The Feast of Pentecost symbolizes two aspects of the Kingdom message: Judgment and Jubilee. I believe this Feast has been of little interest to most Christians because they were more interested in the “receiving” of the Holy Spirit for selfish reasons than to look at the big picture of service to mankind. They focused on their “vertical” relationship with Our Heavenly Father. They wanted the gift without the understanding of the ensuing aspect of service to others. They were basically self-centered concerning the Baptism of the Holy Spirit.
Few Christians realized the Pentecost began at the giving of the Law at Mount Sinai fifty days after the Exodus, also known as the Feast of Weeks:
Exodus 23:
14 “Each year you must celebrate three festivals in my honor. 15 First, celebrate the Festival of Unleavened Bread. For seven days the bread you eat must be made without yeast, just as I commanded you. Celebrate this festival annually at the appointed time in early spring, in the month of Abib, for that is the anniversary of your departure from Egypt. No one may appear before me without an offering.
16 “Second, celebrate the Festival of Harvest,fn when you bring me the first crops of your harvest.
“Finally, celebrate the Festival of the Final Harvest at the end of the harvest season, when you have harvested all the crops from your fields. 17 At these three times each year, every man in Israel must appear before the Sovereign, the LORD.
Deuteronomy 16:
The Festival of Harvest
9 “Count off seven weeks from when you first begin to cut the grain at the time of harvest.10 Then celebrate the Festival of Harvest to honor the LORD your God. Bring him a voluntary offering in proportion to the blessings you have received from him. 11 This is a time to celebrate before the LORD your God at the designated place of worship he will choose for his name to be honored. Celebrate with your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, the Levites from your towns, and the foreigners, orphans, and widows who live among you. 12 Remember that you were once slaves in Egypt, so be careful to obey all these decrees.
The Giving of the Law established the Standard by which righteous judgment would occur. The Law judges sin. Yet the Law was given 50 days after the Exodus and the number represents jubilee. We were all destined to sin and death yet somehow the Law is suppose to expose our sin which guarantees our destiny? No. In order to properly appropriate a jubilee, the reality of the judgment must first be exposed. How can you receive a jubilee without knowing the debt to be freed from? The assessment of the debt must first be determined and the Law fulfilled that assessment.
The Giving of Our Lord Jesus Christ and Holy Spirit completed the path to the Jubilee. HIS Blood provided for the payment of debt and the Holy Spirit provided for the maturing of the saints by leading us into all Truth. The Holy Spirit is our Advocate in dealing with the legal issues of sin as we are maturing as well as our Comforter to minister to us as we are being taught the needed truths discovered through the suffering phase in our training.
We must embrace both the Law and the Holy Spirit as both are needed to provide a full understanding of our growth toward maturity as Sons of GOD. The Law is fulfilled in Love. The ego or false self must die and the new man must rise to full maturity. The Law did its job to expose our lawlessness so that there would be no question of our beginning point. However from that realization that we all deserved death and destruction, Jesus Christ represented the door to life everlasting. HIS Blood began our walk but we needed the Comforter to assist us in proceeding to full maturity and restoration.
This Feast celebrates Our Heavenly Father’s process to jubilee us fully and completely. The Feast of Passover celebrates the initial step to our Jubilee. The Feast of Tabernacles celebrates the presenting of the Mature Sons, the result of Jubilee. Let’s celebrate the Feast of Pentecost as the bridge between these other Feasts that focuses on the process of maturing to our final state.