June 24: Why Pentecost, Part 2

“16You shall count fifty days to the day after the seventh Sabbath. Then you shall present a grain offering of new grain to the Lord.” –Leviticus 23.16
“41So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.” –Acts 2.41
At the conclusion of these two intimately connected feasts, God took for Himself the firstfruits of the people’s harvest. The firstfruits were given to represent the fact that the entire harvest would belong to the Lord.
On Pentecost thousands of men and women from all over the world became firstfruits to God. They were the first shafts of grain. Their salvation was Christ marking out that He was beginning the harvest. All who would come to Him through trusting in His death (Passover) and resurrection (the waving of the grain bundle) would most certainly be God’s just as much as the firstfruits were. Brothers and sisters in Christ, we are the remainder of the harvest which Christ is pulling in! And we are taking part right now in the harvest which Christ continues to carry out until all of God’s children are brought to Him.
1. How does the picture of a harvest affect the way in which you view God building His church?
2. How and why should it comfort us that God has set aside His harvest from the beginning (we Christians whom He is saving), and has promised to fully pull in that harvest?