From Passover to Pentecost (Shavuot)

From Passover to Pentecost
A Celebration of His Presence
Print the two-page PDF

All over the world in this year of 2024, Pentecost (Shavuot) is being celebrated in the traditional church on Sunday, May 19, 2024 and in the Jewish community beginning at sundown on Tuesday, June 11, 2024. (These days differ because of the use of different calendars.) So, what does this holy day represent?

The chart below shows the Passover-Pentecost connections and how they foreshadow Messiah’s life. For more understanding, please keep reading below the chart.

Along with the weekly celebration of the Sabbath rest, Yahweh appointed seven more annual observances for His people to observe to remember His covenant with them and to foreshadow the coming of His Anointed One (see Leviticus 23). The Appointed Day of Pentecost is also called Shavuot or The Feast of Weeks. Pentecost is Greek for fiftieth, and Shavuot is Hebrew for Weeks, because this day is celebrated seven weeks and one day (50 days) after The Feast of First Fruits (the Sunday after Passover).

After Yeshua’s last Passover meal with His disciples, He was tried, beaten, and executed. Three days later, the Father raised Him from the dead! 50 days after His resurrection, the Spirit of the Living God fell on His disciples just as He had promised them (John 14:16-20)! These events in the last days of Yeshua’s life fulfilled three of God’s Appointed Days:

• Passover/Unleavened Bread was fulfilled in Yeshua’s sacrifice.
  The Israelite’s deliverance from slavery in Egypt through the blood of the sacrificed lamb applied on the lintel and doorposts of their homes was the first Passover. This day foreshadowed our deliverance from slavery to sin through the blood of the slaughtered Lamb of God for all time.
  Yeshua fulfilled Passover. He is our Passover Lamb. (1 Corinthians 5:7)
  
  
• The Feast of First Fruits was fulfilled in Yeshua’s resurrection.
  Each year on the Sunday after Passover, the Israelite’s celebrated the resurrection of the earth after the winter’s repose with the first harvest. This day foreshadowed Yeshua’s resurrection that brought us eternal new life! Yeshua was resurrected on The Feast of First Fruits.
  Yeshua fulfilled The Feast of First Fruits. He is our First Fruits. (1 Corinthians 15:20-23)

(After His resurrection, He appeared to His disciples over a period of 40 days. Before He ascended to the Father, He instructed them not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for what the Father had promised. (See Acts 1:4-5.) 10 days after He ascended (50 days after His resurrection on Shavuot), His disciples received the promise of the Holy Spirit Who would guide them to fulfill His Kingdom purposes!) 

• The Feast of Weeks (Shavuot or Pentecost) was fulfilled in the Father’s promise of the Holy Spirit.
  After the Israelite’s were delivered at Passover and through the Sea, they travelled and camped along the way as Yahweh led them in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. Can we imagine such tangible and glorious guidance for this band of worn slaves trudging through the dry, rugged wilderness toward their goal of a promised land?

600,000 men (along with women, children, flocks, and herds) made their way from Rameses in Egypt to Succoth to Etham, then to Pihahiroth between Migdol and the Sea in front of Baal-zephon by the Sea, then into the wilderness to Rephidim, and eventually to the Mountain called Sinai.

There, Yahweh visited the Israelite’s with His presence! The mountain quaked violently with thunder, fire, thick clouds, and smoke to write His Beautiful Heart to them on tablets of stone – His desire for covenant and relationship was expressed! This event foreshadowed the disciples’ Shavuot celebration 1,500 years later when He came again in glory as they gathered:

“And suddenly, a sound like a violent rushing wind came from heaven, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. And there appeared tongues of fire distributing themselves and resting on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different languages as the Spirit was giving them utterance.” (Acts 2:2-4)

The Holy Spirit had come! – declared beforehand through the prophet Jeremiah, “This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days, I will put My law within them and write it on their heart...” (Jeremiah 31:33)

The Apostle Paul referred to the believers as letters of Messiah, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts! (2 Corinthians 3:2-3)

Yeshua fulfilled Shavuot. His love has been poured out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit!

The Shavuot Art Card is found here in the Feast of Israel Fulfilled Collection at Flower Girl Greetings!

Shale Fragments™ - devotionals by Beth Ann Phifer is a division of Flower Girl Greetings, LLC. ©2020, All Rights Reserved.
Blessings and love in Him,
Beth Ann