Deuteronomy 16:9-12--The Feast of Weeks

Deuteronomy 16:9-12
English Standard Version
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The Feast of Weeks
9 “You shall count seven weeks. Begin to count the seven weeks from the time the sickle is first put to the standing grain. 10 Then you shall keep the Feast of Weeks to the LORD your God with the tribute of a freewill offering from your hand, which you shall give as the LORD your God blesses you. 11 And you shall rejoice before the LORD your God, you and your son and your daughter, your male servant and your female servant, the Levite who is within your towns, the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow who are among you, at the place that the LORD your God will choose, to make his name dwell there. 12 You shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt; and you shall be careful to observe these statutes.

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We know this feast as the feast of Pentecost.  We normally think of this feast starting in the New Testament, but it's really an Old Testament feast, and it was one of the pilgrimage feasts where everyone was required to come to the Tabernacle or Temple.  God had planned from the beginning for all of His people to be present to see the Crucifixion, Resurrection, and the Holy Spirit coming upon the Jewish believers at Pentecost.

This is the Jewish feast of the harvest, and Pentecost as we know it was a harvest of souls.  We see in Leviticus that the offering that was made here was a mixture of leavened and unleavened bread symbolizing that the church was going to be made up of both Jews and Gentiles and these two loaves were bound together and waved together before the LORD as a single offering.  The Jewish believers and the Gentile believers would become one people through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Once again the people are to celebrate their freedom from slavery, but we also celebrate our freedom from the slavery of sin as we are born again through the blood of Jesus and through the power of the Holy Spirit that takes that which was dead and makes it alive.