Numbers 29:13-14

This is the meal offering that always went on top of the burnt offering and it goes right on through that. That is the offerings for the first day. Verse 17 introduces the offerings for the second day, and this continues all the way up to and including verse 34.

If you have enough time on your hands and you care to search this out by counting all of the offerings required by God, you will find that there are more offerings required for the Feast of Tabernacles than all the others combined. Remember what I said. The offerings indicate the spiritual aspect of the Feast. There is more required spiritually of the Feast of Tabernacles than all the others combined.

That ought to tell us something about what God expects the Feast of Tabernacles to be spiritually. It should be both a spiritual and a physical Feast whose fruit is the rejoicing of both. If we go to the Feast purely to enjoy, I do not think we are going to have a very good spiritual Feast. If we go to the Feast to really worship the Lord and allow the enjoyment to be the fruit, I think we will have a good Feast. I mean a truly good Feast.

It may be that we would not consider it because our perception of enjoyment tends to be hard on the physical side, but I will tell you this, I think on the authority of God: whether you feel it was a good Feast, if you go there to have a good Feast by putting your efforts into the spiritual things, you are going to have one whether you feel it or not. Feelings are highly variable and what we are looking for is spiritual profit.

What I am talking about here is something that cannot be forced. The rejoicing is the fruit of the right approach and use. I think that the emphasis is clearly on the spiritual.

Numbers 29:12-16

We are stopping there, but this is just the offerings for the first day, right? You could read on and read all the way through day eight here. The required burnt offerings for the Feast of Tabernacles were more than double any other time of year. God is trying to get us focused, brethren, on the one thing. That is why we are here.

We are here to learn how to sacrifice.

Now, the burnt offering of a life always came first. Jesus Christ was completely devoted in service to God, and likewise, we must sacrifice our complete life in service and devotion to God. This always has to come first. But right after that burnt offering, we see the instruction on the corresponding grain offering.

And if you notice the verbiage there in Numbers 29, it says with each burnt offering, their grain offering or its grain offering. It is saying the two had to be together to be complete. You could not just have the burnt offering, you had to have the burnt offering with its grain offering. The meal for God is what this represents, the meal for God was not complete with just meat. He was not on the Atkins Diet. God's sacrificial meal required meat, grain, and drink.

Immediately following the burnt offering was the grain offering, which demonstrated the two cannot be separated. They had to go hand-in-hand.