We notice that the first four feasts come close together at the beginning of the year. Then come almost four months of reaping until the last sheaf was cut, though there was still good grain left standing in the corners of the fields.
In creation, God made the world in six days and rested on the seventh. In the dispensation of law, men worked six days and rested on the seventh. In the feasts of Jehovah, six months of the year passed by, but when the seventh month came, on the first day of the seventh month: “Ye shall have a rest, a memorial of blowing of trumpets, a holy convocation. No manner of servile work shall ye do; and ye shall present an offering by fire to Jehovah” (Lev. 23:24-25, New Trans.).
The four feasts that are passed all have been most exactly fulfilled. At the present time, we are still in that long space left for the harvest between the Feast of Pentecost and the Feast of Trumpets. The Feast of Trumpets begins the second series of Jehovah’s set feasts.
In Numbers 10:2, God commanded Moses to make two silver trumpets. These trumpets were used for calling together the assembly, and for the journeying of the camps. They were to be used when Israel went to war and God promised that when these trumpets were blown, He would remember His people and save them from their enemies (Num. 10:9). They were also used in their set feasts and in their new moons. God said, “that they may be to you for a memorial before your God.” The silver tells us of redemption, and those notes on the silver trumpets would not only bring to remembrance God’s covenant with His earthly people, but they also brought to remembrance the price that was paid to purchase that redemption.
This feast was a special time of blowing these trumpets. It was called “A memorial of blowing of trumpets” (Lev. 23:24). It was truly a feast of remembrance. Does this not tell us of that great trumpet that is to be blown in a coming day? Then “He shall send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of Heaven to the other” (Mt. 24:31).
“All ye inhabitants of the world, and dwellers on the earth, when a banner is lifted up on the mountains, see ye, and when a trumpet is blown, hear ye!…In that time shall a present be brought unto Jehovah of hosts of a people scattered and ravaged, to the place of the name of Jehovah of hosts, the Mount Zion” (Isa. 18:3-7, New Trans.). And again, “It shall come to pass in that day, that the great trumpet shall be blown; and they shall come that were perishing in the land of Assyria, and the outcasts in the land of Egypt, and they shall worship Jehovah in the holy mountain at Jerusalem” (Isa. 27:13, NT; also Zech. 10:8).
There are very many more passages that tell of the gathering of Israel and Judah, but these make quite clear that at a certain time, a special call will go forth from God to bring His own people back to their own land. Both the Old Testament and the New Testament speak of this call as a Trumpet, so we believe that the Feast of Trumpets foretells that trumpet blast that will call Israel back.
But the Feast of Trumpets was also to call to remembrance, and in Numbers 10:9, when God told Moses to make silver trumpets, He told Israel that when they went to war against the enemy that oppressed them, “then ye shall blow an alarm with the trumpets, and ye shall be remembered before Jehovah, your God, and ye shall be saved from your enemies.” Although Israel now seems to be cast off and rejected, the Word of God tells us that this shall not be always so. In Ezekiel 16:60, we read, “I will remember My covenant with thee in the days of thy youth, and I will establish unto thee an everlasting covenant.”
“Zion said, Jehovah hath forsaken me, and the Lord hath forgotten me.” It looks like that just now, but is it really so? Listen: “Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? Even these forget, but I will not forget thee. Lo, I have graven thee upon the palms of My hands” (Isa. 49:15-16, NT).
We might turn to many other passages telling us that God again will remember His people. But in the Feast of Trumpets, is it not God who blows the trumpet Himself? The verses quoted in Ezekiel 16 continue this way, “I will establish My covenant with thee, and thou shalt know that I am Jehovah; that thou mayest remember, and be ashamed” (vv. 62-63, NT).
Israel forgot their God and forsook Him, and now it appears as though God had forgotten and forsaken and cast away His people Israel. But it is appearance only. Paul asks, “Has God cast away His people?” And the reply is clear and decisive, “Far be the thought–God has not cast away His people whom He foreknew” (Rom. 11:1-2).
God describes the Feast of Trumpets, saying, “Ye shall have a rest, a memorial of blowing of trumpets, a holy convocation” (Lev. 23:24, NT). And the Spirit of God in the Psalms says of it, “Sing ye joyously unto God our strength, shout aloud unto the God of Jacob; raise a song, and sound the tambour, the pleasant harp with the lute. Blow the trumpet at the new moon, at the set time, on our feast day” (Ps. 81:1-3, NT). What a happy day that will be for Israel! How little do they know of rest and joy now, driven from one country to another.
But even though we know Israel must first pass through the most terrible judgments, yet their rest and joy is soon to come. Indeed, may it not be possible that the first notes of that silver trumpet, or their echo from above, are beginning to fall on the ears of Israel? On every hand we see them hearing a call to remember and return to the land of their fathers, and tens of thousands are heeding the call and returning. Is it not apparent to all that Israel is again beginning to come in remembrance before God?
We sadly fear that Israel has not yet heard that trumpet in a way that makes them remember their God, and turn to Him again. In Isaiah 27:13, we saw that Israel was to return to “worship Jehovah in the holy mountain.” They can only do this when they accept the Lord Jesus as their Messiah. But, alas, they are not now prepared to do this, so we may know that at present those sweet notes of the silver trumpet are not sounding out as they soon will.
But if even the echo of the notes from afar are beginning to sound, telling us that the silver trumpet is about to be blown, let us lift up our heads, listening the more longingly for the note of another trumpet–“In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump” (1 Cor. 15:52).
No, it is not the trumpet that calls Israel back to their land that we, the Church, are listening for, but for the Lord Jesus Himself (1 Thess. 4:16-17). What a day of joy and gladness and rest will this be for the Church! Then we will be forever with the Lord. And the loved ones who have gone before will be raised first, and we shall be together again to go no more out!
But it was not only a day of joy and gladness and rest; the Lord specially warns against any “servile work” on that day. How different to the teaching of some that it is only by our own efforts in watching and overcoming that we can even hope to see that day, or hear that trump! Such teachers little know the grace of God or the value of the redemption told out in those notes of the silver trumpet, nor do they know the worthlessness of their own servile work in making themselves fit for that day. It is not the fear of being left behind at that day that God sets before us as a motive to keep clean down here, but the blessed hope of seeing Him and being like Him (1 Jn. 3:3).
The Feast of Trumpets follows the harvest described in verse 22. It came on the first day of the month, the time the moon is smallest. In China we call it “the Black Moon.” And is the world not getting darker? But the morning star appears just before dawn, when the night is the darkest. So, brethren, as we see the professing Church getting worse, as we see it growing darker and colder, and more and more like the world, let us look up and watch more earnestly for the Morning Star and listen more intently for the sound of our trumpet.
The Lord always makes it clear that His coming is imminent. “Yet a very little while and He that comes will come, and will not delay” (Heb. 10:37, NT). Let us beware that nothing whatever shall come into our hearts that will ever allow us to say–even in the inmost recesses of our thoughts–“My Lord delayeth His coming.” May we ever, daily and hourly, be expecting Him, and our hearts ever crying, “Amen, even so, Come, Lord Jesus.”
From The Seven Feasts, published by Christian Book Room, available from GFP.