Leviticus; The Law of Holiness and Grace

Pentecost and Rest

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Pentateuch

Genre: Lessons with Q & A

Lesson: 58

Track: 58

Dictation Name: RR172AE58

Date: Early 70s

Let us worship God. Serve the Lord with gladness. Come before His presence with singing. Enter into His gates with thanksgiving and into His courts with praise. Be thankful unto Him and bless His name. For the Lord is good. His mercy endureth forever and His truth is unto all generations.

Let us pray.

Almighty God, our Heavenly Father, we come into Thy presence again, rejoicing in Thy good gifts, grateful for Thy mercies, and rich by Thy grace. We pray, our Father that Thou wouldst make us ever mindful of how great Thou art, and how little the power of man is, that we might not be fearful, that we might indeed be more than conquerors as we face the powers of this world. Give us grace so to walk day by day, that wheresoever we tread may become Thy ground, conquered and subdued for Thee. Bless us always in Thy service, in Christ’s name, amen.

Our scripture is from Leviticus 23:15-21, but we shall read 22 also. Verse 22 will be our subject next week, but it is relevant to our subject today which is “Pentecost and Rest.” “Pentecost and Rest,” Leviticus 23:15-22:

“15 And ye shall count unto you from the morrow after the Sabbath, from the day that ye brought the sheaf of the wave offering; seven sabbaths shall be complete:

16 Even unto the morrow after the seventh Sabbath shall ye number fifty days; and ye shall offer a new meat offering unto the Lord.

17 Ye shall bring out of your habitations two wave loaves of two tenth deals: they shall be of fine flour; they shall be baken with leaven; they are the firstfruits unto the Lord.

18 And ye shall offer with the bread seven lambs without blemish of the first year, and one young bullock, and two rams: they shall be for a burnt offering unto the Lord, with their meat offering, and their drink offerings, even an offering made by fire, of sweet savour unto the Lord.

19 Then ye shall sacrifice one kid of the goats for a sin offering, and two lambs of the first year for a sacrifice of peace offerings.

20 And the priest shall wave them with the bread of the firstfruits for a wave offering before the Lord, with the two lambs: they shall be holy to the Lord for the priest.

21 And ye shall proclaim on the selfsame day, that it may be an holy convocation unto you: ye shall do no servile work therein: it shall be a statute forever in all your dwellings throughout your generations.

22 And when ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not make clean riddance of the corners of thy field when thou reapest, neither shalt thou gather any gleaning of thy harvest: thou shalt leave them unto the poor, and to the stranger: I am the Lord your God.”

These verses have to do with the festival of Pentecost. Pentecost means simply, “fiftieth”. It gains this name because it falls on the fiftieth day after Passover. It was a one-day celebration and it was a thanksgiving for God’s gracious provision. It came at the end of the harvest season. It gave thanks to God for His providence. And there was an offering to God of animal sacrifices, cereal gifts and drink offerings. Our modern Thanksgiving is modeled after Pentecost.

In verse 22, gleaning is cited as one aspect of giving thanks to God. Our Lord says in Matthew 10:8, “Freely ye have received. Freely give.” In the Law, we are repeatedly warned against forgetting God and believing in our own self-sufficiency so that we say in our heart, “17 and thou say in thine heart, my power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth. 18 But thou shalt remember the LORD thy God: for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth that he may establish his covenant which he sware unto thy fathers, as it is this day.” So declares Deuteronomy 8:17, 18. God ratifies His covenant with us by prospering us so that we can better serve Him and His kingdom.

I heard recently that in a conference, two very prominent internationally-known Christian leaders insisted that there was nothing more evil and wicked than to strive to exercise dominion, to strive to improve this world, to strive to gain victory, because, the statement was made; the power of sin is too great. Which is to say, Satan is greater and stronger than God. Which is to say, grace is not equal to sin. It’s not surprising that this type of thinking which has recurred in the Church more than once has created only evil. At one time, the Reformed Church in Germany was a very powerful force. But in the last century, it was virtually gutted and destroyed, as was the German Reformed movement in this country. And the reason was a simple one: a very prominent theologian who virtually became the determining force within the Church, a man who was sound on the various articles of doctrine, nonetheless was sadly astray on one key issue—sanctification. He said our sanctification was complete as far as it would go in this lifetime on the day or our conversion, our justification. This meant that a Christian was a no-growth person. No growth!

And this kind of thing has been too common off and on through Church History. It destroyed the Puritan movement. The book that helped destroy it represented a current that came to the surface prominently in this book, Gurnall’s The Christian in Complete Armour. It’s still in print! It’s still exercising an influence. And what is the message of this book which is at least a couple of inches thick? The message is that our life is a perpetual St. Vitus dance in No Man’s Land. That there is no progress, that from the day of our conversion to the day of our death it is a virtually hopeless struggle against sin. The only progress is that before we didn’t struggle. Now we’re struggling but it’s an uneven battle, and we’re losers!

This is what has paralyzed the Church. This is what Pietism leads to. Pietism says that you’ve got to be continually in a retreat. You have to go continually into long prayers, you have to have an hour-long session of prayer every morning or else you haven’t got a chance. You’re going to go under. And this is nonsense. It is implicitly Manichean. It echoes the Manichean dualism which said the good and evil gods are always equally balanced so you didn’t have a chance in life.

But Pentecost has a different message. Pentecost says that because we are God’s covenant people, He blesses His faithful people with a harvest. And that’s what Pentecost is about. It says, ‘We celebrate!’ And that’s what the Day of Pentecost in the Book of Acts is about. God blessed His Church with the gifts of the Spirit so Pentecost was a festival to rejoice, because having been faithful to God and His Law Word, God had blessed His people. And what were they to do? They were to bless those less fortunate—the widows and orphans, the poor, the aliens. Having been blessed, they were to bless. This is what our Lord was talking about when He said “Freely ye have received. Freely give.” God ratifies His covenant by prospering His covenant people so that they can better serve Him and His kingdom. If we use that prosperity for our own purposes, it is taken from us. In other words, God’s blessings are purposive.

The weakness of modern Evangelicalism is that it goes to the Bible and it acts as though the Bible has one purpose—to save us. But our Lord says, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.” His justice. “And all these things” (that the Gentiles seek) “shall be added unto you.” So our blessing come when we have God’s priorities, when we seek not our own, but God’s purpose. And when He blesses us, His blessing is purposive. Purposive.

The Day of Pentecost included a meal. At the conclusion of the sacrifices there was the Thank Offering which was eaten by families with guests with the Levites, with the poor, with aliens who believed. In other words, God’s blessing was purposive and still is. Its purpose is that we, having blessed, will bless others to the end that the kingdoms of this world may become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ.

There was to be no servile work. Servile work meaning laborious heavy work, field work, our occupational tasks. It was a day of thanksgiving.

Time, as we have seen, must be made holy by God’s covenant people. The harvest represents the result of Godly dominion. It is a holy day, because before that we were holy, we were separated to God, we worked under Him. And He blessed us. So on this special holy day, we rejoice in God’s blessing. All time, thus, is to be used in God’s service. When we rejoice in present blessings, we are to expect more from the Lord in future in time. What is the commandment concerning this? Open wide thy mouth that I mightest fill it. God tells us to be faithful, to be blessed, to bless others, and to be blessed further.

Israel made Pentecost a time for the confirmation of children after public catechism. And the rabbis confirmed children by the laying on of hands. This was significant. It was done on the Day of Pentecost because godly children were seen as a present blessing and a future prosperity; that godly children were a promise of God’s future blessing, and hence, they were catechized and confirmed on that day.

In verse 17 we read, “Ye shall bring out of your habitations two wave loaves of two tenth deals: they shall be of fine flour; they shall be baken with leaven; they are the firstfruits unto the Lord.”

These were not unleavened loaves. These were out of your habitation—out of your house, out of your daily fare. Now this was significant. It meant that God wanted to receive out of our lives—out of the life of every believer, so these were offered to God and also used in the Thank Offering dinner. Unfortunately, centuries later in the Christian era, this was changed in Judaism to mean ‘two loaves out of the nation.’ So that it became a symbolic offering from the nation as whole, rather than from the people. This had deep roots. It went back to Phariseeism which in effect separated the believer himself from the offering to God. It said this was something that was privileged; it had to represent the best in the nation. And it de-personalized it.

The New Testament has of course, a great deal to say about Pentecost, not only with regard to the fact of the Day of Pentecost, but because it saw the meaning of the Day of Pentecost as a great and triumphant prophecy fulfilled in the life of Christ and the Church. S.H. Kellogg, in his account of it, gives so telling a statement that it requires, really, citation in full. So let us see what Kellogg has to say:

“This festival, as one of the Sabbatic series, celebrated the rest after the labors of the grain harvest, the symbol of the great Sabbatism to follow that harvest which is the end of the age. As a consecration, it dedicated to God the daily food of the nation for the coming year. As Passover reminded them that God was the creator of Israel, so herein, receiving their daily bread from Him, they were reminded that He was also the sustainer of Israel, while the full accompaniment of burnt offerings and peace offerings expressed their full consecration and happy state of friendship with Jehovah, secured through the expiation of the sin offering. Was this feast also like Passover, prophetic? The New Testament is scarcely less clear than in the former case. For after that Christ, first having been slain as our Passover had then risen from the dead as the firstfruits, fulfilling the type of the wave sheath on the morning of the Sabbath, fifty days past. And when the Day of Pentecost was fully come, came that great outpouring of the Holy Ghost, the conversion of 3,000 out of many lands and therewith the formation of that Church of the New Testament, whose members the Apostle James declares to be a kind of firstfruits of God’s creatures. Thus, as the sheath had typified Christ as the firstborn from the dead, the presentation of the Day of Pentecost of the two wave loaves the product of the sheath of grain, no less evidently typified the presentation unto God of the Church of the firstborn. The firstfruits of Christ’s death and resurrection as constituted on that sacred day. This then was the complete fulfillment of the Feast of Weeks regarded as a redemptive {?}, showing how not only rest, but also redemption was comprehended in the significance of the Sabbatic idea. And yet, that complete redemption was not therewith attained by that Church of the firstborn on Pentecost, was pre-signified in that the two wave loaves were to be baken with leaven. The Feast of Unleavened Bread had exhibited the ideal of the Christian life, that of firstfruits, the imperfection of the earthly attainment. On earth, leaven of sin still abides.” But we can add that the feast is also a sign of the total victory which is to come. That is why it is a time of rejoicing.

Moreover, consider the fact of the wave offering, which so often is a part of the sacrifices. Waved side to side and up and down, making the sign of the cross.

Every Sabbath celebrates the final victory and rest. And in every Sabbath, we rest from our labors, knowing that the future comes not from our work, but from God’s ordination. We rest in His victory over sin and death and we rest in the confidence in His total victory which is to come.

As Kellogg noted, the festival “dedicated unto God the daily food for the nation for the coming year.” It dedicated it in the confidence that God yesterday, today and forever would care for His people, His covenanted and faithful people. It was thus a confidence in God’s providential care of us while the Sabbath means rest, it can be very seriously misinterpreted if we view it in terms of the modern ideas of rest. The Biblical doctrine of rest involves trust, as we shall see on a later day, it involves more, but basic to it is trust. And this is very, very clearly set forth in Psalm 37:1-11:

“1 Fret not thyself because of evildoers, neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity.

2 For they shall soon be cut down like the grass, and wither as the green herb.

3 Trust in the Lord, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed.

4 Delight thyself also in the Lord; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.

5 Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass.

6 And he shall bring forth thy righteousness as the light, and thy judgment as the noonday.

7 Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for him: fret not thyself because of him who prospereth in his way, because of the man who bringeth wicked devices to pass.

8 Cease from anger, and forsake wrath: fret not thyself in any wise to do evil.

9 For evildoers shall be cut off: but those that wait upon the Lord, they shall inherit the earth.

10 For yet a little while, and the wicked shall not be: yea, thou shalt diligently consider his place, and it shall not be.

11 But the meek shall inherit the earth; and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace.”

This is what Pentecost is about. This is what the Sabbath is about. To rest means to trust in God, to trust in Him to provide for us, for all our yesterdays and todays and our tomorrows come from His omnipotent hands. And if we are faithful, we are blessed. And if we trust in Him, we shall not be confounded.

Let us pray.

Oh Lord, our God, Thy Word is truth. Give us grace to believe it, to know it, and to obey it. We confess unto Thee our Father, that too often we have listened to the voices of men, and the voices of our own heart and we have then listened to the voices of failure and of defeat. Thy Word is truth. And Thy Word is the word of victory—victory over sin and death; victory over this world, victory over ourselves and the sins that beset us. Give us grace therefore to walk day by day, trusting in Thee and resting in Thy grace and government, and working in the confidence that what Thou hast declared and what Thou hast summoned us to do will be accomplished for Thy Word will never return unto Thee void. Our God, we thank Thee in Christ’s name. Amen.

Are there any questions now?

Yes.

[Audience] Psalm 37 tells us not to fret about the prosperity of the wicked. Elsewhere the psalmist seems perplexed at the fact that the wicked do prosper and the righteous have troubles. How are we to view that?

[Rushdoony] Yes. Many of the psalms reflect the bewilderment of saints when they see the righteous prosper. The psalms express, inspired of God, both our feelings and the answer to them. So even though many of the psalms express this distress, they also provide the answer. We are to recognize indeed that God does allow falsehood, does allow evil to have its way. Because if God, the minute anybody stepped out of line, clobbered them, nobody would. And then people would not be godly, they would just be intimidated. There would be no righteousness or justice in any true sense. As one poet said, “I saw the finger of God go forth, giving a body to falsehood, that it might be cast off forever.”

So God allows these things to happen, but He also tells us that if we trust in Him, if we keep His Law, there is a victory over these things. So the wicked are going to prosper if we become {?} in effect, if we don’t grow in our sanctification, if we don’t exercise dominion, if we don’t bring things under the dominion of Christ.

So, the power of sin is really in the retreat of the Church, of Christ’s people from their responsibilities, then the wicked do flourish as the green bay tree, because Christ’s people have allowed them to do so.

[Audience] So, like the poverty of righteousness; is that explained the same way?

[Rushdoony] The…

[Audience] The poverty of righteous people.

[Rushdoony] Yes. Their poverty is due to the fact that, first, Christians have ceased to take care of one another. At one time, they were taking care of one another and the ungodly. Second, they pay no attention to God’s Laws, and third, when they have troubles and ails, they go to the Welfare Department before they go to the Lord. This is a sad fact.

I wrote a position paper on Social Security a few years back which was reprinted in one or two publications. And the sad fact is that all the letters I had attacking me for it came from people who started off by telling me they believed the Bible from cover to cover. But! This is our problem.

Any other questions or comments?

Yes.

[Audience] {?} The prosperity of the wicked looks better from the outside.

[Rushdoony] Yes, I think you’re right on that. The prosperity of the wicked does look better from the outside.

A pastor, with whom I was very close, we worked together on many things a good many years ago, this… the first church he pastored after seminary, he found that the richest couple in the community, extremely wealthy, and this was a major city, never spoke to each other. And he said he knew that was literally true, because on one occasion they called him in and he had dinner, and all the messages were relayed from husband to wife at opposite ends of the table by the servants. They had too much, uh, tied up in the property and their assets ever to separate, but they stayed together and went their separate ways. And he said it was the most uncomfortable evening he’d ever had. He never felt envious of them after he visited.

Yes.

[Audience] I spoke to a coach of a professional football team, who sat next to me on a plane, and I brought up the amount of money that they’re getting now and he said, yes but they’re green kids. And any time one of them signs a contract with all this money, there’s an army of parasites and leeches who swarm around them and he said, it’s a great struggle to keep them from being totally ruined.

[Rushdoony] Yes, ah, and what makes it harder is they enjoy playing lords bountiful. It appeals to their ego.

Well, if there are no further comments or questions, let us conclude with prayer.

We thank Thee our Father, for Thy Word and for the blessing of Thy Word, for the joy of Thy covenant and the provisions of Thy covenant. Oh Lord, our God, how rich Thou art unto us. And how poorly we lay hold on Thy promises. Give us grace to trust in Thy Word and to act on Thy Word and to grow strong in Thy Word and in Thy Spirit. And now, go in peace. God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost bless you and keep you, guide and protect you this day and always. Amen.