Spring Festivals, Pt 5(b): Shavuot

Deuteronomy 16:9-12           9Count off seven weeks from the time you begin to put the sickle to the standing grain. 10Then celebrate the Festival of Weeks to the LORD your God by giving a freewill offering in proportion to the blessings the LORD your God has given you. 11And rejoice before the LORD your God at the place he will choose as a dwelling for his Name—you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, the Levites in your towns, and the foreigners, the fatherless and the widows living among you. 12Remember that you were slaves in Egypt, and follow carefully these decrees.

Acts 2:1-4                            1When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. 2Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. 4All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.

The believing world knows of the Festival of Weeks, also known as Shavuot (Shah-voo-ot), as Pentecost.  I’ve written about it before (see Day 45) but it is such an important Festival that it deserves another look.  Day 45 contains comments about the history of Shavuot and so I don’t want to look extensively at that again beyond a few additional comments, but I do want to spend some time on the Spiritual impact of Shavuot.

Originally a Festival celebrating the wheat harvest, by 200BC Shavuot had come to represent the outpouring of the Law by God to his people at Mount Sinai and the presentation of his Covenant with his people.  A covenant at its basic level is just an agreement between two parties, but in this case it is an agreement between God and Israel.  When Moses went to Mount Sinai God gave him the 10 Commandments and many other precepts which described how Israel was to live.  God said,

5Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, 6you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ (Exodus 19:5-6)

It’s not just that Israel was to live a certain way, but that Israel was to be an example of righteous living before all other nations of the earth.  If she did that and showed the world what holy and righteous living was like, then she would be to God a “treasured possession”, a “kingdom of priests”, and a “holy nation”.

So by 200BC, Shavuot had come to be a celebration of the giving of that Covenant on Sinai.  But more was coming.  By 33AD, the Shavuot 50 days after Jesus’ Resurrection was filled with flames of fire, smoke, and loud sounds as if made by wind.  Many theologians think the events at Sinai were so dramatic that it must have seemed as if the mountain were exploding like in a volcano.  There also were theophanies of fire, smoke, and winds.  Jewish tradition holds that every person present heard the boom of God’s voice and that actually saw the sound waves emanate so profoundly from his mouth that they seemed as fire.  Bur consider this:  So much were the two events similar that some see the Shavuot (Pentecost) of Acts 2 as God’s renewal of the Sinai Covenant at the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

Before Jesus went to the Cross he told his disciples that,

 26But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. (John 14:26)

Romans chapter 11 teaches that we Gentiles who have accepted Jesus as our Savior are grafted in as new branches in the olive tree that is Israel, and we also have the blessing of the Holy Spirit according to John 14:26.  So the Sinai Covenant as renewed at Shavuot is also renewed in our own hearts in the present day.  That means that you and I and all who have intimacy with Jesus also are treasured possessions, a holy priesthood, and holy people.

How does that inform the way we live our lives?  Should anything change?  Two verses (among many others) speak to God’s covenant with us believers.

“The days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. (Jeremiah 31:31) 

“This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time,” declares the LORD. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. (Jeremiah 31:33)

And

26I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. 27And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. (Ezekiel 36:26-27)

Before we came to know Jesus as Savior we had hard hearts: hearts of stone.  We were indifferent, even opposed to God’s ordinances.  But God worked things out in a way specific to each of us that we come to know his Son.  So now with our hearts turned to flesh and the Holy Spirit residing in us we are empowered to observe God’s precepts and ordinances.  The Holy Spirit is the testimony that God is alive and well in our new hearts of flesh.  That sin that you used to do routinely without thought, now bothers you because God wants you to get rid of it.

So that outpouring of the Holy Spirit at that Shavuot 2000 years ago reasserted and reestablished God’s Covenant for a new time and a new people.  Now the Covenant applies to both Jew and Gentile, male and female, slave and free.  And, especially, it applies to today.  Modern Jew and modern Gentile together make up the body of Christ.  That’s the cool thing about Shavuot(Pentecost):  It reminds us that we can daily reapply the New Covenant to our increasing calloused heart to make it more submitted to God.  The Holy Spirit, the written word, and the Living Word are the full expression of God and dwell with the human heart.  Yours, mine, and everyone else’s who name Jesus as Savior.  He is our God and we are His people.  That was the purpose of the first Shavuot on Mount Sinai, and it was the purpose of the Shavuot in Acts 2.  It has been the purpose of every Shavuot since Acts 2 and will continue to be the purpose of every Shavuot until the return of Christ.  Whereas Passover represents our freedom from slavery to sin, Shavuot represents the empowering by the Holy Spirit to overcome sin.  Thus the two Festivals and the time between become almost one Great Festival for the purpose of reaffirming out love of God and rededicating our lives to Him.  Hallelujah and Amen to that!