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Exodus 23:14-16
Excerpted from: The Appointed Weeks of Pentecost

Now, tomorrow is one of the appointed times that God commands that we set aside our normal activities in order to glorify Him.

God commands His people to keep feasts to Him at various seasons of the year because keeping Him at the forefront of our minds is critical to our well-being. These seasons center around agriculture. Up until the Industrial Revolution, which really was not that long, national and community life revolved around agriculture. We’ve all grown up since the Industrial Revolution, so even though we understand the concepts, nearly all of us are largely removed from the reality of living from the land and depending on God for a good harvest. But with each festival season, God brings the focus back to Himself—back to His works and to His providence. It is for the good of His people that He is repeatedly brought to mind. One of the worst calamities is for a man to forget his Creator, Deliverer, and Provider.

So, the pre-incarnate Christ commands keeping the feasts to Him. That’s what verse 14 says. Two of the festival seasons are directly named in agricultural terms: the Feast of Harvest and the Feast of Ingathering. And even though Unleavened Bread is mentioned here in terms of the deliverance from Egypt, that feast also has a connection to agriculture because the wavesheaf offering was made on the day after the Sabbath within Unleavened Bread. That offering to God was required before any harvesting could take place. God had to be acknowledged before the work could move forward.

This passage contains the first mention of the feast we typically call Pentecost. Here it is named “the Feast of Harvest.” That has an obvious literal meaning, but there is a metaphorical one as well. Biblically, the time of harvest can imply receiving the consequences of one’s behavior, whether good or bad. A harvest can be a symbol for a time of evaluation of one’s labors.

That’s what verse 16 says about both the Feast of Harvest and the Feast of Ingathering. In type, those are appointed times when the fruit of our labors are brought before God. Israel did that physically, but we understand that, for the Israel of God, God is most interested in our spiritual labors and the spiritual fruit that comes as a result.

Verse 10 reiterates what we saw in Exodus 23 that the Feast of Weeks is kept to the LORD. It wasn’t just a festive occasion, but a time He set apart for His people to remember Him. The feasts are about Him.

So, while each of God’s festivals teaches us something different, they also have some commonalities. Each festival season has an agricultural focus, which in turn points to God’s providence and natural law and dependence on Him. Each festival season also contains reminders of what God brought His people from. During all three seasons, He says to remember where we came from and what He has done in separating us from this world. He does not want that ever to get far from our minds lest we are tempted to return.

Part of Pentecost’s uniqueness is its emphasis on time. It is the only holy day arrived at by counting. In the Hebrew Scriptures, its primary name is the Feast of Weeks. It is called that five times (Exodus 34:22; Numbers 28:26; Deuteronomy 16:10, 16; II Chronicles 8:13), and the Feast of Harvest once. In the New Testament, Pentekostos is a Greek word that means “count fifty.” Thus, it is a feast that cannot take place until the designated number of weeks, or the number of days, has been fulfilled. The feast is a culmination of a distinctive span of time.

We saw in Exodus 23 that the Feast of Harvest is when we bring before God the firstfruits of our labors that we have sown. Metaphorically, a harvest is a time of evaluation and judgment, a time when efforts bear fruit, whether those efforts are good or bad, serious or half-hearted. What we focus on and spend time on, and the way we conduct ourselves, will … . . .

Exodus 23:14-17
Excerpted from: Still Producing Fruit?

God here, through Moses, speaks about the three harvest festivals among the holy days. They are also the three pilgrimage feasts where once they got into the land the people would come to Jerusalem to keep those particular feasts, Unleavened Bread, Pentecost as we call it now, and the Feast of Tabernacles. Now, what is interesting here is that for the last two, God gives them different names from what we are used to. God calls Pentecost the Feast of Harvest. In the New Testament, of course, we call that Pentecost. In Leviticus 23, it is called the Feast of Weeks. And so we have a different name for Pentecost, and then the Feast of Tabernacles, instead of dwelling on the idea of tents or temporary dwellings, here He talks about ingathering, another harvest term.

Well, we need to notice as we focus in on the Day of Pentecost, how God describes this holy day. First, He does call it here the Feast of Harvest. Now, the Hebrew word that lies underneath the word harvest is qasir. (Like I said before, I am not going to give you all the diacritical marks here.) And this particular word does not necessarily mean harvest. It comes to mean harvest, but the base idea behind the word is cutting or severing. And so when you reaped a field of grain, you brought in the harvest, you would cut the stalks with something very sharp, and then you would gather them up and bring them in.

Now you might wonder, is that the same word that they used for ingathering there in the middle part of verse 16? But no, these are two different words and that is why they are translated with two different English words. Ingathering is the Hebrew word asip, and it means to gather or to bring in, to receive, or of course ultimately it meant also to harvest. This refers not to the reaping or the harvest of grains out in the field, but more specifically, it refers to the ingathering of fruit, or grapes specifically. That is what was ripe in the fall, whereas the wheat that was gathered in and around Pentecost was ripe around Pentecost. And so it was cut out of the field, harvested, whereas at the time of the Feast of Tabernacles, the harvest was a fruit or grapes, and that was brought in, as the Hebrews thought of it. And that is what the word ingathering means, to gather or to bring in.

Exodus 23:14-17
Excerpted from: Passover (Part 9)

The phrase "the month of Abib" in these three situations is properly connected with the Exodus and not Passover. So why in Deuteronomy 16 is "being brought forth out of Egypt" used in connection with Passover and not Unleavened Bread as in all the other scriptures?

Exodus 23:14-17, Exodus 34:18-24, and Deuteronomy 16:1-17 all have something in common. They all pertain to the three festival seasons: Unleavened Bread, Pentecost (called the Feast of Firstfruits), and the Feast of Tabernacles. In neither one of these contexts is either Passover or the Last Great Day mentioned at all. What we have in these three chapters are specific instructions for these three Feasts. This is especially important to Deuteronomy 16. Deuteronomy 16 is not about Passover. It is about the Feast of Unleavened Bread, Pentecost, and the Feast of Tabernacles.

Exodus 23:14-16
Excerpted from: Does Doctrine Really Matter? (Part Six)

I do not want to go further because I want you to note what it says there. Verse 16 specifically applies to the firstfruits offering. Now, is it not true that the wave sheaf offering is the first of the firstfruits offering, so this instruction that is given here in verse 16 applies directly to it. You could not get something more positive.

What does it say here? It says that the offering must be made from the firstfruits of their labors that the Israelites had sown in their field. See—"which you have sown." Is there anything hard to understand about that phrase? The wave sheaf offering had to be made from the harvest from the seeds that they had sown in the field.

Exodus 23:16
Excerpted from: Let the Saints be Joyful in Glory!

Both Exodus 23:19 and Exodus 34:26 contain the phrase first of the firstfruits. And in Exodus 23:16, God refers to the Old Testament Feast of Weeks and the New Testament Day of Pentecost as the Feast of Harvest, the firstfruits of your labors which you have sown in the field. In Numbers 28:26, Pentecost is called the day of the firstfruits. Now the firstfruits were the early part of the harvest. The first of the firstfruits would be even earlier in the harvest season. So the wave sheaf offering represents a small initial harvest, and it carries significant symbolic meaning representing the pure, sinless, and risen Christ.

Exodus 23:16
Excerpted from: Still Producing Fruit?

In Matthew 24:13, most of us know that Jesus says, that those who endure to the end shall be saved. And James 5, verses 7 through 11 speaks a lot about how patience must be a part of producing the fruit. The thing is, remember, Exodus 23:16 tells us that the focus on Pentecost is seeing His people out in the field laboring. He wants to see them out in the field all the time producing. It does not necessarily matter how much you produce. The fact is you are out there producing what you can.

Exodus 23:16
Excerpted from: A Vivid Comparison (2000)

Not only did it have to be something that they reap, but also something that they have sown in their own fields.

So the offering has to come from your own labors that you have sown from your own field, and field in this context means your place of labor or work. So the offering that we make to God must be free of the taint of sin of any kind, otherwise they are blemished and unholy. The labor has to be clean labor not tainted by anything that is defiled in the eyes of God.

Exodus 23:16
Excerpted from: The Two Wave Loaves of Pentecost

This reiterates that the Feast of Harvest contains the first part of our labors. The two leavened loaves are grain offerings of the first part of the wheat harvest. Again, the grain offering does not picture an individual or a people, but rather the service, devotion, and giving of what is due to mankind as an offering to God.

Articles

Countdown to Pentecost 2001  
Did Israel Offer the Wavesheaf in Joshua 5?  (2)
Milk and Meat  (2)
Pentecost Revisited (Part Two): Joshua 5  (2)
Pentecost, Consistency, and Honesty  
Sowing and Reaping  
Sowing and Reaping  
The Harvesting of the Firstfruits  
The Offerings of Leviticus (Part Three): The Meal Offering  
The Wavesheaf Offering  
The Wavesheaf Offering  

Bible Studies

Holy Days: Pentecost  

Essays

Pentecost's Two Leavened Loaves (Part Two)  
The Biblical New Year  
The Work of the Firstfruits  

Sermons

God's Rest and the Millennium  
Prosperity's Consequences  
The Consequences of Affluence  
Wavesheaf Requirements and Joshua 5  
Wavesheaf Requirements and Joshua 5  
God's Spiritual Harvest  
Do Little Things Not Count?  
Sanctification and Holiness (Part 5)  
Psalms: Book Two (Part Three)  
Principled Living (Part Six): Becoming Holy  
Boaz and Pentecost  
Grace, Faith, and Love  
By Every Word of God  
Lift Up Your Voice Like a Trumpet  
The Blind See  
Patience With Growth  
Psalms: Book One (Part One)  
Spiritual Maturity  
Firstfruits to God  
Why Is Atonement a Fall Festival?  
Teachings From Tabernacles  
Wandering or Pilgrimage?  
Feast of Tabernacles Basics  
Pentecost, Consistency, and Honesty  
Why Are We Here?  
Boaz and Pentecost  
Was Joshua Required to Offer the Wavesheaf?  
Do You Recognize This Man? (Part 4)  
The Song of Moses  
Psalms of Ascents  
Psalms: Book One (Part One)  
Is America a Christian Nation? Summary (Part Two)  
The Iniquity of the Amorites  
Teachings from Tabernacles  
Teachings From Tabernacles  

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