Pentecost Harvest

Tomorrow, May 19, 2024, is Pentecost, fifty days after Easter.

Now may He who supplies seed to the sower, and bread for food, supply and multiply the seed you have sown and increase the fruits of your righteousness.
2 Corinthians 9:10

I’m not much of a gardener, but we often have folks at church with such a harvest of tomatoes, peppers, and squash, they leave baskets full for other church members to take as much as they want! It’s amazing what a large harvest one gardener can produce, but it does take a lot of effort on their part. I appreciate reaping the benefits of their work.

Did you know that Pentecost was a harvest celebration? Pentecost is the Greek word (meaning fiftieth day) used in the New Testament to refer to the Jewish Feast of Harvest, which is a celebration of the early wheat harvest every spring. (Exodus 23:16, 34:22). It takes place fifty days after the Feast of Firstfruits, which is part of Passover week. According to tradition, Moses was given the law at Sinai fifty days after the original passover (Leviticus 23:15). Sometime after the destruction of the temple in 70 A.D., Pentecost came to include celebration of this event as well as the harvest. For some Christians, Pentecost is a celebration of the beginning of the church in Acts 2 when God poured out His Holy Spirit on the apostles and they began teaching the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The Feast of Harvest was one of three yearly festivals that required all Jewish males to go to Jerusalem. So Pentecost was a great time to start the church because there was a large concentration of Jews gathered together from all over. They were coming from many different countries with many different languages. They probably all understood enough Hebrew to get by, and that is certainly the language they expected to hear at the service in Jerusalem, but in a miraculous reversal of Babel confusion, they each heard in their home tongue instead!

Also, just as with the events on Mount Sinai fifty days after deliverance from Egyptian bondage, the events of the Pentecost in Acts 2 represented another grand turning point. A new covenant was being initiated and a new law was being given, just as had happened with Moses so many years earlier. In Moses’s day, God covenanted with the physical descendants of Abraham, and gave them a law. In Acts 2 God initiated a new covenant and a new law (Hebrews 7;12; 8:7-13), and from that point on, God’s people would be those with the faith of Abraham whether they were from his physical lineage or not (Galatians 3).

Also God’s way of communicating with man was changing again. As the Hebrew writer said, “God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son,” (Hebrews 1:1-2a). But on that day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came as the promised Helper. (John 14:26; 15:26). Over the next several years He inspired the apostles to remember and understand all of Christ’s teachings, and to pass them on to the rest of us (e.g. 1 Corinthians 2:10-13 ; Ephesians 3:3-5).

There was quite a harvest to be celebrated on that Pentecost fifty days after the Passover Lamb took away the sins of the world. “That day about three thousand souls were added to them,” (Acts 2:41b). Luckily I don’t think God expects those kinds of results from any one gardener in His kingdom. But we do reap what we sow. We can’t just borrow the produce from someone else’s planting and watering. So let’s make sure we’re doing our part. God will give the increase, and when He does, we have reason to celebrate!

In Matthew 9:37-38 Jesus said to His disciples, “The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.” Are we praying for a spiritual harvest? Are we laboring for one?

Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying:
“Whom shall I send,
And who will go for Us?”
Then I said, “Here am I! Send me.”
Isaiah 6:8

So then neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase… For we are God’s fellow workers… 1 Corinthians 3:7, 9a

Dear God, thank You for covenanting with us to be Your people through faith in Jesus Christ, and thank You for those who helped lead me to You. I pray that You would send laborers into Your harvest so that more people can come to know You. Furthermore, here am I, Lord. Send me. Help me to do my part alongside my fellow workers knowing that You will give the increase. The glory belongs to You. In Jesus’s name, Amen.

by Christie Cole Atkins