Exodus 23:14–17, Three times thou shalt keep a feast unto me in the year. The feast of unleavened bread shalt thou keep:—this represented the Feast of Passover—seven days thou shalt eat unleavened bread, as I commanded thee, at the time appointed in the month Abib (for in it thou camest out from Egypt); and none shall appear before me empty: never come before the Lord emptyhanded; come before Him with something that shows your love and appreciation for what He means to you—the Passover Lamb that takes away the sin of the world.
Fifty days after the Passover, came the Feast of Pentecost, which is called the Feast of Harvest—and the feast of harvest, the first-fruits of thy labors, which thou sowest in the field: and the feast of ingathering, at the end of the year, when thou gatherest in thy labors out of the field. The Jewish New Year is now celebrated at the beginning of the Feast of Ingathering (Feast of Tabernacles) in September instead of April.
In Leviticus 23:15, we read that the sheaf of the wave-offering took place during the Passover. The sheaf of the wave-offering was the first stalks of grain that were gathered. And ye shall count unto you from the morrow after the sabbath from the day that ye brought the sheaf of the wave-offering; seven sabbaths shall there be complete: seven sabbaths were counted from the sheaf of the wave-offering. But notice this next verse, … ye number fifty days; and ye shall offer a new meal-offering unto Jehovah. Pentecost means fifty days. Fifty days after the Passover and the bringing of the sheaf of grain, it says, Ye shall bring out of your habitations two wave-loaves of two tenth parts of an ephah: they shall be of fine flour, they shall be baken with leaven, for first-fruits unto Jehovah. And ye shall present with the bread seven lambs without blemish a year old, and one young bullock, and two rams: this gives a description of what took place at the Feast of Pentecost in the Old Testament.
I want to show you the symbolism of Passover and Pentecost, so you’ll see why it was numbered as it was. During the Feast of Passover, they took one shock of wheat and waved it before the Lord. On the Passover, Christ came forth as the First-Fruits of them that slept. When He arose from the grave, He was the first representative Man of the Body of Christ to be standing in immortality in the righteousness of God. Fifty days later came Pentecost, and then that shock of grain was made into two loves of bread which were waved before the Lord. The symbolism is that Christ is the Bread of Life. But the symbolism of the two loaves is: all that Christ is, is refined and brought forth. Two is the symbolism of Christ and His Body.
What happened on the day of Pentecost? In Acts 2:1–4 it says, And when the day of Pentecost was now come (The Greek reads, “was being completed,” or “was being fulfilled”), they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a sound as of the rushing of a mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them tongues parting asunder, like as of fire; and it sat upon each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.
Then in verse 12 we read, And they were all amazed, and were perplexed, saying one to another, What meaneth this? But others mocking said, They are filled with new wine. But Peter, standing up with the eleven, lifted up his voice, and spake forth unto them, saying, Ye men of Judea, and all ye that dwell at Jerusalem, be this known unto you, and give ear unto my words. For these are not drunken, as ye suppose; seeing it is but the third hour of the day; but this is that which hath been spoken through the prophet Joel: then Peter began to preach.
When you reach the end of the chapter, you read that three thousand people accepted Jesus Christ; that was the fulfillment of the first two loaves waved toward the Lord. It was the “harvest” of the “first-fruits.” The Feast of Tabernacles has more significance to us, because it is the end time ingathering: the last ingathering before the Lord, the glory that is to come, and the Kingdom that is to follow. Nevertheless, we see the significance of the Feast of First-Fruits now, because this move of God is in the stage where we are just getting the first-fruits of the harvest. We haven’t seen the full ingathering yet; we’ve only seen the beginning of the first-fruits.
God had His own way of keeping the Feast of Pentecost. He poured out His Spirit and the first-fruits of all the earth came to Him; three thousand people were baptized in His Spirit, speaking with other tongues the mighty praises of God. There were Jews there who had been born, or had lived, in foreign lands. If you wonder what they were doing in Jerusalem, they were keeping the Feast of Pentecost. Three times a year all the males in Israel were to appear in Jerusalem to keep the Feast: first, Passover, then Pentecost, then Tabernacles; and so at the Feast of Pentecost they had gathered from nations which are named in the second chapter of Acts. They said, “How is it that we hear these people speaking the marvelous works of God in the language wherein we were born?” Did they know all those languages? No—they were Galileans, yet they were speaking all the different languages as they were magnifying God.
It was the miracle of utterance. It was a reversing of the confusion which came at the building of the tower of Babel in the Book of Genesis when they tried to reach God without redemption, when they tried to have religion without regeneration. God smote their efforts by confusing them; and they all departed speaking different languages. That was the origin of languages.
This new utterance was not of Babel, though some have accused it of being babblings. It was the first time that people were able to hear the gospel in their own language from a man that had never learned the language: a miracle of communication. God was reversing the confusion of Babylon. He was reversing something that would bring the people of God together again. In effect He was saying, “I will pour out My Spirit, and people who haven’t been able to communicate are going to be able to communicate. People who have been divided and separated are going to be made one again.”
Wave those first loaves toward God and say, “O Father, this is the promise of what you are looking for—the precious fruit—the first-fruits of the earth that will be yours.”