This is Chad Harrison, and you're listening to hope alive, applying God's word to your daily life. Hi, this is Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and have been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open up his word to you and allow you to see him and to know him and to know his will, that you might glorify him and that you might walk in faith and power each and every day, especially today, in Jesus name.
Well, good morning. Welcome to Lake Community Church. This morning, Bible study. We are in Leviticus, chapter 23, and we've gotten to, well, I guess the best way to describe it is an interesting feast that really, there's not a lot of information on. There's not. There's not a lot of instructions. In fact, there's very little instructions. It says in verse 23, then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, speak to the children of Israel, saying, in the 7th month, on the first day of the month, you shall have a Sabbath rest, a memorial and burn of trumpets, a holy convocation. You shall do no customary work on it, and you shall not offer any offerings made by fire to the Lord. So it's going to be a holy convocation. We've got that. We know the date, the 7th month, on the first day, and it's going to be a memorial of blowing trumpets. But there's no effort made by fire. No effort at all made by fire. Now, in this passage, it is other than the Sabbath, which was the very first feast that was mentioned, other than the Sabbath, which is, by the way, only one verse. This is three verses. And the information is kind of similar to a lot of the other ones describing what they're to do. God tells them to do it, it's the announcement to do it, and then it's a holy convocation. And then really not a lot of information. Now you go, well, what does that mean? Well, it means a lot when I'm trying a case in front of a jury, one of the things that we tell the jury that they can do is they can make all reasonable inferences from the evidence, meaning you can sit back and say, okay, here's what we know from the evidence, and here's what we can infer. Now, some of those inferences are inferences that are made by the lack of information rather than the lack of evidence, rather than the evidence, meaning if they claimed that, you know, I robbed the bank, but they had no evidence of me being at the bank, they had no evidence of me having the money. They had no evidence of anybody seeing me at the bank. They had no evidence that I drove that day or was over near the bank. Then you can infer that I didn't rob the bank because. Not because of the evidence, but because of the lack of evidence. And so you can make reasonable inferences from the lack of information sometimes that God gives you. And this is one of those situations where we can make a lot of inferences from what is said, and we can learn from what is said, because it is the least talked about, the least understood, and the least notable of the feast. And the reason it is, is because I think it has to do with things to come in the future. I think it has to do with the. With maybe the millennial kingdom or maybe. Maybe the new heaven and new earth, or maybe something that we don't have a lot of information. Now, we do know several things. First of all, we know that it was the beginning, this feast time, that deals with the day of atonement, and it also is associated with Rosh Hashanah, which is the jewish new year. It's got a lot of things that it's associated with, but nothing that really tells us anything other than. And really, the only two things that we can infer from it is there's. There's two things that are going to happen or not going to happen. The first one is the blowing of trumpets, and the second one is you don't make any offering. Now, what does that tell us? Well, the blow of the Trumpets has always been symbolic of the calling of God's people to meet, to do, to act, to be God's people. It is a. It is a. It is a constant picture of God, God drawing his people to him, announcing something to them, beginning a movement of God. And so when you're kind of thinking about the feast of trumpets, and you go, what kind of trumpet is it? Well, there's. There's a ram's horn that is called a shofar that was used oftentimes in this feast. And just a straight trumpet, you know, the brass trumpet that you. That you just blow into that looks just like a straight line. Well. And it can sometimes have a flag hanging off of it. Well, those two trumpets were used interchangeably throughout the generations and throughout the years to announce whatever God was going to do. The sound of a trumpet is the announcement of God moving, using, calling beginning something with his people. And that's what it is. And so we know that God's doing something with his people here. Now, the thing that we know he's not doing is he's not dealing with sacrifice. So this feast does not deal with sin. It does not deal with. It does not deal with the necessity of. And remember, sacrifices were not just for sin. Sacrifices were for peace. Sacrifices were for fellowship. Sacrifices were. I mean, lots of things that didn't have to do with sin were offered. Grain offerings, bread offerings, food offerings. All these offerings and sacrifices were given to God that have to do with the relationship. So this feast doesn't have to do with the necessity of something being offered in order for us to have a relationship with God. In fact, by bearing of trumpets, it pretty much infers that we have a fullness of relationship with God, because the blowing of trumpets kind of gives us indication that God is already. We already know what it means and know how it works and know what it is, and we do it right now. We don't know that. And so anytime you have a mystery in scripture or something that you just don't have anything to really talk about. You don't know. Oftentimes what I like to do when I'm studying the Bible is to log that into my brain, just kind of logging in. Feast of trumpets, no sacrifice. Nothing else other than we're going to blow the trumpets. And notice he says, he says it's going to take place on around Rosh Hashanah, and it's going to be several days before the day of atonement. And the day of atonement is the covenant of sin. So it could have to do with. With preparing God's people for the day of atonement. But remember, there's no sacrifice here. And the day of atonement has to do with the sacrifice so that we can have a relationship with God. This feast does not have that. This feast doesn't even indicate that that's necessary. In fact, it's not necessary. So. So this feast, in many ways, for me, is a mystery, but it is also exciting. And you go, why is it exciting? Well, anytime there's something that is not fully revealed by God, that means that he's got something really big planned, and we just couldn't fit it into our understanding of how he's made the world, how he's doing things, what he's going to do. And when he unveils that mystery, one of the mysteries he unveils is his son. When he unveils those mysteries, they're usually fabulous. They're usually, well, if God did it, it's better than you could ever imagine. And obviously it is. And so, especially when we know that the sound of trumpets, that's always a little bit exciting anyway, isn't it? The sound of the shofar being burned. There's a little bit of an excitement or there's a little bit of not an understanding. But no matter what, by the way, the Ram song or the chauffeur is a picture of the Holy Spirit, too. And so you've got the work of the angels, the work of the Holy Spirit, you've got the work of the power of God and his revelation to us, his calling, his directing, his announcing to us. And some might even say this is a picture of the rapture. And it might be. And in fact, in the New Testament, whenever we see Christ's second advent, meaning his second coming, which would not be the rapture, by the way, the rapture would be God calling us up, not us, Jesus coming down and getting us. The second advent of Jesus Christ is going to be his coming in the clouds. Behold, he cometh in the clouds to take over and begin his millennial kingdom. But all these things in the New Testament are also associated with the blowing of trumpets. And so I don't know exactly why. It's very limited in the Old Testament. Maybe just because that's a lot of stuff that just hasn't been shown to the people of Israel by now and they would not understand and not get it. It could be that God is just kind of tickling our senses, tickling our brains and saying, hey, listen, there's going to be a lot of things that deal with trumpets and deal with no need for sacrifice that are coming one day. And there's going to be a day when you don't have to sacrifice anymore, when there's not, when the work of trusting God, the work of faith, it doesn't seem difficult. And by the way, it's not difficult because Hebrews tells us that these works have already been completed since the foundation of time, since the foundation of the world. But they offer us oftentimes, because we have to climb over ourselves to get to them. And you think about that metaphor for a moment, but. But maybe this is just a little place right here in the middle of the book of Leviticus, where God says, I got a plan for y'all, and, and it's not going to deal with sacrifices, and it's not going to be necessary that we fix our relationship with each other because we're going to have a perfect one one day and you know what? It's going to have a lot of excitement and a lot of power involved in it and you know even though we're going to have this day of atonement and even though we're going to feast of weeks and even though we're going to have all these other things that are necessary because of your because of the state you find yourself in today, that state is going to be over one day and you are going to walk in God's grace and his goodness and his power and it's going to be a good time and a good place for you. I think that's what this has to do with and for me it's kind of exciting. I hope it is. As you go today I pray that.
The Lord will bless you and keep.
You that he'll make his face to.
Shine upon you and that he will give you hope and peace today. In Jesus name.
