For almost two months the people labored in the fields; then it was time to celebrate again!
With the spring festivals over—Passover, Unleavened Bread, and Firstfruits—the people would return to their farms to bring in the winter field crops. One week would turn into two, and then three, and then…. You see why it was called the Festival of Weeks (Heb., Shavuot), because “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” (Lev 23:15). The interval was a week of weeks! But this feast was to be celebrated not on the seventh Sabbath, but “Count fifty days to the day after the seventh Sabbath” (v 16), in other words, on what we call the Lord’s Day, the first day of the week. Thus Pentecost means “fifty days.” What did they do that day? “You shall bring from your dwellings two wave loaves of two-tenths of an ephah. They shall be of fine flour; they shall be baked with leaven” (v 17). Do you recall back in chapter 2, God said, “No grain offering which you bring to the Lord shall be made with leaven” (2:11)? This is the exception. Why? We must wait until the New Testament to find the answer “when the Day of Pentecost had fully come” (Acts 2:1). Pentecost is the birthday of the Church! The two loaves might picture believing Jews and Gentiles: “For He Himself is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation,…so as to create in Himself one new man from the two, thus making peace” (Eph 2:14-15). The leaven reminds us that sinners were redeemed to make up the body of Christ, but the action of the leaven has been arrested by the fire. We are a people whose sin has been judged. We are not sinless yet, but we ought to sin less! But more on this exciting topic in our next lesson.