Before Pentecost

Many people have called Pentecost the birthday of the New Testament Church. It has also been called a lot of other things down through the years. It has been called a harvest festival. It’s been called a celebration of the resurrection. It’s a celebration of the Holy Spirit. It’s been called the Feast of Weeks, the Feast of Firstfruits, and the name we generally use—the Feast of Pentecost, itself a curious little Greek word signifying that it is the fiftieth day. In the very beginning, though, Pentecost was a harvest festival. Let’s begin with the very earliest reference to the feast, found in the 23^rd chapter of Exodus.

Hello everyone and welcome to the Christian Educational Ministries Weekend Bible Study. It is good to be with you and we thank you for being there and allowing us to make this weekly service possible.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve followed Ron Dart in taking a closer look at the Passover, the resurrection of Christ, and the beginning of the countdown to the Feast of Weeks or Pentecost. As we find commanded in Leviticus 23:

From the day after the Sabbath, the day you brought the sheaf of the wave offering, count off seven full weeks. Count off fifty days up to the day after the seventh Sabbath, and then present an offering of new grain…a wave offering of firstfruits to the Lord.

Leviticus 23:15–17 NIV

This weekend concludes the sixth of those seven weeks, so tonight we’ll join Mr. Dart in examining this time of year and its accompanying harvest—both of grain and of men.