leaved bread. Oddly even in the Old Testament the first Sunday after Unleavened Bread was when their attitude was supposed to change. ( Isn’t it such an odd coincidence that the first two feast were fulfilled in Jesus death and burial and the prescribed attitude change just happened to coincide with Jesus resurrection. Then the next fifty days were supposed to be days of worship marked by:

I’m not trying to force anything to fit here…it is very clear…….

The early church picked up on this right away. Who could miss the significance of the Old Testament prescribed change in attitude as directly linked to the New Testament fulfillment of Jesus defeating death and rising from the dead. The change of attitude in the disciples after Jesus resurrection was instant and electrifying.

I have a funny feeling that the three requirements commanded of Jews in the Old Testament were not much of a problem for the early church. Can you imagine the day after the resurrection. Peter said: Oh boy…here it is the beginning of the Feast of Weeks, for seven long weeks I have to:

1) put on a joyful attitude

2) remember that I’ve been freed from bondage

3) I suppose I have to cough up a freewill offering for God

Jesus had explosively fulfilled the first three feasts of that year…

Without question, in my mind, the disciples were electrified with the belief that if Jesus had specifically caused his actions to directly align with Feasts of Passover, Un-leavened Bread, and First Fruits…there must be something coming at the culmination of the feast of weeks. The Greek word for that day was Pentecost. (Fifty)

I used to think that the disciples were surprised that what happened on day 50 after Jesus resurrection. I’m now amazed that I didn’t see this earlier. I now think every single one of them was waiting through day 49, watched the moonrise on day 50 knowing something amazing awaited them. That is exactly the day that all of them expected God to show his next great fulfillment.

Let walk through those fifty days after the resurrection with the disciples. As the Feast of Weeks unfolds they are meeting again with their risen Lord. Every once in a while they run into someone in town whose funeral they attended some time before…. That would get your attention! More importantly the one who’s crucifixion they attended is showing himself to an increasing number of people outside of town. I Corinthians records that at least 513 men plus women and children saw him, spoke with him, listened intently as he explained how all that had happened was part of God’s great plan. I’m sure he reinforced to them how his death, burial, and resurrection directly fulfilled the feasts. He may have clearly outlined to them what to expect when the fifty days were complete and the day of Pentecost arrived…..maybe not. Forty days in something very striking takes place:

(Acts 1:1-11) … I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen. After his suffering, he showed himself to these men and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God. On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command: "Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit."….you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight. They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. "Men of Galilee," they said, "why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven."

I wonder how long they are going to have to wait? Is it going to be one day, three days, ten days, one hundred days? Do you think they knew how long they were going to be waiting?

We know looking back that they were waiting, praying in that room exactly 10 days until:

Obviously not an accident….It was the next major feast…in fact it was one of three required feast. Everyone was required to come to Jerusalem for it. Everyone had to prepare and bring, from home, two flat loaves of wheat bread to wave as an offering to God

Everybody came, everybody brought two wheat loaves, everybody brought a freewill offering, everyone prepared to honor God for the first fruits of the summer wheat harvest. Everyone starts to wave their loaves in an offering to God, the silver trumpets blasts as prescribed by God, A prescribed scripture from Ezekiel is read, the same passage every year since the inception of the holiday: It included this:

(Ezekiel 1:4) I looked, and I saw a windstorm coming out of the north-- an immense cloud with flashing lightning and surrounded by brilliant light. The center of the fire looked like glowing metal, …

Everyone prays a certain prescribed prayer in unison (hundreds of thousands of people)…then they hear a noise…a huge noise like a violent windstorm, but there were no clouds…it seemed to descend toward the west of town…

(Acts 2:1-4) When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit…… (NIV)

What an amazing coincidence… and right there on the long anticipated Day of Pentecost…

What did it all mean?……. I’m going to answer that question for you….

On May 30th…The Day of Pentecost

In the meantime we will spend some time figuring out together how these amazing truths apply to us individually……