Wednesday, June 7, 2006
Acts 2:1 When the Day of Pentecost had fully come . . .
TWO LOAVES MADE ONE
When Old Testament Israel celebrated the Feast of Weeks on the 50th day after The Passover, each family was to bring a wave offering from the new harvest of wheat. A "wave offering" was not burned in the Temple courts but held high in thanksgiving -- "waved" before the LORD.
Yet the people were not to bring sheaves of grain or cups of wheat for this offering. They were to take from their new wheat, the first-fruits of the harvest, and bake two loaves of bread. In the temple courts these loaves were then held up in thanksgiving to God. The harvest meant daily food, daily bread.
The greater harvest to come -- the one that would begin on the Pentecost that followed the Passover when the Lamb of God was offered for the sins of the world -- that harvest of souls would also involve two.
For these two loaves were symbols of the two bodies from which the church was to be formed, the Jews and the Gentiles. Jesus said He came first to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, the Jews. But He also said, "I have other sheep, that are not of this fold; I must bring them also So there shall be one flock . . ." (John 10:16). He was referring to the Gentiles.
As the Apostle Paul says, "For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body" (1 Cor. 12:13). That is the true baptism of the Holy Spirit. One loaf. One through faith in Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ of God.
May we each, by the power of Christ's own love, live out this truth in the church family in which the Holy Spirit has placed us.
