Celebrating Freedom's Fruit
From Freedom to Fruit…The Winning Path
Just one year after the Boston Marathon bombing, the race’s winner illustrated the relationship between freedom and fruit.
That year Meb Keflezighi, an American émigré, won the marathon. It was the first American win since 1983! Keflezighi’s win is a classic immigrant success story: no longer running to save his life in Eritrea, he ran as a free man to enjoy the fruit of freedom – making a life for himself and his family.
Keflezighi’s story mirrors the spiritual truth connecting Pesach (Passover) with Shavuot (Feast of Weeks) – faith in God provides freedom and its fruit.
First among God’s annual appointed times listed in Leviticus 23, we find Pesach, the celebration of my people’s freedom from Egyptian slavery. God’s calendar begins with remembering and celebrating freedom. The next appointment is Shavuot, celebrating the first fruits of that freedom, the beginning of the year’s harvest. God binds the two celebrations together by commanding us to count the fifty days separating the two. Traditionally this is called “counting the omer,” an omer being a measure of grain. Each passing day brings us closer to enjoying the abundance for which we were freed.
The message of Shavuot is simple: the One who frees us is the One who feeds us. A unique feature of celebrating this truth is waving before the Lord two loaves of leavened bread. The two leavened loaves picture the first fruits of the new harvest and anticipate the full harvest to come. Waving them draws us to see the source of the fruit – the One who freed us. Shavuot teaches us that we enjoy both freedom and its fruit only through faith in God.
The Pesach-Shavuot connection continues into the New Covenant and finds its ultimate fulfillment in Messiah’s sacrifice and the freedom it brings.
By God’s design, Messiah’s sacrificial death, burial, and resurrection took place at Pesach. Why? Because like Pesach, Messiah’s sacrifice provides freedom – ultimate freedom from enslavement to sin and its penalty, death, bringing us into a whole new life through His resurrection.
But wait…there’s more!
Precisely fifty days later, in obedience to the Scriptures, Yeshua’s disciples gathered in Jerusalem to celebrate Shavuot. It was then they received God’s promised Holy Spirit, the first fruits of their spiritual freedom.
It was this first fruit, the Holy Spirit Himself, who empowered the twelve to preach Messiah’s good news in multiple languages to the Jewish people gathered in Jerusalem for Shavuot. And 4,000 of them came to faith!
Through the fruit of the Spirit the good news went out to Jewish communities throughout the then-known world, and eventually to Gentiles as well. And, by God’s grace, Jewish and Gentile fruit continues to be reaped.
As we finish counting down the omer to the celebration on Shavuot (this year at sunset on June 4th) may we strive like Meb Keflezighi to enjoy the fruit of our freedom in Messiah. We all need freedom, and the food Messiah offers.
Are you searching for spiritual freedom, release from death to a whole new life with God?
Shavuot is a great time to put your faith in Messiah Jesus for the forgiveness of sin and the fruit of a new life with God. Please reach out to us, we would love to help!
If you already know the freedom and fruit Messiah provides, celebrate Shavuot by inviting others, Jews and Gentiles, to find freedom and the abundant fruit that comes with it. Again, let us know how we can help you. It would be our joy!
You shall count seven weeks for yourself; you shall begin to count seven weeks from the time you begin to put the sickle to the standing grain. Then you shall celebrate the Feast of Shavuot to the Lord your God with a tribute of a freewill offering of your hand, which you shall give just as the Lord your God blesses you; and you shall rejoice before the Lord your God, you and your son and your daughter and your male and female servants and the Levite who is in your town, and the stranger and the orphan and the widow who are in your midst, in the place where the Lord your God chooses to establish His name. You shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt, and you shall be careful to observe these statutes.[1]
And not only this, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body.[2]
Written by Dan, Life in Messiah Board Chair
How will you celebrate Shavuot/Pentecost this year?
If you are already enjoying freedom in Messiah, who do you know who needs to find that same freedom?
First time hearing about Shavuot? Learn more here: https://lifeinmessiah.org/feasts-shavuot.
Endnotes:
[1] D’varim/Deuteronomy 16:9-12.
[2] Romans 8:23.