This week we begin celebrating the Day of Trumpets, which is followed by the Ten Days of Repentance. When asked, “Why should Christians celebrate the Jewish feasts?” I respond, “Because they are biblical feasts that we celebrate along with the Jews.” God mandated in the Scriptures that His people are to celebrate these appointed times forever (Leviticus 23:21). So it will be interesting to see how these times unfold and what they become for us on into the days of the Kingdom.
On the first day of the seventh month, all Israel came together for a holy convocation to celebrate the Day of Trumpets. God commanded the people through Moses, “You shall have a rest, a reminder by blowing of trumpets” (Leviticus 23:24).[1] It is to be a time of rest, which means we are to treat it like a Sabbath, and it is to be a reminder to us. “You shall do no laborious work. It will be to you a day for blowing trumpets” (Numbers 29:1). God commanded that this time of Trumpets be a time to rest from our own labor and to remember. Much of Tabernacles surrounds this idea of remembering. But what were they to remember? Let us go back to the first time the trumpet sound alerted the camp of Israel.
After the exodus from Egypt, Moses led the people to camp around Mount Sinai. “It came about on the third day, when it was morning, that there were thunder and lightning flashes and a thick cloud upon the mountain and a very loud trumpet sound, so that all the people who were in the camp trembled. And Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain” (Exodus 19:16–17). God was getting their attention as He descended upon the mountain in His tremendous power. Smoke ascended like the smoke of a furnace, the mountain quaked violently, and the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder (Exodus 19:18–19). That is why the days following this time of Trumpets are called the Days of Awe.
God came down and introduced Himself to Israel, and the greatest aspect of all that He did in His power and authority was represented by that trumpet. So when God says to come and celebrate a day of blowing the trumpet, we are to come and remember the awesomeness of God. God expressed His drive with these people, in that He was coming down out of heaven into their lives once and for all. And they had never experienced that before.
We are remembering God’s tremendous determination to bring Himself and His presence into the earth as it is in heaven, to manifest His presence for us and with us. That is what the trumpet announcement is declaring. The only prayer that Christ gave us was, “Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). That is our intercession. We are literally pulling heaven down like a whole overlay right over the earth until this earth is going to be swallowed up by His Kingdom. We live in tremendous times.
God touched down on Mount Sinai saying, “My Kingdom is going to come into this earth.” It was like a seal or a guarantee that the Kingdom of God at some point would completely cover and take over this earthly realm. That is what the trumpet cry is all about: on earth as it is in heaven!
[1] All Scripture references are from the New American Standard Bible 1995 (NASB1995).