The Unceasing Aroma: God's Daily Bread Text: Numbers 28:1-8
Introduction: The Rhythm of Reality
We modern evangelicals tend to think of worship as something that primarily happens inside our heads and hearts. It is a feeling, an experience, a moment of personal connection. And while it is certainly not less than that, the Bible insists that it is much, much more. Biblical worship is structured. It has a grammar. It is an objective performance, a public declaration, a structured liturgy that shapes a people over generations. It is not a jam session; it is a symphony.
In the book of Numbers, we find Israel in the wilderness, on the cusp of entering the Promised Land. This is the second generation, the children of the faithless who perished in their unbelief. Before they can inherit the land, God, through Moses, lays out for them the calendar of their worship. He is structuring their lives, their weeks, their months, and their years around His presence. And where does He begin? Not with the big, flashy festivals, but with the daily grind. He starts with the ordinary, the repeatable, the constant. He begins with the daily offerings.
This chapter is profoundly important because it establishes the rhythm of covenant life. Before you can have a feast, you must have daily bread. Before the big celebrations, there must be the steady, faithful, twice-a-day acknowledgment of who God is and who they were. This is the baseline, the foundational hum of their existence as a holy nation. This was their national heartbeat, synchronized to the courts of heaven. Morning and evening, the smoke of the offering was to ascend as a perpetual testimony.
We might be tempted to read a passage like this and think it is just a dusty piece of ancient legislation, irrelevant to our free and Spirit-filled worship. But that would be a catastrophic mistake. This is not about dead ritual; this is about the grammar of communion with the living God. These sacrifices were the gospel in picture form, the types and shadows that pointed to the ultimate substance, Jesus Christ. And the rhythm God established here is the same rhythm He writes into the heart of the new covenant. The daily, the constant, the faithful, the perpetual. This is how God builds a civilization. This is how He builds His church. He does it one day at a time, one offering at a time.
The Text
Then Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying, "Command the sons of Israel and say to them, ‘You shall be careful to bring near My offering, My food for My offerings by fire, of a soothing aroma to Me, at their appointed time.’ And you shall say to them, ‘This is the offering by fire which you shall bring near to Yahweh: two male lambs one year old without blemish as a continual burnt offering every day. You shall offer the one lamb in the morning, and the other lamb you shall offer at twilight, also a tenth of an ephah of fine flour for a grain offering, mixed with a fourth of a hin of beaten oil. It is a continual burnt offering which was ordained in Mount Sinai as a soothing aroma, an offering by fire to Yahweh. Then the drink offering with it shall be a fourth of a hin for each lamb, in the holy place you shall pour out a drink offering of strong drink to Yahweh. And the other lamb you shall offer at twilight; as the grain offering of the morning and as its drink offering, you shall offer it, an offering by fire, a soothing aroma to Yahweh."
(Numbers 28:1-8 LSB)
God's Food, God's Time (v. 1-2)
The instruction begins with a command that sets the entire tone.
"Command the sons of Israel and say to them, ‘You shall be careful to bring near My offering, My food for My offerings by fire, of a soothing aroma to Me, at their appointed time.’" (Numbers 28:2)
First, notice the authority. This is not a suggestion. "Command the sons of Israel." Worship is not a consumer choice. It is a divine summons. God dictates the terms of His worship, not us. The modern church is riddled with the cancer of consumerism because we have forgotten this foundational point. We come to church asking what we will get out of it, instead of asking what God requires of us. But God is the one who commands, and we are the ones who must be "careful to bring" what He requires.
Second, look at the startling language God uses. He calls the offerings "My food." Now, this is a direct polemic against the pagan idolatry surrounding Israel. The pagan gods were needy. They were finite. They supposedly needed the smoke of the sacrifices to sustain them. But Yahweh, the God who created the heavens and the earth, is not hungry. He says in Psalm 50, "If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and its fullness are mine." So what does He mean by "My food"? This is the language of intimate fellowship. It is the language of the table. God is inviting Israel to dine with Him. The offerings are the basis of that communion. He is saying, "This is the meal that makes our fellowship possible." It is food in the sense that it satisfies His righteous covenant demands, thus opening the way for Him to dwell with His people.
Third, the offering must be a "soothing aroma to Me." This phrase is key. It speaks of divine pleasure and acceptance. An offering that is not a soothing aroma is a stench. Think of Cain's offering. Think of the strange fire of Nadab and Abihu. God is only pleased with what He Himself prescribes. The aroma is soothing because it corresponds to His own holy character. It is a picture of the one sacrifice that would be infinitely pleasing to Him.
Finally, this must happen "at their appointed time." God is the Lord of the calendar. He sets the schedule. Our time is not our own, and our worship must conform to His clock. This establishes a principle of regulated, rhythmic worship that stands against all forms of spontaneous, "spirit-led" chaos that is actually just man-led emotionalism.
The Continual Burnt Offering (v. 3-6)
Next, God specifies the central, daily ritual.
"This is the offering by fire which you shall bring near to Yahweh: two male lambs one year old without blemish as a continual burnt offering every day. You shall offer the one lamb in the morning, and the other lamb you shall offer at twilight..." (Numbers 28:3-4 LSB)
The central offering is the burnt offering, or in the Hebrew, the olah, which means "to ascend." This was the offering of total consecration. The entire animal, except for the hide, was consumed on the altar and went up in smoke. It represented the complete dedication of the worshiper to God. In our covenant renewal worship, this corresponds to the consecration portion of our service, where we hear the Word read and preached, dedicating ourselves wholly to God.
And notice what is offered: a male lamb, one year old, without blemish. This is not just any old animal from the flock. It had to be perfect. It had to be valuable. This pointed forward with glaring clarity to the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, Jesus Christ, who was "a lamb without blemish or spot" (1 Peter 1:19). Every morning and every evening, Israel was rehearsing the gospel. They were declaring that their acceptance before God was not based on their own perfection, but on the perfection of a substitute.
This was to be a "continual" offering. The fire on the altar was never to go out (Leviticus 6:13). This continual offering framed their entire day. The first thing that happened at the tabernacle was the morning sacrifice, and the last thing was the evening sacrifice. The entire national life of Israel was bookended by the gospel. They woke up to grace and they went to sleep under grace. This constant reminder was to shape their consciousness. We are a people who live and breathe and have our being because of a substitutionary sacrifice.
Along with the lamb, there was a grain offering of fine flour and beaten oil, and a drink offering of strong drink. This was not just about atonement for sin; it was about presenting the whole of life to God. The grain and oil represented their labor, their daily bread. The drink offering represented their joy and celebration. They were bringing the best of their substance and dedicating it all to Yahweh. This is the logic of the offertory in our worship. We bring our tithes and offerings not just to pay the bills, but as an act of worship, presenting the fruit of our labor back to the God who gave it.
The Fulfillment in Christ (v. 7-8)
The passage concludes by reiterating the pattern for the evening sacrifice.
"And the other lamb you shall offer at twilight; as the grain offering of the morning and as its drink offering, you shall offer it, an offering by fire, a soothing aroma to Yahweh." (Numbers 28:8 LSB)
The evening sacrifice was a mirror of the morning. This repetition is not redundancy; it is reinforcement. God was driving the point home. The need for a substitute is constant. The call to total consecration is constant. The basis for fellowship is constant. Morning and evening, day in and day out, for centuries, this was the central drama of Israel's faith.
But we are no longer under this system. So what does this mean for us? The book of Hebrews tells us that Christ is the fulfillment of this entire system. He is the perfect Lamb, offered once for all (Hebrews 9:26). His sacrifice was so infinitely valuable that it accomplished what millions of lambs could only point toward. His death on the cross was the ultimate "soothing aroma" to the Father, satisfying divine justice completely.
Therefore, we no longer offer animal sacrifices. To do so would be an act of blasphemous unbelief, as if Christ's sacrifice were insufficient. However, the rhythm and the logic of this worship are not abolished. They are fulfilled and transformed. We still offer a continual sacrifice. The writer to the Hebrews says, "Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name" (Hebrews 13:15). Our entire lives are to be a burnt offering. Paul says, "I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship" (Romans 12:1).
Our Daily Offering
So how do we apply this? The pattern of morning and evening sacrifice should frame our days. This is the foundation for the historic Christian practice of morning and evening prayer. We begin the day by consecrating it to God, acknowledging our dependence on the finished work of Christ, the Lamb slain for us. We present ourselves to Him as living sacrifices, ready to do His will. And at the end of the day, we come back to Him, confessing our sins and failures, and once again taking refuge under the blood of the evening Lamb. This is how you bookend your life with the gospel.
This is not just for individuals; it is for families. Family worship in the morning and evening is the new covenant application of the continual burnt offering. It is the central altar of the Christian home, where the smoke of prayer and praise continually ascends before the throne of God. It is how we teach our children the rhythm of reality. We live and move and have our being within the atmosphere of God's grace, made possible by the Lamb.
This daily rhythm then culminates in the Lord's Day gathering, which is our great weekly feast. But the feast is only as rich as the daily preparation. The continual offering sustained the life of Israel between the great festivals. And our daily, personal, and familial worship is what sustains our spiritual lives between our weekly gatherings for covenant renewal.
God commanded Israel to be careful to bring His food at the appointed time. He commands the same of us. He has provided the Lamb, the Lord Jesus Christ. He has provided the meal, which is fellowship with Him. And He has appointed the time. Let us therefore be a people who are careful to offer Him the continual sacrifice of praise, morning and evening, day by day, until that final morning breaks when we will see the Lamb face to face.