Message 53
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Scripture Reading: Lev. 23:15-22
In this message we come to the fourth feast, the feast of Pentecost. This feast belongs to the first group of feasts, which includes the feast of the Passover, the feast of unleavened bread, the feast of the firstfruits, and the feast of Pentecost.
These four feasts may be applied both to history and to our experience. The Passover was on the fourteenth day of the first month of the Jewish year. On this day Jesus Christ was slain as our Passover. Whereas the Passover in the Old Testament was a type, Christ is the real Passover to us. He is the reality of the Passover, the fulfillment in history of the type of the Passover. The feast of the Passover was followed by the feast of unleavened bread and the feast of the firstfruits. Christ’s resurrection was the fulfillment of the feast of the firstfruits and is the reality of this feast. The feast of the firstfruits was followed by the feast of Pentecost.
These historical facts can be applied to us in our experience according to the history of Christ. In other words, what Christ has accomplished and achieved in His history can become our experience. This is why the first group of feasts can be applied in two ways — to Christ’s history and to our Christian experience.
When we were saved, we experienced the feast of the Passover. Because Christ was slain for us, God could pass over us. We thus enjoyed the reality of the Passover. What the Jews enjoyed in Egypt was merely a type; what we enjoy is the reality. This is a matter not only of Christ’s history but of our experience.
After we experienced the feast of the Passover, we began to enjoy Christ as our unleavened bread and to live an unleavened life. Christ is unleavened, sinless. With Him there is no sin. We can live such a life by being supplied and supported by Him.
In our experience we also enjoy Christ as our feast of the firstfruits. As the resurrected One, He is now living within us. Christ is not only the unleavened One but also the One who died and lived again and who lives forever. He lives within us as the firstfruit for our daily enjoyment.
The fourth feast, the feast of Pentecost, or the feast of weeks, took place seven weeks after Christ’s resurrection. The time from Christ’s resurrection to the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit was poured out from the heavens by the ascended Christ, was fifty days. Pentecost means fifty days. Christ’s resurrection was on the first day of the week. This day is also called the eighth day. Counting seven weeks from this day, we reach the fiftieth day, which was also a first day of the week and an eighth day. Christ rose up on the first day of the week, and the day of Pentecost took place also on the first day of the week.
After His resurrection, the Lord Jesus appeared to His disciples over a period of forty days (Acts 1:3). Although He would appear and then disappear, He never left the disciples. On the day of His resurrection. He appeared to them and breathed Himself as the life-giving Spirit into them (John 20:22), and from that time onward He was living not only among the disciples but also within them. The Lord’s appearing to the disciples simply means that He made His presence visible to them; it does not mean that He ever left them. The Lord’s appearing and disappearing was a training to the disciples. During those forty days after His resurrection, the Lord Jesus was training His disciples to realize and enjoy His invisible presence. Even though He was invisible, they could still appreciate and experience His invisible presence. Today the Lord Jesus is also with us and in us. We cannot see Him. But we believe that He is with us and in us.
After those forty days, the Lord Jesus ascended to the heavens, leaving the disciples on earth. For the next ten days they prayed continually in one accord. Then on the fiftieth day a great event took place — the consummation of the Triune God was poured out. This consummation is the all-inclusive, life-giving, compound Spirit of the processed Triune God. Such a One — the totality of the Triune God — was poured out upon the one hundred twenty disciples, who represented the Body of Christ.
Pentecost is the full issue of Christ’s resurrection, and Christ’s resurrection is the issue of His death. Without death there cannot be resurrection. The Lord’s death on the cross issued in His resurrection, and His resurrection issued not only in His ascension but also in His being poured out as the consummation of the processed Triune God upon His Body. Since this happened on Pentecost, the feast of Pentecost is a great manifestation of God’s economy.
As a result of what took place on the day of Pentecost, the Body of Christ came into existence. Prior to that time, in God’s economy there was only the individual Christ to fulfill the desire of God’s heart. But at Pentecost the Body of Christ came into being to match Christ, to make Him a corporate Christ. Now Christ has a Body, and this Body is His increase, His enlargement, His extension, even His expansion. Today we are a part of Christ’s extension. Every local church is a small part of the universal extension of Christ, which came into being on the day of Pentecost.
The first four festivals form a group that bears a great significance. This significance includes the death of Christ, the resurrection of Christ, the ascension of Christ, and the outpouring of the consummated Spirit of the processed Triune God to produce the Body of Christ as the enlargement, the increase, the extension, the expansion, of the unlimited, individual Christ into a universal, corporate Christ.
Historically, the first four festivals are all related to Christ. He is the fulfillment and reality of the Passover, the unleavened bread, and the firstfruit. In a spiritual form, as the consummation of the processed Triune God, Christ is also the fulfillment and reality of Pentecost. All these historical instances have become our experience. We have participated in the Passover, in the unleavened bread, and in the firstfruit, and we have become a part of Pentecost.
Pentecost is a matter of forty-nine days plus the first day of the week. This involves eight first days, from the first first day, the day of resurrection, to the eighth first day, which is the fiftieth day. This indicates from resurrection to resurrection. Here everything is in resurrection, for we have eight times resurrection.
We all are those in resurrection. We were produced on the first first day of the week, and we have come to the eighth first day. Now we are a part of Christ’s expansion, part of His increase, enlargement, and extension. No longer is Christ merely an individual Christ; He is now a corporate Christ. This corporate Christ includes us. The church, therefore, is Christ incorporated.
We need to see that we are now in Pentecost and that the component of Pentecost is eight times resurrection. Here we have the expansion of the incorporated Christ. This expansion as the enlargement, the increase, of Christ is actually the mingling of the processed Triune God with His chosen and redeemed people. There is such a mingling in the universe, a mingling that is the achievement of God’s eternal economy and the fulfillment of God’s eternal desire. We may not have much realization of this today, but we shall have the full realization of it in the New Jerusalem. Do you know what the New Jerusalem is? The New Jerusalem is the real increase, enlargement, expansion, and extension of the all-inclusive, immeasurable, untraceable Christ, who fills all in all. Praise the Lord that we all are parts of the enlargement of Christ produced on the day of Pentecost!
“You shall count from the day after the sabbath; from the day that you brought the sheaf of the wave offering, there shall be seven complete weeks. You shall count fifty days to the day after the seventh sabbath” (Lev. 23:15-16a). The feast of Pentecost was the feast of the fiftieth day, counting from the day after the sabbath, the day on which the sheaf of the wave offering was brought to God, to the day after the seventh sabbath. This signifies the resurrection of Christ in its sevenfold fullness reaching the realm of the complete fullness, bearing the full responsibility (signified by the number fifty, which is ten times five, the number of responsibility) for the testimony of resurrection.
When the angels look at us from the heavens, they see us as testimonies of Christ’s resurrection. We, however, may still have the feeling that we are unclean and leprous, that we have unclean discharges, and that we are surrounded by confusion and all kinds of religion. But in the sight of God we all are a part of the testimony of Christ’s resurrection. Now that we are in Leviticus 23 and in the feast of Pentecost, we should forget all the negative things. Here there is no uncleanness or leprosy. Instead, there is the extension of Christ.
“Then you shall offer a new meal offering to Jehovah. You shall bring from your dwellings two loaves of bread of two-tenths of an ephah of fine flour as a wave offering; they shall be baked with leaven as firstfruits to Jehovah” (vv. 16b-17). This signifies that the fine flour, typifying Christ at the stage of the firstfruits, has become the two loaves, typifying the church in two sections at the stage of Pentecost, one of which sections is the church of the Jews and the other the church of the Gentiles, both of which had sins (signified by the leaven) within them, offered to God as the new meal offering for God’s satisfaction.
The type in Leviticus 23:17 does not speak of one loaf or of three loaves but of two loaves. These two loaves signify the two parts of the church as the Body of Christ, the Jewish part and the Gentile part. These two parts are represented by the saints in Jerusalem and by those in the house of Cornelius.
Why were the loaves in 23:17 to be baked with leaven when according to Leviticus 2 there was to be no leaven in the meal offering? The reason is that in each part of the church as the Body, as typified by these two loaves, there still is sin. We see this clearly in the book of Acts, for example, with the sin of Ananias and Sapphira in chapter five and the murmuring over the distribution of food in chapter six.
As the type indicates, not only is Christ the firstfruits but the church also is the firstfruits. The two loaves that were baked with leaven and that typify the church were firstfruits. Christ, the firstfruit as the fine flour, was the firstfruit on the day of resurrection. Eventually, this fine flour became the two loaves. Hence, these loaves are the increase, the expansion, of the fine flour that came out of the firstfruit on the day of resurrection. Typologically this indicates that Christ has become the church, that the church is the enlargement of Christ. As such an enlargement of Christ, the church with its two parts is offered to God for His satisfaction.
“And you shall offer with the bread seven lambs a year old without blemish, one young bull, and two rams; they shall be a burnt offering to Jehovah, with their meal offerings and their drink offerings, as an offering by fire of a satisfying fragrance to Jehovah” (v. 18). This signifies that the church on the day of Pentecost was a corporate man offered to God as a burnt offering to live absolutely for God, with a living as a meal offering mixed with leaven — sins — and as a drink offering (pouring out its life for God by being martyred) to be an offering by fire accepted by God by being consumed for the satisfaction of both God and man.
In the sight of God, the early church was a drink offering because many of the believers were martyred. They poured out their soul to God for His satisfaction, even as Christ poured out His soul on the cross to God.
“You shall offer one male goat for a sin offering, and two male lambs a year old for a sacrifice of peace offerings. And the priest shall wave them with the bread of the firstfruits as a wave offering before Jehovah, with the two male lambs; they shall be holy to Jehovah for the priest” (vv. 19-20). This signifies that because of its sins, the church on the day of Pentecost needed Christ as its sin offering, and for the sake of the fellowship of man with God and man with man, it needed Christ as its peace offering. At the same time, it enjoyed Christ as its wave offering.
With the church at Pentecost there were the sin offering, the peace offering, and the wave offering. The sin offering is for sin, the peace offering is for fellowship, and the wave offering signifies resurrection. All three offerings refer, of course, to Christ.
“On that same day you shall make a proclamation; you shall have a holy convocation; you shall not do any laborious work. It shall be a perpetual statute wherever you dwell throughout your generations” (v. 21). This signifies having God’s redeemed people as the church enjoy Christ with God without any need of human labor to add anything. Because everything has been completed, finished, there is no need of any human labor. Instead of labor, there should be rest.
“When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not completely reap the corners of your field, neither shall you gather the gleanings of your harvest; you shall leave them for the poor and for the alien: I am Jehovah your God” (v. 22). This signifies that the grace of Christ in His resurrection at the feast of Pentecost has a remainder in which we, the poor and the Gentiles, may participate.
We are those typified by the poor and the aliens, and our portion is the gleanings. This is the extraordinary portion of God’s grace. Such a portion is illustrated by the case of the Canaanite woman in Matthew 15. When the Lord Jesus said to her, “It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs,” she replied, “Yea, Lord; for even the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table” (vv. 26-27). Instead of being offended by the Lord’s word, she admitted that she was a “dog.” She also realized that Christ, the “children’s bread,” had been rejected by the Jews and had become the “crumbs” under the table for the Gentile dogs to enjoy. This is the gleanings, the harvest at the corners of the field, that was to be left for the poor and the aliens.
We may be poor Gentiles, but we have our portion of the Pentecost harvest. Now we may enjoy the Pentecost Triune God, the Pentecost Christ, and the Pentecost all-inclusive Spirit as our portion. This portion has made us part of Christ’s increase, enlargement, extension, and expansion.
The first four festivals — Passover, unleavened bread, firstfruits, and Pentecost — are all related to food and to the matter of eating for God’s satisfaction, yet God’s heart still remembers the poor and the aliens. Hence, we, the Gentiles, are able to participate in the grace of Christ at the feast of Pentecost as that which was accomplished on the church.
