Offerings for the Festival of Harvest

²⁶ “At the Festival of Harvest,^[a] when you present the first of your new grain to the Lord, you must call an official day for holy assembly, and you may do no ordinary work on that day.

²² “You must celebrate the Festival of Harvest^[a] with the first crop of the wheat harvest, and celebrate the Festival of the Final Harvest^[b] at the end of the harvest season.

¹⁶ “Second, celebrate the Festival of Harvest,^[a] when you bring me the first crops of your harvest.

“Finally, celebrate the Festival of the Final Harvest^[b] at the end of the harvest season, when you have harvested all the crops from your fields.

¹⁰ “Give the following instructions to the people of Israel. When you enter the land I am giving you and you harvest its first crops, bring the priest a bundle of grain from the first cutting of your grain harvest.

²⁰ But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead. He is the first of a great harvest of all who have died.

The Festival of Harvest

⁹ “Count off seven weeks from when you first begin to cut the grain at the time of harvest. ¹⁰ Then celebrate the Festival of Harvest^[a] to honor the Lord your God. Bring him a voluntary offering in proportion to the blessings you have received from him. ¹¹ This is a time to celebrate before the Lord your God at the designated place of worship he will choose for his name to be honored. Celebrate with your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, the Levites from your towns, and the foreigners, orphans, and widows who live among you.

The Festival of Harvest

¹⁵ “From the day after the Sabbath—the day you bring the bundle of grain to be lifted up as a special offering—count off seven full weeks. ¹⁶ Keep counting until the day after the seventh Sabbath, fifty days later. Then present an offering of new grain to the Lord. ¹⁷ From wherever you live, bring two loaves of bread to be lifted up before the Lord as a special offering. Make these loaves from four quarts of choice flour, and bake them with yeast. They will be an offering to the Lord from the first of your crops. ¹⁸ Along with the bread, present seven one-year-old male lambs with no defects, one young bull, and two rams as burnt offerings to the Lord. These burnt offerings, together with the grain offerings and liquid offerings, will be a special gift, a pleasing aroma to the Lord. ¹⁹ Then you must offer one male goat as a sin offering and two one-year-old male lambs as a peace offering.

²⁰ “The priest will lift up the two lambs as a special offering to the Lord, together with the loaves representing the first of your crops. These offerings, which are holy to the Lord, belong to the priests. ²¹ That same day will be proclaimed an official day for holy assembly, a day on which you do no ordinary work. This is a permanent law for you, and it must be observed from generation to generation wherever you live.^[a]

¹⁸ He chose to give birth to us by giving us his true word. And we, out of all creation, became his prized possession.^[a]

The Holy Spirit Comes

2 On the day of Pentecost^[a] all the believers were meeting together in one place. ² Suddenly, there was a sound from heaven like the roaring of a mighty windstorm, and it filled the house where they were sitting. ³ Then, what looked like flames or tongues of fire appeared and settled on each of them. ⁴ And everyone present was filled with the Holy Spirit and began speaking in other languages,^[b] as the Holy Spirit gave them this ability.

⁵ At that time there were devout Jews from every nation living in Jerusalem. ⁶ When they heard the loud noise, everyone came running, and they were bewildered to hear their own languages being spoken by the believers.

⁷ They were completely amazed. “How can this be?” they exclaimed. “These people are all from Galilee, ⁸ and yet we hear them speaking in our own native languages! ⁹ Here we are—Parthians, Medes, Elamites, people from Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus, the province of Asia, ¹⁰ Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, and the areas of Libya around Cyrene, visitors from Rome ¹¹ (both Jews and converts to Judaism), Cretans, and Arabs. And we all hear these people speaking in our own languages about the wonderful things God has done!” ¹² They stood there amazed and perplexed. “What can this mean?” they asked each other.

¹³ But others in the crowd ridiculed them, saying, “They’re just drunk, that’s all!”

¹⁸ The first day of the festival will be an official day for holy assembly, and no ordinary work may be done on that day.