Pentecost.
I. A SACRED RECKONING. "Seven weeks shall thou number," etc. (Deuteronomy 16:9). A week of weeks, seven times seven, hence the name, "Feast of Weeks "(Deuteronomy 16:10). The count began with the offering of the sheaf of firstfruits on Nisan 16, the second day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread (Leviticus 23:11). Till that sheaf was offered, no Israelite was permitted to eat of the new corn (Deuteronomy 16:14). With the arrival of the fiftieth day, inclusive of the second of Unleavened Bread, the labors of the harvest were presumed to be ended, and this festival ensued, at which baked loaves were presented to Jehovah (Leviticus 23:17), in token of consecration to him of the fruits of the harvest, and of dedication of the life which bread sustained. There is, intended or unintended, a beautiful symbolism in this sacred count, the divinely allotted period for the labors of the harvest, its days reckoned by heaven's calendar, the end, an "appearing before God" in the sanctuary. The harvest began with consecration (in the Passover sheaf), it ended with it (in the presentation of the wave loaves). So has the Christian his allotted work-time in the world, a sacred cycle of weeks, rounded off in God's wisdom for the work he means to be accomplished (John 9:4); work in the Christian harvest-field, a work beginning in consecration, carried on in the spirit of consecration, and the termination of which is "entrance into the joy of the Lord."
II. A HARVEST THANKSGIVING. This was distinctly the idea of the Pentecostal festival. It was characterized:
1. By a devout recognition of the Divine bounty in the fruits of the earth.
2. By a voluntary dedication to God of part of what he had given. There was the public ceremony of the two wave loaves. But the Israelite was required in addition to keep the feast with "a tribute of a free-will offering of his hand" (Deuteronomy 16:10). The offering was to be voluntary, yet not without rule, but "according as the Lord thy God hath blessed thee."
3. By a willing sharing of God's bounty with the needy (Deuteronomy 16:11). The stranger, the fatherless, the widow, were, as usual, not to be neglected. The remembrance of former bondage in Egypt was to furnish the "touch of nature" which would make this duty easy (Deuteronomy 16:12).
Note:
III. A GOSPEL TYPE. The figure of the firstfruits finds an abundance of applications in the New Testament. It is employed of the Jews (Romans 11:16), sanctified in their covenant heads; of Christ, the "Firstfruits" of them that sleep (1 Corinthians 15:20-23); of first converts in a particular district (1 Corinthians 16:15); of believers generally, as "a kind of firstfruits" of the redeemed creation (James 1:18); of the 144,000 of the Apocalypse (Revelation 14:4), possibly "all the Church of Christ at any time on the earth; a limited company at any one time, capable of being numbered" (Revelation 7:1-9). A more direct relation must be traced between the presentation of the firstfruits at Pentecost and the events consequent upon the Pentecostal effusion of the Spirit (Acts it.). It is surely not to be ascribed to accident that, as our Lord died on the Friday of the Passover—probably on the 14th of Nisan—so the disciples were kept waiting for the promised effusion of the Spirit till "the day of Pentecost was fully come;" and that on this day the great ingathering of three thousand took place, embracing representatives from "every nation under heaven"—a truly glorious offering of "firstfruits." May we pursue the coincidence further, and see in Christ, the solitary sheaf, raised from the dead on the same day that the first-cut sheaf was presented in the sanctuary (Nisan 16), the firstfruits of the harvest in prospect; while in the Church constituted and consecrated at Pentecost, the day of the offering of the wave loaves, we have the firstfruits of the harvest as realized. The wave loaves correspond in significance to the meat offering, and still more nearly to the showbread. Bread, as the staff of life, the nourishing principle, stands for the presentation to God of the life so nourished, involving the recognition of him as the Nourisher of it. In the possession of the believing heart by the Spirit of God, as the indwelling and abiding principle of spiritual life, we have the full realization of this thought, the fulfillment of the types of meat offering. The passage, James 1:18, suggests the deeper idea that the Church constituted at Pentecost is itself only a kind of firstfruits of redemption. It is so in relation:
1. To the latter-day effusion of the Spirit (Acts 2:17-20).
2. To creation as a whole (Romans 8:19-24).
Other two points may be noted:
1. If our dates be correct, Pentecost, like the Resurrection, fell on the first day of the week—the Spirit was given on the Lord's day.
2. As Pentecost was held by the Jews in commemoration of the giving of the Law, so God signalized it as the day of the giving of the Spirit, thus superseding the old dispensation by the new.—J.O.