Shavuot: A Bride for the Beloved

There’s a different kind of atmosphere that settles over Jerusalem during festival times. It’s like there’s something tangible, something sparkling and exceptional in the air. The Orthodox Jews proudly dress in their special festival clothes and make their daily trips to the Western Wall for prayer with added gaiety. Groups of youngsters break out in spontaneous song in the streets, giving voice to their love for the One who never slumbers nor sleeps as He watches over Israel. There is a sense of expectation, of boundless joy as Jerusalem prepares herself for a festival. Well, that is of course if it is one of the happy festivals. And Shavuot definitely falls into that category. Happy, glorious, beautiful. 

As the afternoon before Shavuot progresses, the frantic commotion in the city dies down. The street cafes and shops close their doors. Last-minute shoppers hurry home on the last train or bus. Just before sundown, the sound of the shofar echoes through Jerusalem and it’s as if the entire city exhales the last bits of stress, tension and responsibility of everyday life to usher in the feast. 

Wives and mothers cooked all day to prepare a meal fit for a king—it is, after all, a festival. Family and friends gather for a feast of the best dairy treats Israel has to offer and dine on a menu of quiches, pastries, salads and cheesecake.

Wives and mothers had cooked all day to prepare a meal fit for a king. It is, after all, a special occasion. Family and friends gather and sit down to a feast of the best dairy treats that Israel has to offer and indulge in a menu of the most delicious quiches, cheese pies, cream puffs, salads and, of course, cheesecake. But why all the dairy on the Shavuot menu, you ask? Interestingly, no one really has a definitive answer. Some speculate that it might be related to Israel’s honorific as the Land of Milk and Honey, but even they aren’t entirely sure.

Then, after the last piece of quiche has been eaten and the last slice of cheesecake consumed, comes the all-night Torah study. Shavuot commemorates a watershed moment in Jewish history: God giving His instructions—the Torah (Gen.–Deut.)—to Israel at Mount Sinai some 3,300 years ago. And today, the descendants of those who stood around the shaking mountain mark the holiday by spending the evening wide awake pouring over God’s heart, His instructions, the Torah. But why the all-night study session? Well, Jewish tradition teaches that the Israelites overslept on the morning of Shavuot and that Moses had to wake them up to keep their appointment with God. Staying awake and studying Torah is therefore a type of penance, a way to ensure they never miss another appointment with God.

After a night of Torah study, a throng of tired Jerusalemites wrapped in prayer shawls pour from synagogues and front doors to flock to the Western Wall for prayers at dawn to thank God for the gift, for the beauty, for the delight of His Torah. On any normal Shavuot, up to 80,000 people gather in the shadow of the only remaining physical structure where the two Temples once stood. It’s a breathtaking sight: a sea of brilliant white as men wrapped in their prayer shawls pray to the God of the universe. 

But let’s just back up here for a second. Shavuot? Traditionally, we know Shavuot as Pentecost, the day on which Jesus’ disciples were all gathered in the upper room and Jesus’s promise of sending us a Helper, a Comforter and a Best Friend was fulfilled when the Holy Spirit was poured out. Shavuot and Pentacost is one and the same. On Shavuot, God turned a group of cowering, timid men and women into fearless witnesses. That was the Shavuot that changed the history of mankind, the Shavuot on which the Spirit of God who raised Jesus from the dead came to make His home in us and the Shavuot on which the Church was born. But there was also another significant Shavuot: the first one, the Shavuot that started it all.

But before we get to that, let’s put Shavuot or Pentecost in its context. Our journey through the seven feasts of the Lord which God gave to Moses in Leviticus 23 started with Passover. On the very first Passover, Israel was freed from slavery in Egypt and the salvation of a people was secured by the blood of the Passover lambs. And then, thousands of years later, Jesus was crucified on Passover to become our perfect, spotless Passover (1 Cor. 5:7). And once again, the salvation of a people was secured by blood. But this time, it was the salvation not only for Israel but for all the people of the earth, the salvation was from slavery to sin and death and destruction, and the blood was that of Jesus. Passover is therefore synonymous with the death of Jesus as our Passover Lamb for our salvation through His blood.

Then, for three of the seven days of the Feast of Unleavened Bread—the second of the seven feasts of the Lord—Jesus was in the tomb. Leaven represents sin, death and decay. At the opposite end of the spectrum, we have Jesus, who is holy, pure and sinless. His life—and also His sacrifice—was untouched by the curse of sin, untouched by death and decay, untouched by the leaven that corrupts and destroys. The Feast of Unleavened Bread is therefore synonymous with Jesus who was buried and His sinless victory over death and decay in the grave.

The Feast of Firstfruits—the third of the seven feasts of the Lord—celebrates the bringing of the first portion, the first few sheaves of the harvest to the Temple as an investment, a sign, a promise of the full, abundant harvest to come. And on the Feast of Firstfruits, Jesus was raised from the dead as that first portion of the harvest, as the firstborn of God’s family, as an investment, a sign, a promise of the full, abundant harvest of the sons and daughters of God to come. This feast is thus synonymous with the resurrection of Jesus as the first fruit and us are the full harvest of sons and daughters of God to come.

Now, if Jesus stands as the central message in each of the seven feasts…

If the festivals are a shadow, a picture and a prophecy of God’s plan for the salvation of mankind…

If we keep in mind that this is a cycle of feasts, with each building on the preceding one, with each of the seven feasts standing as one aspect of what Jesus would and will do and would and will be for us…

If He died on Passover, if He was in the grave on Unleavened Bread and rose on Firstfruits…

Then it is only obvious that the next episode in God’s plan for the salvation of mankind, the next aspect of what Jesus would do would come would occur on the next feast, the fourth one. And so it was.

The First Shavuot

In Leviticus 23:16, God instructs the Israelites via Moses to count seven weeks, or 50 days, from Passover to reach the beginning of the next festival, the fourth festival. The name of that feast, Shavuot, which simply means “weeks” in Hebrew, is thus chronological, describing the timespan between one festival to the next. It also highlights the close correlation between the two feasts. The name Pentecost is also chronological and is simply a transliteration of the Greek word pentekostos, which means fiftieth day.

But why are the seven weeks or the 50 days important? So important, in fact, the feast is named for it? There is a lot of depth to that 50-day timeframe, a period known as the “Counting of the Omer,” but I want to focus on one aspect in particular.

To say that a lot happened during the 50 days between the very first Passover and the very first Shavuot is a bit of an understatement. For one thing, Israel went from a bedraggled horde of former slaves to God’s chosen, precious possession, the apple of His eye. That’s quite the progression in status, wouldn’t you say? But there’s more.

The exodus from Egypt came after Israel had spent almost half a century among the Egyptians with no one to teach them about the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Oh, they would have known about Him, about the awesome things He did for their ancestors. But an intimate relationship? Probably not. The long and the short? Moses’ people did not know who God was. They had no idea of ​​His omnipotence, His love, His greatness and His faithfulness. And so, after He freed them from slavery, God took them on a 50-day journey of preparation, a journey during which He introduced Himself to a bunch of former slaves who would soon be Israel. First, he stayed the hand of the Angel of Death, who passed over Moses and his people during Passover. Then, He arranged for the wealth of neighbors to be carried out of Egypt with them. At the Red Sea, He split the waters in two and Israel walked through what should have been certain drowning, only to turn around and see the might of Egypt consumed by a watery grave. Then He provided food—nothing short of bread from heaven. Water bubbled out of the rock. He offered shade by day, and at night, they slept tucked into His fiery presence. Miracle upon miracle unfolded right before Israel’s eyes. And all these miracles were necessary, crucial to Israel’s freedom, salvation and survival. 

But there was also something else. Through each of these miracles, God introduced Himself to a people who did not know Him yet.

In the Passover Lamb, the wealth of Egypt, the dry path through the Red Sea, the bread from heaven, the water from the rock, the shadow by day and the warmth by night, Israel came to know God as the One who protects them, delivers them, sets them free, redeems them and provides for them. God introduced Himself to Israel as their only Protector, Savior, Redeemer and Provider. It’s almost like Him saying, “Hello, this is who I am. This is what I do. This is how I work. And this is what you can expect from Me.”

But the most important, the most personal of encounters and the most intimate way in which God introduced Himself took place 50 days after the Passover and the exodus from Egypt. And that meeting took place on Shavuot at the foot of Mount Sinai.

While Israel pitched their tents in the shadow of the mountain, God instructed Moses, “Go to the people and consecrate them today and tomorrow, and let them wash their clothes. And let them be ready for the third day. For on the third day the Lord will come down upon Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people” (Exod. 19:10). 

Can you imagine the excitement, the anticipation—but also the dread? If the God of the Universe, the One who created heaven and earth, the Righteous Judge, the One before whose presence and holiness the most righteous men in the Bible simply dissolved into a puddle of stammering nothing, the One whose face no man can see lest he dies were to tell you that He would appear to you, how would you react? With excitement, yes. With anticipation, absolutely. But more than a little part of me would also be absolutely terrified. And perhaps that is how the Israelites felt for three days as they consecrated themselves for their meeting with God. 

The big day finally arrived and God descended on the mountain with all His might. According to Exodus 19, the morning dawned with peals of thunder, lightning streaks through a blanket of thick, dark cloud, deafening booms of a trumpet, God’s presence covering Mount Sinai with smoke like that of a furnace and the mountain quaking greatly. It was an awesome sight. So awesome, in fact, that the people were petrified. No man could draw close to such a holy, awesome God, they reasoned. And therefore begged Moses to act as their middleman, to listen to what God had to say on their behalf and then to relay His instructions to them. 

So it was that the Israelites remained afar off, while Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was, to meet with the Almighty and receive His instructions that would govern every detail of every aspect of Israel’s lives going forward. 

When Moses returned, he “told the people all the words of the Lord and all the judgments,” (Exod. 24:3). And Israel responded with one of the most famous phrases in the Torah: na’aseh v’nishma—“We will do and we will hear/understand” (see v. 7).

If you think about it, there is almost an ominous tone about all of it—the smoke and the thunder, the fire and the fear, followed by God’s instructions through Moses of what Israel was to do and never to do. Except that’s not really how it happened. Yes, on the morning of Shavuot God put His might on display for Israel to get a glimpse of how glorious, how awesome, how holy, how far above anything they know and understand He is. Not so that they would fear and cower before Him as a cruel dictator. Rather so that they would know Him as their Savior, their Deliverer, their Provider and the One who loves them unconditionally, but also as the Awesome and Terrible One that is not to be trifled with.

They had to know God in that way because He was about to enter into a very special covenant with Israel, to forge a relationship that has never existed between God and sinful man. But before He did that, He wanted them to gain a deeper understanding of their covenant partner. 

Traditionally, we tend to think of what happened on Mount Sinai on that first Shavuot as God giving Israel the law. Interestingly, the Jewish people don’t see it that way. On Shavuot, Israel commemorates hearing the voice of the Lord directly for the first time telling them—and through them all mankind—exactly who He is and what is required to be in relationship with Him. They remember that God shared His heart with them about what He desires, what He likes and what pleases Him. Yes, He gave them the Torah, but Torah doesn’t translate to law or even to commandments. It simply means “instructions.” Instructions for what, you may ask. Ah that is where things get interesting. And romantic…

What played out on that first Shavuot morning at the foot of Mount Sinai was not a legalistic, dry ceremony full of dos and don’ts. At Mount Sinai, God entered into a relationship of marriage with Israel. That’s why we read in Isaiah, Jeremiah and Hosea that God refers to Israel as an unfaithful wife who commits adultery, and why Jews today still refer to God as the Beloved. Shavuot, Sinai was a marriage with God as the Groom and Israel as the bride. And the Torah? The Torah was a ketubah, a marriage contract, the instructions of how Israel was to live out that marriage relationship with God, their Beloved. Through the Torah, the God of the universe shared His heart about what He desires, what He likes, what His wishes are, what pleases Him and what He despises. 

That’s big. Massive. And that is why that first Shavuot still stands as a watershed moment in the history of Israel and is observed to this day as the birthday of Judaism. Romantic isn’t it?

But the tale of the very first Shavuot didn’t end there. We all know the rest of the story. While Moses spent time with God on the mountain, receiving His instructions about how Israel was to live in a marriage relationship with God, things in the camp of Israel deteriorated to the point of chaos. First, a week passed. Then two—with no sign of Moses. Then another week passed. And then another. And in their terrible humanity, Israel did doing a terribly human thing. They fall into fear. Moses—the man who had heard from and spoke to God on their behalf, the one who bested Pharaoh, called down the Ten Plagues on God’s say-so, led them through the Red Sea while the mightiest army in the world drowned, organized for drinking water, bread from heaven and shade by day and fire by night—was suddenly gone, leaving them stranded slap bang in the middle of an unforgiving wilderness. And yes, Israel surely knew that the hand of God had orchestrated all the miracles, but who would approach God, intercede with Him, pray to Him and ultimately get what Israel wanted? Moses was their connection to God, and without him, well, they might as well have lost God.

And so they call on the next-in-command—Aaron—to address their terrible human fear in a terribly human way: by fashioning gods they could see, possibly like the ones they knew in Egypt.

Things deteriorated quickly after that. Still on the mountain, God told Moses all about Israel’s sin down below, threatening to wipe them out and start anew with His faithful servant. God’s anger here wasn’t merely that of a God catching His servants in an act of betrayal and rebellion. There’s much more. God’s anger was that of a Beloved subjected to the horror of His unfaithful wife—who swore fidelity as little as 40 days before—committing adultery.

Yet faithful Moses interceded with God and pleaded for the lives of His bride—and God relented. Moses then headed back down the mountain to the camp of Israel, catching the people in the throes of idolatry and adultery. In his anger, he smashed the stone tablets engraved with the ketubah or marriage contract between God and Israel and destroyed the Golden Calf. Then, he presented Israel, God’s bride, with an ultimatum: choose either for God or against Him. Those who chose God—the sons of the tribe of Levi, the Bible tells us—received a fearsome command from Moses: “Get ready for war. Take your sword in your hand and go from one entrance of the camp to the other entrance, and kill everyone—brother, son, friend, or neighbor—who is against God.” The sons of Levi showed radical obedience and 3,000 Israelites perished that day (Ex. 32:26–28).

All things considered, the first Shavuot was an event that would change the course of history—and the fate of humanity—forever. It commemorates Israel hearing the voice of God, God taking Israel as His wife, His beloved, His treasure and provides the Torah, the marriage contract, the instructions for how to live in covenant with their Beloved. It’s the day on which the God of the universe shared His heart about what He desires, what He likes, what His wishes are, what pleases Him and what He despises. But Shavuot also recalls Israel’s adultery with the Golden Calf and the consequences of an unfaithful bride with the death of 3,000 from Israel. A drastic, eventful day, I would say. But it was not the last time that God did something so radical, so extreme and so romantic…

Pentecost 

Then, about 1,500 years later, there was another such drastic, eventful Shavuot that would change the course of human history forever. It’s the Shavuot we know as Pentecost.

We read about this Shavuot in Acts 1 and 2. It was 50 days after Passover, after the crucifixion and the resurrection. Fifty days after the world tilted on its axis when the Son of God gave up His life as the perfect Passover Lamb on Passover so that the Angel of Death would pass us over forever. After Jesus was in the grave for three days during the Feast of Unleavened Bread and then rose on Firstfruits to conquer death forever and make us sons and daughters of the Living God. After Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene, Peter, John, Thomas and many others. After all that.

Jesus’ commission on earth was fulfilled and He was on His way back to His Father to sit at the right hand of God where He would intercede for us as our High Priest forever. But before He ascended to heaven, He instructed His disciples to wait in Jerusalem for the Father’s promise, for what the Father would do next, for the next episode in God’s plan for the salvation of mankind. And that’s what they did. Exactly 50 days after Passover—on Shavuot—all the disciples were gathered in the Upper Room when they heard a great roar from heaven, like a strong, driving wind, and saw tongues of fire divided and settling on each of them. Can you imagine that strange, unearthly phenomenon?

But for the Jewish men and women who were gathered in the Upper Room that Shavuot day, the phenomenon was actually not that strange. The roar from heaven, the flashing fire and the howling wind were, after all, not strange phenomena in Israel’s history. For the Jewish men and women in the Upper Room, it was reminiscent of the first Shavuot, 1,500 years ago, when their great, great, great, great, grandparents stood at the foot of Mount Sinai. It reminded of the day when God through the Torah, through the marriage contract or instructions, shared His heart with Israel about what He desires, what He likes, what His wishes are, what pleases Him and what He despises.

And then, on that Shavuot, 1,500 years after the first one, God showed up again. But this time He would not write His instructions, His heart, His wishes for how to live with Him in a covenant relationship on stone tables. On this Shavuot, He would begin to fulfill His promise in Jeremiah 31:33: “But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.”

Because this time, on this Shavuot, God came to share His marriage contract or instructions, His heart, with the bride of Jesus, with all those who through Jesus would be part of the new covenant that the Bridegroom made on Passover with His blood and His body. And this time, the page on which He came to write His instructions for how to live in a covenant relationship with the Beloved were not stone tablets. It was our hearts.

But how? How would our hearts—which in their natural state are as hard as stone tablets—become soft enough to make what God desires, what He likes, His wishes and what pleases Him our own? Well, on that Shavuot, God came to do just that by sending us a Helper, an Advocate, a Comforter, an Intercessor, a Strengthener and a Guide in the form of our best friend, the Spirit of the Truth, the Holy Spirit, which Jesus specifically promised will guide us into the whole truth (John 16:13) with the same immeasurable power and ability with which He raised Jesus from the dead. And He—the Helper, the Intercessor, the Comforter, the Intercessor, the Strengthener, the Leader, the Spirit of Truth, the Holy Spirit—kneads and works on our hearts of stone until we will, can, want to live as our Bridegroom desires.

God’s strategy and the way in which that strategy progresses is staggeringly beautiful. On Passover, the Passover Lamb is slaughtered to save us from eternal death, and through His blood and His body, we become part of the covenant. And 50 days later, He sends us the way, the ability to live in this covenant with our Bridegroom in a way that pleases Him. Because left to ourselves, on our own, we are doomed to failure.

But there is something else, another fulfillment of the mirror image that we see in the first Shavuot. Acts 2:4–6 explains what happened after the howling wind and tongues of fire. “And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. And there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men, from every nation under heaven. And when this sound occurred, the multitude came together, and were confused, because everyone heard them speak in his own language.” 

There’s something important in these verses that I always missed, simply because I was not aware of the historical context. During the time of Jesus, Jerusalem—the place where the Temple of God stood—was the heartbeat of Jewish society. However, only a small percentage of Jews actually lived in Jerusalem. In fact, the vast majority of the Jewish population was spread across the known world, with communities from Rome to Alexandria in Egypt to Tarsus in modern-day Turkey. With that context in mind, there is an important question that arises from Acts 2:4–6: why were all the religious Jews from all the nations under the sun in Jerusalem at that particular time? If the vast majority of the Jewish population was scattered across the known world with only a small percentage calling Jerusalem home, what were they all doing in the City of Gold at that particular time?

Well, in Deuteronomy 16:16, God commands that every Jewish man must appear before His presence in the Temple in Jerusalem three times per year. However, the three times cannot simply be three arbitrary dates as each person sees fit. God Himself chose three specific moadim or festivals, three exact agreed-upon times and called them His three Pilgrim Festivals: Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot or the Feast of Tabernacles. On each of these three festivals, every Jewish man, regardless of where he lived, had to go to Jerusalem to obey God’s command to appear before His face in the Temple. These Pilgrim Festivals were times of great merriment, joy and fellowship as families, old friends and perfect strangers gathered in Jerusalem for the unspeakable privilege of worshiping the God of the Universe—at His invitation, of course. For many, the road to Jerusalem was long, difficult and dangerous, especially on foot, but when God invites you to spend time with Him, you don’t say no. However, because Passover and Shavuot were only 50 days apart, it didn’t make sense to walk the long, difficult and dangerous road between your home to Jerusalem and back again twice in 50 days. And so the majority of pilgrims simply stayed in Jerusalem from right before Passover to right after Shavuot, meaning that from right before Passover to right after Shavuot, Jerusalem would be bursting at the seams, with the population skyrocketing from about 200,000 to over a million people.

So it was, year after year after year, generation upon generation upon generation. The implication? For Shavuot, God set the scene just so that Jerusalem would be packed with Jews there to worship Him, their hearts longing for Him. And it was those longing, yearning hearts that He used to serve as the pages on which He wrote His instructions, His heart, His wishes for how to live with Him in a covenant relationship—just as He promised in Jeremiah 31:33. On that Shavuot, or Pentecost as we have come to know it, He came to pour out His Spirit into these longing, yearning hearts.

Moreover, God made sure that everyone—every Jew from every nation under the sun—could hear the Good News in their mother tongue, the language in which they were born, as the disciples began to speak in a multitude of tongues ​​as the Holy Spirit inspired them. Hear how beautifully Acts 2:7–12 puts it: “Then they were all amazed and marveled, saying to one another, ‘Look, are not all these who speak Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each in our own language in which we were born? Parthians and Medes and Elamites, those dwelling in Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya adjoining Cyrene, visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—we hear them speaking in our own tongues the wonderful works of God.’ So they were all amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, ‘Whatever could this mean?’”

And this, we know, was precisely the invitation that Peter needed to share the Good News with every Jew from every nation under the sun who came to seek God in Jerusalem with a longing heart.

And then, in Acts 2:41b, we read what effect the Good News had on those yearning hearts: “That day about three thousand souls were added to them.” On Shavuot, 3,000 of the Jews from every nation under the sun who gathered in Jerusalem for the feast were saved. It’s amazing, definitely. But why does Luke find it so important to point out that it was specifically 3,000 people? Remember the very first Shavuot when Israel became God’s bride at the foot of Mount Sinai, only to commit adultery with the Golden Calf soon after? On the very first Shavuot, Moses gave Israel, God’s bride, an ultimatum: choose either for God or against Him. On the very first Shavuot, 3,000 from Israel chose against God and died. But then, 1,500 years later, the God of salvation showed up again. On that Shavuot, 3,000 from Israel chose God and lived.

There’s something else. On the first Shavuot morning at the foot of Mount Sinai, God took Israel as His bride with the Torah as the ketubah, the marriage contract, the instructions of how Israel had to live out that marriage relationship with God, their Beloved, engraved on stone tablets.

Then, about 1,500 years later, God showed up again on Shavuot. He showed up again to share a ketubah, a marriage contract, the instructions for a marriage relationship. But this time, the marriage was not between Him and Israel. It was between the Bridegroom, Jesus, and His bride, us, everyone who through Jesus would be part of the New Covenant that the Bridegroom came to ratify for us 50 days before on Passover with His blood and His body, a marriage that will be fulfilled when the Bridegroom comes again for His clean, spotless bride. And how do we become this clean, spotless bride? By following His instructions, His heart, His wishes for how to live with Him in a covenant relationship. On Shavuot, He writes those instructions, what He desires, what He likes, what His wishes are, what pleases Him and what He despises, on our hearts and pours out the Holy Spirit to guide us into all truth with the same immeasurable power and ability with which He raised Jesus from the dead. And He—the Holy Spirit—kneads our hearts of stone until we will, can, want to live as our Bridegroom desires. Which means, on that Shavuot 2,000 years ago, or Pentecost as we know it now, the Church, the bride of Jesus, was born—out of Israel. And that is why that Shavuot still stands today as a landmark moment in the history of the Church as the day on which the Church was born, as the Church’s birthday. Which means that Judaism and the Church, Israel and the church, share a birthday.

Can you see how closely interwoven the bond between the Church and Israel actually is? After all, we are the two groups with whom the God of the universe made a specific and special covenant and requires us to live with Him in that covenant relationship—as the beloved, as a bride. Romantic, huh?

Romance and Ruth

I know. I’ve been harping about romance and Shavuot on and on. Why? Well, it’s a bit of a story, really. Shavuot takes place at the beginning of the Israeli summer, when everything is lush and green after the winter rains. It’s the time of the wheat harvest, with acres of golden fields ripening all over the land. The weather is glorious, even for someone who hates summer—blue skies with enough of a breeze to ward off the stifling heat. And the pomegranate trees are in full bloom…It starts as a splash of color that shyly peaks from behind spring’s new leaves. And then, one morning, almost as if overnight, Jerusalem is filled with bright pomegranate blossoms, the city adorned in a bright red robe. Like thousands of tiny bright red bells, pomegranate blossoms paint patches of scarlet all over the city like harbingers, announcing the arrival of Shavuot. Every year, the City of the Great King blooms in scarlet glory as we commemorate the day Jesus sent His Spirit to ignite the hearts of a group of cowering followers so that they can ignite the world with the message that there is a Redeemer who saves. And today, more than 2,000 years later, that same Holy Spirit is still igniting hearts with the Good News of that very Redeemer who saves. But why does Jerusalem deck herself out in the most beautiful garment of bright red pomegranate blossoms when we remember the coming of the Holy Spirit?

Well, from May through June, July and August, these blossoms ripen and the bright red bells turn into small, green fruit, right before these small, green fruit also ripen through the summer months until September for the fifth festival, Yom Teruah or the Feast of Trumpets, when Jerusalem finally overflows with plump, cheeky clusters of pomegranates.

Beautiful, yes. But why important? See, the pomegranate is the fruit of the bride, each adorned with a perfect crown, a symbol—or rather a promise—of a bride who is ready, ripe and adorned for her Heavenly Bridegroom to fetch her. And the Feast of Trumpets, when the streets of Jerusalem overflow with plump, ripe pomegranates, is the first feast that Jesus has yet to fulfill, the feast that will be fulfilled when He returns to fetch His bride. Which is why the pomegranates—the fruit of the bride—are ripe every year in time for the feast anticipating the Bridegroom’s return for His bride.

Again, beautiful, yes. But what does that have to do with Shavuot or Pentecost? Well, if the pomegranate is the fruit of the bride, if the ripe fruit adorned with a perfect crown is the symbol and promise of the bride, then every scarlet bell of a pomegranate blossom that begins to bloom over Pentecost or Shavuot is a symbol of a bride preparing herself so that she can be ready, ripe and beautiful for the day when He comes to fetch her for Himself. And when do the bright red pomegranate blossom bells bloom? Now! To announce the festival of Shavuot. And the pomegranate blossoms themselves? That’s us! The bride preparing herself for her Bridegroom, the bride getting ready and clothing herself out for the biggest wedding feast of all time! And who did Jesus send to help the bride prepare herself? The Holy Spirit. And when was the Holy Spirit given? On Shavuot or Pentecost, when Jerusalem is decked out in a bright red robe of pomegranate blossoms.

See how even nature proclaims God’s salvation plan as it unfolds in His appointed times, His festivals?

That’s why I often stop at every second pomegranate tree to gaze up in wonder at the blossoms, the promises that bloom so abundantly. And I choose to remember: He is coming. Our Bridegroom, the One who loves us so dearly, is coming soon to collect us, His bride. And then, when He comes, He will make all things new. I choose to remember that despite the hurt and sorrow and disappointment and loss, everything is already okay. Jesus is enough, all, sufficient, perfect love, more than we can hope or dream. And until He comes, you and I as pomegranate blossoms of brides-to-be will look to the One who our Bridegroom sent to us on Shavuot—the Holy Spirit—to help us prepare, mature, get ready until we finally turn from bright pomegranate blossoms into the red, ripe pomegranate fruit, ready for the wedding.

Which is why Shavuot is all about romance. The festival tells the story of a Bridegroom, the original, true Romantic who is passionately in love with the one His heart longs for, His bride. Shavuot tells the story of Jesus and His beloved: you. And that’s where the story of Ruth—one of the greatest love stories in the Bible—comes in. Interestingly, all of Israel reads the book of Ruth on Shavuot. But why Ruth? What does the story of a widow from Moab have to do with a festival that commemorates the events at Mount Sinai—and for us, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit? At first glance, nothing. But if you look deeper, everything.

Ruth’s story is one of the most beloved stories in the Bible—and for good reason. A daughter from the nobility of Moab marries a wealthy young man who fled to her country with his parents and his brother to escape the grip of drought in Bethlehem. But then the young Moabite princess’s father-in-law, brother-in-law and husband die in quick succession. All that remains of the original family of four from Bethlehem is her mother-in-law. Ruth’s whole life was in Moab. She came from a wealthy family who could easily arrange a good second marriage for her with a distinguished young Moabite. But instead, the young widow chose to turn her back on her people, gods, culture and land, bidding farewell to a future full of predictable, safe and guaranteed abundance to follow her Israelite mother-in-law back to Bethlehem to an unknown future filled with uncertainty and hardly enough with the now familiar words, “For wherever you go, I will go; and wherever you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God, my God” (Ruth 1:16).

After the impoverished pair arrived in Bethlehem, Ruth went straight to the fields to glean the ears of grain the reapers dropped. There, she caught the eye of wealthy Boaz—in whose field she happened to be gleaning and who happened to be her kinsman-redeemer. Boaz married Ruth and rescued her and Naomi from an existence of despair, uncertainty and barely enough, giving them a future full of joy, security, comfort, prosperity and guaranteed abundance. Naomi was blessed with a grandchild. And the young widow from Moab became the great-grandmother of King David.

Devastating tragedy. Epic romance. And a fiery, redemptive love. No wonder the story of Ruth is such a favorite. Still, the question remains: what is the connection between Ruth and Shavuot?

Both Passover and Shavuot have an agricultural connection. Passover marks the beginning of the barley harvest, while the wheat is ripe and ready in time for Shavuot. On the second day of Passover, Israel brought the first omer, a biblical measure, of the barley as an offering to the Temple, while Shavuot meant a firstfruits offering of the wheat harvest. In the 50 days between Passover and Shavuot, Israel goes from the barley harvest to the wheat harvest.

We read that Ruth and Naomi arrived in Bethlehem during the barley harvest—so right around Passover. We also read in Ruth 2:23 that Ruth “stayed close by the young women of Boaz, to glean until the end of barley harvest and wheat harvest.”

This means that the story of Ruth took place during the 50 days between Passover and Shavuot, with the love story of Ruth and Boaz—and ultimately their marriage—coinciding with Shavuot.

But there’s more. The Jewish people see Ruth as the bride from the heathen nations who turned her back on her people, her false gods and her world to become part of the Jewish nation to follow the one true God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. 

Ruth chose to submit to the instructions, to the marriage relationship with a man from Israel. And so, her kinsman-redeemer and her groom, Boaz, rescued her from an existence of despair, uncertainty and barely enough, giving her a life full of joy, security, comfort, prosperity and guaranteed abundance. By marrying Boaz, her Jewish redeemer, Ruth became part of the covenant relationship that God made with Israel at Sinai on Shavuot. Because Ruth was a Moabite, because she was not part of Israel, she was not entitled to all the blessings contained in that covenant. But her marriage to her Jewish bridegroom changed things. Ruth’s marriage to her Jewish bridegroom made her part of Israel, entitled to all the blessings contained in a covenant with the almighty God of the universe. You could almost say that Ruth was grafted into Israel, into the marriage relationship with God—because of the one who made her eligible.

Ruth was grafted into Israel…In exactly the same way you and I are grafted into Israel, through a marriage relationship and a covenant. Romans 11:17 puts it like this: “And you, being a wild olive tree, were grafted in among them, and with them became a partaker of the root and fatness of the olive tree.” 

See, the story of Ruth is the story of you and me. It is the story of a bride who turned her back on her idols and the world to follow the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And so our Redeemer and our Bridegroom, Jesus, came to rescue us from an existence of despair, uncertainty and barely enough, giving us a life full of joy, security, comfort, prosperity and guaranteed abundance. Through our relationship with Jesus, our Jewish redeemer, we can enjoy all the benefits of a covenant with God. Just like Ruth, we are not entitled to all the blessings contained in that covenant. But our marriage to our Jewish Bridegroom changes things. Our marriage to our Jewish Bridegroom entitled us to all the blessings contained in a covenant with the almighty God of the universe. We are Ruth, the wild olive branch, grafted into the olive tree, into Israel, into the marriage relationship—because of the One who makes us eligible.

And this, right here, is possibly why Shavuot holds a special place in my heart. We live in a fallen world where romance and adventure and beauty are not really the building blocks of our daily lives. In fact, they are the out-of-the-ordinary, the rare treats we taste on occasion. Our daily lives are often, well, most of the time, a monotonous and what can feel like an arbitrary ticking off of the tasks on a daily to-do list: wake up tired, struggle to make yourself look respectable enough to appear in society, drop the kids off at school, brave rush hour traffic, work through your deadlines, attend 7,000 meetings, rush home, prepare dinner, fall into bed exhausted—and repeat for five days, with a slight variation on weekends to get to those things on your to-do list that you don’t have time for during the week. And that’s not even mentioning the trials and the tests and the wilderness seasons and the disappointments we face.

And before you know it, your life becomes equated to, reduced to this mere existence from one day to the next. Before you know it, you forget who you are, whose you are and that your life is anything but random, anything but boring and ordinary and pointless. 

Shavuot stands as proof and serves as a constant reminder. With that, precious child of Abba Father, today, on Shavuot, I’d like to remind you of the truth—whether you feel like it or not. You are the Beloved of the One who created the world and hung the stars in the sky, who calls them each by name. You are the Treasured One, the Handpicked, Desired, Longed For one of the One who holds the whole universe in His hands, the Commander of the Angel Armies of Heaven before whom every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that He is Lord. Right here, today, tomorrow morning when you wake up tired, you are living in the greatest love story of all times—with you as the Beloved, the Pursued One, the Great Love—whether you feel like it or not. And one day, your Bridegroom will come for you and all the monotony and the randomness and the mere existing from day to day and the trails and the tribulations and the wilderness and the testing seasons will all be worth it as you stand beside Him at the greatest marriage feast of all time. That is a promise. That is your inheritance. Because of your Kinsman-redeemer.

Precious child of Abba Father, let Shavuot remind you of this, let it fill your weary heart with wonder and excitement and expectation and hope. Let the blooming pomegranate blossoms remind you of the romance you are part of, of the romantic hero or heroine you are. And most importantly, let the little red blooming bells remind you of who your Bridegroom is.