2) Fall Celebration: Feast of
Trumpets
Lesson Focus: God Calls Us To Repent.
Overview: Trumpets were blown, calling people to wake up spiritually and repent of their sins. Today, God calls us to repent and receive Christ’s atonement and be ready for the final trumpet blast.
Read Leviticus 23:23-25 from a child-friendly Bible.
The Feast of Trumpets is the first of the fall feasts. It occurs on the first day of the seventh month, during our September or October months. Although the Bible doesn’t say this, traditionally it’s believed this day celebrates the creation of the world, and specifically when God created humankind on the sixth day. The Feast of Trumpets marks the beginning of the civil or national year for Israel. In our time, it is known as Rosh Hashanah*, the Jewish New Year. However, today’s celebration has little, if any, comparison to the celebration instructed in Scripture.
The Feast of Trumpets, like the Sabbath, is considered a Holy Day for rest and worship. It is celebrated by blowing a trumpet made from a ram’s horn called a shofar. It is believed that a ram’s horn is used to recall the ram that was sacrificed by Abraham in place of his son Isaac. The month leading up to the Feast of Trumpets is to be a time of repentance. God’s people are to consider their sins, turn from them, “repent,” and prepare their hearts for the Feast of Trumpets and the nine days that follow. Together these ten days are referred to as the Days of Awe and lead up to the tenth day, the most holy of all days in Israel, the Day of Atonement. This entire
forty days, the month leading up to, plus the ten Days of Awe, are to be a time of repentance.
Learn more about the Feasts of the
Lord.
*Rosh Hashanah occurs this year on October 3, 2016.
