The Weekend Bible Study - with Ronald L. Dart

The Lord our God spoke unto us in Horeb, saying, You have dwelt long enough in this mount:

Turn you, and take your journey, and go to the mount of the Amorites, and unto all the places near there, in the plain, in the hills, and in the lowland, and in the south, and by the sea side, to the land of the Canaanites, and unto Lebanon, unto the great river, the river Euphrates.

Behold, I have set the land before you: go in and possess the land which the Lord swore unto your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give unto them and to their descendants after them.

The holy days in Israel were prophetic, illustrating God's plan through annual cycles that reflected his work and intentions. Although the people of Old Testament times might not have fully grasped their significance, these holy days carry profound meaning for Christians today.

One of these, the Feast of Weeks or Pentecost and was a time to thank God for the bounty received. It required the firstfruits of the harvest to be offered to God before the harvest could be enjoyed. This act symbolized the beginning of a seven-week period of work, culminating in Pentecost. Although we may have distanced ourselves from these agricultural roots, Pentecost remains a festival of thanksgiving for the harvest.

The seven weeks leading up to Pentecost represent the Messiah's work—from his acceptance by God as the first of the firstfruits until his return and the establishment of his kingdom. This period was marked by labor, punctuated by rest, symbolized by the seven Sabbaths leading up to Pentecost.

In this prophetic scheme, these weeks highlight the long period of Christ's work gathering his firstfruits, culminating in his return. Join us as we delve deeper into these profound truths and explore their significance for Christians today.

Many people have called Pentecost the birthday of the New Testament Church. It has also been called a lot of other things down through the years. It has been called a harvest festival. It’s been called a celebration of the resurrection. It’s a celebration of the Holy Spirit. It’s been called the Feast of Weeks, the Feast of Firstfruits, and the name we generally use—the Feast of Pentecost, itself a curious little Greek word signifying that it is the fiftieth day. In the very beginning, though, Pentecost was a harvest festival. Let’s begin with the very earliest reference to the feast, found in the 23rd chapter of Exodus.

Hello everyone and welcome to the Christian Educational Ministries Weekend Bible Study. It is good to be with you and we thank you for being there and allowing us to make this weekly service possible.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve followed Ron Dart in taking a closer look at the Passover, the resurrection of Christ, and the beginning of the countdown to the Feast of Weeks or Pentecost. As we find commanded in Leviticus 23:

From the day after the Sabbath, the day you brought the sheaf of the wave offering, count off seven full weeks. Count off fifty days up to the day after the seventh Sabbath, and then present an offering of new grain…a wave offering of firstfruits to the Lord.

This weekend concludes the sixth of those seven weeks, so tonight we’ll join Mr. Dart in examining this time of year and its accompanying harvest—both of grain and of men.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, self-control: against such there is no law.

And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts. If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.

Referenced articles:

• Why Do We Use the Hebrew Calendar?
• The Hebrew Calendar (chapter from The Thread)

One of the first questions the scholars tend to ask is, Who wrote this book and when was it written? The Talmud refers to Samuel as the author of Ruth, but scholars, generally speaking, say: No, Samuel died before David became king and the way in which the author writes the genealogy in Ruth, chapter four—right at the end of the Book of Ruth—supposes that this whole lineage is well known to the people who are reading it. It talks about this child that is born and Naomi takes him, lays him in her lap, and cares for him. And the woman living there said, Naomi has a son, and they named him Obed. He was the father of Jesse, the father of David. This, then, is the family line of Perez. Perez was the father of Hezron, Hezron the father of Ram, Ram of Amminadab, and Amminadab the father of Nashon, Nashon the father of Salmon, Salmon the father of Boaz—who is the male lead in this play—and Boaz the father of Obed, who is the father of Jesse, and Jesse is the father of David. Now, what is this book about? Well it’s about David, as a matter of fact, about what leads up to him.

Sheep, grain, bread, salt, seeds. In the Gospels, Jesus uses many metaphors when describing both the harvest that is before us and our own roles as workers, bringing in that harvest.

Hello everyone, and welcome to the Christian Educational Ministries Weekend Bible Study. It is good to be with you and we thank you for being there and allowing us to make this weekly service possible.

Over the past few weeks, we've followed Ron Dart in taking a closer look at the Passover, the resurrection of Christ, and the beginning of the countdown to the Feast of Weeks or Pentecost. As we find commanded in Leviticus 23:

From the day after the Sabbath, the day you brought the sheaf of the wave offering, count off seven full weeks. Count off fifty days up to the day after the seventh Sabbath, and then present an offering of new grain […] a wave offering of firstfruits to the Lord.

This weekend concludes the third of those seven weeks, so tonight we'll join Mr. Dart in examining this time of year and its accompanying harvest—both of grain and of men.

It was just at the crack of dawn. First light of the new day was just starting to show over the top of the Golan Heights. Still too dark to see anything. The men in the boat fumbled around because they knew where their tackle was, they knew what the boat was like, they knew where everything was by hand, by touch. They had fished a lot at night, so they didn't have any problem with that.

But on the shore, off to one side, they could see a little fire burning. They had fished all night long, and they were frustrated because they hadn't caught a thing. And, you know, fishing the way they fished was fairly hard work. And nighttime for them was the time—with daylight coming, hope for catching a lot of fish was beginning to diminish. But that little fire was burning over there. Someone was moving around the fire, and a voice came out across the sea there, about some hundred yards or so away where they were.

"Boys, have you caught anything?"

And one of them put his hand to his mouth and says, "No!"

He said back, "You're fishing on the wrong side of the boat. Try the right side."

Now, that must have in itself been a little bit of frustrating advice to those fellows out there because they'd been professional fishermen, off and on, all their lives. And there's just not a whole lot of difference between the right side of the boat and the left side of the boat.

And one of them says, "There's no point in doing that."

He says, "Well, you had a better idea?"

He said, "No, I don't."

So they threw the net out the right side of the boat. And before they got anything done at all, the net began to get very heavy. There was a lot of vibration coming up the lines, and they realized they had gotten themselves a load of fish.

And about that time, John leaned over to Peter and said, "It's the Lord. It's the Lord."

And Peter, who had been fishing naked all night (it must have been pretty warm), grabbed something and put it on him and jumped in the water. They were only 100 yards offshore, so they rowed their boat to shore, dragged the net behind them and up on shore, and they got counted over 160 fish they had in that net.

But Jesus already had a fire going, had fish propped up against it, cooking away; and he'd taken bread and put it up, toasting the bread against the fire; and so they had breakfast already well underway.

After breakfast, Jesus said to Peter (and the way I read the account, I think it was kind of privately when he said it, perhaps walking along the shore after breakfast as the sun was beginning to come up), "Simon, son of Jonas, do you love me more than these?"

And Peter said, "Lord, you know I love you."

And Jesus replied, "Feed my lambs."

He walked a little further along, and he turned again and he said, "Simon, son of Jonas, do you truly love me?"

And he said, "Yes, Lord, you know I love you."

And Jesus fixed him with a glaze in his eyes and says, "Feed my sheep."

And then finally he said to him the third time, "Simon, son of Jonas, do you love me?"

And Peter was grieved because he said it to him the third time, and I can understand why he might have been. And he said, "Lord, you know everything. You know I love you."

And Jesus said, "Feed my sheep."

Now, I can understand why Peter was grieved, but here's my question for you today (my first question of many): Why did Jesus call his love into question? Why was it questionable? Was it perhaps that he had denied the Lord three times? Most commentators who read this, most preachers who preach on it, make that comparison just like that. Peter denied Christ three times. Christ made him affirm his love back to Christ three times. There was reason for it.

You know, to deny your best friend, your closest friend, is a betrayal. And Peter had in every sense betrayed Christ. His love certainly could be called into question, and so Jesus on the shores of the Sea of Galilee did so.

"Simon, son of Jonas, do you love me?"

And now my next question for you: What if Jesus had asked you the same question three times?

"Robert, do you love me? Feed my lambs."

"James, do you love me? Feed my sheep."

"Shirley, do you love me? Feed my lambs."

Would it cross your mind to wonder why Jesus would need to ask you that question? Why? I mean, "Do you love me? Do you love me? Do you love me?"

Because you do have to understand, I hope, that there are more ways to betray somebody or to deny somebody than the way Peter did. There are other ways to do it, as well.

I don't doubt for a moment that Peter loved Jesus. I mean, how could you not love a man like him after having spent this amount of time with him? When you read about Jesus, you see the character of the man, you see the charisma of the man, the love of the man. And you remember that Peter and all these guys had been up and down every road in Galilee and Judea with him. They'd camped out on the roadside at night. They'd eaten from the same pot so many times they couldn't even count them. They shared the same bread. They passed it around together. They actually slept next to each other on the ground.

How, after all that period of time, would Peter not love Jesus? I don't think there's much of a question as to how that would be so.

But we only know Jesus secondhand. We haven't had that chance. We haven't had that time. How could we possibly know Jesus like Peter did to love him as Peter loved him? But Jesus had to ask him anyway.

So I suppose he would ask me, as well.

"Ronald Dart, do you love me?"

And it's a painful question. But it's a question I have to answer. And so do you.

"Do you love me?"

We rarely give very much thought to these days between Passover and Pentecost; but in ancient times, this was a time of very hard work. These are weeks of harvest that we are now going through. What do the weeks between Passover and Pentecost really mean? And what does an ancient agricultural rhythm have to do with the Church today?