Happy New Year! Today is Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. It’s a day of rest, a day for offerings, and a day for the blowing of the shofar, a ram’s horn trumpet. Traditionally, the blowing of the shofar has three purposes:

1. It is a call to repentance, beginning the Ten Days of Awe between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. During this time Jewish people are exhorted to seek reconciliation with those whom they have wronged during the year. “Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.” Matthew 5:23-24

2. The shofar is also blown to “remind” God of His covenant with His people Israel. Our Lord, of course, needs no reminder of His commitment to those who are in Christ. “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,[a] neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8:38-39

3. Finally the shofar is sounded to confuse Satan, the accuser, as he accuses the saints before the throne of God. “Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say:
“Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God,
and the authority of his Christ.
For the accuser of our brothers,
who accuses them before our God day and night,
has been hurled down.”

So Rosh Hashanah is a good time to remember God’s mercy through Christ, His faithfulness in Christ, and God’s power over Satan by the suthority of Christ.

L’shanah tovah tikatevu= May your name be inscribed (in the Book of Life).

Information from Lederer/Messianic Jewish Communications
Picture courtesy of Blue Mountain