House of Hope Online

June 15, 2025

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Last week, we commemorated the Day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit appeared to the early Christian Church in the Upper Room, as recounted by Luke in Acts 2.  We said the Greek word for Pentecost means “50” and Pentecost is observed in the Christian Church 50 days after Easter weekend.  We also related the Day of Pentecost in the Christian Church to the Jewish Pentecost, or Shavuot, a celebration which honored God’s visitation at Mount Sinai and His provision of the Torah, which forms the first five books in the Bible.  In both cases, God communicated to His people and directed them on how to escape the oppression they were facing.  In addition, we showed how God used fire to speak to His people: first, in the burning bush to Moses, second, He appeared as a fire at the top of Mount Sinai to address Moses and the people, and later as a pillar of fire to lead the people in the wilderness.  Finally, on the Day of Pentecost in Acts 2, the Holy Spirit appeared as tongues of fire distributed upon the people.  In all cases the fire burned but no one was consumed by it.

Today, I want to discuss three feasts that God established in the Torah, one of which coincides with the Day of Pentecost.  These Old Testament Feasts represent prophetic symbolism that points to Jesus as Lord and Savior.

Three Feasts Requiring Pilgrimages

Deuteronomy 16:

 16 “Three times in a year all your males shall appear before the LORD your God in the place which He chooses, at the Feast of Unleavened Bread and at the Feast of Weeks and at the Feast of Booths, and they shall not appear before the LORD empty-handed.

 17 “Every man shall give as he is able, according to the blessing of the LORD your God which He has given you.

Verse 16 indicates the three feasts are the Feast of Unleavened Bread (Passover), the Feast of Weeks (Pentecost), and the Feast of Booths (Tabernacles).  For each of these three feasts, the sons of Israel were required to travel to Jerusalem to celebrate.  Notice in verse 17 that every man was expected to give an offering as he is able, according to the blessing which God has given him.

1^st Feast: Passover / Unleavened Bread / First Fruits

The first feast of the Jewish calendar year is Passover, which celebrates God’s liberation of the people from slavery and oppression in Egypt.  This feast is based on Exodus 12, when God directed His people to sacrifice a lamb, and to take some of its blood and mark their doorposts, so God would pass over them when He brought punishment to Egypt and its gods. 

The Feast of Passover is sometimes also called the Feast of Unleavened Bread, because of the requirement to refrain from leavened bread for one week following the Passover meal.  In addition, Passover represents the season (our early Spring season) that crops were beginning to reach maturity, so once the people of Israel made it to the Promised Land, Leviticus 23:10 adds a requirement for a wave offering of the first fruits of the grain during the seven days of unleavened bread.  Thus, the combined feast is also sometimes called the Feast of the First Fruits.

Let’s begin with the Feast of Passover in Exodus 12.

Exodus 12:

 1 ¶ Now the LORD said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt,

 2 “This month shall be the beginning of months for you; it is to be the first month of the year to you.

 3 “Speak to all the congregation of Israel, saying, ‘On the tenth of this month they are each one to take a lamb for themselves, according to their fathers’ households, a lamb for each household.

 4 ‘Now if the household is too small for a lamb, then he and his neighbor nearest to his house are to take one according to the number of persons [in them;] according to what each man should eat, you are to divide the lamb.

 5 ‘Your lamb shall be an unblemished male a year old; you may take it from the sheep or from the goats.

 6 ‘And you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month, then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel is to kill it at twilight.

 7 ‘Moreover, they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the houses in which they eat it.

 8 ‘And they shall eat the flesh that [same] night, roasted with fire, and they shall eat it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs.

Notice in verse 5 the lamb to be sacrificed was to be an unblemished male, which is prophetic symbolism for Jesus, who was without sin when He was offered as our sacrifice.  Jesus is known as our Passover Lamb.

Exodus 12 continues with the Passover plan and the requirement to observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread for seven days following.

Exodus 12:

11 ‘Now you shall eat it in this manner: [with] your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it in haste–it is the LORD’S Passover.

 12 ‘For I will go through the land of Egypt on that night, and will strike down all the first-born in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments–I am the LORD.

 13 ‘And the blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live; and when I see the blood I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy [you] when I strike the land of Egypt.

 14 ‘Now this day will be a memorial to you, and you shall celebrate it [as] a feast to the LORD; throughout your generations you are to celebrate it [as] a permanent ordinance.

 15 ‘Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, but on the first day you shall remove leaven from your houses; for whoever eats anything leavened from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel.

 16 ‘And on the first day you shall have a holy assembly, and [another] holy assembly on the seventh day; no work at all shall be done on them, except what must be eaten by every person, that alone may be prepared by you.

 17 ‘You shall also observe the [Feast of] Unleavened Bread, for on this very day I brought your hosts out of the land of Egypt; therefore you shall observe this day throughout your generations as a permanent ordinance.

In Leviticus 23, the Lord adds the requirement for a wave offering of the first fruits of the harvest.

Leviticus 23:

 10 “Speak to the sons of Israel, and say to them, ‘When you enter the land which I am going to give to you and reap its harvest, then you shall bring in the sheaf of the first fruits of your harvest to the priest.

Notice this First Fruits part of the feast was not required to be observed until they entered the Promised Land, while Passover and Unleavened Bread were established in Egypt and during their time in the wilderness.  The idea of the first fruit offering is that we tell God that we have faith and trust that more harvest is coming.  We are saying we believe Malachi 3:10-11 that God will pour out a blessing that overflows and He will rebuke the devourer, so our crops will not be destroyed. 

Get that into your spirit: more harvest is coming!

Now, if we fast forward to the New Testament, the Last Supper was the observance of the Passover meal by Jesus and the disciples, then Good Friday’s crucifixion was the sacrifice of our Passover Lamb, Jesus, and Resurrection Sunday represented Jesus as the first fruits of the End Times Resurrection harvest, as Paul describes in 1^st Corinthians 15.

1^st Corinthians 15:

 20 ¶ But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who are asleep.

 21 For since by a man [came] death, by a man also [came] the resurrection of the dead.

 22 For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all shall be made alive.

 23 But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, after that those who are Christ’s at His coming,

 24 then [comes] the end, when He delivers up the kingdom to the God and Father, when He has abolished all rule and all authority and power.

The Old Testament Feast of the Passover / Unleavened Bread / First Fruits is prophetic symbolism of Jesus as 1) our Passover Lamb, 2) freedom from sin (unleavened), and 3) the first fruits of the Resurrection harvest.  Jesus was raised as the first fruits resurrection of those who are asleep.  Christians who pass away (sleep) will follow and be raised at His coming, which is the Resurrection harvest.  We will, like Jesus, have a reconstituted physical body, built to last for eternity.  Praise God!

2^nd Feast: Feast of Weeks / Pentecost / Harvest Feast

The second feast requiring the sons of Israel to travel to Jerusalem is the Feast of Weeks, also known as the Feast of Harvest, which is our modern-day Feast of Pentecost.  It is called the Feast of Weeks because the Lord established it to be observed on a day which is seven weeks, or 50 days, after the Feast of Passover.  A look at Deuteronomy 16:9 narrows the count to begin on the day they put the sickle to the standing grain, which indicates that the Feast of First Fruits is the starting point of the seven-week count.

Deuteronomy 16:

 9 “You shall count seven weeks for yourself; you shall begin to count seven weeks from the time you begin to put the sickle to the standing grain.

 10 “Then you shall celebrate the Feast of Weeks to the LORD your God with a tribute of a freewill offering of your hand, which you shall give just as the LORD your God blesses you;

 11 and you shall rejoice before the LORD your God, you and your son and your daughter and your male and female servants and the Levite who is in your town, and the stranger and the orphan and the widow who are in your midst, in the place where the LORD your God chooses to establish His name.

 12 “And you shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt, and you shall be careful to observe these statutes.

The Feast of Weeks is also called the Harvest Feast as it occurred later in the harvest period, and according to verse 10, a freewill offering of thanksgiving for the harvest was justified.  The word “freewill” indicates we should not give under a sense of compulsion but rather out of thanksgiving.

We said last time that the Feast of Weeks represented the Jewish Pentecost, or Shavuot, which also commemorated the day that the Lord visited Moses and the people at Mount Sinai and delivered the Law that formed the Torah, or the first five books of the Bible:  Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.  Shavuot acknowledged the guidance of the Lord from the Torah, and in the New Testament, Pentecost in Acts 2 symbolizes the guidance of the Holy Spirit.  Verse 12 says we should remember that we were slaves in Egypt, so the point of the feast is that God freed us from unbelief by giving us the Torah, and later the Holy Spirit, to guide us into that freedom.  We should be thankful for this loving guidance, and we should trust the Holy Spirit to lead us in deciding on our freewill offering.

3^rd Feast: Feast of Tabernacles (Feast of Booths)

Deuteronomy 16:

 13 “You shall celebrate the Feast of Booths seven days after you have gathered in from your threshing floor and your wine vat;

 14 and you shall rejoice in your feast, you and your son and your daughter and your male and female servants and the Levite and the stranger and the orphan and the widow who are in your towns.

 15 “Seven days you shall celebrate a feast to the LORD your God in the place which the LORD chooses, because the LORD your God will bless you in all your produce and in all the work of your hands, so that you shall be altogether joyful.

Again, verse 15 indicates we should trust that the Lord will continue to bless the work of our hands.  Do not fear lack.  Trust that your crops will not be devoured. Instead, be altogether joyful!

The Feast of Tabernacles is also prescribed in Leviticus 23.

Leviticus 23:

 39 ‘On exactly the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when you have gathered in the crops of the land, you shall celebrate the feast of the LORD for seven days, with a rest on the first day and a rest on the eighth day.

 40 ‘Now on the first day you shall take for yourselves the foliage of beautiful trees, palm branches and boughs of leafy trees and willows of the brook; and you shall rejoice before the LORD your God for seven days.

 41 ‘You shall thus celebrate it [as] a feast to the LORD for seven days in the year. It [shall be] a perpetual statute throughout your generations; you shall celebrate it in the seventh month.

 42 ‘You shall live in booths for seven days; all the native-born in Israel shall live in booths,

 43 so that your generations may know that I had the sons of Israel live in booths when I brought them out from the land of Egypt. I am the LORD your God.’”

The Feast of Tabernacles was celebrated after the harvest was complete and the crops were gathered into the barns and wine vats.  The celebration acknowledges that God provided lodging for them in the form of booths (tents) in the wilderness, and to acknowledge that the Lord will bless the harvest and all the work of their hands.  Verse 40 says we should rejoice before the Lord as we celebrate.

Closing

To put these three feasts into perspective for the Christian calendar, the Feast of the Passover occurs in the first month of the Jewish calendar, which equates to our Easter season of March/April.  If we assume mid- to late April for Passover, then the Feast of Weeks (Pentecost) would arrive in early June (7 weeks later), and the Feast of Tabernacles would occur in late October or early November (7 months after Passover).

These are the seasons for us to consider a special offering to the Lord, according to Deuteronomy 16:16-17.  I encourage you to seek the Holy Spirit for guidance in making donations in observance of these important feast days.  Here are some suggestions for east feast:

• Passover (Easter) – Honor Jesus as the Passover Lamb and the first fruits of the Resurrection:  Consider a first fruit offering based on a blessing of the Lord.  When the Lord blesses you financially or otherwise, make an offering of thanksgiving and tell the Lord you trust that is only the first fruit of your blessing and more harvest is to come.
• Pentecost – Honor the Holy Spirit who is sent to us by Jesus: Seek the Holy Spirit for an appropriate gift amount to a ministry that is led by the Holy Spirit.  Thank the Lord for His harvest and direction into further blessings.
• Tabernacles (Late Fall) – Acknowledge that Father God has provided your current lodging and the full harvest of the work of your hands, but more importantly, acknowledge that the Father’s house has an eternal dwelling place for you in the New Heaven and New Earth.  Jesus said in John 14:2 “…in My Father’s house are many dwelling places…I go to prepare a place for you.”  Consider a gift to a homeless shelter that teaches the Gospel and pray that an unbeliever will become saved and will be housed in the Father’s house.

The Lord wants us to remember what He has done in our lives.  It is a form of worship to honor Him with special offerings.  I encourage you to prayerfully consider making financial or other contributions to the work of the Lord as an acknowledgement of what He has done.  But the important take away here is that Jesus is our Passover Lamb and God’s First Fruits offering on the coming harvest of the Church.  He was resurrected first, and we will be next as part of that harvest.  Take some time to focus on that blessing and have a thankful heart toward the Lord as you consider your offering.

Let us pray.

Father God, thank You for the Passover Lamb of Jesus, who is the first fruits of the resurrection harvest to come.  Thank You for the Day of Pentecost, the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and the harvest of our work lives.  And thank You for the provision of housing in this life and in Your house forever.  In Jesus’ name we pray.  Amen.