Acts 2:1,4 And when the day of Pentecost (Shavuot) was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.
In Israel, the celebration of Shavuot took place yesterday. Most Christians would recognize this as the celebration of Pentecost in Acts 2. However, the very first Shavuot took place fifty days after the Israel crossed the Red Sea. It was on this day according to Jewish tradition that the law was given on tablets of stone.
Fifty days after the resurrection of Jesus, Shavuot was celebrated again when the Holy Spirit was poured out and the law of God became written upon the hearts of men. Just as God had promised in Ezekiel and in Jeremiah — the law of God shall be written upon your heart.
Shavuot is both a celebration of the God’s faithfulness in the early harvest and an anticipation of the abundance of the final harvest yet to come. Just as three thousand Jewish people came to faith in Messiah on this day a couple thousand years ago, the day will soon come when the fullness of the Gentiles will be completed and then “all of Israel shall be saved!”
Let’s celebrate how the Lord has provided for us today and be assured that this is only a glimpse of our awaited home in glory — a home that the Lord has spent thousands of years preparing for us!
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[worthy_plugins_devotion_single_body]F.B. Meyer once said, “The education of our faith is incomplete [till] we learn that God’s providence works through loss…that there’s a ministry to us through the failure and fading of things. The dwindling brook where Elijah sat is a picture of our lives.
Most people reading this passage tend to focus in on the fruit that is produced. Okay…But a closer look will reveal that the Lord is really focusing on the tree. The fruit merely demonstrates the quality of the tree. We have all encountered this: there are trees whose fruit is healthy and delicious, and there are trees whose fruit is scarcely edible, or even useless.
One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on in every person. He said, “My son, the battle is between two ‘wolves’. One is evil — it is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other is good…
There’s an interesting story about the great English actor, Macready. A respected preacher once asked him, “I wish you would explain something to me.”
We live in a day and age that everywhere we turn, there’s a “self-help” theory. Books, videos and dvds, websites, world-renown speakers, you name it — all dedicated to helping us “feel good about ourselves”. Yet somehow, still many of us struggle with self-consciousness, even as Christians!
Early in the last century, sculptor Gutzon Borglum gazed at the cliffs of South Dakota’s Black Hills. As any great artist would, He saw what no one else could the sculpted faces of US presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt. After 14 years, he finally completed his project — Mount Rushmore.
Counselors, encouragers, and people who offer care to others often encounter those whose past failures threaten to define them and hinder their development, healing, and sanctification. Our enemy capitalizes on our failures and regrets, pressing home the current influence of what we could have, would have, or should have done, if only we were wiser, more courageous, honest, or godly.