02/10/2024
If the sound of the shofar calls us back to Exodus 19, back to Sinai and the covenant with God, we are also forced to face the broken promises that followed. Unlike the unconditional covenants with Noah and Abraham, the covenant at Sinai was conditional on Israel keeping their side of the bargain:
Therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ (Exodus 19:5-6)
Israel, for the most part, did not obey God’s voice or keep His covenant. Even as the covenant ceremony was being established on the mountain, God’s people were cavorting with the calf. A sorry sign of what was to come. The broken tablets and God’s broken heart. Back in Hosea, God asks his servant to name his children after the broken relationship with Israel prophetically:
Then the Lord said, “Call him Lo-Ammi (which means “not my people”), for you are not my people, and I am not your God.” (Hosea 1:9)
Yet, the Lord, in His unwavering faithfulness, did not sever the relationship there. His plan, conceived long before Sinai, before Egypt, before Abraham, and even before the creation of the world, was to send His Messiah for restoration and a fresh start. The New Covenant, sealed in the blood of the Messiah, rekindled the possibility of a relationship with God—not just for Israel, but for all the families of the earth. Now, all who embrace the atonement for sin, paid for by the eternal and spotless Lamb of God, whether Jew or Gentile, are invited to be part of God's people. The path is open for all to join His royal priesthood, His holy nation, based on HIS righteousness, not ours. The covenant with Israel endures, and now, Gentiles are engrafted in to share in the promise:
But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. (1 Peter 2:9-10)
https://www.oneforisrael.org/holidays/biblical-feasts/fall-feasts/the-feast-of-trumpets-and-the-shofar-blast-of-remembering/
