God's Harvest Begins

Acts 2:1-4 When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. 2 Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3 They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. 4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.
 
PENTECOST was one of three annual festivals God commanded the Jews to observe. “Pentecost” referred to the 50th day after the Passover Feast. It is also called the Feast of Weeks because God commanded it to be celebrated seven weeks plus the one day after Passover.
   Pentecost was also called Feast of the Harvest because it was the time of the first harvest of the year. From that harvest, new bread were made and these first loaves were the first fruit of the harvest offered to God. Thus, the festival was also known as Frist Fruits. Four names for one festival seems too much, doesn’t it? But each name points to God’s plan to gather a lost world to  himself.
   This 50-day timetable also relates to the number of days from the Passover in Egypt to God’s revelation of the Ten Commandments at Mt. Sinai. The law was the first fruits of God’s nourishing presence to care for his people. As the LORD gathered them from Egypt, he began to help them understand his magnificent grace to make them his own.
   In a like manner, the Holy Spirit anointed the apostles with the ability to speak the gospel. God used them to begin the harvest of new believers that day to become the church’s first fruits. From that day to now obedient ministers of the gospel have been sowing seeds and gathering the harvest into Jesus’ church.
     The Spirit came as a wind in the same way the mighty wind separated the waters of the Red Sea (Exodus 14). He came also as a fire to cleanse and to gather: Matthew 3:11b He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. 12 His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” The wind and the fire gave the apostles the ability to speak many languages, so they could communicate to the Jews from other nations gathered for the festival.
   This Pentecost festival has become the church’s Day of Pentecost to remember the day God began the harvest to reap your soul into his kingdom.
   The Bible is an orderly account of God’s love for you. Read it as such.