“These you shall offer to the Lord at your appointed feasts, in addition to your vow 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, ESV)
In chapters 28 and 29, Moses records the feasts of Israel and their many offerings. Jamieson, Fausset, & Brown’s commentary records the following regarding the magnitude of Israel’s offerings.
From the statements made in this and the preceding chapter, it appears that the yearly offerings made to the altar at the public expense, without taking into account a vast number of voluntary vow and trespass offerings, were calculated at the following amount:—goats, fifteen; kids, twenty-one; rams, seventy-two; bullocks, one hundred thirty-two; lambs, 1,101; sum-total of animals sacrificed at public cost, 1,241. This, of course, is exclusive of the prodigious addition of lambs slain at the passover, which in later times, according to Josephus, amounted in a single year to the immense number of 255,600.
Accordingly, in just the thirty years prior to Christ’s sacrifice on the cross the people sacrificed over 7.5 million animals. It would be a great study to look at each feast and each offering and see the Christological significance of each. However, for now it is sufficient to consider Paul’s words.
“These are a shadow of things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.” (Colossians 2:17, ESV).
How often do we consider the wonder and infinite magnitude of Christ’s sacrifice for us? When we consider the magnitude of the Law and its demands upon the people of Israel, we as partakers of the new covenant should be in awe of the sufficiency of Christ’s sacrifice for us. According to the numbers above, without any population increase the number of animals required in 2000 years would be over half a billion. When we consider the population increase of Christians, worldwide in 2000 years, the sacrificial requirement would have become astronomical. Yet Christ’s sacrifice on the cross completely fulfilled the requirements of the Law for all and for all time.
Christ, as the spotless “Lamb of God,” was more than sufficient to meet every need we have. We should take some time to consider the wonder of the Christ’s first advent. He came to do for us what we could never do for ourselves.
Renewing the Heart 