The Grammar of Grateful Worship Text: Numbers 29:39-40
Introduction: The Liturgical Calendar of Grace
We come this morning to the end of a long and, to our modern sensibilities, perhaps a tedious chapter. For twenty-first-century evangelicals, a chapter like Numbers 29 can feel like reading a divine tax code. So many bulls, so many rams, so many lambs, day after day, feast after feast. Our eyes glaze over. We are tempted to think that this is the dusty attic of the Old Testament, filled with obsolete furniture that has no bearing on our sleek, modern, New Covenant lives. We want the soaring theology of Romans, the practical punch of James, but we get a detailed, bloody, and repetitive sacrificial schedule.
But this is the height of folly. To neglect these portions of God's Word is to misunderstand the very nature of the grace we now enjoy. This detailed liturgy was not given to crush Israel under a burden of religious performance. It was given to shape them, to form their lives, their calendar, and their imaginations around the central reality of God's presence with them. God did not just save them from Egypt; He was teaching them how to live with Him in their midst. This calendar of "appointed times" was a grammar of worship, a structured way of life that constantly pointed them to the need for atonement, the joy of fellowship, and the all-encompassing Lordship of Yahweh over their time, their wealth, and their very lives.
These chapters are a shadow, and a glorious one at that. And as we know, a shadow is cast by something solid. That solid reality is the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. If we find these rituals boring, it is not because they are boring, but because our spiritual senses have been dulled. We have forgotten that every one of these bulls and rams was a stand-in for the Lamb of God, slain before the foundation of the world. Every grain offering pointed to Him as the Bread of Life. Every drink offering was a type of His blood, poured out for many. This was not meaningless repetition; it was a symphony of grace, with the same central theme played in different keys, reminding the people over and over again: you cannot approach a holy God on your own terms. A substitute is required. Blood must be shed.
These final two verses of the chapter serve as a crucial summary and conclusion. They gather up all the prescribed, mandatory offerings of the liturgical year and set them alongside another category of worship: the free, voluntary, and personal offerings of God's people. In doing so, they teach us a timeless principle about the relationship between divine command and human gratitude, between the structure of corporate worship and the spontaneous overflow of a thankful heart. And they conclude with a reminder of the absolute authority of God's Word, faithfully delivered through His chosen servant, Moses.
The Text
‘You shall offer these to Yahweh at your appointed times, besides your votive offerings and your freewill offerings, for your burnt offerings and for your grain offerings and for your drink offerings and for your peace offerings.’ ” And Moses spoke to the sons of Israel according to all that Yahweh had commanded Moses.
(Numbers 29:39-40 LSB)
Required Grace and Spontaneous Gratitude (v. 39)
We begin with the summary statement in verse 39:
"‘You shall offer these to Yahweh at your appointed times, besides your votive offerings and your freewill offerings, for your burnt offerings and for your grain offerings and for your drink offerings and for your peace offerings.’ ” (Numbers 29:39)
The first phrase, "You shall offer these to Yahweh at your appointed times," refers back to the entire chapter. The daily, weekly, monthly, and annual festival offerings were not optional. They were the required national curriculum in the school of worship. These "appointed times," the moadim, were God's calendar. God claimed Israel's time. He structured their year around His great acts of salvation, like Passover, and around the rhythms of the harvest He provided. This demolishes any notion of a sacred/secular divide. For Israel, all of life was to be lived before the face of God, and their calendar was a constant reminder of this fact. In the New Covenant, we are not bound to the specific Hebrew calendar, but the principle remains. Our central "appointed time" is the Lord's Day, the first day of the week, where we gather to celebrate the resurrection, the ultimate festival of new creation. We still live on God's time.
But then comes a crucial distinction: "besides your votive offerings and your freewill offerings." The required sacrifices were the foundation, the floor. But God made room for more. He invited a response that was not legislated. A "votive offering" was a sacrifice promised in a vow. A man might say, "Lord, if you deliver me from this battle, I will offer ten lambs." This was a voluntary promise, but once made, it was a binding obligation. A "freewill offering," on the other hand, was pure spontaneity. It was a man waking up one morning, overwhelmed with the goodness of God in his life, his healthy children, his fertile fields, and saying, "I must go and give something to God, simply because He is good."
This is a beautiful picture of the Christian life. The foundation of our worship is what God has required and accomplished in Christ. We don't invent the gospel. We don't design the sacraments. We come to the "appointed time" to receive what God has done for us. But a heart that has truly grasped this grace will not be content with the bare minimum. It will bubble over. It will look for ways to express its gratitude. It will make vows of consecration. It will give freely, joyfully, and generously, not out of compulsion, but out of love. God's required grace does not stifle our gratitude; it ignites it. The structure of commanded worship is the trellis upon which the vine of our freewill devotion can grow and flourish.
The verse then lists the various types of offerings, reminding us of the comprehensive nature of Christ's work. The "burnt offerings" were about total consecration, the entire animal ascending in smoke, a picture of Christ's complete surrender to the Father's will. The "grain offerings" represented the dedication of our labors, our daily bread, to God, fulfilled in Christ who is the Bread of Life. The "drink offerings" were poured out, a picture of joy and of a life poured out in service, as Christ's blood was poured out for us. And the "peace offerings" were the wonderful fellowship meal, where the worshiper, the priest, and God all shared a portion, a beautiful type of the communion we have with the Father through the Son.
The Unedited Word (v. 40)
The chapter, and this section of the law, concludes with a simple but profound statement about the nature of revelation and authority.
"And Moses spoke to the sons of Israel according to all that Yahweh had commanded Moses." (Numbers 29:40)
This might seem like a simple transition, a narrator's note. But it is a bedrock theological assertion. Moses' authority did not come from his charisma, his leadership skills, or his military victories. His authority was a derived authority. He was authoritative because he was faithful. He spoke "all that Yahweh had commanded." He did not edit God's Word. He did not soften the hard parts. He did not leave out the parts that might be unpopular or difficult to understand, like, say, a long list of sacrifices.
Moses was a faithful servant in God's house, and in this, he was a magnificent type of the Lord Jesus Christ. The author of Hebrews tells us that Moses was faithful as a servant, but Christ is faithful as a Son over His own house (Hebrews 3:5-6). Jesus said, "For I have not spoken on My own authority; but the Father who sent Me gave Me a command, what I should say and what I should speak" (John 12:49). The authority of the preacher, the authority of the Church, is precisely this: to speak what God has commanded. We are not called to be innovative; we are called to be faithful. We are not called to be creative editors; we are called to be humble messengers.
When a church begins to pick and choose which parts of God's Word to obey, when it decides that the parts about sexual ethics are outdated, or the parts about church discipline are unloving, or the parts about bloody sacrifice are primitive, it has ceased to be a faithful messenger. It has abandoned the authority of Moses, and more importantly, the authority of Christ. Our task is to declare the whole counsel of God, just as Moses delivered all that Yahweh had commanded. This is where true authority and true blessing are found.
Conclusion: The Overflow of the New Covenant
So what are we to do with a passage like this? We are to see in it the glorious pattern of God's grace and our response. The entire, intricate, repetitive system of "appointed times" and mandatory offerings has been fulfilled, once for all, in the single offering of Jesus Christ on the cross. He is our burnt offering, our grain offering, our peace offering. His sacrifice is the final, perfect, unrepeatable satisfaction for our sins. We do not bring bulls and goats. The foundation has been laid, perfectly and completely, by Him.
But because that foundation has been laid, our lives are now to be the "votive offerings and freewill offerings." We are called to respond to this finished work. Paul picks up this very language when he says, "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service" (Romans 12:1). This is our freewill offering. It is not coerced. It is a joyful, grateful response to the overwhelming mercies of God shown to us in Christ.
Your cheerful giving in the offering, your time spent in prayer, your hospitality to a neighbor, your patient instruction of your children, your faithful work on Monday morning, all of it, when done in faith, is a freewill offering, placed on the altar of Christ's finished work. It is the "besides." It is the overflow. God has done everything necessary for our salvation. The appointed sacrifice has been made. And now, in response, He invites us to pour out our lives in joyful, grateful, spontaneous worship, according to all that He has commanded.