Yom Teruah (Feast of Trumpets) is not just about being raised from the dead or being changed but being with the Son of God and sharing in what the Son of God is going to do. We will be a part of it. All power and authority on the Earth will be in the Messiah’s hands, because we know what kind of person the Messiah is, because we trust Him. But as the book of Ezekiel tells us, we should always be diligent and prepared for His coming.
The lesson of the Feast of Trumpets is a clarion call to Messiah Yeshua. We, as believers in Yeshua, are waiting to hear and respond to a certain trumpet sound, the last trumpet sound. That is what we wait for.
The Messiah says the last trumpet will be great, powerful sound. There is hope for us that we can rejoice that He is showing us and teaching us that He is the resurrection and the life. We live in the hope that He will restore Israel to her former glory and, according to the book of Acts, He will restore the Gentiles who have joined the House of Ya’akob (Jacob) too.
This is a 50,000-foot-high view of the fall “feasts to the LORD” (Lev. 23:2) — Yom Teruah (Trumpets, aka Rosh Hashanah), Yom haKippurim (Atonement) and Sukkot (Tabernacles). We’ll look at what they are and what meanings are stacked on top of each other as memorials of the actions of the Messiah past, present and future.
A number of theologians have wondered publicly if the festivals of the LORD are relevant for today or are just historical or intellectual curiosities. Many dismiss Sukkot as either a harvest festival only applicable in the Land of Israel or only relevant with a standing temple. Let’s explore what the Bible says about the past, present and future layers of meaning in these annual appointments and how they teach us about the Messiah and ourselves.
We will look at the different layers of the festivals: past, present and future.
In a sense, they are like a wedding anniversary, on which the couple remembers all the experiences layered on top of one another since the cutting of that first wedding cake.
Apostle Paul tells us that we are to be ready to preach “in season” (2nd Tim. 4:1-2), translated from kairos, the Greek word used for the appointed times of God. Because this is the “season” of Yom Teruah (Num. 29:1), this is the focus of today’s talk.
We will get to hear the sound of the trumpet if we respond to the Messiah’s call of salvation first. The blowing of the trumpets gives us an idea of what God has in mind. We might seem unimportant to those in the world but God has a job for all of us to do.
The temple of King Shlomo (Solomon) is the prototype of the temple in Ezekiel and the temple apostle Yokhanan (John) sees in Revelation as well. These components were not put in by Shlomo’s own choice. They were designed and selected by God ahead of time because they mean something to God. In a sense, the Temple is us. Each physical component has a spiritual component.
Daniel explores foreshadowing of all seven ‘feasts to the LORD’ in Genesis 2–5. For example, hints of Passover are seen in Adam and Eve’s hiding from God in the garden; Firstfruits, in Eve’s dedicating her firstborn; Atonement, in God’s marking Cain to wander with vengeance taken against him.