Dennis Tuuri

# SERMON TRANSCRIPT – REFORMATION COVENANT CHURCH
## Pastor Dennis Tuuri

We return today to Exodus 23:14-19 for our scripture reading. Please stand for the reading of our King’s Word.

Exodus 23:14-19. “Three times you shall keep a feast to me in the year. You shall keep the feast of unleavened bread. You shall eat unleavened bread seven days as I commanded you at the time appointed in the month of Abib. For in it you came out of Egypt. None shall appear before me empty.

And the feast of harvest, the first fruits of your labors which you have sown in the field. And the feast of in-gathering at the end of the year when you have gathered in the fruit of your labors from the field. Three times in the year all your males shall appear before the Lord God. You shall not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leavened bread, nor shall the fat of my sacrifice remain until morning.

The first of the first fruits of your land you shall bring into the house of the Lord your God. You shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk.”

Let’s pray together our prayer for illumination in song.

—

My opening statements concern the church year—the context of the Christian church for the last 2,000 years. Significant elements of the church have celebrated a church year or a church calendar. This feast of Pentecost, which we’re going to talk about today, the feast of harvest, is one of those major feasts in what has become known as the church year.

There are some interesting things going on in contemporary times in terms of the celebration of Pentecost. I’ll allude to one of them at the beginning of my communion talk as we move to the last part of our worship service where the Lord feeds us with grace from on high.

I will also mention another aspect of contemporary celebrations of Pentecost in the church. Pentecost is beginning to be celebrated in the last couple of decades as a 50-day cycle as opposed to just a single day at the end of seven weeks from Easter. Additionally, one of the emphases that churches place in the context of this part of the church year is the weekly partaking of communion. Churches that don’t take communion every week sometimes during Pentecost season will have communion every week. That’s because of the presence of Christ with the spirit in the context of Pentecost.

Now, I have this huge sermon illustration in front of me to my left. Praise God for Pam who’s playing the piano right down there and doing a wonderful job. We always have to adjust here, don’t we?

This is an illustration of our celebration at Reformation Covenant, our partaking of a church calendar or a church year. Not in the context of every Sunday being specifically named as part of the church calendar, but I tend to preach on Advent during the Advent season. Usually we have some sermon relating to the advent or birth of the Lord Jesus Christ for the Sunday just before Christmas. Remember, we had this here at Christmas time. Why do we have it here again now, do you suppose? Because we’re coming up to Easter, right?

And at this church, Easter is different for us too. We put communion in the first half of the service. We speak on the resurrection of the Savior. And so we sort of celebrate this church year as well.

I want us to think today about this second of these three feasts that are described for us in the law of the covenant in Exodus 23 in relationship to this church calendar year. And as we get to the end of this sermon, you’ll hopefully understand a little bit better why the church celebrates Pentecost, why weekly communion is involved, and why some of the other things that contemporary churches do in the context of Pentecost are done in the particular way they are done.

One other point I want to make here at the beginning is that, by way of review, remember this is in a sequence of sermons going through this concluding section of the law of the covenant that puts the capstone to the law of the covenant in these annual festivals. The weekly Sabbath, the sabbatical year, and then these other cycles that happen in the context of the church year of the Old Testament church—it kind of puts a capstone to the whole law of the covenant in this concluding section.

A couple weeks ago Chuck Moore’s parents were here visiting with us and his mother made the comment that she always tries to take one point of application from a sermon or from a conference or from whatever it is to change your life. That’s a wonderful picture of what Lord’s Day worship should be to us. We should always try to take from the word and from the liturgy, as we understand it, some aspect that we’re trying very diligently to apply in the context of our lives.

By way of review, we kind of started this whole series by talking about these things as feasts. The single application point I hope you remember is that the Christian life is a celebratory event. It is a celebration and the Sabbath or Lord’s Day is a celebration. It’s the culmination of all these great festivals. And so you should have a festive mood when you come to the Lord’s Day worship service.

Now, when you come and there are things that have happened in the last week that are difficult for you, I’m not saying put on a happy face, but I’m saying that the worship service itself—as we move through the ministry of God to us by way of his gifts, the forgiveness of sins, the impartation and planting of the word in our hearts, and the sacrament—moves us to process all of our griefs and difficulties and put them in the context of a true Christian joy that may not be equated to happiness, but is celebration nonetheless.

Now, that celebration is put in the context of God’s regulation. Like most things in life, we don’t know how to do what we should do. God has to tell us how we’re to celebrate because we’re so mixed up in the Adamic nature. We don’t know how to make ourselves happy or joyous. So God says, “Here’s the way to make things happy and joyous in the context of your celebration or worship.” So celebration is the application point, and I would say a regulated celebration as we began.

Secondly, we then gave a talk on preparation for the Lord’s day, for the Christian Sabbath. And I hope, I pray, and I would encourage and exhort and admonish you that it should be a point of application to you since that word was preached—since God’s word instructing us to prepare for meeting with him as he has done in the context of both Old and New Testaments—that the point of application is that our Saturday nights look a little bit different, that we’re a little bit more attentive to the fact that we’re going to meet with the King of Kings the next day, and that our dress should reflect that. Our activities Saturday evening should reflect that.

The attempt to get a good night’s rest should reflect that, and in terms of families, trying to bring the family together for a moment of prayer at least on Lord’s Day morning. An encouragement to put on not just nice clothes, but the imputed righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ by means of our deeds and actions. That is the application point I would like you to have taken from that sermon—that your day of preparation on Saturday, the preparation you make in the mornings, would be geared toward you realizing and entering into the fullness of the joy of the Lord’s day as he has instructed us in it.

Now last week we talked about the feast of unleavened bread and the main point of application you should have taken from that sermon was the idea of some healthy degree of introspection, some degree of interrogation of oneself relative to the old leaven of the Adamic nature and the insertion of the new leaven of the life in Christ. So some proper degree of interrogation, some proper degree of mortification of the flesh as we read it in the epistle to the Romans.

This is not again—our celebrations are not spirit as opposed to flesh. The flesh that we’re to mortify in Romans is that Adamic nature, the flesh of the Old Testament that exhibited the manifestation of the effects of the fall. So one point of application I want you to take from that is that indeed, as we come and prepare for the celebration of the Lord each Lord’s day, there’s a proper degree of introspection, of interrogation of oneself, of mortification of the deeds of the flesh.

You should be preparing for the Lord’s day by, among other things, thinking through your lives and asking what element of the leaven of the world system has been implanted into your hearts—perhaps maybe into your homes—that you really should remove. And you remember the image of the parable of the woman with the lost coins and the traditional image of the Jews as they prepared for the feast of unleavened bread. They take a lighted candle and go over all parts of their house to see where any leaven might be because they were going to head out and move into the new leaven of the new kingdom.

So we should do a healthy degree of introspection by means of the word of God to clean out old leaven and to see inserted into us the new leaven of Christ’s kingdom. So by way of application, these last three sermons we can remind ourselves of them by: celebration, preparation, mortification. And I’ll tell you now what I would say is the primary application point of this sermon—that I’d like perhaps to focus on, as the spirit leads—is communication.

Communication. God communicates the Holy Spirit to us in the context of Pentecost. We’ll see that in a couple of minutes. And our communication—specifically our tongues—should be changed to reflect that new nature we’ve been given in the context of the Holy Spirit.

We’re to be the people of God that flow forth from the worship service of God as fire and water, right? A fiery stream issues forth from the throne room of God. Jesus says out of the center of our being will flow rivers of living water. The spirit that Jesus was to baptize the church with, John says in fire. He baptizes with water. Jesus will baptize you with fire. Jesus takes upon himself the fire of judgment that we might be transformed by the work of the spirit in the Lord’s day worship services, that our service of celebration would be a unification with Christ in the context of the indwelling Holy Spirit, that we might go forth as dispensers of that same gift of grace that God has given us in Christ.

God sends the spirit to Christ at his baptism. Now, that’s what it says. The Holy Spirit descends in the form of a dove—not as if he didn’t have it, but there’s a picture of endowment there and him becoming the Son of God in a unique sense, in an empowered sense, to form his ministry of service to the Father. And the church is baptized with grace from on high on the day of Pentecost. The spirit descends on her.

Jesus has received the spirit and he gives that spirit and dispenses it to the church at Pentecost. And Peter then preaches on the day of Pentecost and tells the people that would hear, “Repent, be baptized, and receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” So the transmission of the spirit occurs in the context of the proclamation of the word of God. So communication—we go forth changed and we go forth to minister as a fiery watery stream from the throne of God being filled with the Holy Spirit in accordance with him writing the law upon our hearts. And our speech—how we speak and interact with each other—should change as a result of this.

—

Now, we want to look briefly at Leviticus 23:15-22 as we begin. So turn to Leviticus 23:15-22, please. And what we’ll do here is we’ll talk about the feast of harvest. That’s the second feast. And in Leviticus, we have a little more extended description of it. Here in Exodus 23, we have a single statement of this second of the three feasts. But in Leviticus 23, beginning at verse 15, we have some detail.

And this will bring us some background information in terms of the feast of harvest:

Verse 15: “You shall count for yourselves from the day after the Sabbath, from the day that you brought the sheaf of the wave offering, seven Sabbaths shall be completed, count 50 days to the day after the seventh Sabbath.”

Okay, so this feast of harvest, so-called in Exodus 23, our text for today, is also referred to as the feast of weeks because there’s seven weeks—a fullness of weeks, 7 times 7. So it’s called the feast of weeks. Also, it’s 7 weeks and a day—the 50th day after some point in the feast of unleavened bread. And specifically, it says after the Sabbath, and specifically we’re told that after the day you brought the sheaf of the wave offering.

So it’s a little bit confusing as to when that actually occurred in the week-long feast of unleavened bread where the first sheaf was offered. But suffice it to say that connected to Passover and unleavened bread, that first sheaf 50 days later comes the feast of harvest, also known as the feast of weeks. Also in Numbers it’s called the day of first fruits. And what we read about in the context of the New Testament as Pentecost.

Penta comes from “penta” or fifty. Pentecost means “the fiftieth.” Pentecost was the 50th day after the resurrection of Jesus. Jesus is the first fruit, the first sheaf rather in the feast of Passover and unleavened bread. The first sheaf goes up on Easter morning in terms of the church calendar. And 50 days later, literally in the book of Acts, the day of Pentecost is when the spirit comes and forms or rebirths the church in the context of the new creation. And that’s what’s being spoken of here.

So you count fullness of weeks and then the 50th day after the seventh Sabbath: “Then you shall offer a new grain offering to the Lord. You shall bring from your dwellings two wave loaves of two tenths of an ephah.”

The distinctive thing about the feast of weeks, Pentecost, or the feast of harvest is that you have these two loaves that are leavened that are offered to God. And everybody was supposed to come to the second annual feast. All the men had to come up and everybody was supposed to bring from their dwellings these two loaves of leavened bread representing maturation. We go from unleavened to leavened.

So we have this leavened bread offering. “You shall offer with the bread seven lambs of the first year without blemish, one young bull, two rams. They will be as a burnt offering to the Lord with their grain offering and their drink offerings.”

See, the problem we have is, and I don’t have time to explain it, is we’re told here specific details about what happens at this feast that we’re going to see is correlated to Pentecost in the New Testament. And there are sacrifices involved—a burnt offering, peace offering, drink offering. And most of you have no idea what that means. You don’t know what the burnt offering is. You don’t know what the peace offering is. Well, you hopefully you’re beginning to get it because I keep mentioning it over and over.

But if we’re going to be people of the book who understand the New Testament based on the Old Testament, we’ve got to have some idea of what these terms we run across perpetually over and over mean.

The burnt offering was the ascension offering. It was the offering that was burnt up wholly and represents our transformation of state. The sin offering purified the worship environment. And the peace offering that’s mentioned here a little later is our communion. We move from sin offering here at the beginning of our worship service. The worship context is purified. The word is preached and you respond with total consecration representing the ascension offering—or we could say the “Lift up your hearts” is related to that as well.

We ascend up and we’re transformed in state and we offer to God all that we have. We bring forward a tribute offering, our tithes and offerings as we come forward in the middle portion of our worship, and then we move to the peace offering at the Lord’s table. But in any event, this feast of weeks had offerings associated with it. These offerings were not for every person. Every person didn’t have to bring seven lambs. That was the offering for all the people. What they had to bring specifically was these two leavened loaves that’s talked about here.

Now, it’s interesting as Leviticus goes on in verse 21: “You shall proclaim on the same day that it is a holy convocation to you. You shall do no customary work on it. It shall be a statute forever in all your dwellings throughout your generations.”

And then verse 22: “When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not wholly reap the corners of your field. When you reap, nor shall you gather any gleaning from your harvest, you shall leave them for the poor and for the stranger. I am the Lord your God.”

So the feast of weeks or feast of harvest was also a time to remember that God has graciously given us this harvest and we’re to extend grace to others in the context of our culture.

The other main place where this feast is talked about is Deuteronomy 16. Let me read you verse 9 from Deuteronomy 16: “You shall count seven weeks for yourselves. Begin to count the seven weeks from the time you begin to put the sickle to the grain.”

So the 50 days is from the waving of the first sheaf. Sometimes it’s talked about as 50 days from Passover, and now it’s talked about as 50 days from when you begin to put your sickle into the grain. The harvest starts here and 50 days later it’s completed. And so the beginning and end of the harvest here has is in the context of a celebration to God for what he’s given us. But it’s a celebration regulated so that we recognize that it’s God who provides the harvest.

So in terms of application, our labor from the beginning of our day to the conclusion of the workday is dedicated and consecrated to God, and our whole season of labor is marked before and after by consecration to God. And so God wants us to think that way by way of applying this feast to today.

—

All right. So that’s a little bit of background from the Pentateuch on this feast of weeks. And let’s talk now going through the outline. These preliminary considerations have to be done because you really need to have this understanding of the flow of this material. And unfortunately, we don’t normally know this and we pray to God that our children or our grandchildren will know their Bibles better than we do.

**Harvest is Weeks.** So the feast of harvest is the same as the feast of weeks. It’s also called the day of first fruits in Numbers 28. And it’s a little confusing, like I said last week, because there’s a first fruits at Passover and unleavened bread. The first sheaf is waved and now there’s first fruits 50 days later. Those two loaves representing you and the people of God are presented to God. Two leavened loaves are presented.

So it’s also sometimes talked about as the feast of first fruits. It’s Pentecost—50 days after the harvest began. So we go from the first sheaf at Passover here, 50 days later, to the feast of weeks. The sheaf of grain at Passover matures into two leavened loaves at harvest. So the totality of the harvest, the totality of our labor, is consecrated to God by these ritual actions of the Old Testament.

Well, so what you say? Well, if the Lord’s day is the celebration that is the culmination of all these Old Testament feasts, then this tells us that the Lord’s day also is a marker to us that God owns the beginning and end of our labor, our harvest, and it’s all to be seen in context of consecration to him. It also shows us that our celebration of the Lord’s day is a celebration of maturation. We don’t stay at Passover and the feast of unleavened bread.

We move forward in history to the day of Pentecost. And our lives are moving forward and maturing—or the leaven isn’t in you. If you’re not moving forward and maturing in these things, then you have cause to be concerned.

**Three, Harvest, Feast of Harvest is Associated with the Giving of the Law at Sinai.** The Jews call this the Torah Festival—the Torah Festival, the Pentecost or the feast of weeks. Very important for our consideration of what we’re going to talk about on the day of Pentecost.

Exodus 19:1 tells us in the third month, Moses and the people arrive at Sinai and he receives the law in the middle of the third month. And Passover happened exactly, or at least seemingly, in the context of about 50 days before. Now, Exodus 19:1 doesn’t tell us the specific day of the third month. But tradition has always said that it was the 16th day of the third month, which puts it exactly at 50 days past.

Now, the scriptures don’t explicitly make this connection. These three main feasts—the first is linked to the Passover. The last is linked to some dwelling in the wilderness. This middle one has no explicit historical connections other than this reference in Exodus 19. There’s another reference in Psalm 68:18, I believe, that talks about God ascending and giving gifts to men. And the idea is the Jews have interpreted that as saying that Moses ascends up and brings back the gifts to the people of the word of God.

And Paul then quotes from this psalm in Ephesians talking about Jesus—that he ascended up and gave gifts to men. Now, we typically think of that in terms of the gifted men of the church, but it seems like the immediate context for understanding Paul’s epistle would have been this correlation to Psalm 68, correlating it to the giving of the law of God, and that the gifts that Jesus gives to his church is pictured on the day of Pentecost as the flowing out of the spirit. And because of the context of what the understanding of Psalm 68 and Exodus 19 was, the giving of the law to the people of God.

Now that’s very important for us because it puts the law not in the context of obtaining salvation, but the law comes to a saved or redeemed people. You move out of Passover and you move then to the reception of God’s law and the power of the spirit. We come together on the Lord’s day and we confess our sins, purifying the worship environment, but we move out of Passover and the introspection of unleavened bread that we should do in preparation, putting off sinful influences out of our houses. But we move from that to the preaching of the word and the response of the people to the word of God and the power of the spirit.

And the Holy Spirit is given—Jeremiah tells us—to write that word upon our hearts. So there’s connection with the feast of weeks, the giving of the law, the giving of the spirit at Pentecost. Jesus ascends up into the heavenly throne room and gives the gifts of the spirit and the word to his people. That’s what weeks prefigured. That’s what Pentecost is a celebration of in the context of the New Testament church year.

Okay. So the giving of the law, Exodus 19, Ruth—the book of Ruth, by the way, was typically read at the book of harvest, the idea of harvest season. Gift of the Holy Spirit in tongues. Talk more about the tongues later on. The New Testament church is birthed—or I suppose transformed in the new creation. And of course it’s on Pentecost that the disciples—now the apostles—first publicly and openly proclaim the resurrection and messiahship of Jesus Christ and they baptize, of course, all the new converts.

So there’s this pivotal event that happens at Pentecost that’s sometimes a little hard for us to understand. What I’m getting at here is why the church celebrates Pentecost in relationship to Easter and why Pentecost should in our own minds—the feast of weeks is tied to this maturation that happened with the resurrection of the Savior at Easter.

**Four, Pentecost, Feast of Harvest, the Great 50 Days.** In 1969, lectionaries were changed. And the lectionaries were changed to indicate that the feast of Pentecost was not just one day after Easter, but the entire set of 50 days was to be a great celebration, a festival of the church. That’s because of this cycle of Easter to Pentecost. Pentecost is part of a cycle of a Christian calendar.

Now, the Christian calendar is an attempt on the part of some churches to talk about the life of the Lord Jesus Christ. It begins with Advent. It moves to Christmas, his birth. Epiphany—the coming of the Magi to Jesus—is celebrated the first week in January. Then there’s a series of Sundays leading up to Lent. Lent is sort of like that introspection, mortification of the flesh thing that I’ve talked about, that prepares us for Easter and resurrection.

Easter is followed 40 days later by Ascension Day. That’s followed by Pentecost 50 days after Easter. And in the modern age, two other feasts have been added. Trinity Sunday, the Sunday after Pentecost, and the feast of Christ the King, the Sunday before Advent, were added later on. But the idea here is that you have this progression from the advent of Christ, his birth, his suffering on the cross leading up to Easter, his resurrection. But it doesn’t end there. It moves on—the church year does—to move toward Pentecost.

And then all the rest of the Sundays after Pentecost in the traditions of the church till recent days were marked as the first Sunday after Pentecost, the second Sunday after Pentecost, the third Sunday after Pentecost, leading back up to Advent, where we go through his life again. Why? Because Jesus’s resurrection is not the end of the deal. Jesus then ascends 40 days after his resurrection. And based on his ascension, the spirit that he has received is now given to the church at Pentecost.

And the birth of the new creation is now definitively entered into by the church. You see, resurrection has to be seen in the context of Jesus moving toward ascension and the ascension is for the purpose of sending the spirit to the church to make us a new people—to recreate a new world—as the spirit moved in the context of the first creation. So Jesus sends the spirit to move in the context of the new creation based upon his work.

And so the church has always understood this: that can’t just leave resurrected Christ there. He’s got to ascend and give the spirit to his church at Pentecost. And the rest of the church year is about how the world progresses from the day of Pentecost. We work out the implications of Pentecost into the rest of eternity. That’s really the picture. Now, it recycles. It goes back to Advent and you go over the life of Christ.

But do you see the connection? Resurrection, ascension, and then the gift of the spirit and word at Pentecost. And as a result, the evangelization of the whole world then begins to take place. The gospel is proclaimed. Then the nations are gathered. Then the nations of the whole world are symbolically—as a first fruits of the world—saved then on the day of Pentecost, and the spirit flows then, not before, not immediately after the resurrection.

All right? So it’s part of this cycle of the church year. With Sunday, by the way—that’s another name that the church has given to Pentecost. Whit Sunday means white Sunday. Pentecost was seen as the day when baptisms would be performed in the church of England. The baptismal candidates wore white, and so it became known as Whit Sunday or White Sunday. That’s Pentecost, the same as any other.

Jesus Christ—1 Corinthians 15:20 says that Christ has risen from the dead. He has become the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. So Jesus is the first sheaf. The church is a first fruits. And Pentecost means the maturation of that harvest into the rest of the world in association with the giving of the spirit who writes the word upon our hearts.

All right. So that’s by way of a little bit of preliminary background.

—

And so the church has traditionally, since the times of the early fathers, celebrated Pentecost as a day of great joy. As a day of great joy. Processions were held. In the 4th century of the church, early 4th century, the church would gather at the place of the ascension where it was traditionally thought that Jesus ascended. And they would read ascension accounts. Then they would also read accounts of Jesus’s post-resurrection meals and the ascension would be read. The text from Pentecost would be read and a procession would then go to Jerusalem of great joy and thanksgiving.

Tertullian, writing about this feast of Pentecost, calls it “a most joyous space” in which it is especially fitting that baptisms take place. Athanasius, the bishop of Alexandria, wrote an annual festival letter to the churches in which he announced the date of Easter which quote “extends its beams with unobscured grace to all the seven weeks of holy Pentecost.” So early on, church fathers understood that Easter extends its beams with unobscured grace to all the seven weeks of holy Pentecost.

He went on to say, “Let us now keep the feast, my beloved, not as introducing a day of suffering, but of joy in Christ in whom we are fed every day.” It was called the Great Sunday—the whole 50 days of Pentecost—because it was a week of weeks, a week of Sundays. And the church rejoiced in this resurrection of Christ.

Historically, in the context of the church, the historic application of the feast of weeks or harvest and the day of Pentecost involved three elements.

One: Because this is now moving away from the resurrection—Jesus has done his passion work on the cross. He’s raised up and now he has ascended and given gifts to the church, the spirit and word. This time of Pentecost or the feast of Pentecost was seen as a time of great feasting. So fasting was prohibited. You could not fast during the 50 days of Pentecost because it represents the gift of the spirit. The new creation has started up. The bridegroom who went away is now present with the church through the spirit.

And Jesus says when the bridegroom is there, you don’t fast. You feast. So the fasting went on for a very short period of time. 50 days later—because of Jesus’s ascension, the spirit is given. The spirit brings Christ to us. And because Christ is now present with us, the once-for-all act of Pentecost, the feast of weeks fulfilled in Pentecost, now we’re in a time of perpetual feasting.

And at least during the 50 days of Pentecost, the early church completely forbade fasting at all. We’re in a time of feasting.

Second: The church prayed standing during this time. We’re not used to liturgical actions. We don’t think of our bodies much in worship. We’re trying to a little bit in this church. During Lenten season, the church would kneel for the prayers of the church. But during Pentecost, you’d stand all the time because it’s a time of joy. It’s a time of marching into all the world. You see, it’s not a time now when you move into Pentecost of introspection, reflection, and confession as much as it is a time of action, moving forward in joy. So you’d be feasting during those 50 days. You’d stand when you prayed in the context of the worship service.

And third: You’d sing a lot of Alleluias. The Alleluia choruses would be sung in the context of the worship service, which had been—the Alleluias were not sung during Lent because it’s a reflection upon the suffering of Christ. But now at the coming of the fulfillment of his work at Pentecost, the Alleluias are sung.

The presence of the risen Christ is a prominent theme throughout this season because the spirit comes. Jesus tells us explicitly not to speak of himself, but to bring Christ and minister Christ to his people.

Secondly, a prominent theme of the season is the presence and work of the Holy Spirit. You know, in the gospels you’ve got a big focus on Jesus and you’ve got Jesus saying over and over again, “Well, the spirit’s going to come. I’m going to give you the spirit.” He’s talking about that all the time. But in the gospels, they don’t have the spirit in the same way that we read about it in the epistles.

In the epistles now we have this idea: “Don’t grieve the spirit, don’t quench the spirit, be filled with the spirit, be motivated or carried about in the context of the spirit.” There’s this transition from the period of the gospels with this emphasis on Christ and the epistles with an emphasis on the walk that we’re to have in the spirit.

Now the spirit ministers Christ, but you see there’s a transition here, and the pivot point for that transition—from really the whole Old Testament and the gospels into the epistles—is Pentecost. Pentecost is what makes that transition to where now the spirit comes in a fullness in which it had never come to God’s people before. It’s poured out on all flesh, and the manifestations on the day of Pentecost are a miraculous attestation to the church being endued with the Holy Spirit from on high and now being able to minister that spirit in the proclamation of the gospel.

So the presence of Christ, the presence and the importance of the Holy Spirit, and then third, this period was noted as the very nature of the baptismal life or the baptismal rite because the church comes and this baptism of the Holy Spirit occurs. Peter says be baptized and receive the gift of the spirit. And so all those who are baptized are seen as being recipients of that spirit who ministers Christ to us.

And so the feasting time, the proclamation time of Pentecost is really emblematic of the rest of our lives. And that’s why the church year ends there. And every Sunday after that is called the Sunday after Pentecost, second Sunday after, third Sunday after—it’s come to its completion, the cycle. The presence of the risen Christ, the work of the Holy Spirit, the significance of the baptismal life are the fundamental themes that permeate the texts of the Easter season in the context of the church. They’re fundamental themes, of course, to all of Christian worship.

This is the flow of the feasts.

—

Well, actually let me look briefly at Roman numeral II. We’ll do a little review of this by way of talking about these gifts and the three feasts next week. But I do want you to look at the chiastic structure of the feasts from Leviticus 23.

Remember, Leviticus 23 lists seven feasts that are given for us here. And this structure I got from James B. Jordan off his biblical horizons web page. And it seems to make sense. When we see a listing of seven things in the scriptures, frequently the middle element is the pivot point.

We move from the Sabbath on the seventh day. That’s the first feast or convocation in Leviticus 23. We move then to Passover and unleavened bread, which is the first central annual offering of the people. Then the first sheaf is waved. The people are waved before God—that’s the third feast. The fourth feast is Pentecost, which happens on the 50th day, meaning it is an eighth day celebration, right? 7+7+7+7, the last seven. The eighth day of that week is Pentecost, or first day.

Then we go back to the trumpets, which gathers the people together before God—correlating to the first sheaf which waves the people before God. And then the feast of atonement, the second central annual offering, is the sixth one listed in Leviticus 23. And finally, tabernacles, the climax of the year in the seventh month, and it is an eight-day long festival.

So we move from the Sabbath to tabernacles, an eight-day long festival in the seventh month, by means of this development in the middle of the structure. And the central pivot point is Pentecost. The pivot point between the old creation and the new creation is the feast of harvest, the feast of weeks, the feast of Pentecost in the context of the early church.

—

Let’s look at a few texts then relating to the feast of Pentecost. Now, what I say here is that the spirit of Pentecost is in us. Here’s another way to summarize this. I want to talk about these verses that represent to us the centrality of Pentecost to Christ’s ministry—the centrality of Pentecost or the feast of harvest to Christ’s ministry.

John 1:33-34: John says, “I did not know him. He who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘Upon whom you see the spirit descending and remaining on him, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ And I have seen and testified that this is the Son of God.”

So Jesus is going to receive the spirit at his baptism, and his purpose in receiving that is that he might baptize the church individually and collectively with the Holy Spirit.

1 Corinthians 15:45: “It is written: The first man Adam became a living being. The last Adam became a life-giving spirit.”

The Lord Jesus Christ becomes a life-giving spirit. He receives the spirit at his baptism that he might be the life-giving spirit who gives the Holy Spirit to the church. And as I said, Jesus is talking about the Holy Spirit in the context of the gospels repeatedly.

So what we see here is that Jesus—a central element of what he is to accomplish—is to give the Holy Spirit to the church, to baptize the church with the Holy Spirit. And that’s why the picture of the spirit descending upon him at his baptism is so pregnant with meaning when we come around to understanding what happens on the day of Pentecost.

On the day of Pentecost, the church is baptized with or into the Holy Spirit. It is the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in Acts 2:17-18. In Acts 2:38, the baptism of the spirit is called the gift of the spirit. So the spirit is the focal point of that Pentecostal activity that occurs in Acts chapter 2, and it’s correlated to being a central aspect of our Savior’s ministry.

In John 14:16-17, he says he’s going to go away, but he says, “I’ll pray the Father and he will give you another helper that he may abide with you forever. The Spirit of truth whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees him nor knows him, but you know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.”

Jesus says he won’t forsake us. He won’t leave us ultimately. He’s going to send the spirit. And as the spirit comes, he comes to bring the things of Christ. And Christ is brought to the church at Pentecost. The resurrected, glorified, ascended Christ—who receives all power from the right hand of the Father—comes at Pentecost to fill his people for ministry.

John 16:13-14 tells us: “When the Spirit of truth has come, he’ll guide you into all truth. He will not speak of his own authority, but whatever he hears, he will speak, and he will tell you things to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is of mine and declare it to you.”

So when Jesus comes around in Matthew 28:20, the culmination of the gospel of our Savior, to tell us to go into all the world in relationship to the great commission, and assures us that “he is with us even until the end of the age,” you see, all that is predicated upon Jesus being brought to us in the context of the spirit being poured out upon us at Pentecost.

So Jesus is resurrected. 40 days later, he ascends. 10 days after that, the spirit is sent from heaven and the spirit ministers Christ to the church. We’ve talked about how in Revelation 2 and 3, Jesus appears to the churches. And he comes to you today and says, “You’re a new creation in me. You’ve been baptized. You’ve been brought into the new creation of the new world through the work of the Holy Spirit.

Because I’m glorified and exalted and have received all power, I give you power to be transformed. And what I have is what you need. I’m completed humanity in my resurrection and ascension and glorification. And I have what you need to make you a different person.” The spirit comes ministering Christ in the context of the worship service and changes and transforms us. That’s what Lord’s day worship is. The feast of Pentecost, feast of harvest is what it’s all about.

The first sheaf is the beginning of what becomes the gospel harvest—the church—and the spirit is poured out upon the church. So Pentecost is absolutely integral to the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Pentecost can be said to be the coming of Christ to the church of himself as the life-giving spirit. The spirit of Pentecost is the resurrection life of Christ, the life of the exalted Christ effective in the church.

Richard Gaffin in his article titled “The Holy Spirit” in the Westminster Theological Journal says this: “From one perspective, it’s fair to say that the earthly ministry of Jesus in its entirety consists in securing and then communicating to the church at Pentecost the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

The gift of the Holy Spirit. The plain implication is that Jesus receives the spirit so that he might minister it to his church. The purpose of his death on the cross and his resurrection is that we might be a new creation by being given the Holy Spirit in full upon his glorification and ascension to the Father. The Holy Spirit is the central blessing of the kingdom. The agricultural year moves to this harvest period of kingdom growth, and that is tied explicitly in the scriptures to the day of Pentecost—the gift of the Holy Spirit.