Happy people enjoy what they do have; unhappy people obsess with what they don’t have.
Numbers 29 is a continuation from chapter 28 on the subject of Israel’s sacrifices to the Lord. This is a reprise of Leviticus 23 regarding the Festivals of Jehovah. One of the Lord’s titles is “The Happy God.” We read of “the glorious gospel of the blessed [or happy] God” (1 Tim 1:11). In other words, the Good News is that God is not only glorious, but gloriously happy—infinitely happy. It is into this happy world we are invited by the gospel. We catch the musical echoes of this happiness in the festivals God arranged for His people. In the previous chapter, they were reminded to celebrate their liberty through the gift of God’s Passover Lamb. In the Firstfruits celebration, they not only enjoyed the beginning of their fields’ harvest but, if only they knew, it pointed forward to “Christ the firstfruits” (1 Cor 15:23), and the ripe fields of saints whose bodies have been sown in hope and await the resurrection. Oh, and Pentecost? It was to be a birthday celebration of a whole new society of the redeemed, uniting Jews and Gentiles in Christ. Here the feast of Trumpets (vv 1-6) was a call to a new beginning in Israel’s return and the Great Day of Atonement (vv 7-11) when “all Israel will be saved, as it is written: ‘The Deliverer will come out of Zion, and He will turn away ungodliness from Jacob’” (Rom 11:26). And then? The Lord describes the feast of Tabernacles; the rest of the chapter overwhelms us with wave upon wave of offerings. To God’s mind, this is the Grand Finale of history. At last, He will be at home with His people. Antichrist will be defeated and the devil cast out. Israel will be the head of the nations instead of the tail. His Son with His Bride will rule supreme. He will be so happy. And we will be happy, too!