ROSH HASHANAH

ROSH HASHANAH (part 1)

                In his book entitled, “Seeing Christ in the Tabernacle” Ervin Hershberger, stated that at the first Passover, God revised the Hebrew calendar by putting the Passover at the head of the sacred Calendar year. The month of Abib (Later called Nisan) therefore became the beginning month of their sacred calendar.

                From a sacred perspective it really does make more sense that Passover would become the beginning of things since it represents Israel’s deliverance and exodus out of Egyptian bondage. It was the beginning of Israel’s walk with God as a nation.

                To this day the Hebrew people live by two calendars: The Civil calendar beginning with the Jewish New Year of Rosh Hashanah and the Sacred Calendar beginning with Passover. They do all of their civil and economic business according to the civil calendar, but they celebrate all of the appointed feasts of the Lord according to the sacred calendar which contains the spring feasts and the fall feasts in their order as prescribed by God.

                I am praying diligently that the Holy Spirit will help me to portray the absolute holiness of God and our absolute and total need of a Savior which is Christ the Lord. It is for lack of understanding that the church has become casual in worship and careless in in our lives. In both the feasts of the Lord and in the tabernacle services we begin to gain something of an understanding of the infinite gap between a holy God and sinful fallen man.

                Imagine if you will, pulling the batteries out of your toy robot and then demanding that it restore itself to its former functions without batteries. But without the batteries the robot is dead, deaf, dumb and blind and it is helpless to do even one of the things you ask it to do.

                Just so was the fall of Adam and Eve from the perfections of creation when they were in the image of God and inhabited by Him. One sin destroyed all of that and man became as helpless to do anything of eternal value as was the above mentioned robot whose batteries had been removed. Adam and Eve died spiritually on that very day and since then; mankind has been helpless to do even one good thing apart from complete dependence upon Christ.

                So the plan of salvation not only forgives and reconciles us as sinners to God, but it also puts our batteries back in. That is to say that we are only Christians if Christ dwells in us through His Holy Spirit. There is no other way of salvation. But how does a fallen and sinful person, receive into himself the presence and person of an absolutely holy God? There is no way, short of the blood of a sinless Lamb of God and His robe of righteousness to cover what we are so that He can remake us into what He is.

ROSH HASHANAH

                Since we will be in the fall season when I teach this class I have decided to teach the feasts beginning with the fall feasts even though we will be dealing with the sacred calendar rather than the civil calendar. Rosh Hashanah, also known as the Feast of Trumpets is much more complex than simply being the Jewish New Year. There were one hundred trumpet or shofar blasts on this day and each of them had a specific meaning.

                There was Yom Teruah… meaning a day of blowing as found in Numbers 29:1

                “Now in the seventh month on the first day of the month you shall also have a holy convocation; you shall do no laborious work. It will be to you and day for blowing shofars.” Num. 29:1

                This convocation was to be held on the first day of the seventh month of the sacred calendar, known as Tishri. The term Teruah means blowing and also means to shout as in a battle cry. Psalm 47:5 speaks of God going up with a shout and the sound of the shofar. This is referring directly to the pre-appointed day when God Himself will shout the battle cry as He comes to judge the earth, and will blow the shofar to gather His troops! This is what the apostle Paul was referring to when he wrote in 1 Thess. 4:16 saying: “The Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout… and the blast of God’s shofar. ...The dead in Messiah will rise first… then we which are alive and remain will be caught up together with them to meet the Lord in the air.” (Think of Isaac and Rebekah meeting in the middle of the field.)

                So the feast of trumpets is the very day that these events will take place. We know this because Jesus fulfilled the spring feasts exactly to the day and the hour according to the spring feasts, the appointed times of the Lord. People traditionally say the Jesus could come at any time, but this is not really true. He will come on some year on the feast of trumpets and though we generally focus on the rapture, there are many other things that take place on that day. But suffice to say that the rapture is a scheduled event.

                At this point we may protest and quote our favorite Bible text saying that no man knows the day or the hour, (Mt. 24:36) but this only displays our lack of knowledge of the feasts and here’s why:

                The feast of trumpets is the only feast in the sacred calendar year that occurs on the first of the month. This made a unique situation for the Jews because each month was determined by the new moon and this required two witnesses to watch for the new moon and then report it to the High Priest who would announce the beginning of the new month. And because of this uncertainty concerning the actually beginning of the new month, Rosh Hashanah became the feast in which nobody knows the day or the hour.

                Notice that in 2 Thess. 2:1-4 Paul talks about non-believers for whom Jesus will return as a thief in the night and they will not be ready. But Paul does not end there. He goes on to say in verse 4: “But you brethren are not in darkness that the day should overtake you like a thief…” We may not know the exact day or the hour of His coming, but we do know the appointed time and the signs leading up to it.

                We can further understand that the trumpet of the resurrection known as the last trump represented the final trumpet blast of the day.  So when Paul spoke of the last trump he was most likely not referring to the 7^th trumpet of the book of revelation since John did not write the book of Revelation nor even have the revelation vision until about 40 years after Paul wrote this text. So the Messianic Jewish Christians of Paul’s day would have known that he was talking about the last trump on the Feast of Trumpets.

THE TRUMPET BLASTS ON ROSH HASHANAH

                The first blast of the day was known as “Tekiah” which was a single long blast.

                Then there was “Shevarim” which consisted of 3 short blasts

                Next was Teruah, consisting of 9 short blasts in quick succession.

                The final blast of the day was known as Tekiah Gedolah, or “the Great Big Blast… or the awakening blast.”           

                Another name for Rosh Hashanah is Yom HaDin which means “Day of Judgment.”

                The Feast of Trumpets is also known as a Day of Remembrance and a Time of Jacob’s Trouble

                Zephaniah called it a day of the trumpet, or shofar and alarm. (Teruah)  ties in the Day of the Lord with the very day of Yom Teruah. Joel 2:1-2 begins with a command to blow the trumpet and to sound an alarm, for the day of the Lord is at hand, a day of darkness and gloominess, comes.

                Another name for the Feast of Trumpets is Ha Kiddushin/Nisu’in, or wedding of the Messiah.

                This wedding according to Jewish custom came in two parts:

Ha Kiddushin- was the betrothal while Nisu’in was the actual marriage

                “In the book of Joel where we earlier read about the day of the Lord, we see a command to blow the trumpet in Zion to gather the people and to sanctify them (Joel 2:15-16) Notice that it talks of the Bridegroom leaving his chamber and the bride coming out of her closet. The Hebrew word for closet here is “chuppah”, the traditional wedding canopy under which Jewish couples are married.” (Mark Biltz from His book called “God’s Day Timer.”)

                Let’s suffice to say that there is nothing in Hebrew tradition that is without divine meaning and purpose. The Jewish wedding is one of those patterns that contain the whole purpose of our redemption, for just as God took a rib from Adam’s side and created a wife for Him, so Yeshua’s side was pierced to bring forth a Bride for Yeshua. Yeshuah was willing to pay the ultimate price for this bride and just as Adam was put into a deep sleep to bring forth his bride, so to was Yeshua put into a deep sleep, the death of the cross to bring forth His Bride.

                We love to simplify God’s word into sound bites in which we leave out all the stuff we don’t like and concentrate on the stuff we like, but the Feast of Trumpets is not a simple day and since there are many trumpets blown on that day and the last trump of the day is the one that brings the resurrection, or the awakening blast, we cannot say for certain when the rapture will occur. In fact the events of the feast of trumpets may be spread out over several years with different aspects being fulfilled on their respective trumpet blasts.        

                Rosh Hashanah is therefore a day of warning… a day of judgment, a day of remembrance, a day of the coronation of the King, the wedding of the Messiah to His Bride. It is also the Time of Jacob’s trouble a day of thick darkness and gloominess and judgment. And like I said, these things may all happen simultaneously or they may be spread out over a seven year period known as the tribulation or time of Jacob’s trouble

                The parable of the ten virgins speaks of this day. It is the marriage supper of the Lamb, but not everyone is ready to go into the wedding feast. During their time of betrothal, they have not acted like a Bride to be. They have continued to date other gods, of self and pleasure and worldliness. They have done nothing to become intimate with their Groom. They have remained in the outer court of the temple and have never pressed beyond the veil and into the intimate relationship with Yeshua through His Word and the Holy Spirit and prayer. They have not been eating the bread of life, nor partaking of the body and blood of Messiah.

                To many He will say on that day, “I never knew you.”

                If we look around us it is plain to see that we are entering the final days of earth’s history. We are entering the fall season of God’s calendar and it is high time for maturity. We must now move on to maturity. There can be no more casual dating. We are betrothed to Yeshua and the wedding is soon to follow. Many Christians are not living the crucified life. Many are not being led by the Spirit of God, but they are still allowing their flesh to drive them and to determine their lives.

                The plan of salvation is really an all or nothing sort of thing. We are either preparing as a bride adorned for her husband or we are not. We are both bearing the fruit of the Spirit and operating in the gifts of the Spirit or we are not. We are either disciples who have left everything to follow Him or we are not. WE are either wise virgins filled with the oil of the Holy Spirit or we are not. We are either among the sheep or the goats. We are either wheat or tares.

                But above all, we must be living the crucified life that Paul talked about in Galatians 2:20, for it is only Christ in us that is our hope of glory. If there was some way that we could have pleased God apart from Christ, He would have simply given us His Law, but in His Feast days we see that our deliverance from Egypt comes by the blood of the Lamb and not only the blood, but we must also eat the whole lamb for in it is our healing and restoration and strength for the journey.

                Today many churches are picking the parts of Jesus they like while ignoring or even denying the parts they don’t like. But such an attitude will never prepare them to be a part of the Bride of Christ. Saying “I Do” changes everything. And just as Rebekah said “I Do” without ever seeing Isaac, so we too say “I Do to Yeshua never having seen Him and it is through His Word and His abiding presence in our lives by His Holy Spirit that we are prepared as a Bride adorned for her Husband.

                To be honest with you, my in depth study of the feasts and the tabernacle have sort of shaken me a bit. In these things I see that the church has become much too casual about our salvation. We tend to do things our way instead of His. We tend to like what Jesus did FOR us, but we tend to ignore what He wants to do IN us and THROUGH us. And so we hang around the outer court, claiming salvation while avoiding the intimacy that will make us into His Bride.

                Far more than being simple information about the feasts then, we must see these things as self-correcting DNA                putting us into a right relationship with the Lord. And it is no coincidence that at this time in history, these feasts of the Lord are being brought to our attention. It serves as a blessing to those who love the Lord and serve Him with all of their hearts, but a warning to those who are doing their own thing. Selah