Happy New Year! …In September?
Café Menu for Monday, October 13, 2014
Today’s Special is: Bring on the Trumpets!
Carefully prepared just for you by your friend, Dallas Paetzold
Main Ingredient:
Speak to the sons of Israel, saying, ‘In the seventh month on the first of the month you shall have a rest, a reminder by blowing of trumpets, a holy convocation. ‘You shall not do any laborious work, but you shall present an offering by fire to the LORD.’
Leviticus 23:24-25 NASB
Entrée:
The sound was chilling, haunting in its reverberations throughout the room, piercing in its reach to our very soul. A lady held two long, spiraled, ram’s horns to her mouth and simultaneously coaxed two different sounds out of each horn. One hundred sounds echoed off the walls before an intense silence rested on the small gathering.
It was Rosh Hashanah (Hebrew for head of the year), and we were privileged to be observing this Jewish holiday with a group of Messianic Jewish believers. God, in Leviticus 23, commanded the Israelites to observe a day of sounding trumpets in the seventh month. Today, during this holiday, Jews will hear the trumpet blast at least 100 times.
Probably because the Feast of Trumpets begins the waiting period for the Day of Atonement, when Jews are hoping to be written in the Book of Life for another year, this feast began to be known as the head of the year or Rosh Hashanah. The traditional greeting is Shanah Tovah, or Have a good year.
According to Jewish tradition, Rosh Hashanah was the day when Abraham showed his obedience to God by being willing to sacrifice his son Isaac. However, God Himself provided a ram for Abraham to sacrifice in place of Isaac. The ram was caught by its horn in the thicket (Genesis 22).
Because it was a ram’s horn that saved Isaac, the shofar (ram’s horn) has become synonymous with deliverance throughout Israel’s history. Then in God’s timing, thousands of years after Abraham, Jesus was sacrificed for all mankind. By faith in the Lamb that God provided, all people can be saved from eternal death, not for just one year but for eternity. The God of history is accomplishing His will in every era, including this one.
Many Christian theologians believe that the Feasts of Trumpets is a prophetic feast that foreshadows the return of Christ. While Jewish people are sounding the trumpet during this feast, they also offer prayers for forgiveness and grace and call out loudly, Ha’melech – The King! as if to announce the entry of the King seated on His throne.
What a beautiful picture of exactly how believers should be waiting for the King of Kings. Sound the trumpet; come quickly, Lord Jesus! May we have many eternal years to come in the presence of the King.
Take Out:
Spend some time today thanking Jesus that you are totally forgiven the moment you accept His sacrifice for your sin, and that your name is written in the Book of Life.
Dessert:
Lord, we praise You that You are the King of Kings and that we will live with You forever. We pray for the peace of Jerusalem, and we ask You to return quickly. Amen.
© 2014 by Dallas P. Paetzold. All rights reserved.
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