The Grammar of Glad Worship: Sabbath Offerings Text: Numbers 28:9-10
Introduction: God's Appointed Times
We live in an age that despises calendars. Not the kind on your phone that tells you when your next dental appointment is, but the kind of calendar that God keeps. Our modern world is built on the sandy foundation of autonomous man, who believes he has the right to define his own reality, his own morality, his own identity, and consequently, his own time. He wants his worship, if he bothers with it at all, to be spontaneous, free-form, and tailored to his own emotional needs. He wants a god who is available on-demand, like a streaming service.
But the God of the Bible is the Lord of time. He created it, He orders it, and He sanctifies it. And in the book of Numbers, as Israel is poised on the edge of the Promised Land, God gives them a detailed liturgical calendar. This is not fussy legalism. This is the grammar of a covenant relationship. God is teaching His people the rhythm of fellowship with Him. He is structuring their lives around His presence. Chapters 28 and 29 are a detailed list of the offerings required daily, weekly, monthly, and annually. This is the steady, faithful heartbeat of Israel's worship.
Our short text today deals with the Sabbath offerings. And we must understand that this is not some dusty artifact for religious historians. These instructions are saturated with gospel truth. They teach us about the nature of God, the nature of sin, the necessity of substitution, and the character of true worship. The modern evangelical might be tempted to skip over a passage like this, thinking it has nothing to do with him. But this is to be biblically illiterate. If we do not understand what God required in the shadows, we will never fully appreciate the substance that we have in Jesus Christ. To understand the New Covenant, you must first do your Old Covenant homework. These sacrifices were the vocabulary words God gave His people to teach them how to speak about Christ before He arrived.
The Text
‘Then on the sabbath day two male lambs one year old without blemish, and two-tenths of an ephah of fine flour mixed with oil as a grain offering, and its drink offering: This is the burnt offering of every sabbath in addition to the continual burnt offering and its drink offering.’
(Numbers 28:9-10 LSB)
The Sabbath Escalation (v. 9)
We begin with the specific instructions for the Sabbath.
"‘Then on the sabbath day two male lambs one year old without blemish, and two-tenths of an ephah of fine flour mixed with oil as a grain offering, and its drink offering:" (Numbers 28:9 LSB)
The first thing to notice is the escalation. Earlier in the chapter, God prescribed the continual, daily burnt offering: one lamb in the morning and one in the evening (Num. 28:3-4). But on the Sabbath, the offering is doubled. In addition to the daily sacrifices, two more lambs are to be offered. The Sabbath is not a day for less devotion, but for more. It is a day of intensified focus, intensified worship, and intensified consecration.
This principle cuts directly against our modern sensibilities. For many, the Lord's Day is a day to dial things back, to give God a token hour in the morning and then get on with our real lives. But God's pattern is one of addition, not subtraction. The Sabbath rest is not inactivity; it is a reorientation of all our activity toward God. The rest we are commanded to enjoy is a rest in Him, which fuels a greater capacity for worship. This is why the New Covenant Lord's Day is the first day of the week. We begin with our rest in the finished work of Christ's resurrection, and from that foundation of grace, we launch into our six days of labor. Our work flows from our worship. Here, in the Old Covenant, the principle is the same: the Sabbath is the pinnacle of the week, and the worship is therefore amplified.
Now, look at the elements. First, there are "two male lambs one year old without blemish." Every time you see a lamb on an altar in the Old Testament, it is a flashing neon sign pointing to the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29). The lamb had to be a male, the head of the flock, representing the whole. It had to be in its first year, in the prime of its life. And it had to be "without blemish," perfect, whole, and unspotted. This was not because God was a picky eater. It was because the sacrifice had to prefigure the perfect, sinless, spotless Son of God. A blemished sacrifice for a holy God is an insult. A sinner cannot die for other sinners; he has his own sins to answer for. Only the perfect Christ could be a substitute for us. These two lambs, offered up in smoke, were a weekly sermon preaching the gospel: your sin requires a perfect death, a substitutionary death, which God Himself will provide.
Next comes the grain offering: "two-tenths of an ephah of fine flour mixed with oil." The burnt offering dealt with the guilt of sin. The grain offering represented the consecration of a person's life and work to God. Flour is the stuff of bread, the staff of life. It is the product of man's labor, cultivating the ground God gave him. To offer "fine flour," the best kind, was to give God the fruit of your best efforts. It was to acknowledge that your strength, your skill, and your daily bread all come from Him and belong to Him. This flour was to be "mixed with oil." Oil in Scripture is consistently a symbol of the Holy Spirit, of consecration and anointing. This teaches us that our labors, our good works, are only acceptable to God when they are sanctified by the Spirit. Our work, offered to God, must be Spirit-empowered work. It is not just what we do, but the power in which we do it.
Finally, there is "its drink offering." This was a libation of wine poured out at the base of the altar. Wine in Scripture is a symbol of joy and gladness (Psalm 104:15). This was not a somber, morose affair. Worship was to be joyful. The drink offering was a picture of a life poured out in glad service to God. Paul uses this very imagery when he says, "But even if I am being poured out as a drink offering upon the sacrifice and service of your faith, I rejoice and share my joy with you all" (Philippians 2:17). This is potent. This is not the tepid, grape-juice gospel of modern pietism. This is a robust, joyful, potent faith. The wine represents the gladness that comes from being accepted by God on the basis of the shed blood of the sacrifice.
The Foundation of Daily Faithfulness (v. 10)
Verse 10 provides a crucial clarification that frames the entire liturgical calendar.
"This is the burnt offering of every sabbath in addition to the continual burnt offering and its drink offering.’" (Numbers 28:10 LSB)
God makes it explicit: the special worship of the Sabbath is built upon the foundation of the ordinary worship of every other day. The Sabbath offerings are "in addition to" the continual burnt offering. You cannot neglect God Monday through Saturday and then expect to show up on Sunday and make it all right with a flurry of religious activity. A healthy Sabbath is the fruit of a healthy week.
This is a vital principle for us. Our corporate worship on the Lord's Day is not a substitute for our daily, private devotions. It is the public culmination of a week spent walking with God. The family that prays together and reads the Word together through the week comes to church on Sunday prepared to worship. The man who has maintained a clear conscience and walked in faith Monday through Saturday comes ready to hear the Word preached and receive it with joy. The special is built on the ordinary. The extraordinary is an addition to the continual.
This also guards against a hypocritical, compartmentalized faith. God is not interested in renting a one-hour slot in your week. He lays claim to the whole thing. The continual offering, morning and evening, every single day, established the baseline of covenant faithfulness. It was a constant reminder that all of life was to be lived before the face of God. The Sabbath then takes that constant reality and brings it to a focused, celebratory, and intensified climax. It is the crescendo of a symphony that has been playing all week long.
From Shadow to Substance
So what does this mean for us, who live on this side of the cross? It means everything. We no longer offer these specific sacrifices, not because God lowered His standards, but because they have been perfectly and completely fulfilled in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ.
He is our Sabbath rest (Hebrews 4:9-10). We cease from our own works of self-righteousness and rest in His finished work. He is our continual burnt offering, the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, whose one-time sacrifice is of eternal and constant efficacy. His perfection covers our sin, morning and evening, day after day.
And because He is our burnt offering, we are now free to be living grain offerings. We offer our bodies as "a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God" (Romans 12:1). Our daily work, our callings, our relationships, our mundane tasks, all of it, when mixed with the oil of the Holy Spirit and done in faith, becomes an act of worship, a pleasing aroma to God. We are giving Him back the fruit of our lives, which He first gave to us.
And we offer up our drink offerings. Filled with the joy of our salvation, we pour our lives out in glad service to our King and to our neighbor. Our worship is not a grim duty, but a festive celebration. This is why we come to the Lord's Table. It is not an altar where Christ is re-sacrificed, but a table where we feast on the benefits of His one sacrifice. We eat the bread of His body and we drink the potent wine of His blood, the wine of the New Covenant, the wine of covenant joy.
The rhythm remains. We live our lives daily before Him, a continual offering. And on the Lord's Day, we gather to celebrate in an intensified way. We double down. We come to hear the Word, sing the Psalms, and feast with our King. Our Sabbath worship is "in addition to" our daily walk, the glorious pinnacle of a life consecrated to Him. God has given us His calendar, and it is a calendar of grace, culminating every week in a joyful celebration of the resurrection of His Son. Let us therefore gladly keep His appointed times.