Celebrating the Feast of Tabernacles 

 7 Fruits of Israel: Wheat 

Rev. Lonnie C. Crowe 

Deuteronomy 8: 7-8 "For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, that flow out of valleys and hills; a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive oil and date honey.” 

Parched grains of wheat were used for food in Israel (Ruth 2:14; 1 Samuel 17:17; 2Sam 17:28T) The disciples picked spears of wheat, rubbed them in their hands and ate the grain unroasted ( Matthew 12:1; Mark 2:23; Luke 6:1).  

Before any of the wheat harvest could be eaten, the first-fruits had to be presented before the Lord ( Leviticus 23:16-17): “Count fifty days to the day after the seventh Sabbath;( this is the time after the first fruit offering during the Passover season.) then you shall offer a new grain offering to the Lord. You shall bring from your habitations 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. 

From David Guzik: “Pentecost was a Jewish feast held 50 days after Passover. It celebrated the firstfruits of the wheat harvest. It was also called the feast of weeks (Exodus 34:22) and the feast of ingathering (Exodus 23:16). 

Leviticus 23:15-22 gives the original instructions for the celebration of Pentecost. As part of the public priestly sacrifices made for this feast, Leviticus 23:17 specifically says that two loaves of leavened bread were to be waved before the Lord. 

This was highly unusual. Generally, Israel could not offer any kind of leaven or yeast with a blood offering (Exodus 23:18, 34:25). But God encoded a hidden message into the ceremony for the feast of Pentecost. It was as if God said, “One day to come, on Pentecost, that which was thought to be unclean and unacceptable will be brought before Me, and I will honor that.” 

For centuries before the Pentecost described in Acts 2:1, Israel saw the leavened loaves waved before God in the ceremony commanded for this feast. Maybe they wondered what it meant. But we know; as the great English preacher Charles Spurgeon said, “Were there not two loaves? Not only shall Israel be saved, but the multitude of the Gentiles shall be turned unto the Lord Jesus Christ.”  

The unleavened bread of Passover pictures the sinless Body of Jesus. The leavened loaves of Pentecost picture redeemed believers, the Church, as the Body of Christ.  

Ephesians 1:22-23: “And He put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all. 

1 Corinthians 12: 12-14 “For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free and have all been made to drink into one Spirit.  For in fact the body is not one member but many.”