When The Trumpet Sounds Series

INTRODUCTION

The title of today’s message is, “When the Trumpet Sounds”… and is part 1 of a 3-part series on the Fall Festivals.

In Leviticus 23, God institutes a series of 7 feasts or festivals that the people of Israel were to observe each year…

Each of those have great significance in Jewish faith and practice… but each of those 7 feasts like many things in the OT also prophetically point to Jesus…

Those feasts were divided into 2 seasons…

The first 4 feasts are known as the Spring Festivals… and all 4 Spring Festivals have already been fulfilled by Jesus during His first coming…

… The Feast of Passover was fulfilled by Jesus’ sacrificial death as our Passover Lamb

… The Feast of Unleavened Bread was fulfilled by His burial

… The Feast of Firstfruits was fulfilled by His resurrection

… The Feast of Weeks (or Pentecost) was fulfilled by the coming of the Holy Spirit

The final 3 feasts are known as the Fall Festivals… We’re going to be hosting our own Fall Festival here at the church a little more than a month from now… but that’s not the kind of Fall Festival I’m talking about…

The 3 Fall Festivals from Leviticus 23 will be fulfilled when Jesus returns a 2nd time…

What I find so amazing is how perfectly and completely Jesus fulfilled each of the details of the 4 Spring Festivals in His first coming… even down the very DAY specified centuries earlier in the time of Moses!

Just like His fulfillment of the Spring Festivals, I believe and anticipate that Jesus will also perfectly and completely fulfill each of the details of the 3 Fall Festivals in His second coming…

Many Christians may not realize it, but beginning at sunset today is the first of the 3 Fall Festivals this year… Rosh Hashanah, or the Feast of Trumpets…

In fact, roughly an hour from right now, shofars (trumpets made of rams’ horns) will be sounding off in Jerusalem to mark the beginning of the Feast of Trumpets…

Go ahead and turn with me to the Old Testament… to Leviticus chapter 23… Please stand with me as we honor the reading of God’s Word that was given to Moses…

Leviticus 23:23–25 (CSB)

23 The Lord spoke to Moses:

24 “Tell the Israelites: In the seventh month, on the first day of the month, you are to have a day of complete rest, commemoration, and trumpet blasts—a sacred assembly.

25 You must not do any daily work, but you must present a food offering to the Lord.”

[PRAY]

GAP OF THE CHURCH AGE

In Leviticus 23, God provides Moses with basic instructions concerning the Sabbath and all 7 feasts…

The first 3 verses of this chapter talk about the Sabbath, then verses 4-21 outline the four Spring Feasts / Festivals that I had mentioned earlier… with the description of the Feast of Pentecost ending in verse 21…

Then we come to verse 22, which seems a little out of place… Let’s back up and read verse 22 real quick…

Leviticus 23:22 (CSB)

22 When you reap the harvest of your land, you are not to reap all the way to the edge of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Leave them for the poor and the resident alien; I am the Lord your God.”

This verse doesn’t belong to the verses about the Spring Feasts… nor does it belong to the verses about the Fall Feasts that start in verse 23… which is where we read about the Feast of Trumpets.

But verse 22 is squeezed in between the listing of Spring and Fall Festivals… and it gives instruction concerning the harvest… that they are to remember the poor and the alien (or stranger / foreigner)… which is a word used throughout the OT to describe someone who is not of the nation of Israel… or in other words… a “Gentile”.

So why is this in there? And why is it placed between the feasts of Pentecost and Trumpets?

Remember that each of the 7 feasts are prophetically pointing to Jesus and to future events that Jesus would fulfill…

This verse that so conveniently lands in the gap between the Spring and Fall Festivals… that so conveniently lands in the 4 month gap between the feasts of Pentecost and Trumpets… is also prophetic…

Prophetically, I believe this gap refers to the Church Age that began at Pentecost and which will reach its conclusion at Trumpets.

So what did God do during this gap between the Spring and Fall Festivals? He did exactly what He told Israel to do in verse 22… He remembered (and IS remembering) the poor and alien (foreigner/stranger)… He is sending His word to the far ends of the earth so that the Gentiles can be saved.