JESUS & ROSH HASHANA – THE JEWISH NEW YEAR By Fiona Sorbala

As a Jewish believer, I love the Jewish Feasts and how the Lord’s biblical calendar is fulfilled in Jesus, the Messiah. I want to give you some insights into the Jewish Festival of Rosh Hashana, which means the ‘head of the year’. However, this name is not found in the Bible; it’s the name by which Judaism calls this Festival: in the Bible, It is called ‘Zikron Teruah’, which means a  ‘Memorial of Blowing’  but is more commonly known as the Feast of Trumpets.

Lev 23:24: “Speak to the people of Israel, saying, In the seventh month, on the first day of the month, you shall observe a day of solemn rest, a memorial proclaimed with blast of trumpets, a holy convocation.

Moses instructed the people to have a day of Blowing, a day of holy convocation,  a sabbath, and to offer a burnt offering as sacrifice a fragrant aroma pleasing to the Lord. But other than that, the Scripture is silent about why the children of Israel were instructed to keep it. No matter how they try, the rabbis do not understand it, nor do they fully see its prophetic significance! Only when we look at it through the eyes of faith is it possible to understand why the Lord wanted us to keep it.

The rabbis have some prophetic insight into this Festival, which is why they look to it as a call to repentance and focus their hearts on the kingship of God, and they read a story from the OT that they use to illustrate the divine kingly rule of God in our lives. The story they use is called the ‘Akeda’ or the Binding of Isaac. In church, I heard many sermons about Abraham but never one in which the story’s focus was Isaac. The focus is usually on Abraham or the ram provided by God for the sacrifice.

I want to take you through the story and show you a prophetic message that is often missed. I would like to show you a couple of ways in which Jesus fulfils this Feast.

We understand that for Abraham, his son Isaac was the fulfilment of his hopes and dreams and for Abraham, the very promise of God that he has been given:

Gen 17:6-7 I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make you into nations, and kings shall come from you. And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you

So, when God asks him to sacrifice Isaac, it is no small thing. God acknowledges Abraham’s love for his son in his request, asking Abraham to offer up his only son, Isaac, whom he loved.

Gen 22:2  And He said, Take now your son, your only one, Isaac, whom you love. And go into the land of Moriah, and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will name to you.

So, we point to Abraham’s faith that God would provide a sacrifice or even restore Isaac to life, but there is more. For Abraham, it was the laying down of all his hopes and dreams on that altar. It meant laying down the promise of God that he would have a multitude of descendants: it was the ultimate sacrifice, the ultimate act of obedience. The ultimate demonstration is that Abraham submitted his life to the Lord as His King and Master, and as we know so well, God did indeed provide the ram.

At Moriah, Abraham was tested in the deepest place of his heart, and it touched what he considered most precious and dearest to him. As the Jewish calendar cycles through our lives, the festivals come, each with its own challenge. At Rosh Hashana, we too are challenged, and the question is asked of us: are we willing, like Abraham, to lay down our hopes and dreams, even our plans to do the will of God? Have we truly accepted His divine rule as God and King over our lives?

The New Year challenges us to discover the true meaning of the obedience of faith as people like Abraham and Isaac were and to become people who know the joy of God’s presence in our lives as we seek to do His will. And, in so doing, bring joy to the heart of  the Father, our God, our King of Kings and Lord of Lords

Let’s look for a moment at the messianic and prophetic aspects of this story that Isaac reveals.

Gen 22:6 And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac, his son. And he took the fire in his hand and a knife. And they both went together.

Isaac is so often overlooked in this story: the only son, the obedient and beloved son who accompanies his father to Mount Moriah to make a sacrifice to the Lord. There is much debate about Isaac’s age at this point. Some say he is a youngster, others around thirteen approaching his manhood, and some Jewish sources like Josephus and the Targums have him anywhere from his mid-twenties to mid-thirties. What is clear, though, is that he is old enough and strong enough to carry the wood for the sacrifice, sufficient to burn a whole lamb, which his father Abraham lays on his back. He is also old enough, as the two of them walk on together to ask the question: where is the sacrifice?

Gen 22:7 Then Isaac said to Abraham his father, “My father?” Then he said, “Here I am, my son.” He said, “Look. Here is the fire and the wood. But where is the lamb for a burnt offering?”  Abraham said, “God will provide for Himself a lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” The two of them walked on together

Here is where we often miss the point: he, too, like his father, was obedient. He accepts his father Abraham’s answer; he believes his father and does not protest. Just like the lamb of God prophesied in Is 53, he is silent! He did not struggle; he willingly walked up the mountain and allowed Abraham to bind him and lay him on the altar. He, too, had faith, obedient faith.

His story so clearly points us to Jesus, God’s only Son: God’s Beloved Son who carried the wood for His sacrifice, who willingly went as the Lamb of God to lay down His life for us. In the Akeda, we see that Isaac is the story of an obedient son, a prophetic foreshadowing of the obedient Son of God, Jesus.

Php 2:8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

And finally, Isaac challenges us, as this Festival is meant to, about personal obedience: Obedience to the King of Kings. Obedience is an uncomfortable word; it conjures up ideas, such as the loss of freedom or restrictions imposed on us. People rewrite their marriage vows to avoid the old-fashioned promise of a wife who must promise to obey her husband. Yet obedience is a quality in us that God considers both valuable and prized. Samuel understood this when he spoke the following:

1Sa 15:22 “Has the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams.

Both the Latin root of the word obey and the Hebrew word for obey, carry the idea of listening or of hearing, but it is more than just hearing; it is acting upon what we hear – the dictionaries give a list of other words such as comply submit yield be ruled by follow instruction but the biblical idea of obedience is something deeper because we are not called to blind obedience – we have been given free will and the opportunity to choose to serve God.

We have been given free will and the opportunity to choose to serve God. It is our choice to obey that marks us out as followers of God and delights

His heart. However, there is another prophetic foreshadowing missing in this story, and it is missing because of a poor translation of a Hebrew word.

Abraham said that the Lord will provide, yet if you do a word study on the Hebrew word, you discover that provide may not be the best transaltion. Translating it as ‘provide’ explains what God did. There is only one other occasion where the word is translated as provide. It is always translated as to see, show, or appear. Abraham clarifies what he means, and the King James translation is especially helpful because, in honour of the miraculous provision of the ram for the sacrifice, Abraham names the place where the miracle occurred.

Gen 22:14 And Abraham called the name of that place Jehovah Will See; so that it is said until this day, In the mount of Jehovah it will be seen.

I am sure that you know that Mount Moriah is the place where this all occurred, and as we look through Scripture, Moriah becomes a place that is central to the plan of God

In Abraham’s day, about 2000 BC, Moriah was in the wilderness area, and a thousand years later, King David established the city of Jerusalem there, and his son Solomon built the Temple.

2 Chron 3:1Then Solomon began to build the Temple of the LORD in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah, where the LORD had appeared to his father, David

Abraham called Mount Moriah Jehovah will see – Yahweh Yireh or as Jewish people say out of respect for the holiness of God’s name- Adonai Yireh, and as we discovered this mountain became prophetically known as The mount of Jehovah, it will be seen as the KJV

The Jewish Publication Society’s translation also clarified the meaning for us

Gen 22:14 And Abraham called the name of that place Adonai-Jireh; as it is said to this day: ‘In the mount where the LORD is seen.’

Little did they realise that on Moriah, one day, the Lord would indeed be seen in the Person of the Beloved Son of God, who came as the Lamb of God to take away the sins of the world.

I rejoice every time I say the name Jerusalem or its Hebraic form, Yerushalem, the city known as the city of peace, and I know that many of you know that the last part of its name, Salem, comes from the word shalom: peace.

If we consider that the first part of the name Jerusalem comes from the Hebrew root to see, we could translate it not only as Jerusalem, the City of Peace, but Jerusalem, the city where God’s peace will be seen.

And that is what happened on the Moriah, the mountain called by Abraham’ Yahweh Yireh’. The place where the Lord will be seen (or appear) is the place where God was seen in the Person of his Son Jesus, who came to make peace between God and Man.

The Jewish Feast of Trumpets is all about Jesus, and the story of the Akeda is not so much about Isaac but about the One whom Isaac foreshadows: Jesus and what He would do in that very place. Isaac points us prophetically as a type or a foreshadowing of Jesus as the only Son, the beloved Son who was willing to carry the wood for the sacrifice up the mountain in the very place where God was seen in the Person of the perfect Lamb of God who took away the sins of the world in the city called Peace will be seen! When the Lamb of God took away the sins of the world and became our Peace.