“Behold, days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” declares the LORD. “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the LORD, ” I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. Jeremiah 31
I believe this prophecy was fulfilled on the day of Pentecost, fifty days after Passover, in Acts 2. But since I had never studied the Old Testament Feasts, I didn’t grasp the similarities.
The following excerpt from Judaism 101 is a simple explanation of Shavu’ot / Festival of Weeks / Pentecost. Leviticus 23
The period from Passover to Shavu’ot is a time of great anticipation. We count each of the days from the second day of Passover to the day before Shavu’ot, 49 days or 7 full weeks, hence the name of the festival. See The Counting of the Omer. The counting reminds us of the important connection between Passover and Shavu’ot: Passover freed us physically from bondage, but the giving of the Torah on Shavu’ot redeemed us spiritually from our bondage to idolatry and immorality. Shavu’ot is also known as Pentecost, because it falls on the 50th day.
Exodus 19 starts out with the Israelites coming to Mount Sinai. They have left Egypt, crossed the Red Sea, God gives them water, He gives them manna/bread, He gives them meat, He gives them the day of rest, He gives them more water, He utterly blots out even the memory of their enemies. Now it’s been fifty days since Passover and the Lord wants to come down and talk to His people.
In verses 19:18 through 20:18 He does come down, and Mount Sinai was all in smoke because the Lord descended on it in fire; and its smoke ascended like the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mountain quaked violently. To me it sounds a lot like what happened in Acts 2. When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a noise like a violent rushing wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues as of fire distributing themselves, and they rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit was giving them utterance.
When I went to share this it was so hard not to just go on and on about all the layers of meaning the feasts add to what God has done, is doing and will do in the future. In between the Passover and Pentecost is the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and there is so much in that feast and the events that have occurred during it, not the least of which was the Resurrection of Christ. Well looks like I’m going on and on, again… anyone…anyone…
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