A Sacrifice Better than Bulls & Rams (Numbers 28-29) [2025-7-20]

Let me invite you all to find your seat.

Good morning once again to everybody.

As you find your seat, let me invite you all to open your

Bibles to the Book of Numbers. This morning we're going to be

in two chapters, Numbers 28 and 29.

We're being the entire chapters of of both 28 and 29.

Tyler, the sermon this morning. Is this a sacrifice better than

bulls and Rams will not be reading the text upfront this

morning because it is so long. And then we're doing 2 old

chapters because these chapters deal with offerings and all the

offerings that God commanded his people when they enter the

promised land. And so while it may seem a

little tedious, we will work our way through it section by

section. I won't be reading it, but I, I

trust that you can either read it you you have already read it,

or you will maybe read it afterward in your own time.

But let's open in a word of prayer and we will jump into the

sermon this morning. Father, as we break open your

word and we discuss it and examine it and, and try to apply

it to our lives, especially on a text that doesn't have a an

immediate direct application to us, that none of us have shown

up here with a bull or a ram or a lamb or a goat this morning.

Lord, we pray that you would help us to see that we've shown

up with, with our, our bodies, our lives, and you have called

us to present ourselves as living sacrifices, holy and

acceptable to you. And so this morning, God, would

you help us to understand what that means, what are the

implications of that and how we make these sacrifices and how we

how do we present ourselves as living sacrifices and, and what,

what do we have to learn from the Old Testament sacrificial

system? God, help us to understand why

you gave these sacrifices, what you were trying to teach your

people, what you wanted them to learn, and what you want us

today, thousands of years later, to learn.

I pray all this in the name of Jesus, Amen.

What does warning information, airplane safety guides, movie

credits, terms and conditions, drug information sheets, and

credit card agreements all have in common?

They are things that almost nobody reads, either because we

don't think it matters or it's not applicable to our life.

There are sections of the Bible that fit in this category, and

the two chapters that we're looking at this morning are such

a section. We read these two chapters.

If you read them ahead of time or maybe if you read them later,

and you might think I'm not an Old Testament Jew, we don't

celebrate these feasts anymore. We're not building booths and

living in them or cleansing out all of the leaven in our house.

So what does this have to do with my life?

But this morning, I want us to, I want to exhort us as we look

at these eight different types of offerings and these different

feasts that are given in the text.

I want us to, I want to challenge us to see, can we

glean application from this? What, what does God want us to

think and feel and see and know and do from these eight

different offerings and feasts that we look at?

So that's my challenge to us this morning.

We're going to go through it. There are going to be 888

sections this morning because that's how the text is divided

up. We won't read it because it'll

take it'll take just take too much time.

But I will give you all the information that's contained

there in the text. So let's start looking at

Numbers 28. Our first section we're going to

look at is verses one through 8. Now you may have a title in your

Bible that says daily offerings, or maybe it's something along

those lines, daily offerings. And that's the first section

we're going to look at is the daily offerings.

Now I want to make a note that before we look at the daily

offerings, just as a side note in these two chapters, all of

these offerings are cumulative, so they build on top of each

other. So it's not as though when you

make a daily offering when it's the Sabbath, you don't make that

daily offering. You still make the daily

offering. You make the daily offering plus

the Sabbath. And when it's the Feast of

Booths, you don't just make the feast of Booths offering, you

make the daily offering, the Sabbath offering.

If it's the Sabbath and they're all, they all build on top of

each other. All right, So keep that in mind

as we go through it. God starts off giving a command.

If you see that in verse 2, command the people of Israel to

make offerings. Now this is a reminder to us

that offerings, while they can be voluntary, we often use the

word offering us being voluntary.

They can be, they often are, but they first and foremost are

primarily commanded. God commanded His people to make

these offerings. And I want to point out a word

that occurs 4 times in verse two.

Look at it in verse 2. It's the word my.

He says my offering my food. Twice He says my food, and then

He says my pleasing aroma. That's important.

Don't miss that word my. It reminds us that what we do in

worship is God's. It is God's worship.

It's so easy to think of it as this is my song that I am

leading. You know, you may have been a

church. I grew up in a church where

people would have solo solos. They would sing or play an

instrument or something, right? And often they would think of it

as this is my song that I am leading.

This is my money that I'm giving.

This is my sermon that I'm preaching.

This is my ministry in which I am serving or even at a bigger

scale. This is my church that I'm

leading. And yet we see right here, it is

God's. It all belongs to God.

Everything we do here this morning and every morning is

God's, not ours. God tells them they are to offer

a daily offering every day of the year.

Every single day. They are to offer 2 male lambs a

year old without blemish, one in the morning and one in the

evening. They were to do this every day

without fail. In addition to the lambs, they

are to offer a grain offering 1/10 of an EFA of fine flour

mixed with 1/4 of hen of beaten oil.

And along with the grain offering, they'd offer a drink

offering. So they would have the lamb, the

grain offering and the drink offering 1/4 of a hen of strong

drink for each lamb. Now I want to point out three

aspects of the daily offering. Number one, I want you to notice

in this text that God is pleased with their offerings.

Now where do I get that? Three times God describes the

offering as an aroma and three times He describes the aroma the

exact same way, a pleasing aroma.

God in his grace was pleased with their offerings.

And brother and sister, because of Jesus Christ and His death on

the cross, God is pleased with our offerings.

Here's why this is so important to understand, especially like

culturally, this is so important for us to understand because we

have many contacts where we legitimately strive to please

someone and the person is not pleased.

Sometimes a a child tries their very hardest in a ballet recital

or a piano recital or a basketball game or their grades

in school, and yet the parent is still not pleased.

Sometimes we give it our very best on our work project and our

boss is still not pleased. Sometimes in marriage, we may

strive to make dinner with all our effort.

Our spouse is still not pleased and we must not transfer this

experience, these experiences to God.

You see, God never looks at us singing or our preaching or our

evangelism or our discipleship and thinks, nice try, try better

next time. I've heard better.

What a great joy it is to know that because of Jesus Christ,

everything we do for the Lord is pleasing to the Lord, assuming

it's done with the right heart #2 Second thing I want to point

about this daily offerings. God required the Lamb to be

without blemish. These lambs, every one of them,

two a day, every day, 300 and well, it's like 54 days of the

year, 354 days of the year they are to be without blemish.

In fact, 15 times in these two chapters God reminds them that

they are to be without blemish, which means the Lamb had to be

perfect. In a sense, as perfect as a Lamb

could be. In Major League Baseball there

have been over 238,500 games. Baseball has been around for a

long time. They play 162 games a year,

238,500 games if you multiply that times 2 because there are

two pitchers per game, at the minimum 2 pitchers per game.

That's 477,477 thousand. For a pitcher to throw what is

known as a perfect game, he needs to have no hits, no walks,

no hit batsmen, no uncaught third strikes, no catchers

interference, no fielders, obstructions, no fielding

errors. In other words, a batter can

never reach base for any reason. There are 27 batters and that's

it, no more. Of those 477,000.

Do you know how many have been perfect games?

24 That's .005%. I was thinking about it like

what if that was the standard to play in college?

What if colleges said if you would like to pitch baseball in

college, you have to throw a perfect game in high school?

Think of the pressure, think of the hopelessness of like I'll

never play at the next level. And yet God says if you would

like to come to heaven, you must be perfect.

You have to have you have to throw a perfect life.

And yet we have no pressure. We have hope.

Why? Because Jesus lived a perfect

life and he makes us blemish free, His perfection of his

life. And he says, I make you blemish

free. You may enter the presence of

the father #3 Third thing I want to point out about the daily

offerings is that the burnt offering was offered daily

morning and evening, every day, daily morning and evening.

There was no, I'm sorry, I was busy.

I meant to do it, but I was really busy.

I got distracted, you know, I was got distracted.

I was on vacation. I just forgot I was really

tired. I had every intention to make

the evening one but I I went to bed early.

I was really tired. I'll catch up this weekend.

I'll make 7 offerings on the weekend.

I'll catch up. Did work that way?

God said these burnt offerings were to be made every single

day, without fail, twice a day, every day, morning and evening.

Brothers and sisters, we need the worship of God every single

day of our life, every day. Just as I eat every day, usually

two to three times a day, I need to spiritually eat day two to

three times a day, whether that is through prayer or His Word or

meditation. We need the worship of God every

day. Verses 9 to 10 deals with the

Sabbath offerings. The next section we're going to

look at in verses 9 to 10 is the Sabbath offerings.

Now on the Sabbath, which was Saturday for them, they were to

offer 2 male lambs a year old without blemish.

They were to offer a grain offering, 2/10 of a fine flour

mixed with oil and a drink offering.

Now this all of this is in addition to the burnt offering

that we just looked at. Now, what this reminds us of is

that the Sabbath for them was not just a day of rest where

people slept in longer and took an afternoon nap, right?

Now, maybe they did do that, but it wasn't just that.

It was a whole day, once a week set aside to worship God.

And they and they would recognize this by making these

additional offerings every week. Now I understand, you know, that

there are endless debates and conversations about the role of

the Sabbath, the New Testament Christian, right?

Like, are we to observe a Sabbath?

Are we not? If we do observe it, what are we

allowed to do? What are we not?

That debate is not going to get solved.

There's just not. And it's certainly not going to

get solved here this morning. So we can go back and forth all

day long about that. Here is one thing that is not up

for debate. The early church models for us

at the very least, that the way at the minimum, the way that we

observe the Sabbath, which is now Sunday, I believe, is by

gathering with the people of God to worship God.

At the minimum, the way that we observe the Sabbath today is to

gather with the people of God to worship God in the same way that

they're offering on the Sabbath was different, right?

It was more they still made the daily offering morning and

evening, and then they made the Sabbath offering after the

morning offering. It was more it was different.

Our worship of God is to be different on the Sabbath.

It should be more. Now I understand you might be

thinking, Matt, you're, you're preaching to the choir here.

Like literally you're preaching to the choir.

We're here. We made it.

You're telling us together we did.

We gathered we're here. What are you trying to get at?

That may not always be the case. I may not always be the case.

I have known many, many people who have faithfully attended

church every Week, 2, three times a week, every single week

for 10/20/30 years and then stopped attending for 10/20/30

years. I was talking to my boys the

other day about a book we're reading, a book together on

vocation and calling, and I was talking to them.

One of the the chapter was talking about church and being

committed to church and I was exhorting them.

This is so important for you parents.

I was exhorting them to make weekly corporate worship and

intrinsic conviction for them and not simply a borrow one from

mom and dad. As parents, we have such a

responsibility to make sure that our children are not borrowing

our convictions, but they are developing their own intrinsic

conviction of this. And I want to say the same to

you as your spiritual father because I don't the way our

church is like 5 years from now, about 1/5 of you won't be here.

That that's just how what how our church is.

And then another fifth of you won't be here.

You never outgrow your need to gather with the people of God to

worship God. Make this your intrinsic

conviction to once a week at the minimum, gather on the Sabbath

to worship God. Verses 11 to 15.

These are what's called the monthly off section we're going

to look at is the monthly offerings.

These are often referred to as the new moon sacrifices.

You may have seen that throughout the Bible of new what

the new moon, that's what this is, is the monthly offerings.

The new moon sacrifices once a month.

At the beginning of each month. They were to offer unique

offerings. So again, this is cumulative.

This is on top of everything else.

So if the new moon fell on the Sabbath, it would be daily

offering, Sabbath offering, and new moon offering.

They're all cumulative. They were to offer unique

offerings. 2 bulls, 1 ram, 7 male lambs A grain offering.

The grain offering would be commensurate with the size of

the animal. The bull would be 3/10, the ram

would be 2/10. The lamb would be 110th.

The drink offering would be commensurate as well.

The bull would be half a hint of wine, the ram would be 1/3 of a

hen, and the lamb would be 1/4 of a hen.

In addition to all of that, they were to offer a sin offering a

goat. 1 Male goat for a sin offering to the Lord.

Again, this is in addition to all the daily offerings, all the

Sabbath offerings. Now, here's the question that I

had about the monthly offering, right?

It's like, well, if you got daily offerings and you have

Sabbath offerings, why do you need monthly offerings, right?

What, what is the purpose of this monthly offering?

We'll have to back up for just a moment.

One commentator writes this. The new moon was affirmed by two

witnesses who began watching. For at the end of each month,

once sighted in the sky, the new moon was announced in Jerusalem

with a long trumpet blast, and an official message was sent out

by a signal fire. The entire Hebrew calendar

depended on these declarations, for without them no one would

know when a new month begun, had begun.

They used the moon to keep time right?

We all know this, this is important.

You ever had time just bleed together, right?

People ask you like, you know, when did you do this?

And you're like, I was last week and your wife's like one last

week. It was last year.

You're like, right, Right. You ever had time just kind of

bleed together in your mind? Like your days bleed together,

your weeks bleed together, your months bleed.

It's really bad if your years bleed together, right?

You just kind of lose sense of all time.

The new moon was a way to pause and celebrate a new beginning.

It was one day once a month where it was a time for the

Israelites to pause and celebrate a new beginning, and

they would make offerings to celebrate this.

Brothers and sisters, let me exhort you to be intentional to

build new beginnings into your spiritual walk.

Build new beginnings. You see, all of us in Christ

have put our hand to the plow and have not looked back.

That's what it means to be a Christian.

You put your hand to the plow and you're not looking back.

But that doesn't mean we keep plowing the same field over and

over again. God will give us new fields to

plow. You say, what does that look

like? Well, a new beginning might be

an area of your life where you say, I'm not going back there.

I've been engaged in this sin for the past five years of my

life, the past 10 years of my life, and today it stops and I'm

not going back. Or it might be a commitment to

start doing something. Here's why there's some like

because sometimes you think it's too late, right?

Like you wake up one day and your kids are 7, five and two.

You've not done worship and you're like, it's too late.

It's not. It's not too late to start.

Start today. Be intentional to build new

beginnings in your life. It's never too late.

Verses 1625. These are the the Bible.

My Bible calls it Passover offerings.

I don't know why it does that because it's really not the

Passover offerings. These are actually the Feast of

Unleavened bread offerings. If you notice, the Passover is

only mentioned in verse 16, but the the section is really about

the Feast of Unleavened Bread. So I feel like they should

change that label there. This is the Feast of Unleavened

Bread. It started with Passover.

That's why they mention it here. The Passover was celebrated on

the the first month, on the 14th day, so the 14th day of the

first month of the year. But then on the 15th day of the

month began the Feast of Unleavened Bread.

And what they would do is they would go through their house and

they would remove all leaven in their house.

Anything that would be used to leavened bread, they would

remove this and for seven days they would eat unleavened bread,

right? This was a sacrifice, right?

If you've ever eaten unleavened bread, it doesn't taste as good,

right? The leaven not only helps it at

the area, but it also like adds flavour to it doesn't taste as

good. And so they would eat this

unleavened bread for seven days on the first day of that month,

on the first day of that, that, that, that week, and on the 7th

day of that week, the text says they were to do no ordinary

work. Now, when you read that word

ordinary, read it as occupational.

So like the Sabbath they were allowed and the Sabbath they

were not to work at all, do anything but ordinary means

occupational work. So they could still like do

chores and whatnot, but they weren't trading commerce.

They were to see from their normal jobs.

They would offer a burnt offering.

Instructions for this offering are the exact same as the new

moon offering, so I won't look at it.

They're the same exact thing as the new moon offering.

Now, what was the point of this? Why did God command them once a

year for a whole week to remove all leaven and to eat unleavened

bread? What was the point of it other

than, you know, remembering the Exodus and so forth?

That that's true, but what? Why did God have them do that in

the Exodus? What was the point of this?

I think this is the answer. God was teaching His people what

it means to be holy. Now the apostle Paul picks up on

this in the New Testament. God was teaching his people to

cleanse out the leaven in their lives.

How interesting that God would teach this lesson through

something so small as leaven. You've ever seen leaven?

It's very small. How interesting that God would

teach them this massive lesson through something so small.

You see, the ship captain may worry about the iceberg, but a

great ship can also be sunk by a tiny leak.

A lightning strike is not needed for a wildfire for a great

started by a small spark. Engineering mistakes need not

happen in calculus, for an entire bridge can collapse by a

miscalculation and arithmetic. And although it actually is

rocket science, an entire rocket can explode from a very small

crack. You see, it is not often the

so-called egregious sins that ruin a person, but it is the

little leaven that leavens the whole lump.

We need not commit adultery. Satan will settle for an

emotional affair. He need not commit sexual

immorality. He will settle for fooling

around. We need not bow down to bail.

Satan will settle for idolatry of money.

We need not get outwardly angry. Satan will settle for

unforgiveness in the heart. Brothers and sisters, a little

leaven leavens the whole lump. Cleanse out the leaven in your

life, verses 26 to 31. The next section is the Feast of

Weeks. This, this, this the first

festival, the first feast was the Feast of Unleavened Bread.

The second is the Feast of Weeks.

It essentially is one day. It's called the Feast of Weeks,

but it's only one day. It was actually one day.

It was 50 days after Passover, often called Pentecost.

Pentecost you get, you get the 50, right?

Pentecost, this is the feast that's being celebrated in Acts

chapter one, right? When we think of Pentecost, we

think of Acts 1 and 2. But Pentecost actually started

in the Old Testament. It was 50 days after Passover.

That's what they're celebrating in Acts one and two.

It marked the end of the grain harvest and the beginning of the

period when the first fruits could be offered to God.

So when this grain harvest ended, they could now begin to

offer their first fruits to God. The offerings are the exact same

as the New moon and the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and they're

also going to do no occupational work on that day.

All right. Now, what was the purpose of

this? What was the purpose of the

Feast of Weeks? It was an opportunity to present

their first fruits to God as a way to express praise for His

provision. They would offer their first

fruits to God to say, God, we want to praise you for your

provision of for us. Now how appropriate it is that

God would give us the greatest gift in the history of the world

on Passover, His Son, and then fifty days later at Pentecost,

He would also give us a gift of equal magnitude and His Spirit,

Passover and Pentecost, Jesus and the Spirit, He gave us these

two gifts. On these two feasts, we joyfully

give to God our first fruits, our very best, because God gave

us his very best. I told this illustration a few

months back, and it bears repeating.

Suppose one of my son's years from now comes home one day and

says that he's found a godly woman that he loves and wants to

marry. I would be happy, I would be

excited. And he asked me, he says, Dad,

can you and mom take care of the rehearsal dinner?

And I was like, of course, Of course.

So I go home and I tell Lauren. Lauren, our son came to us and

and said that he wants us to take care of the rehearsal

dinner. Can we do that?

She's like, yeah, I'm like, OK, great.

Don't we have a bunch of leftover spaghetti from the

retreat? They don't have like, a lot of

it. So we ran out of dining hall and

we serve our guests leftover spaghetti.

That would be shameful, right? Some of y'all are thinking, I

don't see a problem with that. That would be shameful, right?

Whether it is my tithe, whether it is my time, whether it is my

talents. I don't want to give God my

leftovers. I want to give him my first

fruits. I want to give him my very best.

Chapter 29 verses one through 6. The next feast is the Feast of

Trumpets or what's called the Feast of Trumpets.

This was to be celebrated on the first day of the 7th month on

during this Feast of Trumpets, they were to do no occupational

work. The offerings are the exact same

as the New moon and the Feast of Unleavened Bread and the Feast

of Weeks. Exact same.

There's one exception there to offer one bowl instead of two.

That's The only exception. On this particular day of the

Feast of Trumpets, they were to blow the trumpets.

They would sound the trumpets. Now what was the purpose of

this? Why would they do this?

Well, the Day of Atonement that we're going to look at in just a

minute. Yom Kippur, Day of Atonement, is

the most important day of the year.

Atonement was on the 10th day of this month, 10th day.

And so this sounding of trumpets was a call to the nation to

prepare themselves for Yom Kippur.

That's what it was. When they would hear the

trumpets, they would know I need to begin preparing myself for

Yom Kippur. It was a call for them to

reflect on their past sin in preparation for the Day of

Atonement. You could say that the Feast of

Trumpets functioned as a so-called wake up call.

I think that's what it was. I think that's what it was

intended to do. It was to wake them up and to

remind them clean up, prepare your hearts for the Day of

Atonement in the summertime, which is what it is now.

Obviously the only way for us to cool our house is to open all

the windows at night and put fans in them and let in all the

cool air. It's nice if you get box stands,

you put them in the window. It actually works better than

air conditioning in a lot of ways.

It brings in just massive amounts of cold air at the night

time. What?

Yeah, that's what I'm telling myself.

Nick. Nick looks like I'm telling

myself this. OK.

It does work. Well now, because of all the

fans, it's quite loud in our house.

My wife does not like loud alarms.

Her alarm on her phone is. She's chosen the most gentle,

soothing, soft, quiet alarm that you could choose.

The other day we were waking up early to go work out and I had

woken up much earlier and I was downstairs and I was, you know,

I don't, doing all kinds of stuff.

And I came upstairs expecting to find her awake when it's time

for us to leave for the gym. I come upstairs, I'm surely

she's awake, she's putting on her shoes, she's still snoozing

in the bed. And I'm like, why didn't you set

your alarm? So her phone to be like, why

didn't she set her alarm? I pick up her phone.

I noticed, oh, she did set her alarm.

It's actually been going off for the past 3 minutes.

It's currently going off, but you can't hear it because the

fans are going off. And her alarm is like, you know,

see, sometimes we can't hear God's voice.

We can't hear God's wake up call because of all the fans in our

life. We got too many fans going on

and we can't hear God's voice. Brothers and sisters, we don't

want God's wake up call to be a harp or a flute or chimes.

We want it to be a trumpet. A loud, obnoxious trumpet that

wakes us up. We want the Word of God to like

a trumpet in our life, waking us from our spiritual slumber.

We want brothers and sisters in the gathering of the church to

function like a trumpet in your life.

Don't be a harp to each other. Be a trumpet.

And let me encourage you. I understand.

You hear that trumpet. What's the temptation?

Snooze. Please stop.

Please stop being a loud sound in my ear.

Don't hit snooze on your brothers and sisters and

especially on God. Don't snooze God out of your

life. It's loud for a reason.

Verses 7 to 11, this is the offerings for the Day of

Atonement. This is Yom Kippur.

This is the most important day of the year.

This hands down the most important day of the year for

Israel. On this day, they were to take

three actions. Number one, they are to afflict

yourselves. Like what?

Afflict yourselves like what does that mean?

Other translations have humble yourselves or deny yourselves.

Most scholars take this to mean to fast from food.

I think that's what they were doing.

They would fast from food on this day.

That's what that means, I believe.

Do no work at all. So not just occupational work,

but all work was deceased. So just like the Sabbath, no

work on the Day of Atonement and #3 they are to make offerings.

The offerings are the exact same as the Feast of Trumpets.

Now, what was the purpose of Yom Kippur?

God said in Leviticus 1630 For on this day shall atonement be

made for you, to cleanse you. You shall be clean before the

Lord from all your sins on this day and only this day.

One day a year the high priest would enter the holy of Holies,

and he would make atonement for all the people for all their

sins. Now you remember, well then why

did they need this? I mean, why do they need this

day of all these other sacrifices are being made?

If they're making a daily offering, a Sabbath offering, a

monthly offering, the feast, they're doing all these other

things, why do why do they need Yom Kippur?

Why do they need this? Writes this.

The underlying reason for the day was that the other offerings

for sin could not provide for unknown or secret sins.

Because of such sins, the sanctuary, the land, and the

nation remained ritually unclean.

The Day of Atonement was instituted by God for the

complete atonement of all sin. On this day, God would atone for

all the things that were secret. Secret to others, even maybe

secret to yourself that you're not even aware that you had done

this or thought this or said this.

I've called this day the Day of Atonement, the Good Friday of

the Old Testament. Yom Kippur is a type type.

It points us to the true Day of Atonement, the death of Jesus

Christ. The author of Hebrews writes,

When Christ appeared as a high priest through the greater and

more perfect tent, he entered once for all into the holy

places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves, but

by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.

Hebrews, 911 to 12. You see, in the Old Testament

they had to make these offerings every day, every week, every

month, every year. We make none of them.

We make none of them because Jesus's blood is sufficient.

It is sufficient. You imagine standing before a

judge. Our clothes are stained.

We're in so much debt that we can't even pay the parking fee

of the courthouse. We are guilty of a long, long

rap sheet of crimes. And our smell is offensive to

the courtroom. And the judge says one word and

our stains are removed. Our debt is paid, our guilt is

forgiven and is washed clean. You see, our great High Priest

Jesus Christ entered the true Holy of Holies, and he shed His

blood, and he made atonement for every single sin we have ever

committed. Or He is a sacrifice far better

than bulls and Rams. Last section, it's a long one.

It's the Feast of Booths. This is the last and most

significant feast that that we're going to look at the Feast

of Booths on the 15th day of the 7th month.

So this is 14 days after the Feast of Trumpets and five days

after Yom Kippur. They were to do no occupational

work. They were to keep this feast for

seven days. The offerings for this feast are

a lot. For the first seven days, each

day, every day, for seven days in a row, they're to offer two

Rams, 14 male lambs and 1 male goat.

On the first day they are to offer in addition 13 bulls, the

second day 12 bulls, the third day 11 bulls and on and on.

On the 8th day, they're to offer one bull, 1 Ram, 7 milligrams

and one goat and the same as all the other feast.

Now, if you count all of that up, and I don't know how people

count because when I was counting I got like I got a #1

commentator got a different number, another coming to get a

different number. And I'm like, man, I guess like

we didn't all of us, you know, Pastor, we the major in math.

I guess because I don't this is the number I got.

You count all this up one bulls. This is just for the piece of

booths, 71 bulls, 15 Rams, 105 male lambs and eight goats.

That's a lot over one week. Now, what was the purpose of

this? What was the purpose of the

Feast of Booths? God says in Leviticus 2340 to

43. You shall take on the first day

the fruit of the splendid trees, branches of palm trees, and bows

of leafy trees and willows of the brook.

You shall rejoice before the Lord your God seven days, and

you shall dwell in booths for seven days.

All native Israelites shall dwell in booths that your

generations may know that I made the people of Israel dwell in

booths. When I brought them out of the

land of Egypt, they would literally take leaves, like big,

huge palm leaves and they would build a little booth and they

would live in it for a whole week.

You imagine if, if, if we were required to live in like a man

made tent for a whole week, like imagine as a church, we'd have,

I think Laura might be happy. But like imagine if we had

mandatory camping once a week or like every year like that, Like

I require, if you're going to be a member of this church, you're

going camping every year for once a week, right?

Why did they do this? Why did God have them do this?

Why did God require them to dwell in these booths?

What were they supposed to learn by this?

They were supposed to learn what the Israelites were were

supposed to learn in the wilderness and didn't.

They were supposed to learn the same thing that Moses did learn

and wrote about in the very first verse of Psalm 90?

Lord, You have been our dwelling place throughout all

generations. Our dwelling place is not our

homes, it is the Lord. Our food is not fish and

cucumbers and melons and leeks, it is the Lord.

Our water does not come from the fresh springs, it is from the

Lord. Our provision is not manna and

quail from heaven, but the Lord God is our dwelling place.

He is our home. As we close, I want to remind

all of you that they have not yet conquered the promised land.

When God gives all these offerings, they they haven't

even started conquering the promised land yet.

God says in verse 39, these you shall offer to the Lord at your

appointed feasts. Now here's the question I have.

Where are they going to get all these animals?

I was thinking like, how many is this?

If you count up all these animals and these two chapters,

Again, the math did not match any of the commentators I had,

but neither did they match each other, so I don't know who's

correct. Here's the math I came up with.

1051 male lambs every year, 101 bulls every year, 31 Rams every

year, and 24 goats every year. That is not to mention more than

one ton of flour and 1000 bottles of oil and wine.

And this is not even all the sacrifices.

This is just two chapters worth. Where are they going to get that

many animals, oil, flour and wine?

God, God is going to give it to them.

If God required this much every year from them, it means that

God would be faithful to provide them this much every year and

more. You see, I know many of you are

on a season of uncertainty. Many of you are in a season

right now where you know what the future holds.

You would love to know what the future holds.

If you could have a crystal ball, man, that would be a gift.

You're in a season of uncertainty.

So with Israelites, so with Israelites.

But just as the Israelites can look at this blood stained altar

and be reminded every day that God is faithful to provide for

us, we too look at a blood stained cross and are reminded

God is faithful to provide for us.

He will provide for you. Let's pray.