Rosh Hashanah
In Rabbinical literature, Rosh Hashanah is considered the second most solemn day of the year. The most important is the Day of Atonement.
The famous Rabbi Akibah wrote, “On New Year’s Day all men are judged, and the decree is sealed on the Day of Atonement; Rosh Hashanah is the Day of Judgment.
This is the reason Jewish people send greeting cards to each other with the expression “May you be inscribed for a good year.”
According to tradition this is the day on which the names of all the inhabitants of earth pass before God for judgment, just as sheep pass before the shepherd.
According to Jewish tradition, books are opened before God. The names of those who are righteous are written in one book, and sealed for everlasting life.
The wicked are blotted out of the book of the living and sometime during the following year they will die and their souls will be placed in the book of Death.
Those whose names are not found in The Book of the Righteous or the Book of the Dead are given a respite of 10 days. These 10 days are known as the 10 days of Awe.
During this time, they are given the opportunity to repent for their sins and to seek forgiveness from God and those whom they have sinned against.
But the most memorable aspect of Rosh Hashanah is the blowing of the Shofar, or the rams horn.
The first mention in Scripture of the Rams horn is found in Exodus 19. Blown at the giving of the Law on Mt. Sinai. Only when the ram’s horn sounds a long blast may they go up to the mountain.”
The blowing of the Shofar was God’s method of calling His Chosen people into a Covenant relationship. The apostle John heard the trumpet when he was given a vision of the last days:
(Rev 1:10-11) I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like the sound of a trumpet, saying, “Write in a book what you see, and send it to the seven churches: to Ephesus and to Smyrna and to Pergamum and to Thyatira and to Sardis and to Philadelphia and to Laodicea.”
What should we be reminded of today when we hear the shofar today? Well first we need to understand that God’s Holy Days have never been done away with. Jesus said in Mat 5:17-20:
“Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish, but to fulfill. “For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass away from the Law, until all is accomplished. “Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and so teaches others, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
Israel’s Rabbis shared timeless truths that apply to us today.
Maimonides (Rambam) wrote: “There is a message implicit in the Command to blow the Shofar on Rosh Hashanah … “Sleepers awake from your sleep! Slumberers, arouse yourselves from your slumber!
“Search your deeds and return to Tshuva and remember your creator. Look to your souls, better your ways and deeds. Let each one of you abandon his evil way and your thoughts which were not good.”
These words echo the words of Israel’s Messiah spoken in Revelation 2:3-4 You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary. {4} Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love.
Revelation 3:3 – Remember, therefore, what you have received and heard; obey it, and repent. But if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what time I will come to you.
Rabbi’s list at least 12 things the Shofar of Rosh Hashanah should remind us of, but this morning I want us to consider four.
1. God is our King 2. The call to repentance 3. The call to obedience 4. That Israel’s King is coming soon.
1. The Shofar is a reminder that God is our King
Rosh Hashanah according to tradition marks the anniversary of the creation of the world. In ancient times King would blow trumpets to mark the anniversary of when their reign began.
So too are we called to remember our King, whose reign over the world began when He created it. God also is the Judge of the world He created. He also is the author of salvation, Consider Psalms 98:1-6
Sing to the LORD a new song, for he has done marvelous things; his right hand and his holy arm have worked salvation for him. The LORD has made his salvation known and revealed his righteousness to the nations.
He has remembered his love and his faithfulness to the house of Israel; all the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God. Shout for joy to the LORD, all the earth, burst into jubilant song with music; make music to the LORD with the harp and the sound of singing,
Note especially verse {6} with trumpets and the blast of the ram’s horn– shout for joy before the LORD, the King. and verse 9: let them sing before the LORD, for he comes to judge the earth. He will judge the world in righteousness and the peoples with equity.
Consider this in the light of 1 Samuel 8:4-7 where Israel rejected God as their King.
So all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah. They said to him, “You are old, and your sons do not walk in your ways; now appoint a king to lead us, such as all the other nations have.” But when they said, “Give us a king to lead us,” this displeased Samuel; so he prayed to the LORD. And the LORD told him: “Listen to all that the people are saying to you; it is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king.
1 Samuel 8:19-20 But the people refused to listen to Samuel. “No!” they said. “We want a king over us. Then we will be like all the other nations, with a king to lead us and to go out before us and fight our battles.”
King Saul was a King chosen by man but David was the king chosen by God. He reflected Israel’s Eternal King who was promised to bring blessings to all the nations. In 2 Samuel 7:12-13 King David was told:
When your days are over and you rest with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, who will come from your own body, and I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.
This promised King of Israel was spoken of by Moses and the prophets. This King has come and as the prophets foretold we would reject this God appointed King, just as Israel did in the days of Samuel.
However, from the time he came to today Jewish people as well as Gentiles have the opportunity to receive The King and His Kingdom. If we do we will experience God’s peace and joy.
2. This reign can only comes if we respond at the blast of the Shofar with Repentance.
As the Jewish community begin the 10 days of Awe seeking to be written in the Book of Life by Tsuvah (repentance) so we are reminded that the kingdom of God is entered into only through repentance.
Ezekiel 33:1-11 helps us understand the call to repentance and His Kingdom:
The word of the LORD came to me: “Son of man, speak to your countrymen ad say to them: ‘When I bring the sword against a land, and the people of the land choose one of their men and make him their watchman, and he sees the sword coming against the land and blows the trumpet to warn the people, then if anyone hears the trumpet but does not take warning and the sword comes and takes his life, his blood will be on his own head. Since he heard the sound of the trumpet but did not take warning, his blood will be on his own head. If he had taken warning, he would have saved himself.
But if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet to warn the people and the sword comes and takes the life of one of them, that man will be taken away because of his sin, but I will hold the watchman accountable for his blood.’
“Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel; so hear the word I speak and give them warning from me. When I say to the wicked, ‘O wicked man, you will surely die,’ and you do not speak out to dissuade him from his ways, that wicked man will die for his sin, and I will hold you accountable for his blood.
But if you do warn the wicked man to turn from his ways and he does not do so, he will die for his sin, but you will have saved yourself.
“Son of man, say to the house of Israel, ‘This is what you are saying: “Our offenses and sins weigh us down, and we are wasting away because of them. How then can we live?” ‘Say to them, ‘As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, O house of Israel?’
The Jewish Scriptures clearly teach that all mankind is separated from God because of our sins. Isaiah 59:1-2:
Surely the arm of the LORD is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear. But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear.
Moses and the prophets taught a sacrifice was necessary for entrance into the kingdom. First for the nation and later individually.
The Passover Lamb delivered that nation from bondage and slavery and then the Tabernacle and later the Temple provided atonement for individual sin. Those sacrifices needed to be done over and over.
Until God sent a once and for all sacrificial lamb described by Isaiah 53:6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
Jesus is this Lamb. John 1:29 The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!
So as we consider the Shofar we are called to Repent. And God’s provision for atonement is God’s perfect Lamb, Yeshua.
3. The Shofar is a call to obedience and personal sacrifice.
The Rabbis teach that the Shofar is a reminder of how God spared Isaac with a ram caught in a thicket by his horn described in Gen. 22. It was there that God confirmed His covenant with Isaac because of his obedience.
He could have run from that sacrificial altar, but he submitted to both of his fathers, Abraham and God. He was a living sacrifice. And so the Rabbis teach God extended the covenant to Isaac.
In Exodus 18 on Mt. Sinai the Shofar sounded confirming God’s covenant with Israel. It was there that we said we would obey. But we broke covenant with God and the result was His discipline which led to being removed from the Promised Land.
But God promised a new covenant in Jer. 31:31-33.
“The time is coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them, ” declares the LORD. “This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time,” declares the LORD. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.
The messenger of that New Covenant is the Messiah. Malachi 3:1 “See, I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come,”
The messenger was John the immerser and the Lord who came to the Temple is Yeshua. Just as God provided a lamb for Isaac when he was willing to be a living sacrifice, so God calls us today.
Yeshua said “He who loses his life will find it, but he who keeps his life will lose it. To have the peace and joy of God’s King and Kingdom we must be living sacrifices like Isaac. Rom 12:1-2:
Therefore, I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.
- The Blowing of the Shofar reminds us that the King is Coming Back.
In His first coming Jesus came as a lamb but when He returns He is coming as the Lion of the Tribe of Judah. Zechariah and Jeremiah a day when the nations will come to destroy Israel.
Jeremiah called that day “The time of Jacob’s trouble”. Jer. 31:7-8 Alas! for that day is great, There is none like it; And it is the time of Jacob’s distress, But he will be saved from it. ‘It shall come about on that day,’ declares the LORD of hosts, ‘that I will break his yoke from off their neck and will tear off their bonds; and strangers will no longer make them their slaves. But they shall serve the LORD their God and David their king, whom I will raise up for them.
Zechariah 12:1-3
This is the word of the LORD concerning Israel. The LORD, who stretches out the heavens, who lays the foundation of the earth, and who forms the spirit of man within him, declares: {2} “I am going to make Jerusalem a cup that sends all the surrounding peoples reeling. Judah will be besieged as well as Jerusalem. {3} On that day, when all the nations of the earth are gathered against her, I will make Jerusalem an immovable rock for all the nations. All who try to move it will injure themselves.
Zechariah 12:9-10
On that day I will set out to destroy all the nations that attack Jerusalem. {10} “And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication. They will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for a firstborn son.
Dan. 12:1-2 And there will be a time of distress such as never occurred since there was a nation until that time; and at that time your people, everyone who is found written in the book, will be rescued.
The Shofar is a call to remember that God is our King. A call to repentance. A call to obedience and the laying down of our lives and a call to know that the King is coming back soon.
This Rosh Hashanah you can know that you have been written into the book of life: John 20:30-31 Therefore many other signs Jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these have been written so that you may believe that Yeshua is the Messiah, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name.
