Exodus 29:42, commentary and pictures

The continual burnt offering was a year-old lamb burned on the altar every morning and evening with its accompanying grain offering, as part of the daily service that also included sweet incense on the golden altar and offerings for individual sins, with additional offerings for Sabbaths, new moons, and special feasts. The altar at the door of the tabernacle was an altar of continual atonement standing before the holy place, joined to the altar of perpetual intercession before the veil, teaching that God is to be approached by blood and by incense. The innocent lamb represented the Saviour's death, signifying that Jesus himself as the Lamb of God must die for human sin. The daily offering symbolized Israel's daily consecration to God and constant dependence on Christ's atoning blood. Blood and incense ascending with prayer point to Christ the great Mediator, representing His merits and intercession and His perfect righteousness imputed through faith, which alone makes the worship of sinful beings acceptable and through which alone repentant, believing sinners may approach God and receive mercy and salvation.

The morning and evening sacrifices were still being presented in the temple on the Sabbath when Jesus lay in the tomb, after their greater antitype, Jesus the Passover Lamb, had been slain. The verse appoints morning and evening as the sacred set time when God meets and speaks with His people, with sacrifice offered in the court while incense is offered in the holy place and worshipers uniting in earnest searching of heart and confession of sin and silent prayer with faces toward the holy place so their petitions ascend with the incense while faith lays hold on the merits of the promised Saviour prefigured by the atoning sacrifice. The appointed hours became the regular time for worship throughout the nation, kept even by captives in distant lands who turned toward Jerusalem at the appointed hour to offer petitions to God. The verse gives Christians an example for morning and evening prayer to seek pardon for sins committed and to present requests for needed blessings, which God looks upon with great pleasure when offered in love and the spirit of worship, while He condemns a mere round of ceremonies without the spirit of worship.

The verse presents the continual morning and evening offering as God's regular occasion for meeting His people, after which pattern every house should now be a house of prayer with a household altar. Fathers as priests of their households should offer morning and evening sacrifice through prayer and praise with their families joining them, the father leading in committing the family to God's care and thanking Him for protection. Wife and children unite in prayer and praise and lift up hearts in humble supplication for themselves and their children. Regular worship of this kind invites God's presence and blessing into the home, and in such a household that keeps morning and evening worship Jesus loves to tarry.