Shalom, Shalom, peace in the name of Yeshua. This is Crystal Sharpe and welcome to the Ancient Scrolls program. Today is the first day of the week, Sunday, September 9th.
Today we are going to continue on the study of the Lord’s feast of Yom Teruah or Rosh HaShanah; and we would translate that to the feast of Trumpets. We will do a brief recap of last week’s program.
Let’s pray:
Father,
Thank You for being God. Cleanse me from all unrighteousness that my prayers will not be hindered. Thank You for Your forgiving nature, that our sins are far removed from You as east is from the west. I am like the tax collector who went to the Temple, standing afar off, would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying: ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner.’” I need You, Father, more than You need me; and I desire You and Your righteousness. I would die without Your presence.
You are the King of the Universe, over heaven and earth. The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof; the world, and those who dwell therein. The joy of the Lord is our strength.
Shema, O America, the Lord our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your strength.
We pray for the overthrow of abortion, child molestation, human trafficking, adultery, idolatry, fornication, homosexuality, gender confusion, zoophilia, witchcraft, charismatic witchcraft, pharmakia, suicide, hatred, and greed. The earth is polluted with blood of the innocents, and the land is defiled with our sexual sins. The earth is groaning for its redemption. Our sins are affecting the world.
The idolatrous high holiday of Halloween is next month and we pray You will begin now to cause chaos and confusion in the camp of the enemy. We pray You would destroy the works of the wicked. We pray for exposure and justice.
We pray for the release of Your Spirit of repentance that will saturate this nation, its leadership in the Congress, Senate, and Supreme Court, all areas of our government. We pray You will remove those that are corrupted by greed, and wickedness. Remove those that hate You and Your righteousness.
We pray for president Trump, we pray Your wisdom, knowledge and understanding will saturate him, along with Your Spirit of discernment, might, counsel and the fear of the Lord. We pray Your will, Your purpose, to be done in his life.
We pray for Israel, that Israel will be saturated with Your Spirit of repentance. We pray against evil politicians that seek to divide Your land. We ask that the nation will receive Yeshua as their Messiah. Take the stony places out of their hearts and give them hearts of flesh. We pray for their protection as the nations conspire to destroy them.
We bless You, Father; Your name is above every name, above every situation. We praise Your name. In Yeshua’s name. Amen.
This evening Yom Teruah, or Rosh HaShanah begins. This is the first day of their month, Tishrei, and it is the first day of their new year as well. The sh’mita is announced on Yom Teruah, which we understand it to be the 7th year, the Sabbath rest. It is said that three books will be opened in heaven; the Book of life; the book of death and the book of judgment.
The sages teach that the righteous are written into the book of life and the evil into the book of death, while those in between have judgment suspended until Yom Kippur (the day of atonement).
Revelation 20:21
And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and the books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the Book of Life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books (plural).
The world is given 10 days to repent before the feast of Yom Kippur (the day of atonement) which begins on the evening of September 18th. On the 18th the books are closed and the verdict, or the judgments, for the next year will be sealed on that day of Yom Kippur.
Last program we laid a little foundation on the Lord’s feasts in Leviticus 23. I stated the feasts are about Yeshua and that His feasts serve as visuals for His plans and purposes. The feasts are appointments to meet with God.
I had gone over the holy day of Sabbath, and how it sets a precedence for holiness for the other holy days, or feasts. God consecrates days and we desecrate them and treat them as loathsome burdens, because that is what we have been taught. Yet, His Holiness is the One who established them as holy times to meet with Him.
The book of Revelation mirrors the feasts of the Lord, and reckoning particular activities on holy days gives us the time table of those judgments in the book.
We had examined the word signs found in Genesis 1:14, and today we will explore the word season found in the same passage.
So, let us get started on the teaching.
And God said: “Lights, Be in the firmament of the heavens, to divide the day from the night! Be for signs (Owt) and for appointed times (seasons, moed) and for days and years! (for determining and measuring time through days, weeks, months and years) One New Man translation
In Psalm 104:19
God appointed the moon for seasons (moed).
According to Strong’s moed means an appointment, that is, a fixed time or season, specifically a festival; conventionally a year, by implication an assembly (as convened for a definite purpose), technically the congregation, by extension the place of meeting; also a signal.
Israel’s calendar is determined by the new moon, as well as their New Year and the feasts of the Lord.
Let us talk about the new moon from the Word. Numbers 10:10
Also in the day of your gladness, in your appointed feasts, and at the beginning of your months, you shall blow the trumpets over your burnt offerings and over the sacrifices of your peace offerings; and they shall be a memorial for before your God: I am the LORD your God.
Numbers 28: 11-15: At the beginning of your months you shall present a burnt offering to the LORD: two young bulls, one ram, and seven lambs in their first year, without blemish; 3/10ths of an ephah of fine flour as a grain offering, mixed with oil, for each bull; 2/10ths of an ephah of fine flour as a grain offering, mixed with oil, for the one ram; and 1/10th of an ephah of fine flour, mixed with oil, as a grain offering for each lamb, as a burnt offering of sweet aroma, an offering made by fire to the LORD. Their drink offering shall be half of a hin of wine for a bull, 1/3rd of a hin for a ram, 1/4th of hin for a lamb; this is the burnt offering for each month throughout the months of the year. Also, one kid of goats as a sin offering to the LORD shall be offered, besides the regular burnt offering and its drink offering. These are also the offerings at Yom Teruah, aka(also known as) Rosh HaShanah.
Psalm 81:3 This is from the Artscroll translation
Blow the shofar at the moon’s renewal, (another version has it as the day of our concealment) at the time appointed for our festive day. For this is a decree for Israel, a law of the God of Jacob. This passage is talking about the feast of Yom Teruah, and this psalm is a song of the Hebrews when they were released from their burdens in Egypt. This psalm is read on Yom Teruah and also read on the 5th day of the week. The sages say Joseph was released from his imprisonment and stood before Pharoah on this day of Yom Teruah. Yom Teruah is understood to be the first day of their new year of their month Tishrei.
From the Word we understand the New Moon was treated as a feast to the LORD that required sacrifices and libations to the LORD. Israel sanctified the new moon. The waxing and waning of the moon represents Israel in its degeneration and regeneration; of its peak and fullness and its dispersion in the nations.
There are those who are teaching the full moon is the new moon, but that is the full moon. There is another weird teaching that Sabbath is determined by the moon, the lunar cycle, but the Sabbath was established by God to be observed every 7 days, not by the moon phases in Genesis 2:2.
Since I am discussing this there is another bizarre teaching– that people of Jewish descent today are not actually observing the Lord’s feasts on those months and days prescribed by the Torah.
For instance, they are saying that everyone else is calling the full moon the full moon– and according to their teachings the full moon should be called the new moon. This would have serious implications in that Yeshua was not actually crucified on the feast of Passover. This would mean that Yeshua did not fulfill the feast of the Lord.
The sacrifices of Passover were always offered up on a full moon, on the evening of the 14th day at twilight (Exodus 12:6). Before that, in verse 2, God established the beginning of the month (this would be today Nisan) for the Hebrews, and you know it was the first of the month because he said on the tenth of the month every man should take for himself a lamb according to the number of members in the household.
These teachers are saying Yeshua was crucified at the dark of the moon and this would explain the 3 hours of darkness that covered the land in Israel that day. They say the 3 hours of darkness was from an eclipse and eclipses only occur during the dark phase of the moon. The darkness was not caused by an eclipse, it was caused by God’s own grief from watching His perfectly obedient Son being tortured and crucified by His own creation. The cosmos and the earth was affected by the death of His Son.
The gospel of Matthew records in chapter 27:5, . . . the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.
This imagery is an example of the ancient Hebraic mourning at the loss of a loved one. One example is this from 2 Samuel 13:30-31 where it says:
While on their way, the report came to David: “Absalom has struck down all the king’s sons; not one of them is left. The king stodd up, tore his clothes and lay down on the ground; and all the servants stood by with their cloths torn.
Tearing or renting clothing reflected the absolute tearing of the heart. The curtain that separated the Holy of Holies from the Holy place was traditionally known as the “hem of His garment.” And we all know that the woman with the issue of blood touched the hem of Yeshua’s garment, which was His tallit, his prayer shawl.
When Yeshua was here, He never confronted the Temple elite, or the common folk concerning their observing the wrong day for Sabbath, nor did He correct them on their calendar days or the Lord’s feast days, or reading the wrong passage for the Torah portions in the synagogues. What we do understand is that He observed all the feasts set forth by the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem, and rested and healed the oppressed on the Sabbath. Most of His healings occurred on the Sabbath which prefigured His millennial rein.
Why did He allow this, them—the Temple elite (Sanhedrin) to determine the new moons, and feasts? Because He gave them permission in the Torah. God established the new moon cycle in Exodus 12:2, as the first day of the month where He said to Moses and Aaron: This chodesh (renewal of the moon) shall be the beginning of months for you. He thereby determined the first day of the month, synchronizing the community’s calendar.
When introducing the appointed times of the Biblical calendar, the LORD said to Moses: Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, these are the appointed feasts of the LORD that YOU shall proclaim as holy assemblies; they are my appointed feasts. Leviticus 23:1-2
The words “that YOU shall proclaim” are understood to be directed to the Jewish authorities—the appointed elders. The authorities over the Jewish community have the biblical responsibility of proclaiming the festivals, that is, announcing the annual feasts of the Lord, fixing their dates, proclaiming the new moons, the new months and the dates of the festivals.
After the death of Yeshua, His apostles followed the issuances of the Lord’s feasts by the Sanhedrin, the Jewish authorities there in Jerusalem. They did not follow the splinter groups like the Essenes who wanted the calendar done their way. Yeshua conformed to the rules that were laid out in the Torah to follow the elders that were in authority in Israel.
Today there is no Sanhedrin, the Jewish calendar is a fixed calendar implemented by Hillel in the fourth century. Roman authority had banned the Sanhedrin from determining the new moons, and this pressure mounted for those early Christians and Jews to not observe those things of Yeshua and the apostles any more. This naturally created chaos and discord as people were determining the calendar independently of one another.
Hillel used astronomical projections and mathematical equations to create a fixed calendar that all Israel could use, and the early gentile Christians as well.
It is not a perfect calendar, but it will suffice until a singular authority arises over all Israel, like a Sanhedrin, or when Yeshua returns. I find it more important to submit to the authority of Israel during the appointed times of the feasts because Israel was given the authority to proclaim them.
One would say it isn’t that important, but it matters to God that His people would act like a community of believers coming together at the same time observing His word together. It matters to God that Yeshua would fulfill all His appointed times. All the feasts are at their appointed seasons: Passover has always been at the Barley Harvest, Pentecost has always been at the wheat harvest and the fall fruits are gathered at the end of days, which is in the fall.
Revelation 20:21
And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and the books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the Book of Life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books (plural).
The evening of September 9th the world will enter into the Lord’s feast of Yom Teruah, which is called the day of shouting, Leviticus 23:23
Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: “Speak to the children of Israel, saying: “In the seventh month, on the first day of the month, on the first day of the month, you shall have a Sabbath rest, a memorial of blowing the trumpets, a holy convocation . You shall do no customary work
