Trumpets

In my devotional reading from Numbers I was reading about the Lord’s command to Moses for him to make two silver trumpets, “…for calling the assembly and for directing the movement of the camps.” (Numb. 10:2). Now this was an eminently practical method of communication at that time. Yet, my mind wandered to the reference of trumpets as a means to call the assembly in the Bible.

There are nearly twenty verses in the English New Testament that refer to the trumpet or its sounding. If you are thinking most of these refer either to the voice of Christ or the last trumpet when Christ returns you are correct. Perhaps the most famous of those is I Corinthians 15:52, “in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.”

As God ordered Moses to create the sounding trumpets to call the people of God together was he foreshadowing the promise of the last trumpet, the final call? Isn’t that the believer’s fondest hope? We are still pilgrims wandering in the wilderness of sin in this life (I Peter 2:11). We don’t live under the Mosaic administration but we wait for the sounding of the trumpet to call us to assemble together before the Lord (I Thessalonians 4:16).

I can’t help but think that God was setting the stage for the final trumpet call in that command for Moses. We are the people of God. He calls us to worship him every Lord’s day but that day is only a promise of the Sabbath rest to come (Heb 3:16-4:10). That Sabbath will be ushered in by the final and glorious trumpet call. Will you be ready? Will you hear it and rejoice?