The people of God are set apart, with different priorities, habits, and festivals than the rest of the world. We may celebrate national holidays of our homelands, such as July 4th for Americans, but those are not the observances that shape our identities as God’s people. The kingdom we belong to under Christ’s authority has a different calendar.
A couple months ago, I read Desiring the Kingdom by James K.A. Smith. In Chapter 5: Practicing (for) the Kingdom, he discusses “rhythms and cadences of hope” that Christians observe in weekly and annual practices. For him, this means Sunday, Easter, Lent, Advent, Christmas and others. He connects the observances to a rich history of “a people gathered to worship the Messiah, who does not float in some esoteric, ahistorical heaven, but who made a dent in the calendar — and will again” (p. 157).
But when you read the Bible, you won’t find those days he talks about on God’s calendar. Even the one mention of Easter in the KJV is a mistransltion of pascha, or Passover (Acts 12:4, Strong’s G3957). Rather, we find the church from the Torah to Revelation on a calendar even more unique than the one Smith claims for Christians. I know it puzzles many Christians that I would keep the “Jewish holidays,” but I find it equally puzzling that they would continue a tradition of co-opting pagan holidays and attaching them to Biblical events God gave no instructions to observe. When we search the scriptures looking for God’s version of liturgical rhythms, we find a worship pattern far more richly layered and deeply rooted in God’s plan than what man has invented. Read more →
All the holy days point to Jesus Christ, often in multiple ways. For the soon-approaching Pentecost — the Feast of Firstfruits — Jesus is Himself “the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” because He was the first of God’s people to raise from the dead to eternal life (1 Cor. 15:20-23). He’s also the one who redeemed us, making it possible for us to be firstfruits, and He’s the reason we receive the Holy Spirit, which was first given to the New Testament church on Pentecost (John 14:26; 16:7).
On the surface, the term “firstfruits” simply refers to the first agricultural produce of the harvest season. In the Hebrew scriptures, firstfruits were offered to God before you harvested anything for yourself. This offering occurred after Passover on a Sunday morning and kicked-off the 50-day count to Pentecost (Lev. 23:1-21).
Pentecost, also called the Feast of Weeks or Feast of Harvest, pays a key role in God’s plan. Even churches that no longer keep the other holy days often mark Pentecost because that’s when the Holy Spirit was given to the New Testament church (Acts 2:1-4). In Leviticus 23, instructions about the wave-sheaf, 50-day count, and Pentecost occupy more than 1/3 of the entire chapter. Clearly, there’s something here we’re supposed to take careful note of.
Gleanings and Ruth
Embedded in the holy days discussion of Leviticus 23 is a peculiar verse. It doesn’t seem related to the chapter’s subject, yet it follows immediately after the instructions about Pentecost.
When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not wholly reap the corners of your field when you reap, nor shall you gather any gleaning from your harvest. You shall leave them for the poor and for the stranger: I am the Lord your God. (Lev. 23:22)
Why would God put this law in place while discussing the holy days? It doesn’t seem to make sense. It does, however, connect Pentecost with the story of Ruth. In Jewish tradition, Ruth is read every Pentecost, and perhaps that’s a clue as to why the law of gleanings is discussed here.
When Ruth and Naomi arrived in Bethlehem they’re both poor and Ruth was a “stranger,” a Moabitess instead of an Israelite. She more than qualified for gleaning under the law given in Leviticus, as well as the repetition in Deuteronomy 24:19 which added the “fatherless” and the “widow” to the list of those who could glean.
Instead of just letting Ruth glean, Boaz offered her protection (Ruth 2:9), provided food for her (2:14), and told his reapers to drop grain on purpose so she could glean as much as she wanted (2:15-16). When she first meets Boaz, Ruth’s relation to him is strikingly similar to us when first encountering Christ. He is good, and wealthy, and powerful while we have nothing. We don’t deserve anything from Him, and yet He offers us blessings beyond expectation.
When Jesus died, He opened up the covenants to non-Israelites. Prior to accepting His sacrifice, we were all “strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world” (Eph. 2:12). We were the sort of people who couldn’t expect more than the gleanings.
But He answered [the Gentile woman] and said, “It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the little dogs.” And she said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the little dogs eat the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.” (Matt. 15:26-27)
Jesus did honor this woman’s faith and heal her daughter (Matt. 15:21-28), but by-and-large people outside Israel didn’t have access to God before the cross. Strangers who converted, like Ruth (Ruth 1:16; 2:12), were the exception rather than the rule. That didn’t really happen until after Christ’s Passover sacrifice, His ascension to the Father on wave-sheaf Sunday (click here for a timeline), and the Pentecost recorded in Acts 2.
Then Peter said to them, “Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is to you and to your children, and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord our God will call.” (Acts 2:38-39)
Peter didn’t realize this included Gentiles until latter (Acts 10:34-35, 44-48; 11:18), but speaking by inspiration of the Spirit He still proclaimed salvation for all whom God calls. This was a huge step in God’s plan to save the world through Jesus Christ (John 3:16; 12:47), and it’s connected with Pentecost.
Redeemed Firstfruits
In the epistle of James, we’re told the Father “brought us forth by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures” (James 1:18). The church is composed of the first people God will “harvest” from the world. We’re a rather unusual sort of firstfruits, though.
For you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, that no flesh should glory in His presence. (1 Cor. 1:26-29)
God picks us up from the things devalued and discarded by the world. In other words, He finds His firstfruits among the gleanings. He’s taking people who are underwhelming and overlooked and transforming us into something glorious. Like Ruth, we were strangers who are brought into fellowship with God’s people by a Redeemer (Ruth 2:20; Tit. 2:13-14).
I’ve mentioned before that I keep Saturday as a Sabbath rest, but I don’t think I’ve talked about why. Not every Christian is convicted of this, but I’m seeing more and more acknowledging the value of “sabbathing.” It’s just a small step from realizing that God’s command to rest is good, to resting on the day He set aside from the beginning of creation.
Thus the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished. And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made. (Gen. 2:1-3)
This verse tells us God chose a certain day, the seventh, as a day of rest. He gave this day a special blessing, and set it apart for sacred use. “Sanctified” in the Hebrew carries the sense of separating something from “the common or profane” and placing it in “the sphere of the sacred” (Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, p.1989). That’s what God did with the Sabbath day from the beginning of the world. Read more →
Before getting to today’s topic, I just wanted to mention how much I’ve enjoyed doing an actual count-down this year instead of just putting Pentecost on the calendar. It’s helped me focus my Bible study and kept me in mind of the timing for God’s calender rather than feeling like Pentecost sneaked up on me. Today is the 7th Sabbath in our count, which means Pentecost is tomorrow!
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. (Lev. 23:15-16)
Though this is one of the easiest Holy Days to see evidence of in the New Testament (largely due to the giving of the Holy Spirit in Acts), I think we’ll spend most of our time today in the Old Testament, particularly in the book of Ruth.
Lawns of Gleaning
Pentecost, also called the Feast of the Firstfruits/Harvest/Ingathering, is a harvest-time festival. The count to this day begins with a wave-sheaf “of the firstfruits of your harvest,” and the offerings on the day of Pentecost include “two wave loaves of two-tenths of an ephah” of “fine flour” “baked with leaven” that are described as “the firstfruits to the Lord” (Lev. 23:10, 17). After a lengthy passage of instructions for Pentecost, there is a verse that does not quite seem to fit.
When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not wholly reap the corners of your field when you reap, nor shall you gather any gleaning from your harvest. You shall leave them for the poor and for the stranger: I am the Lord your God. (Lev. 23:22)
This is a repetition of a command also recorded in Leviticus 19:9-10, a command so important to God that He not only gave it twice, but He put one of those commands in the passage describing His most Holy Days. We can get some idea of how this practice works, and perhaps why it is so important, by looking at the book of Ruth.
‘Ruth Gleaning’ watercolor by James Tissot (1896)
There’s a note in my study Bible that says, “by New Testament times” the book of Ruth was being “read at the Feast of Harvest (Pentecost) because much of the story is set in the harvest fields.” It was one of five books “read publicly at the Feasts of Israel.”
I dare say we all know the story. Naomi and her family moved to Moab during a famine in Israel. There, her two sons married. About 10 years later, Naomi’s husband and sons were dead and she returned home to Israel accompanied by her daughter in law, Ruth. We jump into the story as Ruth and Naomi arrive in “Bethlehem at the beginning of barley harvest” (Ruth 1:22).
So Ruth the Moabitess said to Naomi, “Please let me go to the field, and glean heads of grain after him in whose sight I may find favor.” And she said to her, “Go, my daughter.” Then she left, and went and gleaned in the field after the reapers. And she happened to come to the part of the field belonging to Boaz, who was of the family of Elimelech. (Ruth 2:2-3)
As we read further, we see Boaz went above and beyond what God’s law strictly required a landowner to leave for the poor. He offers Ruth protection and water, and asks her not to glean in any other field where he could not guarantee her safety (Ruth 2:8-9). Behind-the-scenes, he told his reapers to let grain fall for her on purpose and not to stop her if she wanted to glean even among the sheaves of grain (Ruth 2:15-16).
Unmerited Favor
There is much of Christ’s character visible in how Boaz treats Ruth when she first arrives in his field. Like Boaz did for Ruth, Jesus offers us His personal protection. He asks us not to stray from His laws because they are designed to keep us safe from the consequences of sin. He says, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink” (John 7:37). Our response to this unearned favor ought to be much the same as Ruth’s.
So she fell on her face, bowed down to the ground, and said to him, “Why have I found favor in your eyes, that you should take notice of me, since I am a foreigner?” (Ruth 2:10)
This is much the same question David asked God in Psalms 8:4 and 144:3 — “What is man that You are mindful of him?” Every human is small and insignificant compared to God, and those of us who God has chosen for His particular attention are unimportant even by human standards.
But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, that no flesh should glory in His presence. But of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God—and righteousness and sanctification and redemption — that, as it is written, “He who glories, let him glory in the Lord.” (1 Cor. 1:27-31)
God is gleaning His firstfruits from the world’s rejects. He is taking people who are nothing and turning us into something glorious. He is taking strangers — like the Moabite Ruth — and adopting them into His family through Christ’s sacrifice.
But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. …Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God (Eph. 2:13, 19)
Our Redeemer
The adoption process by which we become God’s children is, as we discussed last week, linked inseprably to Christ’s redeeming work (Eph. 1:5-7; Rom. 8:23; Gal. 4:3-7). There is a parallel for this as well in the story of Ruth, in the role Boaz plays as a kinsman redeemer.
And her mother-in-law said to her, “Where have you gleaned today? And where did you work? Blessed be the one who took notice of you.” So she told her mother-in-law with whom she had worked, and said, “The man’s name with whom I worked today is Boaz.” Then Naomi said to her daughter-in-law, “Blessed be he of the Lord, who has not forsaken His kindness to the living and the dead!” And Naomi said to her, “This man is a relation of ours, one of our close relatives.” (Ruth 2:19-20)
My study Bible says this last phrase could be translated “one that hath right to redeem.” We find the basis for the practice of a kinsman redeeming land in Leviticus 25: 25, 48-49. To prevent an inheritance from leaving the family, someone who was closely related, financially able, and willing to fill this role could redeem land that was sold. In some cases, as here in Ruth, when the man who the land originally belonged to had left a childless widow, the redeemer was expected to marry her per the command in Deuteronomy 25:5-10.
We see all this played out in Ruth 4:4-10 where Boaz must offer a more closely related kinsman the opportunity to redeem Naomi’s family’s land and marry Ruth. This man refuses (which, being the hopeless romantic I am, I suspect was Boaz’s plan all along).
Stepping back a chapter and looking at Ruth’s request that Boaz play the part of a redeemer, we read about a practice that seems rather unusual. Since Naomi counsels this action and Boaz knew how to respond, I assume Ruth asking him to be her family’s redeemer (perhaps even this method of asking) was not considered unusual in their culture. Per Naomi’s instructions, Ruth lies down at Boaz’s feet when he is asleep and waits for him to notice her.
And he said, “Who are you?” So she answered, “I am Ruth, your maidservant. Take your maidservant under your wing, for you are a close relative.” (Ruth 3:9)
Looking at the Hebrew for “wing”, The Complete WordStudy Dictionary for the Old Testament says “the idiom to spread (one’s) wings over means to take to wife.” This same word is used in Ruth 2:12 when Boaz tells Ruth, “The Lord repay your work, and a full reward be given you by the Lord God of Israel, under whose wings you have come for refuge.” Ruth is asking Boaz for a type of protection that mirrors the relationship between God and Israel. The comparison is drawn even more strongly reading God’s words to Israel in Ezekiel 16.
“When I passed by you again and looked upon you, indeed your time was the time of love; so I spread My wing over you and covered your nakedness. Yes, I swore an oath to you and entered into a covenant with you, and you became Mine,” says the Lord God. (Ezk. 16:8)
In the same way, we who are part of the church have been “betrothed you to one husband” — Jesus Christ — and will be married “to Him who was raised from the dead” after He died in order to redeem us (2 Cor. 11:2; Rom. 7:4).
Taken together, the book of Ruth and the Feast of Pentecost teach us about the glorious unmerited favor that God pours out on us. We were strangers like Ruth and were not only invited to partake in what God provides, but cared for deeply and betrothed to His own Son, who gave His life to redeem His firstfruit Bride.
It’s Sabbath number 2 out of 7 in our count to Pentecost (Lev. 23:15-16). As we get closer to Pentecost, I wanted to focus more of my studies on the Holy Spirit. I’ve already written about the Holy Spirit in the book of Acts, but there is so much more to cover.
This week, while reading through John 14, 15, and 16, what stood out to me was the word “comforter” (KJV) to refer to the Holy Spirit, particularly in connection with this verse:
Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. (John 14:26)
I have a troubled heart. By myself, I’m worried, fearful, distracted, anxious, and would rarely leave the house. But the better my relationship with God is, the more at peace I am. This is a subject close to my heart, because I know first-hand how much worse my anxiety gets if I drift away from God and the comfort of His presence.
Comfort
The word “comforter,” or “helper” in the NKJV, is used in John 14:16, 14:26, 15:26; and 16:7. It’s from the Greek word parakletos (G3875), which is the same word used to describe Jesus Christ as our “advocate” in 1 John 2:1. According to the Complete Word Study Dictionary of the New Testament by Dr. Spiros Zodhiates, it refers “to an aid of any kind. … one who comes forward on behalf of and as the representative of another.” It is translated “comforter” or “helper” because the root word, parakaleo (G3870), means “to aid, help, comfort, encourage.”
The use of this word here in John seems to tie the work of the Holy Spirit directly to Christ’s role as our Comforter. He said the Spirit “will testify of Me” and that it was good for the disciples that He leave them so that He could send the Holy Spirit (John 15:26; 16:7). Again quoting Zodhiates’s dictionary, it says the Spirit “undertakes Christ’s office in the world while Christ is not in the world as the God-man in bodily form,” acting as “Christ’s substitute on earth.” Perhaps this is why we are told “if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His” (Rom. 8:9).
On Our Behalf
One of the themes in the book of Hebrews is what Christ does on our behalf. He was made like us and suffered in our place so that He could be our “merciful and faithful High Priest” who makes “propitiation for the sins of the people” and “is able to aid those who are tempted” (Heb. 2:176-18).
For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. (Heb. 4:15-16)
Because of what Christ did, and does, for us, we have assurance that we can obtain help from God. Our High Priest “is also able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them” (Heb. 7:25). He died to obtain our “eternal redemption,” and now appears “in the presence of God for us” (Heb. 9:12, 24).
These roles Christ is filling for us should be a great comfort. Read Hebrews 10:19-25 — it is not a description of someone who is fearful or discomfited. We have boldness in Jesus, a “full assurance of faith,” and know that we can receive abundant comfort from Him and the Father through the Holy Spirit.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also abounds through Christ. (2 Cor. 1:3-5)
Peace
The assurance of having Jesus present through the Holy Spirit as our Comforter, Advocate, and Helper should work a change in the state of our hearts. In John 14, He said that He gives His peace to us. This word “peace” is from the Greek eirene (G1515), and it means “a state of untroubled, undisturbed, well-being.” It can mean an “absence or end of strife,” but that is not necessary for the inner peace which Christ is referring to here, and which is a fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22).
Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. (Phil. 4:6-7)
In Ephesians, Jesus Christ is called “our peace” because He brought us into covenant with God and gave us “access by one Spirit to the Father” (Eph. 2:13-18). He made peace between us and God by removing the sin which separated us from Him, and gives us inner peace as a result of this new relationship.
For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. (2 Tim. 1:7)
Look at what we are given. Power that makes us able and capable (G1411 dunamis). Love which actively and benevolently does good (G26 agape). Discipline, self-control and sound judgement (G4995 sophronismos). That is just part of the comfort and peace that God makes available to us through His Spirit if we remain in fellowship with Him.
Like An Anchor 