Numbers 29.
IN the 23rd chapter of Leviticus we were given a picture of the coming thousand years of enjoyment of God’s blessing on earth, commonly called the millennium, and here is another, but as always in the Scriptures, there is no mere telling again what has once been told, but new light is given.
There are three parts to this story just as in Leviticus 23. First, the sounding of the trumpets calling Israel to be gathered before God. Second, the day of atonement (verses 7 to 11); and third, the feast of tabernacles (beginning at verse 12). For each one, you will find the expression, “Ye shall do no servile work;” or “Ye shall not do any work therein,” and in the third part it is repeated (verses 12 and 35).
Many today are counting on their works to help them to meet God about their sins, but the Bible says,
“To him that worketh not, but believeth on Him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.” Rom. 4:5.
The next thing we may notice is that this chapter is all about offerings to God. As we have before seen, these offerings speak of Jesus, God’s Lamb; His precious blood was shed for sins; “by Him all that believe are justified from all things” (Acts 13:39). Continuous shedding of blood these picture-stories have to include, so that our eyes will be opened to see that “without shedding of blood is no remission” of sin (Hebrews 9:22; 10:8-22).
Then we should notice that these offerings which were advance pictures of Jesus, the Christ of God, in His devotedness, and the worth that belonged to Him alone, the God-Man, both in His spotless life, and in His death as a substitute for the believing sinner, of them, God says here no less than five times, “a burnt offering of a sweet savor” unto Him. Reader, nothing can please God, that you and I can do, that does not tell Him of His beloved Son in connection with His death on Calvary’s cross. Have you claimed Him as your own personal Saviour?
This chapter, being then an account of the millennium, shows us first the people of Israel, called back to God in that coming day when He will take them in hand again for blessing. We are then shown that they condemn themselves, they “afflict their souls” (verse 7), because of their sins, and they see at last that the Man they rejected was in truth their Messiah, their Saviour, their King.
Next, (verse 12) the people are gathered in full heart to God; it is not perfection (13 bullocks, not 14, which would have expressed full devotedness to God), but the high tide of the millennium. Yet there is even here decline; the millennium will have sinners in it, and even the earthly saints will not be all that they should be for God. This is pictured in the declining number of the young bullocks.
ML 06/15/1924