Leviticus 23:15-17 And you shall count for yourselves from the day after the Sabbath, from the day that you brought the sheaf of the wave offering: seven Sabbaths shall be completed. Count fifty days to the day after the seventh Sabbath; then you shall offer a new grain offering to the Lord. You shall bring from your dwellings two wave loaves of two-tenths of an ephah. They shall be of fine flour; they shall be baked with leaven. They are the firstfruits to the Lord.
As the world celebrated the feast of Pentecost this past Sunday, it’s important to understand its deeper implications for us as believers in Yeshua (Jesus). The Lord (YHVH) commanded the grain offering on Shavuot, (known as Pentecost among Christians), to be made of the finest flour, baked with yeast, that is, leaven. Leaven, in the Bible, is almost universally, a symbol for “sin”, and in the OT is strictly forbidden on the altar of YHVH., yet here, in the Feast of Weeks, it is commanded as part of the offering. Just six weeks prior to this festival, Israel had spent a week eating unleavened bread, a clear picture of the connection between the Passover Lamb and the removal of sin from our lives. Now the grain offering for Shavuot contains yeast; two loaves with it. Why? A common interpretation of this for NT believers is that the loaves represent Jews and Gentiles, the two types of redeemed people, who, of course, still contain sin in our lives.
So the sequence of these two spring festivals can be seen to illustrate, on the one hand, our perfect deliverance from sin and death through the Passover Lamb (Yeshua); and subsequently, the reality of our true condition as “leavened loaves” offered to the Lord as “first-fruits”. We know that having come to faith in Yeshua, cleansed by His shed blood, we stand righteous and perfect in Him; and yet, we constantly struggle with our Adamic nature. In this light, Shavuot begins to emerge as a festival marking and illustrating the opportunity and means for our transformation. The Lord’s sending forth of His Holy Spirit at this time awakens and empowers us to change; to be inwardly transformed from the old creation into a new creation.
On the day of Pentecost, 2000 years ago, this transformation process was dynamically accelerated and made accessible to every believer. Baptized with the Holy Spirit of God, and with His fire, our sinful nature with all its impurities and “leaven” takes a back seat to the powerful indwelling of the Spirit of Messiah, so that as we continually pray, walk in obedience, and thus cooperate to be filled with His Spirit, we are sanctified and transformed into His likeness – “from glory to glory”, and so become His effective witnesses. Praise God that He works with our issues– and is transforming us into a bride without wrinkle or spot!
Allow the Holy Spirit to burn away the impurity of your sinful nature; to purge out the dross, and deeply penetrate your life. The process can be “firey” and involve some painful sacrifices, but the result is purity and the holiness without which no one will see God. And remember that Yeshua is returning soon, greatly anticipating a bride who is prepared for His arrival!
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[worthy_plugins_devotion_single_body]Revivals, that is, genuine Divinely ordained seasons of the activity of God among men, have a universally unusual character. Normal activities and behaviors give way to the tangible influence of God’s Holy Spirit, whose inspiration brings a freedom of expression, emotion, conviction, worship, and other variations from normal experience.
In the late 1800s, an awakening in South Africa led by Andrew Murray was a powerful move of God. Studying that revival yields essential insights concerning the events occurring now throughout the United States. As the spirit of God began to move in Cape Town, Murray compared the SA revival with past experiences of revivals in Europe. He decided that the intense “emotionalism” was a false experience of God and charged in to break up the meeting. Stepping out of the church, he encountered his father standing and weeping. His father rebuked Andrew, “How dare you stop something that I have prayed to happen for 30 years!”
I love to study past revivals and in studying them, there are two recurring themes that stand out:
First, that He has often used obscure and unknown individuals to lead revivals, and that even these men whom He used so powerfully never considered themselves to be “special”, but often wanted to stay out of the limelight.
During the Great Depression, poverty swept across America like a whirling tornado, ripping up dreams and scattering hopes to the wind. One such poverty twister hit a small part of Texas where a man named Yates ran a sheep ranch. Struggling even to keep food on the table, Yates and his wife did all they could to survive. Finally, they had to accept a government subsidy or lose their home and land to the creditors.
When Joseph was thrown into prison, his life was thought to be over. How could anyone escape an Egyptian prison? But then, in one day, according to God’s perfect timing, he was instantly promoted to reign over all Egypt with only the Pharoah, (“god on earth”) as his Lord…
As we continue our study of Mashiach ben Yosef, we observe that both Joseph and Yeshua (Jesus) were chosen or ‘anointed’ for a special task. When Jacob gifted his son Joseph with a coat of many colors, lifting him up above his brothers, he reflected Joseph’s calling by the Lord for a life work as a leader.
Joseph interpreted dreams and revealed their meaning to those around him, and so Pharaoh gave him the name, Tsofnat Paneach (Zaphnathpaaneah) which means the “Decipherer or Revealer of Secrets”. Yeshua, (Jesus) at his first advent as “Mashiach ben Yosef” also came revealing secrets; not as an interpreter of dreams, but as one who disclosed the secrets of men…