The Grammar of True Worship: Passover Offerings Text: Numbers 28:16-25
Introduction: The Liturgy of a Holy God
We live in an age that despises liturgy. Modern evangelicals, in their flight from what they deem "dead religion," have often run headlong into the arms of a religion that is simply shallow. They have traded the deep, structured, and meaningful patterns of biblical worship for a praise band, a smoke machine, and a sermonette on how to have your best life now. The assumption is that true worship must be spontaneous, unstructured, and primarily about our feelings. But when we come to a passage like this one in Numbers, we are confronted with a radically different picture.
Here we see God meticulously detailing the sacrifices required for the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. We see bulls, rams, lambs, goats, flour, and oil. We see specific dates, specific quantities, and specific instructions. To the modern mind, this can seem tedious, repetitive, and perhaps even arbitrary. Why does God care so much about the fine details of animal sacrifice? The short answer is that God cares about worship because He is holy, and because worship is the central activity of the universe. He is not a sloppy, casual, or "anything goes" deity. He is the sovereign King, and He sets the terms by which His people are to approach Him.
This passage is not just an archaic set of instructions for an ancient people. It is a revelation of the character of God and the nature of sin. It is a detailed blueprint that points forward, with stunning precision, to the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Every bull, every lamb, every grain of flour was a shadow, and Christ is the substance. To dismiss these details as irrelevant is to misunderstand the very grammar of redemption. God is teaching His people a liturgical language, a way of speaking and acting that rehearses the story of their salvation. And this story, from the Passover in Egypt to the cross at Calvary, is the story of a substitutionary sacrifice.
Furthermore, this prescribed worship stood in stark contrast to the chaotic, demonic, and self-serving worship of the pagan nations surrounding Israel. Their rituals were designed to manipulate their gods through frenzied emotion, self-mutilation, or sexual debauchery. Israel's worship, by contrast, was orderly, God-centered, and rooted in His gracious covenant. It was about what God had done, what God required, and what God promised. In our day, the choice remains the same. Will we worship God on His terms, according to His Word, or will we invent a worship that caters to our own appetites and preferences? This passage calls us back to the serious, joyful, and bloody business of true worship.
The Text
‘Then on the fourteenth day of the first month shall be the Passover of Yahweh. And on the fifteenth day of this month shall be a feast; unleavened bread shall be eaten for seven days. On the first day shall be a holy convocation; you shall do no laborious work. And you shall bring near an offering by fire, a burnt offering to Yahweh: two bulls from the herd and one ram and seven male lambs one year old; they shall be for you without blemish. Now as for their grain offering, you shall offer fine flour mixed with oil: three-tenths of an ephah for a bull and two-tenths for the ram. A tenth of an ephah you shall offer for each of the seven lambs; and one male goat for a sin offering to make atonement for you. You shall offer these besides the burnt offering of the morning, which is for a continual burnt offering. After this manner you shall offer daily, for seven days, the food of the offering by fire, of a soothing aroma to Yahweh; it shall be offered with its drink offering in addition to the continual burnt offering. Now on the seventh day you shall have a holy convocation; you shall do no laborious work.
(Numbers 28:16-25 LSB)
The Appointed Time (v. 16-18)
We begin with the timing and the nature of the feast.
"‘Then on the fourteenth day of the first month shall be the Passover of Yahweh. And on the fifteenth day of this month shall be a feast; unleavened bread shall be eaten for seven days. On the first day shall be a holy convocation; you shall do no laborious work." (Numbers 28:16-18)
God sets the calendar. The central act of Israel's redemptive history, the Passover, is fixed to a specific day: the fourteenth day of the first month. This is not a matter of human convenience. God's salvation is an intrusion into history at a time of His choosing. The Passover was not just a historical remembrance; it was a perpetual ordinance, a re-enactment of their deliverance from bondage in Egypt. This feast was Yahweh's Passover. It belonged to Him. It was His story they were telling.
Immediately following the Passover is the seven-day Feast of Unleavened Bread. Leaven, or yeast, is consistently used in Scripture as a symbol of sin and corruption. It puffs up, and it spreads silently and pervasively. The command to eat unleavened bread for seven days was a command to live out the reality of their redemption. They were to be a holy people, set apart from the corruption of Egypt and the surrounding nations. This was a week-long object lesson in sanctification. You have been redeemed by the blood of the lamb; now, put away the leaven of malice and wickedness (1 Cor. 5:8).
The first day of this feast is designated as a "holy convocation." This was a sacred assembly, a gathering of the people for worship. And on this day, they were to do "no laborious work." This is a Sabbath principle. God commands His people to cease from their ordinary labors in order to focus on Him. This is not idleness; it is a reorientation of our work. We stop our work to celebrate God's work. In a world that defines men by their productivity and economic output, the Sabbath is a radical declaration that we belong to God, not to our jobs. It is an act of faith, trusting that God will provide even when we cease from our striving.
The Prescribed Sacrifices (v. 19-22)
Next, God lays out the specific offerings required for the feast.
"And you shall bring near an offering by fire, a burnt offering to Yahweh: two bulls from the herd and one ram and seven male lambs one year old; they shall be for you without blemish...and one male goat for a sin offering to make atonement for you." (Numbers 28:19, 22)
Notice the sheer volume and value of what is being offered. Two bulls, a ram, and seven lambs, every single day for a week. This was costly worship. It was not a token gesture. It required the people to bring the best of their wealth, the best of their livelihood, and offer it up to God in smoke. The burnt offering, or ascension offering, was one of entire dedication. The whole animal was consumed on the altar, ascending to God as a "soothing aroma." This symbolized the complete surrender of the worshiper to God. It was a picture of total consecration.
Crucially, every animal had to be "without blemish." This was not a time to get rid of the sick or lame animals from the flock. The offering had to be perfect. This pointed to two realities. First, it taught the people that God is holy and worthy of only the absolute best. You do not offer your holy God your leftovers. Second, and most importantly, it was a prophetic type of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God "without blemish and without spot" (1 Peter 1:19). These perfect animals were stand-ins, placeholders until the truly perfect sacrifice would come. Their perfection was a constant reminder of the worshiper's own imperfection and the need for a flawless substitute.
Alongside the burnt offerings of dedication, there was also a daily "male goat for a sin offering to make atonement for you." Even in the midst of their most joyous celebration, the people were reminded of their sin. The Hebrew word for atonement, kippur, means to cover. The blood of the goat covered their sins, allowing them to stand in the presence of a holy God. This demonstrates that our access to God is never based on our own merit or our acts of dedication. It is always based on a substitutionary, atoning sacrifice for sin. First, the sin must be dealt with. Only then can our offerings of consecration be acceptable. You deal with the guilt first, then you dedicate all to God.
The Continual Offering (v. 23-25)
The passage concludes by placing these special feast offerings in the context of Israel's regular, daily worship.
"You shall offer these besides the burnt offering of the morning, which is for a continual burnt offering...After this manner you shall offer daily, for seven days...Now on the seventh day you shall have a holy convocation; you shall do no laborious work." (Numbers 28:23-25)
These massive Passover offerings did not replace the regular, daily sacrifices. They were offered "besides" or "in addition to" the continual burnt offering that was made every morning and evening. This is a vital principle. Our worship is to be constant and regular, a daily rhythm of devotion. The special feasts and celebrations are high points, but they are built upon a foundation of steady, faithful, day-in-and-day-out worship. We do not just worship God on the mountain tops of spiritual experience; we worship Him in the faithful grind of ordinary obedience.
For seven straight days, this pattern was to be repeated. This liturgical repetition was not mindless ritual. It was spiritual formation. It was shaping the hearts and minds of the people, ingraining in them the fundamental truths of their faith: God's holiness, their sinfulness, the necessity of a perfect sacrifice, the joy of redemption, and the call to total consecration. This is what true, biblical liturgy does. It forms us into a certain kind of people.
The feast concludes as it began, with another holy convocation and another day of rest. The entire week was framed by corporate worship and Sabbath rest, reminding the people that their entire existence, from beginning to end, was to be lived in joyful submission to their covenant Lord.
Christ Our Passover
As Christians, we read this passage and we do not see a blueprint for our own worship services. We are not commanded to sacrifice bulls and goats. To do so would be an act of blasphemous unbelief, a trampling underfoot of the Son of God. Why? Because Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of this entire system. He is the substance to which all these shadows pointed.
The Apostle Paul tells us this directly: "For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed" (1 Corinthians 5:7). Jesus was crucified on the fourteenth day of the first month, at the very time the Passover lambs were being slain in the temple. He is the lamb "without blemish," the perfect sacrifice. His blood, applied to the doorposts of our hearts by faith, causes the wrath of God to pass over us.
He is also our Feast of Unleavened Bread. In Him, we are made holy and called to put away the leaven of sin. He is our burnt offering, the one who offered Himself in complete and total dedication to the Father. His entire life was a "soothing aroma" to God. And He is our sin offering. His death on the cross was the one, true, and final atonement that does not merely cover our sins, but actually takes them away completely (Hebrews 9:26). The repeated sacrifices of the Old Covenant were a constant reminder of sins; the once-for-all sacrifice of Christ is the declaration of their complete removal.
Therefore, our worship is no longer centered on a physical altar in Jerusalem, but on the person of Jesus Christ. We do not bring animals, but we do bring sacrifices. We offer the "sacrifice of praise," which is the fruit of our lips giving thanks to His name (Hebrews 13:15). We offer our bodies as "living sacrifices," which is our total consecration in response to His mercy (Romans 12:1). Our holy convocation is the gathering of the saints on the Lord's Day, the first day of the week, to celebrate His resurrection. And our feast is the Lord's Supper, where we commune with the crucified and risen Christ, proclaiming His death until He comes.
The grammar of worship has not been abolished; it has been fulfilled and transformed. The principles remain. Our worship must be God-centered, rooted in atonement, expressed in consecration, and ordered by His Word. This passage in Numbers, far from being irrelevant, is a rich and detailed portrait of the glory of the gospel, written in the liturgical language of God's covenant people. It reminds us that our salvation was costly, and our worship should be nothing less.