Today begins the Jewish New Year; the feast or festival of trumpets found in Leviticus 23.  Modern Jews call it Rosh Hashanah.  Today begins the year 5783 in the Lord!  It is celebrated as a Sabbath day of celebration where no work is to be done, a food offering is to be brought to the Lord, and with several blasts on the shofar, or trumpet.

Though I don’t think that any of us here this morning are Jewish by birth, our Christian faith has its heritage in the Old Testament.  Jesus lived as a Jewish man and rabbi.  He is the only human not born into sin who lived out the Jewish faith sinlessly; fulfilling the law perfectly.  Now, still by faith in the same God of the Jews, do we receive the fulfillment of all of God’s promises through Jesus. 

The most significant difference between us and modern Jews is that we acknowledge that Jesus is the Messiah, the long-awaited savior.  As Paul taught it, we as the universal church of Jesus Christ have not replaced the Israelites/Jews as God’s chosen people, we have been grafted into them.

Romans 11:11-21

11 Again I ask: Did they (Israel) stumble so as to fall beyond recovery? Not at all! Rather, because of their transgression, salvation has come to the Gentiles to make Israel envious. 12 But if their transgression means riches for the world, and their loss means riches for the Gentiles, how much greater riches will their full inclusion bring!

13 I am talking to you Gentiles (non-Jews). Inasmuch as I am the apostle to the Gentiles, I take pride in my ministry 14 in the hope that I may somehow arouse my own people to envy and save some of them. 15 For if their rejection brought reconciliation to the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead? 16 If the part of the dough offered as firstfruits is holy, then the whole batch is holy; if the root is holy, so are the branches.

17 If some of the branches have been broken off, and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root, 18 do not consider yourself to be superior to those other branches. If you do, consider this: You do not support the root, but the root supports you. 19 You will say then, “Branches were broken off so that I could be grafted in.” 20 Granted. But they were broken off because of unbelief, and you stand by faith. Do not be arrogant, but tremble. 21 For if God did not spare the natural branches, he will not spare you either.

So though we are not Jewish by birth, we receive by faith everything from Jesus, the Root of Jesse, as we are grafted into Him and all of the promises of God prophetically made under the Old Covenant through the New Covenant.  We still value the Old Testament as God’s word, but enjoy the fact that our salvation has been fulfilled and look forward to some of the prophecies which are still left undone.

Alright, spiritual history lesson aside, today is a new day full of new beginnings and lots of new hope!

I think it is interesting that God’s new year begins with what appears to us to be death.  The grass is finally slowing down, leaves are changing and falling, and everything is preparing for the winter. 

However, we know that in Christ, life comes from death. 

Even as the natural world around us enters a season of death, we die to ourselves; to our old flesh and old ways.  Then, the season of spring comes around where everything comes back to a new life!  In the same way, we may put to death our old selves, but it is only so that we might rise up again into a new life through Jesus!

This morning, God is bringing our attention to something that we all possess that has the ability to make or break us, to embitter or embolden us, to cause either fear or faith to rise in us.  It is what He has been speaking about to us the past few weeks as well.  It is our: perception!

Perception is how the apostles were able to physically be with Jesus and not recognize Him.  It wasn’t that they