[Mr. Andy Duran] I guess we'll start today with a little bit of maybe some audience participation if you're willing, just a quick poll. All right, if I ask you a question here, let's see. How many of us like mathematics? Wow! That's actually quite a bit of hands. That's not the answer I expected. It's not quite the answer I expected, but nevertheless, we'll still say majority said no—although there was a lot of hands. I didn't get a quick count. But I did put my hand up. I enjoy mathematics. You know, whether it's lower-level math or upper-level math, it's always been a little bit of a hobby of mine. I've enjoyed following along with it and watching different things. I enjoy watching mathematics lectures and going through different proofs of mathematics stuff. Although a lot of times it goes over my head even, I've always enjoyed it. It's an interesting concept. I was taken aback a little bit by your answer because the majority of people don't like it. And that's an understandable perception sometimes. Although I don't agree fully. Like I said, I love it.

Over the years, my wife and I have actually had several discussions about mathematics and a variety of topics. If you know me, my degree is in computer science. So, we've talked about subjects with that, other subjects that are just very number-oriented. I'd like to think she likes the topics that we discuss, but maybe not always. I remember one time there was a specific thing, we were actually driving to services in Missouri. I don't know how the subject came up—I didn't start it—but she had asked, "How do computers, just store all sorts of data in zeros and ones?" And that led us to a math discussion on base conversion, on changing from different systems of numbers. I think that evening we went to our office, our spare bedroom, and I have a 4-foot by 8-foot wide whiteboard. It's a kind of a nerdy thing I've had, it was a gift that was given to me. It’s come in handy through the years. We've done math tutoring to some of my classmates over the years. And we wrote down on the board how to do these conversions, and although it's not super important, it was a fun time. And it was an enjoyable thing! I'm not sure Amber would agree that it was super enjoyable, but she gives me these little things every now and then. But it's something I've always enjoyed learning about.

It's interesting, I've been thinking about this topic a little bit, and I was thinking about the concept of math, just recently. And more or less the fundamental building blocks of some of these higher-level mathematics. And even more so now that we have children. Amber and I have discussed potentially homeschooling or public schools, depending on where we move. But if we did do homeschooling, she was always very clear to tell me I would be teaching the math and science, which I would love that concept. And so I've been thinking about how I would like to train up Ezra and Ezekiel with some of these different concepts. Ezra loves counting. It's one of the fundamental concepts of mathematics, learning how to count, simple addition that he doesn't quite get fully yet, but he loves counting. Ezekiel, on the other hand, doesn't seem to be giving too much attention to it. Okay. For some of you that don't know, I mean, Ezekiel's only two months old, but he'll get there. He'll love it. But nevertheless, it's an interesting concept.

And interestingly enough, counting has a unique application within God's Word. For real. I've been thinking about this topic with God's Holy Days. Since we just finished another Holy Day season with the days on unleavened bread, something came to mind. The fact that one of the Holy Days out there has a unique concept of counting. Thinking through the festivals and the respected Holy Days, if you think with me real quick through them—we just did the first Day of Unleavened Bread, something that we should know it's on the 15th day of the first month of the calendar. The last Day of Unleavened Bread—that would be the 21st day, right, the 21st day of the first month. You could jump all the way to Trumpets, that would be the first day of the 10th month. Atonement, the 10th day of the seventh month. Feast of Tabernacles starts on the 15th day of the seventh month. They all have their appointed times on the calendar. The Last Great Day, eight days later on the 22nd of the seventh month.

But if you were following along, there was one I missed, it wasn't there. Okay. I see some nods in the audience. If we've observed Pentecost, over the years, we probably would've known, it doesn't have a fixed date on the calendar. You see, Pentecost, interestingly enough, is a little bit unique. We don't arrive at Pentecost through a designated date on the calendar, but instead through counting. Counting the days in Days of Unleavened Bread to 50. Turn with me, if you would over to Leviticus 23. Leviticus 23:15, we're going to take a look at this topic today because, believe it or not, we are in, this moment in time, of where we are counting. You see, today is day number seven. And that's a little bit of a spoiler because we're going to be looking into some of the methods of counting. It's going to get really exciting! So, stay with me. No, it is an exciting study. No joking aside, or all joking aside.

Leviticus 23:15-16 - “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.” If we skip down to verse 21, it says,

Leviticus 23:21 - "And you shall proclaim on the same day that it is a holy convocation to you. You shall do no customary work on it. It shall be a statute forever in all your dwellings throughout your generations." Since Pentecost has this unique concept of counting and not a fixed date, we do have some confusions that can come up. Some different arguments can come to play when discussing, how do we get to Pentecost? You see, when you tell someone to count 50 days, you have to tell them where to start. So, that's a question that can come up. When do we start the count to Pentecost? And another question may come up in your mind, "Why 50? Why 50 days?"

You know, some people have posed different ideas over the years, you know, you have different concepts with connections with harvest. If you're familiar with the harvest seasons of the Middle Eastern area, you have the spring harvest of the… I believe the barley. Early summer or late spring would be the wheat, I believe. And then you'd have the fall harvest, later in the year. Some people have posed different ideas about concept of harvest times and the time to complete different harvests and all sorts of things. But it's interesting. These questions could come up. And so for this afternoon time, I'd like to take a look at this concept of counting to Pentecost. Let's take a look at the methods for counting Pentecost. We'll go through some of the main areas of different options that people choose to count to Pentecost. Then we'll look at also things to keep in mind, and some things to consider while we're going through this counting portion to Pentecost. Because that's the portion we're in right now of the year. We're on day seven of day 50, what are some things we can keep in mind as we count to Pentecost? And so that's what we'll do today.

All right. We're in Leviticus 23, we're going to stay here for quite some time. We're going to start with some of the different arguments, some of the different possibilities, some of the different options for counting to Pentecost. All right. The first option—there are many options out there, but I'm going to pull out the top three that are used. The first one is where you keep Pentecost on the sixth day of the third month. This is known—I don't know if that has a title—but that would be Sivan 6. The third month is called Sivan or Sivan. And it's on the sixth day of that month. This method of counting puts Sivan 6 as day 50, starting with the first day as the day after the first Day of Unleavened Bread. So, people would look at the Sabbath mentioned in verse 15, and they would reckon that to be a Holy Day, not a weekly Sabbath, and they would start their count the next day. So, actually, the group that primarily does this sort of counting is the Jewish population. Majority of the Jewish population today use this method of counting. They'll look at Nisan 16, I guess, the day after first Day of Unleavened Bread, and they'll start with day number one then, then they'll arrive at the third month, the sixth day of the third month, and that would be their Pentecost.

It's always going to fall on Sivan six with this method. And that leads to a question, you know, why would God tell us to count those days if it's always going to be on a fixed day of the year? So, it's an interesting thing to keep in mind with this concept. So, the primary reasons for this, like I mentioned, if you look in verse 15, it says,

Leviticus 23:15 "And you shall count for yourselves from the day after the Sabbath." Their reference here and how they would interpret this is that Sabbath means the first Day of Unleavened Bread, the Holy Day. We would typically refer to those days as annual Sabbaths. That's a correct title that we've associated with them. And we find that reference in the New Testament. But they would look at this Sabbath and say, "Yes, that is a reference to the first Day of Unleavened Bread." So, the first day would be Nisan 16 and the 50th would be Sivan 6.

Another main reason for using this method of counting, it comes from the chapter or something that people or that Jesus said in Matthew 23. We don't have to turn over there.

Matthew 23:2 - "Jesus said that the scribes and the Pharisees sit in the seat of Moses." He says, "Do what they tell you to do, but don't do as they do." It's kind of a lesson in hypocrisy and learning from the law and different things. But some people that aren't Jewish, that reckon this is the correct mode of count counting, they look at the Jewish population out there and they say, "Look, the Pharisees,"—which the modern Jewish population would be a continuation of that sect—they've reckoned this is the proper counting. And so we should follow in that. They say, "They're the seat to Moses. They make the decisions. We should mirror that." One thing that we should mention though, that during the first century AD, not all Jewish population actually agreed on when Pentecost should be kept. That's an interesting perspective to keep in mind.

I mentioned the Pharisees. This is a Pharisees' reasoning in the time, they would do the firstDay of Unleavened Bread, excuse me, the day after the first Day of Unleavened Bread. But the Sadducees actually believed in a different counting method. And I believe the Essenes also thought in a different method as well.

I think they took, they would count the day after the last Day of Unleavened Bread. So they would always be on Sivan 12. But nevertheless, they all kind of disagreed in that time in the first century. And so some people reckon this is the correct counting procedure because they want to follow the Jews of today. Some people reckon, "Well, we use their calendar for other things, why not use their same Holy Day calculation methods." That's another reason people look at this option as being valid.

Another method for counting to Pentecost, which actually has a little bit more tie-in with our modern history in the church is a Monday Pentecost, a Monday Pentecost. The way you count for a Monday Pentecost is day number 50. You would start the first day, as the day after the wave sheaf offering, the day after the day after the Sabbath. If you can follow me on that one. But if you look at verse 15, the same verse, it says,

Leviticus 23:!5 - "You should count for yourselves from the day after the Sabbath." The reckoning here was that it says from the day. You know, in the English interpretation of that, the common English translation, if I were to ask you, will you meet me here one week from today? We would all naturally count tomorrow as day one. That's the common translation of from today. You know, if you say, will you meet me one day from today? The only answer is tomorrow being day one. So, you exclude the day you're starting on. That's where some of this reckoning comes from in this counting concept. You would start with day one being tomorrow.

This is referred to as exclusive counting, you exclude the first day that starts the count. You could say it's day zero, but then that gets confusing. Well, not that this subject is already not confusing enough. It can be confusing, that's for sure. But you would exclude the first day that you start on. So, your weekly cycle for counting would be Monday through Sunday, which means if you have 50 days—50 is not evenly divisible by seven, we'll do a little math—there's one day remaining. So you're going to land on the same day you start counting on. So, Monday through Sunday, seven of those, and you step back to a Monday. So Monday being Pentecost. They reason this from the “from” as we mentioned, and it's a natural way to understand “from a certain day”. And some in the church of God still do this today. And some they reckon that since the majority of the recent (the modern) church of God era kept Pentecost on Monday, they may not see the need to change it. And they still do this today.

The third option for counting Pentecost—and we're only going to go through three—is a Sunday Pentecost. Now, if you've been keeping and observing Pentecost for a while, you should remember that this is the method we use. We arrive to a Sunday Pentecost. This is where day 50 ends on a Sunday. You start counting on a Sunday, the first day of the week. If you look at the same verse, “from the day after the Sabbath”, we believe that to mean starting your count on the day after the Sabbath. One thing to keep in mind with options two and three that we've mentioned, the Sunday and the Monday Pentecost, they both see the word Sabbath, in verse 15, as a weekly Sabbath, not as a Holy Day as the Jews do today. They believe that's a Holy Day reference, whereas we believe it's just the weekly Sabbath.

All right. Some of the primary reasons here, we believe that “from the day” is better translated as “beginning with”. We'll go into the technicals here a little bit deeper here in a moment with some of the Hebrew words. But we do see those as being weekly Sabbath. Why is this the correct interpretation? Why do we believe this is what the Bible says is how you count it? For many years, we kept Pentecost on a Monday. Around the mid-70s, we had realized some of the errors in our translations—some of the beliefs that we had—and it changed to a Sunday. We moved it to a Sunday where the correct day should be observed. So, it can mainly hinge on three main focuses. The first focus is the meaning of the word Sabbath. We've touched briefly on this. But it's interesting to note in the whole Chapter of 23, the same word for Sabbath, that's mentioned here, is used nine times, just nine times in the Chapter 23, and it's the word Shabbat. That may be a familiar word to a lot of us. That's a pretty common Hebrew word to hear. That's the one commonly translated as Sabbath, Shabbat. It's used nine times through this context here.

I know the chapters weren't putting there when the writer wrote the Book of Leviticus. But the context in Chapter 23 is all the main thought - the Feast of the Year. And so if we look at the context of the chapter, the first reference to the word Shabbat is found in verse 3. So, if you look at verse 3, we see actually the first and the second occurrence of Shabbat.

Leviticus 23:3- "Six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, a holy convocation. You shall do no work on it; it is the Sabbath of the Lord in all your dwellings." Here we see that this is a clear indication that this is the weekly Sabbath. I think we could all agree on that. It's a clear indication. Six days you show work, but the seventh is the Sabbath. Sabbath is referencing a weekly Sabbath. Okay. The third occurrence of the word Shabbat is not again found all the way until verse 11. So, it skips past the first Day of Unleavened Bread, the last Day of Unleavened Bread, and it goes all the way down to verse 11 when referring to the wave sheaf offering.

Leviticus 23:11 - “He shall wave the sheaf before the Lord, to be accepted on your behalf; on the day after the Sabbath the priest shall wave it." Here we see that this is the same word Shabbat, it's translated Sabbath. But one thing to keep in mind, as we pass through this chapter, the other Holy Days are not referenced as being a Shabbat. It doesn't use that same Hebrew word. There's no precedent in this context to say that a Holy Day is a Sabbath. Now, of course, we know that Holy Day’s are Sabbath rest and they're referred to as an annual Sabbath, especially in John—in the New Testament—where it says, "For today's a preparation day for a Sabbath being tomorrow" because it's a high day, that's an annual Sabbath. We know that's a true title for it. But in this chapter of Leviticus, it doesn't actually refer to the first or the last Day of Unleavened Bread as a Shabbat.

All right. Continuing on. We have the fourth, the fifth, and the sixth occurrences, all in verses 15 and 16. We've read that. So we're going to skip that. We're going to come back to that in a minute because those are the verses that are really in question. Verse 11, we didn't really narrow down whether or not that's a weekly Sabbath or a Holy Day, but so far they've only referred to weekly Sabbath. That's what we're getting at here. The occurrence of seventh and eighth of this word Shabbat, are in verse 32. This is where we do see a little shift in context. And in verse 32, it's referring to the Day of Atonement.

Leviticus 23:32 - "It shall be to you a sabbath of solemn rest" There, Sabbath is Shabbat solemn rest, rest is another form of Shabbat, it's another Hebrew word that means very something similar. But here we see a clear reference to the Day of Atonement as a Shabbat. So that could give some indication that the previous verses could mean an annual Sabbath and not a weekly Sabbath.

But so far, up until this point, this is the only reference. And then continuing on, there's one more reference—there was nine in this chapter.

Leviticus 23:38 - "Besides the Sabbath of the Lord". Those are just clearly indicating the weekly Sabbath that talks about the offerings you make, besides the ones that you will do on the weekly Sabbath. So, let's go back to verse 15 and 16. We were discussing 15 and 16 because if you think about this in context, except for the Day of Atonement, Shabbat is always a reference to a weekly Sabbath—with the exclusion of what we're discussing right now, verses 11, 15, and 16—it's always a reference to the weekly Sabbath. So being consistent, if we conclude that the verse 3 is a weekly Sabbath, being consistent, it would make verses 11, 15, and 16 and weekly Sabbath as well. Because there's no clear indication that it's a Holy Day being mentioned. So why change the meaning if it's not as clear? See, the Day of Atonement it's very clear, it says, it's talking about Day of Atonement, and it's the Shabbat. That's a very clear reference. But these ones are a little bit more ambiguous. Why mean something different with the same Hebrew usage up to this point?

Another thing to keep in mind, if you look at the Hebrew structure, I mean, we're obviously reading in English. But even if you look in the English structure, the Hebrew is the same for verses 11, 15, and 16 with the exclusion of one word, seven. Look at verses 11 and 15 both say, "From the day after the Sabbath," so day after the Sabbath, it's the same Hebrew usage, same English. And verses 16, just has day after the seventh Sabbath. So, just the addition of seven but the rest of the words are the same. They're the same Hebrew word, same phrase, same grammatical structure. And so being consistent, it would seem to be logical that it's referring to a weekly Sabbath, right? That seems to be the logical conclusion.

Another thing to keep in mind in verse 15, when we're looking at what Sabbath can mean, it says, "You should count for yourselves..." Or sorry, middle of verse 15,

Leviticus 23:15 - "brought the sheaf of the wave offering: seven Sabbaths shall be completed." It says, "Seven Sabbath shall be completed." Now yes, Sabbath could mean seven or it could mean...you could say, could mean weeks, but Shabbat has actually never translated week in the Old Testament. Other forms of the Sabbath word are translated weeks. So you could have an argument that that could mean just simply a week, but it clearly is saying seven Sabbaths, seventh weekly Sabbaths. So that's an interesting thing. And if you parallel this with Deuteronomy 16, Deuteronomy 16 says that you should count for yourself seven weeks—and I think it uses the word Cebu, or the other Hebrew word that is translated weeks. Well, how can you have weeks and then hear a different passage using the word Shabbat if it doesn't mean what it's saying, seven Sabbath? Account from Sunday to the Sabbath, those are seven days, a whole week, and seven Sabbath would be completed.

On other side of the point, well, we've mentioned this before, the Holy Days, actually... Actually, throughout the whole Old Testament, the word Shabbat, is never referenced to the first day or the last Day of Unleavened Bread. It's just not a title that's given to it in the Old Testament, at least that I could find. We do find that reference in the Greek, at least in the New Testament. John is referencing that it's a preparation day before first Day of Unleavened Bread. It's a high day—a Sabbath— as it says there. But it's not referenced that way in the Old Testament. You see, understanding what the Sabbaths mean, in these three verses, can help us pin down when we start our count. And that's why we believe the correct interpretation is to start on a Sunday because it would be the day after the weekly Sabbath. That's why we believe that.

Okay. Another focus on why we believe this is the right interpretation, right? Why this is what the Bible is saying, is trying to figure out the meaning of the word “from”. We mentioned that a little bit earlier. In the traditional English sense, when I say “one day from today” that can only mean day one being tomorrow. So, what does it mean here? It's clearly saying “from the day after the Sabbath”, so you would think that's logically starting on Monday. Well, looking at the Hebrew, it's an interesting, I think, probably called a preposition. Maybe some of you that know your grammar out there better than I that... Okay, I'm getting some head nods. I'll trust the crowd on this one. A preposition, the Hebrew word is min, M-I-N, and the actual translation is min ho habib—I think, I should have put that in my notes. “From the day”, would be min ha... Well, min is usually translated from, we'll just say that one, because I know that one, for sure, off top of my head. And that one, most people... Since it's translated as “from” here, we'll take it as the natural English word of day one starting tomorrow.

But when you put the Hebrew word min, in conjunction with time or counting, it usually always is indicative of inclusive counting starting on the day of what you're talking about. So, if you say “from the day”, it should be rather translated as “beginning on the day after the Sabbath”, or something to that effect. And Hebrew scholars will agree with that. And, in fact, if you look at the Jewish population today, their interpretation—although we believe that their Sabbath is incorrect—they believe the Sabbath is the first Day of Unleavened Bread. They start counting day one on the next day. Well, that's what we do as well, except we think the Sabbath is the weekly Sabbath. And so we see that the Hebrew seem to indicate that it's the day starting on the day after the Sabbath. So, once we understand that the Sabbaths mentioned are weekly, and that the “from”, when in conjunction with time is better translated as “on”, or “starting with”, or “beginning with”, that helps us narrow down where we start counting. We start counting on the day after the Sabbath. That day is day number one. All right?

Let's look at the third main focus here. How would you jump to the end of the count? Day number 50. Look what it says in verse 16.

Leviticus 23:16 - "Count fifty days to the day after the seventh Sabbath". If we can agree that “the Sabbath” means weekly Sabbath, clearly, it's referring to the 50th day ending on a Sunday—on the first day of the week. Now, since weeks are seven days long, you would have to start your day one on a Sunday. Because day one is Sunday, day seven is Saturday, seven of those is 49 days. One day remaining has to be on a Sunday. So, you can look at the end of it. You know, we looked at the beginning, and all those coupled together seems to indicate then a Pentecost is on a Sunday. Those are some of the main focal areas you can look at for determining when to count Pentecost. It's an interesting concept of counting Pentecost. Those are the three main areas that people kind of focus in on. You know, there's other ones as well. Well, you have the mainstream, the other Christian denominations out there that count Pentecost from Easter, which Easter is not recorded in the Bible as being a day we should observe. So, that's a little bit off as well.

Although this year, I guess it would be the same day. Wasn't Easter last Sunday? Okay, maybe the wrong crowd to ask. But I think Pentecost comes on the same day for all these three options this year, actually. I should thought about that more. But I think all three options... Oh, except for Monday, Pentecost, of course. Now, let's stick back to the notes. Okay. But it's interesting to consider how we get this count and why this is the correct meaning. I don't think we touch on this very often. And I don't think we need to spend too much time on it. But I believe the Church of God has this correct in today's understanding—that we keep Pentecost on a Sunday—and it's what God instructed us to do. But looking at this festival—since we're in the time of counting right now—it's interesting to look at the two scenarios of offerings offered; the offering at the beginning of the count and the offering at the end. I said today we'd look at the methods of counting and also some things we can keep in mind as we go forward during these days of counting.

So, let's look at Leviticus 23:9.

Leviticus 23:9-14 - "And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them: ‘When you come into the land which I give to you, and reap its harvest, then you shall bring a sheaf of the firstfruits of your harvest to the priest. He shall wave the sheaf before the Lord, to be accepted on your behalf; on the day after the Sabbath the priest shall wave it. And you shall offer on that day, when you wave the sheaf, a male lamb of the first year, without blemish, as a burnt offering to the Lord. Its grain offering shall be two-tenths of an ephah of fine flour mixed with oil, an offering made by fire to the Lord, for a [b]sweet aroma; and its drink offering shall be of wine, one-fourth of a hin. You shall eat neither bread nor parched grain nor fresh grain until the same day that you have brought an offering to your God; it shall be a statute forever throughout your generations in all your dwellings."

It's an interesting offering that's being presented on day one of the count. If you're familiar with it, this is called the wave sheaf offering. It's interesting that this is given... There was a certain first fruit of the first fruits that would come, a first of many if you remember. What's the significance of this offering? What can we keep in mind about this offering as we're going through the count? Well, simply put, this wave sheaf offering was a representation of Jesus Christ, fulfilled to the exact day, actually. Fulfilled to the exact day. It was a burnt offering, so it was unleavened, you wouldn't mix it with leaven. In God's law, you wouldn't have any burnt offerings with leaven. You could have other grain offerings with leaven, but not burnt offerings, and this represents Christ. Let's look over at 1 Corinthians 15. Okay. We'll get out of the book of Leviticus for at least two minutes. We'll jump back there in a minute. 1 Corinthians 15:20. Because we can see, the wave sheaf offering, clearly, was a symbolic representation of Jesus Christ.

1 Corinthians 15:20 - “But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.”—He's become the first fruits of those. He was given as the first one. Being risen from the dead as an offering of first fruit, Christ is clearly picturing this offering. You know, you don't have to go there but if you look at John 20, talking about the first day of the week. You know, the ladies go to the tomb to bring all the spices to the place where Jesus was buried. It was the first day of the week, but it was still dark out. Christ had already risen. But He had waited to ascend to the Father on the first day of the week. I think it's around... Well, it's in Chapter 20 of John, and I think as a Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb, and Christ says, "Don't touch me I have yet to send to the Father." You know, He was waiting for that very day, that wave sheaf offering day, to be presented before God the Father as the first fruit of the harvest. As the first. And you can't have a first without having many more, right? If you only have one, there would be no need to call it the first, just call it “the” offering, or “the” resurrection, right? And so here we can see him symbolically being represented as the wave sheaf offering.

Okay. Let's jump to the end of the count. Let's go to Leviticus Chapter 23, and let's look at verse number 17.

Leviticus 23:17 - "You shall bring from your dwellings 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." Let's continue down in verse 20,

Leviticus 23:20-21 - "The priest shall wave them with the bread of the firstfruits as a wave offering before the Lord, with the two lambs. They shall be holy to the Lord for the priest. And you shall proclaim on the same day that it is a holy convocation to you. You shall do no customary work on it. It shall be a statute forever in all your dwellings throughout your generations." So, this was an offering that was mixed with other animal offerings on the 50th day, on the day of Pentecost. As Christ was the first fruit of the harvest, there were more to come, that these two loaves easily picture the Church of God. They easily picture the Church of God.

Let's turn over to James 1:18. Some interesting thoughts we can think here—these two loaves were actually mixed with leaven. And coming out of the days on our bread, we understand some of the symbolism there. Unleavened, Christ was unleavened without sin. The church, we strive to be without sin but we know we're human, and we all sin from time to time. And we're made righteous by Christ's sacrifice. But it's interesting that the loaves would actually have leaven in them. James 1:18 has something to say about this creation in this concept.

James 1:18 - "Of His own will He brought us forth by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures." The Church of God is the first fruits of many to come. If you make the first resurrection, as Revelation refers to as "The better resurrection." It's the sort of first fruits of all creation, all those that want to be part of God's plan. It's a wonderful connection between the two offerings on the end of the count, between the beginning of the “day one” and the ending of “day 50”, that there's these connections of the offerings. First, Jesus Christ being the first fruit of many. And then the church, represented by two loaves.

Something definitely to keep in mind, as we go through these days—you know, we're on day 7, you have 43 days more. That's something to keep in mind. What are some other elements that we can keep in mind as we think about this analogy in the symbolisms of these offerings? Well, let's turn over to Leviticus Chapter 25. Let's go two chapters forward. We'll see another interesting connection with 50. Leviticus Chapter 25 for some context. Leviticus 25, it's started out talking about land Sabbaths or Sabbaths that are on every seventh year. You would sow and reap every six years, but the seventh you would leave the land alone. Let it just produce natural and different things. But in verse 8, we see a new context, or a new command, or a new preset being shown.

Leviticus 25:8-9 - "And you shall count seven sabbaths of years for yourself, seven times seven years; and the time of the seven sabbaths of years shall be to you forty-nine years. 9 Then you shall cause the trumpet of the Jubilee to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month; on the Day of Atonement you shall make the trumpet to sound throughout all your land."

And I know we're talking about Pentecost and counting to Pentecost, but we do see a trumpet being sounded on the Day of Atonement. There's wonderful connections between the Day of Atonement and the Year of Jubilee. But I think there's also some connections we can see from the counting of 50, the counting of 50. As we see here, the Jubilee year is to be counted as seven times seven years, or 49 years. The next year would have been the Jubilee Year, the 50th year. It's very similar to Pentecost, except with Pentecost, you count days, and not years. Seven times seven weeks or seven weeks would be 49 days, and the Pentecost day would be the 50th day. And so as we read through the Jubilee year, we'll read a little bit more. But we see some interesting correlations. We see elements of counting, 50 days, 50 years. We also see seven Sabbaths being completed. The first one is seven weekly Sabbaths, and Jubilee is seven yearly Sabbaths being completed. That's an interesting correlation. And also between the two events, we see that the 50th is consecrated as holy to the Lord. The 50th year in Jubilee and the 50th day for Pentecost, it's consecrated the Lord as holy. If we look at verse 10, it says,

Leviticus 25:10-12 - "And you shall consecrate the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a Jubilee for you; and each of you shall return to his possession, and each of you shall return to his family. That fiftieth year shall be a Jubilee to you; in it you shall neither sow nor reap what grows of its own accord, nor gather the grapes of your untended vine. For it is the Jubilee; it shall be holy to you; you shall eat its produce from the field."

And I'll stop there when referring to the Jubilee year. But it's interesting to note that it says, "You shall proclaim it as a year of liberty." We don't need to turn over there, but if you want to reference it, Ezekiel Chapter 46, Ezekiel 46:16-17 refer to the year of Jubilee as a year of liberty. They refer to it as a year of liberty. Well, what is it a year of liberty for? If you think of the year of Jubilee, it's a liberty from generational poverty. Generational poverty is a huge problem in the world around us. You know, if people come upon hard times and they lose their job, and their family suffers, that affects the generations going forward a lot. Sometimes children can break that cycle, and they can get a good job, and they can get back on their feet. But a lot of times generational poverty is a hard thing that just grabs a hold of a society.

And within God's law, there's this wonderful example of a year of release of that debt, a year of release and returning back houses that you may have had to sell, or land that you were given that were for your children, that would go back to the original families. And so everyone would get a reset. And it's so wonderful. And it's so amazing that there would be liberty in this concept. It also neat to think about how... I always wondered if you sold your house or your land on the 49th-year, if you could just sell it for 100% of the market and get that back in a year? Yeah, probably not. Especially not. We see in God's word that you actually have to take into account how many years are left, and you sell your land according to how many years are left, that's several verses down. Verse 15 and 16 says, "According to the multitude of years." So, God was even putting all these safe catches for people that may be trying to get a little bit more money, maybe trying to hurt your brother and oppress your brother in your land. Not a good thing. And so He even puts in those safe things. Well, how does this apply to coming out of the day's unleavened bread and counting to Pentecost?

Let's turn over to John Chapter 8. Why is this a time of liberty? John Chapter 8. As we count to the day of Pentecost, we should remember that we too are living in a time of liberty.

John 8:31-32 - “Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed Him, ‘If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.’” It's a wonderful memory scripture to have in the back of your memory banks, something to be called back to your mind when you need it. “The truth shall make you free”. Could lead you to a question, free from what? You know we live in America, we're as free as you can get. You can apply this in today's world, "And I've never been in bondage to anyone," and that's exactly what they answered.

John 8:33-36 - "They answered Him, ‘We are Abraham’s descendants, and have never been in bondage to anyone. How can You say, ‘You will be made free’?’ Jesus answered them, ‘Most assuredly, I say to you, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin.’"—You see, whoever sins is in the bondage of sin—"And a slave does not abide in the house forever, but a son abides forever. Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed." You see, brethren, sinning brings us into this bondage of sin from… And so what we see during this count, is that there is a proclamation of a liberty from the bondage of sin.

There's a certain freedom with living in Christ. Let's look at Hebrews 2. The sad reality of this phrase of Freedom in Christ, the sad reality is it's twisted by so many scholars out there to mean what it doesn't mean.

Hebrews 2:14-16 - "Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared in the same, that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. For indeed He does not give aid to angels, but He does give aid to the seed of Abraham." Excuse me. You see, it's through Jesus Christ that we have a freedom from sin. The world will take that as a freedom from law. That's not what it means. It means a freedom from bondage of sin, being held back by the crippling problems that come with breaking the law. We're to abide by God's law. We're free from the bondage of sin.

And Pentecost, looking towards Pentecost, counting those 50 days—if you look historically, what happened on Pentecost? Well, you can say the birthday of the church, the birth of the New Testament church, you can say the giving of God's Holy Spirit, that power to overcome sin, that power to reshape how we think and how we live. And we're putting on that mind of Christ. That's the ability of by which we do it. God gives us that power through His Spirit. It's a wonderful time. Even Paul says that there's liberty by which Christ has made us free. If we think about what we just came out of in the days of unleavened bread. With Passover, our sins were forgiven by the blood of our Passover, Jesus Christ as that lamb. During the Days of Unleavened… We put out sin, right, we put out leaven. If you were like me, you probably did a pretty good job, but then you found leaven and a lot of other places.

I had prepared some camping food for my son and I. I like that dried-pack backpacking food, my wife thinks I'm a goof for liking that stuff. But I have this package of food that had yeast in it. I would have never thought there was yeast in this product. And so I failed in that concept. I found that during the Days of Unleavened Bread. But we put out leaven during the seven Days of Unleavened Bread picturing putting out sin, we put out that. And it's not only good to put out sin, you have to then take in, (un-sin?), righteousness, right? Take in righteousness, living by the Bread of Life, that symbolized by unleavened bread. You put that into your life. We're forgiven by the sins, we put in that concept and we put in unleavened bread, and we're made righteous before God.

As we're going through these days, as we're counting to Pentecost, we can consider this idea of growing and developing the mind of Christ Ripening or maturing as fruit of God's harvest. You think of the fruit of God's Spirit. You can think of it as a type of fruit like grapes, you know, each individual types of a whole vine, growing together. And it's a lot of times a slow process. It's a slow ripening and maturing process through our whole lives. But we are to continue growing and developing, and we can think about that as we get through these 50 days, as a maturing process for harvesting. We can consider and we can reflect on how well is God's field ripening? You know, how well am I ripening? How well am I maturing? That's what we can consider over these next 43 days. Am I growing? That's a serious question that we need to ask ourselves. Am I growing? Am I maturing? Do I have the mind of Christ? Sometimes I find that's a very hard, attainable goal. Putting on the mind of Christ? That's difficult, but that's what we should be striving for.

So, one element we can think of is this concept of a ripening period, this concept of a period of liberty. Liberty from the bondage of sin, paralleled with this concept of liberty from poverty and the year of Jubilee. Another element that we can keep in mind, as we're counting to day 50, is that these 50 days are a time of work. They’re a time that we need to get busy, and we need to get down to it, not being lazy. We are to be laboring. If you think of this concept and these analogies of harvest, you can think of yourself as a part of that harvest. We're a fruit or a vegetable, whatever you want to grow, and we're part of that harvest. But not only a harvest, we're also to be laborers in that harvest. Let's look at Acts Chapter 1.

Acts 1:1-3 - “The former account I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach,"—referring back to his letter that now we call Luke—"until the day in which He was taken up, after He through the Holy Spirit had given commandments to the apostles whom He had chosen, to whom He also presented Himself alive after His suffering by many infallible proofs, being seen by them during forty days and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God."

We see here, Jesus Christ, after ascending to the Father, He came back, and He appeared, and He gave commandments to His apostles. He gave them work to do. He taught them of all things concerning the kingdom of God, preparing them for the coming 50th day—the day of Pentecost—when they would have the Holy Spirit, and they would understand what they were learning. They would have that fuller meaning. He gave them that commission to do. He stayed with them the 40 of the 50 days, and He gave them the instruction not to leave Jerusalem. Stay there and wait for Pentecost, wait for that time that God's Spirit would be given to them. And they would truly become laborers in the harvest. If we apply ourselves now down the line, as taking up that mantle, continuing in that commission, we have the commission to go into the whole world and make disciples. And we all have an individual part to play in that. We can be laborers in the harvest. Christ was recorded in saying that the fields were white and ready for harvest. How do we look at the world around us? Do we look at all of them as just, "They're all worse than me?" Or "I'm just so much better. They're not ready. They're not for the harvest." Jesus Christ looked at the multitude and He said, "They're white for harvest.” There are multiple harvests, every person will have the opportunity to understand God's way and to join up and be a part of our family. Or do we just count them off? It's a good thing to reflect on.

Let's turn to Matthew Chapter 9, because brethren, we too are laborers in this harvest. These 50 days, as we count to Pentecost, we can remember that our work is needed. And we to have our place in it.

Matthew 9:37-38 - “Then He said to His disciples, ‘The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.’” That's something that we can keep in mind, are we praying for more laborers? Are we praying for God to call more and more people now, to be a part of the first resurrect, to be part of the first fruits, to join in and to have a strong network and commission to the harvest, to be laborers for that? You know, what brought on this statement from Jesus? If we look in the context, it was Jesus's compassion to the people around Him. It says in verse 35,

Matthew 9:35-36 - "Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people. But when He saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion for them, because they were weary and scattered, like sheep having no shepherd."

Jesus Christ had compassion for those around Him. And He wanted them to be a part of the fold as well. You see, God the Father and Jesus Christ are working. They're bringing apart a harvest if you will, an analogy of a harvest. But it's not just them alone, we have our part to play. You can think of this concept of being lights and the world around us. Maybe not all of us are on the formal aspects of preaching the gospel, right? We have three presenters on Beyond Today. That's a very public, very formal process of preaching the gospel. But each and every one of us are out in the world on a daily basis. We know the analogies. We are to be lights to the world. We're the salt of the earth. We know these analogies. And we don't want to hide who we are. When you get your hair cut at the… salon (this is a rough day for off top my head). When you sit down in the hair... I mean, they always want to talk, they're doing great job, and I think they're trained to do that. You know, “what do you do for work?” Or “what do you have planned this weekend?” Do you just kind of shrug it off and say, "I'm going to church”, you know, and they'll just assume whatever they want to assume? Or do you give a little sentence or give a little statement, pique their interest, maybe they won't be interested, but you never know until you try.

And it's interesting when you think about this concept of being a light, we're not the source of that light. It's not how great I am or how good I am at being a source. God the Father, Jesus Christ, they're the light. And it's through us that they're shining to everyone around us. We are to be laborers, we are to be working. These 50 days can help us remind us, that this is a time of work, not a time of sitting back and just, "Well, the work is done." It’s a time that we can count and think of these important concepts. You know brethren, there are many ideas and many concepts that come to mind, as we count to the day of 50, as we count to Pentecost. As I mentioned at the beginning of the sermon, counting seems to be important to God. I think it should be important to us as well. Counting 50 days between Days of Unleavened Bread and Pentecost is rich of meaning. We kind of just scratched the surface here and we're at the beginning of the count. Let's think about these things as we go forward. Let's consider these elements.

For us, thankfully, our requirement of higher-level mathematics is not the highest thing that God requires from us. Good thing we don't have too many super hard calculations through the Bible. Counting is pretty easy. There's a little bit of multiplication in there, I guess. But counting is pretty easy. And to the best of our knowledge and understanding, we keep Pentecost on the first day of the week. That's how God wants us to do it, counting 50 days beginning with the day of the wave sheaf offering. When we look through these counting processes, we see the symbolism of the first wave sheaf offering and the two loaves, and what they picture in the plan.

We can see that the wave sheaf, beginning with Christ, and many more first fruits to follow, the loaves being the church. And then we remember the four holiday seasons, and we remember all these things together. And God is calling a family. He's calling many sons and daughters to His family. It's a time brethren that we can use these analogies of harvest to understand His plan more fully. Let's consider these things over the next 43 days. Let's consider that we truly are free in Christ, that we have been given liberty to the bondage of sin, liberty from the bondage of sin and death. Along with this freedom, let's remember that we too are to work, that we have a part to play in the work of God. So, as fellow laborers in the harvest, let's consider these elements for the next 43 days, hopefully making this 50-day period of counting just a little bit more meaningful to each and every one of us.