Sound of Faith

Sharon Hardy Knotts: Greetings friends and new listeners. Welcome to the Sound of Faith. I'm Sharon Knotts, thanking you for joining us today because we know that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. I'm so excited about today's message, "The Last Blast." I have to tell you, it was a blast to preach.

Understanding the significance of blowing the shofar, which is translated trump or trumpet in English Bibles, is more than interesting, it's revelatory. Ancient rabbis taught that Satan hates the sound of the shofar because he can't tell the difference between the blowing of the shofar and God's voice. And John confirmed in Revelation that God's voice sounds like the blowing of the shofar. And one day soon, He's going to sound the last blast.

R. G. Hardy: And as the last words of the Bible say, according to John the Revelator, "Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus." And you know, we are in the season where it's more probable that He could come. Now, I'm not predicting anything folks. Jesus said no man knows the day nor the hour, but Paul said we are not ignorant of the season.

And the reason I say this is because we are in the fall season of the holiest of the feasts of Israel. And the feasts of Israel are a type of what is being fulfilled in Jesus Christ. And of those feasts, some of them have already been filled, that's the spring feasts, with the coming of Jesus as the baby, etc., and the Passover Lamb and Pentecost, the giving of the Holy Spirit. But the fall feasts are still waiting to be fulfilled, and we're in them right now.

So if you just don't mind, we're going to talk about them today. Amen. I mean, is there a better time? No. So let me give you a thumbnail sketch first of the fall feasts. It begins with Rosh Hashanah, the Feast of Trumpets, also called Yom Teruah, the Day of Trumpets. It was this past Monday, September the 14th. Now because they are tied to a lunar calendar, they're not the same dates every year.

Sometimes they fall in September and they can fall as late as October. So that's why you have to see every year when it's going to fall on. So that was last Monday. Then the very next feast will be the holiest day of the whole year, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the Day of Repentance. That's coming up Wednesday, the 23rd of September. In between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are ten days, and they're called the Ten Days of Awe, A-W-E.

In other words, we could say the ten awesome days. And then after Yom Kippur, which is the 23rd, the next feast is called the Feast of Tabernacles. It's also called the Feast of Booths because the Hebrew word is Sukkot. And the word "Sukkot" means a booth. And when you think of a booth, don't think of that seat you sit in at the restaurant. Think of a little shelter, a temporary rickety little shelter.

And they have to, during that time of the Tabernacles, they build these rickety little shelters. And sometimes if they live in an apartment, it may be out on the veranda or it may be in their backyard if they have a home. And during this seven days, they stay in these little booths. And you say, "Well, why would they do that?" Because God wants them to look back and remember how they lived for forty years in the wilderness. Amen.

And then the end of that feast, the Feast of Tabernacles, the final day or the day after, which would be the eighth day, is called Simchat Torah. And that means the rejoicing in the law. "Simchat" means rejoicing or joy. A lot of Hebrew women are named Simcha. And so it means rejoicing in the law. It's really festive. They take the Torah, you know the scrolls, the big scrolls, and they take those and they march around and they sing and they rejoice.

They rejoice in the word of God. Amen. And so it would be like if we did this and maybe one day we ought to try it, we march around the building with our Bibles and singing and rejoicing in the word of God. Amen. So that's a thumbnail sketch of what we're talking about. Now Rosh Hashanah just passed. Turn with me to Leviticus 23. We'll read a verse there. I'm going to paraphrase a lot to save time.

Because when you start reading these laws, they have a tendency to say the same thing three and four times in a row. And so for the sake of time, I'm just going to tell you a lot of it. Amen. So Leviticus 23:23, "And the Lord spake unto Moses saying, Speak unto the children of Israel saying, In the seventh month, in the first day of the month, shall you have a sabbath," or a rest, "a memorial of blowing of trumpets, an holy convocation. And you shall do no servile work therein, but you shall offer an offering made by fire unto the Lord."

So this is the New Year. Now, I know that we're thinking, "Huh? It says the seventh month. Shouldn't the New Year begin on the first month?" Well, I won't get into all that, but they have two calendars. They have the civil calendar and then they have the religious calendar, which God gave them. So He's saying here that in the seventh month you're going to have a special, special holiday. It's going to be a day of rest. Nobody goes to work.

All stores are closed. All the restaurants are closed. Everything is closed because this is a special day of rejoicing and you're going to blow the trumpet on that day. Amen. And that's why it's called Yom Teruah because "Yom Teruah" or "Yom Teruah" is because it means the blowing of the trumpets. Now we know it as their Jewish New Year. We know it's going on. A lot of times you get off school, I know Baltimore County usually gives off, I don't know about the city.

And on this day, it's the beginning of their New Year for their religious calendar. Amen. And here's the thing about it, it's a very wonderful day. And a lot of Jews who are secularized, that's a nice way of saying backslidden, it means they no longer keep all of the law and all of those things. They don't go to synagogue. You know how we know people that only go to church Christmas and Easter? You know them kind of saints? Well, they got Jews like that, too.

They don't go to synagogue every Saturday except for they will go on Rosh Hashanah and they will go on Yom Kippur. And so they go to the synagogue on that day. And on that day, the priest blow the trumpet. I'm going to stop using the word trumpet now and I'm going to start saying shofar because that's really what it is. The English says trumpet, but if you say trumpet, you're going to be thinking of a brass horn. And that's not what we're talking about.

We're talking about a ram's horn. You know those big horns on the ram? That's what we're talking about. They didn't have brass horns, they had rams' horns. And it's a whole procedure that they had to do, how that they had to treat them in order to use them, but I won't talk about that today. So we're talking about a ram's horn, and the Hebrew word is shofar. So every time we see trump or trumpet, we're going to think shofar. Amen.

And so on the day of Rosh Hashanah, he blows it 100 times. Amen. And how many know what that sound is? You know, I mean now listen folks, I had another message picked out for today had nothing to do with any of this. And I know it's the High Holy Days and I would prefer to preach it during this period, but I thought, "Well, I preached it before. They probably don't want to hear it again."

But Benny got up this morning and said that last night he woke up because he heard a shofar blowing. And we live not too far from here in Baltimore County and he heard a shofar blowing and first he thought it might be the rapture. But as you see, we're still here. So now he doesn't know if he dreamt it or heard it. I don't think I got any Jews in my neighborhood that I know of blowing shofars.

But when he said that, I thought, "Mm." Because I also was listening to some ministers on the TV this week and a lot of them, because of the season, are talking about this and I heard some interesting things I'm going to share with you today. So I thought, "You know what? I'll just pull out my old notes and re-preach it." So that's what I'm doing. I did this at the last minute, okay? So I want you to see that Rosh Hashanah, he blows it 100 times. Amen. It's the shofar.

Now what it is is a signal to the people. The next ten days are the Days of Awe. And what do they do during these ten days before Yom Kippur, the holiest day of all of repentance? During the ten days they search their hearts. They search their lives to see if they feel like they have been measuring up to God's word and obeying His commandments, if they've been walking in the ways of God and living right.

And for those ten days they really search their hearts about that because this is what they believe. They believe that on Rosh Hashanah God opens up His book and He writes in His book all of their deeds for the past year, the past 365 days. All of their deeds, the good ones and the bad ones. So during this ten days, they start thinking about their good deeds and bad deeds because they want to see if their good deeds outweigh their bad deeds.

Because if their good deeds outweigh their bad deeds, then on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of all, God will write their name in the Book of Life. Now we know there's a lot of problems with that, but that's not the subject we're preaching on today. Amen. Because you cannot use good works to make it. And now you can understand some of the verses in Romans and some of the verses in Galatians and Hebrews where Paul was hammering away. It's not works of righteousness you've done, as he said in Titus.

All those scriptures, that's why. If my good deeds outweigh my bad deeds, and you know what? Islam teaches the same thing. They don't know, they won't even know until they die if their good deeds were, according to them, were greater than their bad deeds. Even Muhammad said he didn't know if he was going to make it to paradise. The only thing that will guarantee them a ticket straight to paradise is if they commit murder in jihad. That's why they're glad to do it because otherwise they don't have a guarantee if they're going to heaven or not.

But that's another sermon. Amen. And so what they do is during the ten days they go around greeting one another. They say, "L'shanah tovah tikatevu." In other words, it says, "May you be inscribed in the Book of Life." So for ten days they go around saying that to everybody. "May you be inscribed in the Book of Life," because they're hoping that on Yom Kippur that God will look at their lives with how they've lived on the past year and see whether or not they're worthy of going into the Book of Life. Amen.

And so that's what happens there. So then we move along here. Turn with me in your Bibles to Exodus 19, and let's look at a couple verses there. And if you have a bookmark, you want to keep it here because I'll come back to it in a moment or two. But right now, let's look at Exodus 19:19. "And when the voice of the trumpet sounded long, and waxed louder and louder, Moses spake and God answered him by a voice. And the Lord came down upon Mount Sinai, on the top of the mount: and the Lord called Moses up to the top of the mount; and Moses went up."

We're going to talk about this in a moment, but I want you to see here that when God came down, there was a particular sound of the shofar. That's what we're looking at. What kind of sound was it? It was loud and long and it was getting louder and louder as it was blown. Amen. So let's look over chapter 20 and look at verse 18. "And all the people saw the thunderings and the lightnings and the noise of the trumpet and the mountain smoking: and when the people saw it, they removed and stood afar off. And they said unto Moses, Speak thou with us, and we will hear: but let not God speak with us, lest we die."

So the sound of this shofar was actually frightening to the people. It was so loud and so long that it caused them to tremble. They were afraid of it to the point that they actually said to Moses, "We don't want to hear God when He speaks. We don't want to hear this. It makes us tremble with fear. We would prefer that God speak to you and then you can come and tell us what He said." And they backed, it said they removed, that means they backed off. They backed way, way off.

And folks, that's a message just wishing to be preached. When people begin to back away from the voice of God, they're on their way to backsliding. And there's a whole thing that you can see. They went from God speaking to where they get to the way, way off to where they don't even have a prophet to speak to them anymore. But I want you to see that they were afraid of the sound of the shofar and they were afraid of the sound of the voice of God that's like a shofar.

That's what it is. God's voice sounds like a shofar and they were so afraid they backed off. And guess what? Satan's afraid of it, too. I said the devil is afraid of it, too. And when he hears it, he begins to back off. Amen. Because the rabbis teach that the devil, they call him HaSatan, cannot tell the difference between the sounding of the shofar and God's voice. And the devil cannot tell the difference between when God speaks and the shofar is blown loud and long.

And when he hears it, he trembles. You know, the Bible says in James that the devils believe and tremble. And Satan cannot differentiate between the two, and so when he hears the sound he has got to flee. Amen. Now let's think about a couple incidents here in the Bible. In Joshua, the sixth chapter, we have the story of their first conquest, the city of Jericho, a mighty walled city. And how were they going to be able to trespass that city? But God gave them His plan.

A God-ordained plan makes no sense to the natural man. And so He said, "I want you to get the priests and I want you to march, let them march in front, and the army can go behind them." And He said, "I want you to march around the walls of Jericho, all the way around, every day. Every single day I want you to march around. I don't want you to say anything, I just want you to march around. Day one, two, three, four, five and six." Now I can imagine the people in Jericho were probably thinking these are a bunch of nuts.

And you know, they didn't attack them because they were probably really curious to see how this thing was going to go down. Here's a bunch of priests marching around and they're not doing anything, and here's a bunch of the army and they're just marching around the city. And they thought these people are really cracked. So they just were up there on the wall looking down saying, "Hmm." And you know, so by the seventh day they thought, "Boy, how long is this thing going to go on?" Well, not much longer folks.

And so on the seventh day, let's read Joshua 6, and I'm let's skip all the way down to verse 13. "And the seven priests bearing seven shofars," because it says trumpets of rams' horns, i.e., shofars, "before the ark of the Lord went on continually and blew with the trumpets: and the armed men went before them, but the rereward came after the ark of the Lord, the priests going on and blowing with the shofars." Amen.

"And the second day they compassed the city once, and returned into the camp: so they did six days. And it came to pass on the seventh day, that they rose early about the dawning of the day, and compassed the city after the same manner seven times: only on that day they compassed the city seven times. And it came to pass at the seventh time, when the priests blew with the trumpets, Joshua said unto the people, Shout; for the Lord God hath given you the city."

So when that seventh day when they blew that shofar seven times at the seventh blasting—I want to call it the last blast—at the last blast He told the people shout. I don't know what they shouted. We're not told what they shouted, but they shouted something. I'm sure it had something to do with their God. I'm sure they shouted something about God. Amen. They might have shouted, "There's no God like Jehovah."

I don't know, the Bible doesn't tell us, but when the last blast sounded they shouted and boom, the walls fell straight down, which is phenomenal. You would expect them to fall in or fall out, but not straight down. Amen. Because it was the blast, it was the sound of God's voice. Amen. And so they fell straight down. And if we would speed ahead past the time of Joshua, after him we have the time of the judges. And various judges were raised up and they ruled over Israel for periods of time.

And one of them was in the time of Gideon who we know was a very fearful guy. He was afraid because all the people were afraid of the Midianites, who came yearly at the same time of harvest time. They would come out of the mountains like marauders and come down, wait till the people had slaved to plant all of their crops and keep their eyes on it. And now it's time to reap the crops, and that's when the Midianites would come down like grasshoppers and steal their crops.

And they kept doing this. And finally God said He was going to use Gideon to conquer their enemy. And we know that when the Lord appeared unto Gideon he was hiding. He was hiding from the Midianites sneaking, trying to get a little bit of grain that they happened to leave behind when the angel of the Lord came unto him and said, "Oh, Gideon, thou man of valor, thy man of great courage, thou brave, brave man." And he looked around and said, "You mean me?"

And so we know the story. We know he was fearful. We know he had to go through a whole lot of things. He had to have a fleece that he had to put out before God not once but twice. And even then he still was having a problem, and God had to let him hear a dream from one of the enemy Midianites that the interpretation of which out of the Midianite's mouth basically said, "Oh, God's going to give that Gideon the victory over the Midianites."

So God had to do all these things to boost his faith up. Amen. But now he's ready. He's ready and he's called his army and he's got 32,000 men. Hey, sounds good until you realize the Midianites had 150,000 men. But you know what? God said, "That's too many. You got too many men. We got to get rid of some of them." Isn't that amazing? And they already are trying to figure out how they're going to go up against them with 32,000. God said it's too many.

And so God said, "Get up and stand up," because this was a law given to Moses. I won't take you there, but this was a law given to Moses. God told Moses to tell the army, if anybody's afraid, let him go home. Now you think, "Well, why would you do that?" Because if you're afraid, then that cowardice is contagious. And if you're full of fear like I preached last week about the bad report, how the ten men caused millions of people to not go into Canaan.

So he said, "If you're afraid, tell them to go home because we don't need you hanging around here being all afraid; you're going to cause the ones who do have bravery and courage to start coming under that." So he said, "Okay, it's time for you to evoke the law of Moses. Stand up and say if you're afraid go home." So he stood up to 32,000 men and said, "If you're afraid go home," and 22,000 men went home. So now we're down to 10,000.

And you know what? God said, "You still have too many. Still have too many. We got to have another test." And so this test had to do with taking them down to the water and telling them to get a drink. Watch how they drink. See what they do. Some are going to get down and they're going to lap it up like a dog. Amen. And others are going to get down and they're going to get down on their knees and they're going to put their mouths down to the water. Amen.

So God said, "You know, watch what they do." And when he did 9,700 did it one way and 300 did the other way. You can read all the details about this later. So, okay, we lost 300 people—well, we still got 9,700 people? No, I'm afraid not. God told him to keep the 300 and send away the 9,700. Really, God? 300 people are going to go up against 150,000 men? Amen. Now God says you're ready now. Now you're ready to go to war.

So we're in Judges, the seventh chapter, and I'm going to read a couple verses there. Let's look at verse 16. "And he divided the 300 men into three companies, and he put a shofar in every man's hand, with empty pitchers and lamps within the pitchers. And he said unto them, Look on me and do likewise: and, behold, when I come to the outside of the camp, it shall be that as I do, so shall you do. When I blow with a shofar and all that are with me, then you blow your shofars on every side of all the camp and say, The sword of the Lord, and of Gideon."

"So Gideon and the hundred men that were with him, came unto the outside of the camp in the beginning of the middle watch; and they had but newly set the watch: and they blew the shofars and break the pitchers that were in their hands," that would have been, you know, like clay pitchers and they make a lot of noise when you break terracotta. Amen. "Break the pitchers," and that meant that the light that the lamp that was in it now would be seen. Amen.

"And break the pitchers that was in their hands, and the shofars in their right hands to blow with: and they cried, The sword of the Lord, and of Gideon." Amen. And so we see here they did exactly what he said. I wanted you to see that once again God used the blowing of the shofar. Now, you know I also like to bring out the fact that the sword was the sword of the Lord and of Gideon. It was a two-mouth sword, you know that message I sometimes preach.

And one mouth was God's and the other mouth was Gideon's. So that's one little nugget there. But let's look at the fact that they all blew the shofar. You got 300 men. That's not many if you're going to have to fight with weapons. But if they have shofars and they all blow them together, and the devil can't tell the difference between the shofar and God's voice—Amen!—he can't tell the difference.

So what happened, and plus they heard all this glass breaking and then they saw these lights all of a sudden? It scared the living daylights out of them. Amen. And that's how God gave them the victory. Satan hates the sound of the shofar. He hates it. Do you know that when God created Lucifer, He created him with musical instruments in himself? In himself. Very, very phenomenal creature that God made in Lucifer.

That's why Satan is so very successful in getting people through music. It's no wonder that music is the drug of the masses. Amen. He gets people through music. And you don't have to turn there, but I will read to you a couple verses to show you what I'm talking about. First of all in Ezekiel the 28th chapter, it says, "Moreover the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Son of man," which would be Ezekiel, "take up a lamentation upon the king of Tyrus, and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord God; Thou sealest up the sum, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty."

"Here's how we know who it is: Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, the topaz, the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald and the carbuncle, and gold." Here's what I want you to see: "The workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day thou wast created." He's got tabrets and pipes. Pipes are wind instruments, your reeds. Amen.

Okay, and there's another one. Isaiah also is about him, and I'll read just one verse there. Isaiah 14 and verse 11, and here he's named Lucifer in this chapter, but I'll just read 14:11: "Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, and the noise of thy viols," V-I-O-L-S, "the worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover thee: how art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!"

So I want you to see who it was talking about. So here we have tabrets, we have pipes, we have viols. So we have percussion instruments and we have string instruments. Amen. But we do not have a trumpet. We don't have a horn. We don't have a trumpet here. Amen. That is the one thing that God did not put in Lucifer because God reserved that sound for Himself. Amen. That is His sound.

Let me tell you, that is what God's voice sounds like. I'll read this to you quickly in Revelation 1:10, John said, "I was in the spirit on the Lord's day, and heard me a great voice, as a shofar," as a trumpet. Revelation 4:1: "After I looked and, behold, a door was opened in heaven: and the first voice I heard was as it were a trumpet," or a shofar, "talking with me; which said, Come up hither." So God's voice sounds like a shofar. Amen. And Satan will flee at the sound of God's voice. He's going to flee. Amen.

Sharon Hardy Knotts: Amen, what an exciting but clarifying message, "The Last Blast." Paul called it the last trump in 1 Thessalonians and 1 Corinthians that is going to wake the dead in Christ who will rise and the living shall be caught up, raptured together in the air. Paul was referring to a shofar or ram's horn, not a brass trumpet.

The shofar had four different sounds that were blown to signify different things, but the final blast was long and loud, and it is what the people heard when God spoke on Mount Sinai. It caused the mountain to quake and the people to tremble. John said in Revelation God's voice is like the sound of the shofar. And the rabbis claim that Satan hates the sound of the shofar because he can't tell the difference between it and God's voice. And when he hears it, he trembles.

"The Last Blast" explains the fall feasts of the Lord and their correlation to the rapture and the tribulation, and refutes the claim that some make that the church will be raptured in the middle of the tribulation. You want to get this one for your spiritual library. "The Last Blast" can be ordered on CD for a love gift of $10 or more for the radio ministry. Request SK183.

Mail to Sound of Faith, PO Box 1744, Baltimore, Maryland, 21203, or go online to thesoundoffaith.org where you can also order on MP3. But to order "The Last Blast" on CD, request SK183, send a minimum love gift of $10, and mail to PO Box 1744, Baltimore, Maryland, 21203. Until next time, this is Sharon Knotts saying, "Maranatha."