What is Shavuot?

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‘And you shall count for yourselves from the day after the Sabbath, from the day that you brought the sheaf of the wave offering: seven Sabbaths shall be completed. Count fifty days to the day after the seventh Sabbath; then you shall offer a new grain offering to the Lord. Leviticus 23:15-16  #ChurchLeadership #faith #Israel #jesus #Messiah #Pentecost #salvation #Shavuot  https://lightforthelastdays.co.uk/articles/jesus-and-judaism/what-is-shavuot/

Transcript

00:00So, anybody know what festival it is which is starting tonight in the Jewish community?

00:08Yeah?

00:09What?

00:10Shavuot.

00:12Not Shavuot, no.

00:13No, Shavuot.

00:14Shavuot, yes, Shavuot, that's right.

00:17Shavuot is the connection with Pentecost, and it's starting tonight.

00:22So if you look around in Golders Green, you'll see Orthodox Jewish people getting ready for

00:27the Shavuot festival.

00:30So Shavuot means, it's the plural of the word Shavua, Shavua which means sevens or weeks,

00:38and we read about the Feast of Shavuot in the book of Leviticus, chapter 23.

00:46Why should this be of interest to us?

00:47Well, if you look at the Bible and you find out that it speaks about Jesus as the Messiah,

00:54you'll find there are many things in the Hebrew Scriptures which point to Yeshua as the Messiah.

00:57You've got direct prophecies like Isaiah 53, Psalm 22, about the crucifixion.

01:05You've got types of the Messiah like Joseph, who is the one who's the favourite son who

01:10then gets rejected and thrown into prison and goes to the lowest plates and then is exalted

01:15and becomes the means by which he feeds his brothers in the time of the famine in Egypt.

01:22And it's a picture, if you like, of Jesus being exalted and lifting up.

01:26And there are many others like that.

01:27You also have connections with the Jewish festivals.

01:29And I'm going to give you some connections tonight with the Jewish festival of Shavuot

01:34and how it does connect to the Christian concept of Pentecost or the gift of the Holy Spirit.

01:41So the passages in the scripture which describes it is in the book of Leviticus 23.

01:47In fact, Leviticus 23 describes all of the biblical feasts of the Lord.

01:52Leviticus 23.

02:22Leviticus 23.

02:52So that's what Leviticus tells us about Shavuot.

03:22If you've followed that through, you can see that there are some agricultural connections,

03:27as there are in all of the Jewish festivals in some ways.

03:33It requires an offering made of fine flour baked with leaven.

03:37And it also requires the offering of animals, the young bull, the two rams, as burnt offerings before the Lord.

03:44And in the last verses, you have some interesting instructions about not reaping all of the harvest of your land,

03:52but leaving some for the poor to reap and to gather any gleaning from your harvest, leaving them to the poor and the stranger.

03:59If you follow through some of the connections, you will know that there is a connection in that with the book of Ruth,

04:06which is going to be read at the time of Shavuot.

04:09And one of the things which is lacking actually is any connection to any event.

04:14When you look at Passover, it connects to the Exodus.

04:18When you look at the Feast of Sukkot, it connects to the Israelites wandering through the wilderness.

04:24But there doesn't seem to be anything in this passage here which links it to any event in Bible history.

04:28Now, as I'm going to show you, as far as the Orthodox Jewish people are concerned,

04:32they have linked it to a very crucial and vital event which took place.

04:37And they say it took place 50 days after the Exodus from Egypt,

04:42which was the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai.

04:45And we'll look at that connection in a moment.

04:48So the connection which most Jewish people and Orthodox Jews teach today is that the Shavuot is a time to remember

04:56God giving the Torah at Mount Sinai.

04:59And we'll see in a moment why that is significant in the light of the New Testament as well.

05:04We also see that there was something about counting for yourself from the day after the Sabbath.

05:10Seven Sabbaths shall be completed and counting 50 days from the seventh Sabbath,

05:15which sounds a bit confusing and a bit mysterious,

05:18especially if you don't know when to start.

05:20So if you're going to count 50 days, you've got to know when to start in order to get to the right destination.

05:24Does that make sense?

05:26And it says that you have to make it after the seventh Sabbath,

05:29after the Sabbath.

05:32And there is a connection with what they call the previous verses.

05:37The previous verses speak about the day after the Sabbath,

05:42referring back to the Feast of Firstfruits,

05:44which is known as Yom HaBikarim.

05:47Okay, so Yom HaBikarim is a festival which takes place during the Passover week.

05:52And it takes place after the Sabbath.

05:56Now if the Passover is a week, there's always going to be one Sabbath in that week.

06:00So on the day after the Sabbath, there'll be the festival which they call Yom HaBikarim,

06:04which is the Feast of the Firstfruits.

06:06And you're going to see in a moment why that is significant as well.

06:10In Leviticus, in the previous few verses in Leviticus, it says in verse 9,

06:14the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, Speak to the children of Israel.

06:18Say to them, When you come into the land which I give to you and reap its harvest,

06:21then you'll bring a sheaf of the firstfruits of your harvest to the priest.

06:25He shall wave the sheaf before the Lord to be accepted on your behalf.

06:30On the day after the Sabbath, the priest shall wave it.

06:33So there you've got the sheaf being waved at the bottom there.

06:39Ripe barley.

06:41And you have to take the barley sheaf, which is not yet fully ripened,

06:50and take it and wave it before the Lord.

06:52And according to Jewish tradition, you're not supposed to eat any fruit of the barley

06:56until you've done this.

06:57So this happens early, it happens around about April time in our calendar.

07:03So in the Jewish month of Nisan, just as the crops are beginning to come out,

07:07they take a piece of barley and they wave it before the Lord

07:12as the firstfruits offering to the Lord.

07:15And it's called Yom HaBikarim, it means the Feast of the Firstfruits.

07:20And as I said, it happens on the day after the first,

07:23after the only Sabbath in the Passover week.

07:26So that is what we call the first day of the week, or Yom Yershon in Hebrew.

07:32And it's something which is to be kept on that day.

07:36And Yom Yershon in our calendar is Sunday.

07:40So we'll see why that's significant in a moment.

07:43Just keep these things in your mind as we look through.

07:47According to Jewish teaching, on the next slide it says,

07:50To work out how to reach Shavuot, Jewish people start to count the Omer,

07:56counting the Omer, or Sefirat HaOmer,

08:00sometimes abbreviated as Sefirah, is a ritual in Judaism.

08:04It consists of a verbal counting of each of the 49 days

08:07between the holidays of Passover and Shavuot.

08:10The period of 49 days is known as the Omer period,

08:13or simply as the Omer or Sefirah.

08:15On the following days, so 50 days after Yom HaBikarim,

08:18the festival of Shavuot, should be celebrated.

08:21So you start counting the days on the first day of the week,

08:26during the Passover time.

08:28You go 50 days and you come to Shavuot,

08:31and then you have the Feast of Shavuot.

08:33Some things you can't do during this time.

08:36I used to work as a school teacher at the Hasmonean School for Boys,

08:39which is an Orthodox Jewish school, and I was teaching French there.

08:42And I tried to organise a trip to France,

08:44and I told them which the day was.

08:46They said, no, you can't do it then,

08:47because that's when we're counting the Omer.

08:48I said, well, what's that about?

08:50I said, well, you just have to wait till after we come to Shavuot,

08:54which we did, and we went to France

08:56and had a good day out with the Orthodox Jewish boys.

08:59But it just taught me that there are certain things

09:01you can't do during this time.

09:05And it's a time which is kept every year

09:11by the Orthodox Jewish people.

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