Chapter 12
THE SWEET INCENSE
One of the sweetest things connected with the tabernacle was the altar
of incense. This little altar was three feet in height and eighteen inches in
breadth. It was of acacia wood, and covered with a crown of pure gold. On
the altar was burned the sweet spices of incense. When set on fire, they would
rise in a cloud of aromatic fragrance and perfume, filling both the holy place
and the holy of holies.
Prayer is a sweet fragrance going up to God and filling both earth and
Heaven with a delightful odor. First, this is a type of Christ's intercession for us.
Second, it represents our intercession with Him. Real praying is more than
words; it is more than calling on God. In order for our prayers to have power
with God, they must first be indicted by the Holy Ghost, fanned into a state of
Divine fervency, then caught up into all the all-prevailing intercessory current
of the Spirit until they reach the very heart of God. There are what may be
termed ordinary and extraordinary promptings of the spirit of prayer. There
are times when the Spirit catches the believer up into the all-prevailing current
of intercession, where the prayer seems to be drawn from him. Everything
depends on times like this when these heavenly gales began to fan the soul. If
the believer remains in this current of power, soon prayer is answered and a
mighty victory is won which makes an epoch in his life.
These spices were fragrant and highly perfumed. The Holy Ghost brings
to us the very fragrance of Heaven. As the smell is the keenest and most
refined sense of the body, prayer is the deepest spirit of worship. It is while in
prayer that our spirit touches the heavenly world and we breathe the very
atmosphere of Heaven, the odors of Paradise.
Prayer so quickens and illuminates the spiritual senses that the heavenly
world becomes as real to the spirit as the physical world does to the outward
bodily senses. Like the ascending incense, it is borne up to God on the breezes
of Heaven as a sweet savor to Him.
These spices were very costly. It cost Christ the bloody sweat of
Gethsemane. If we would enter the life of intercession with Him, we, too, must
have our Gethsemane, follow Him to Calvary and die the self-life. Just as the
veil that hid the holy of holies was never rent until Christ's flesh was rent; so
there is a veil, which is the flesh, that keeps the believer out of the holy of
holies and the life of deep intercession. As long as we pamper the flesh-life and
yield to its soft pleadings, we will live on this side of the veil. Self-indulgence
and a life of prayer never go together.
The Holy Ghost is seeking for vessels of prayer to pour His life current
through and kindle revivals that will astonish hell and bring back the old-time
power to the Church. The history of nations would read differently if some one
had wept between the porch and the altar.
These spices had to be set on fire before they could rise in this cloud of
sweet perfume. Thus it is that our prayers must be set on fire by the Holy
Ghost if they are to prevail with God. Cold praying gets nowhere. Dead
praying is just a little better than no praying at all. St. James tells us that the
fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. This means burning,
glowing, boiling hot. The word fervent is the same word which Peter uses
when he speaks of the heavens melting away with fervent heat. A prayer like
this, we are told by the Apostle, availeth much. How much? Anything
contained in the promises of God, and anything that the child of God believes
for. The world is yet to see what God can do through a man who fully believes
Him.
This incense was not to be counterfeited. There are no substitutes for the
Holy Ghost or for prayer life. The penalty of death was declared on the one
who tried to counterfeit this holy incense.
Are we using the holy ministry as a mere profession and for commercial
gain? Or, do we preach the truth and our God-given convictions regardless of
high officials or men or devils? Whenever the Church loses the supernatural
and the old-time power, it always tries to substitute something for that loss of
power. What is culture and human learning without the Holy Ghost?
Popular evangelism, with its great union meetings, a mammoth choir, a
handshake and a card-signing is being substituted for the mourner's bench and
the cry and sob of a broken-hearted penitent. Thus it is that our churches are
loaded down with dead, unsaved material.
Dr. A. B. Simpson, in his book, Holy Spirit, or Power from on High, says,
"The sublime oratorio may lift your soul to raptures of delight, the perfect
harmonies of the classic hymn may charm your cultivated taste, but this is not
religious feeling. Nay, you may even bow beneath the magnificent arch of
yonder cathedral, and in its religious light you may feel a kind of awe that you
think is worship, but it is pure sentiment, and you can go down from all this to
live for self and sin. It is mere psychology. It is only the kindling of the human
mind. Thus, heathen idolatry rouses its votaries to interest, feeling and
overpowering enthusiasm. Thus, poetry, art, music and eloquence in every
age have charmed and filled the human mind. But it is but human feeling after
all, and has nothing to do with the work of the Holy Ghost."
"There are counterfeits less glaring and daring: intellectual brilliancy,
eloquence, pathos, often presume to imitate the operations of the Spirit, and
produce the impressions which only He can bring."
Some try to make up for the loss of power with noise and demonstration.
The ruin of deep spirituality is putting the fussy things ahead of the deep things
of the Spirit. Others try to imitate the unction of the Holy Ghost by substituting
their own selfish emotions. That peculiar "something" called unction can no
more be imitated than a cold stone in the winter can throw off heat-rays. It
must be kindled like the hot, boiling springs which throw out their water the
year round. The ice and snow on the outside does not affect them, because
they come from an internal fountain in the bowels of the earth. If we would
speak loaded words, they must come from the Holy Ghost element in us, and
not from the mere human.
Finally, the altar of incense was the highest object in the tabernacle,
showing us that prayer is the highest thing in the Christian experience. It
outranks preaching big sermons or cutting a figure in the ecclesiastical world.
Prayer makes the preacher and puts life into his message. Prayer is the most
powerful factor in the universe of God. It is more powerful than all the forces
of nature, such as wind, lightning, storms, earthquakes, electricity, or the law
of gravitation. We hear a great deal said about natural laws. Infidels and
destructive higher critics tell us that natural laws govern this world, therefore
there is nothing in prayer. But God is above all natural laws, and if we move
the Arm that moves the world, He will suspend the laws of nature to answer
prayer. Joshua prayed and arrested the sun in its course. The three Hebrew
children prayed, and fire would not burn them. God will reverse every natural
law in the universe, if necessary, in order to answer prayer.
If prayer will move God to do things, if He would not have done had we
not prayed, then prayer is the most powerful thing in the world. It makes a
holy character. It changes things. Jeremy Taylor graphically says, "Prayer can
obtain everything; it can open Heaven and shut the gates of hell; it can put a
holy constraint upon God, detain an angel until he leaves a blessing: it can
open the treasures of rain and soften the iron-ribbed rocks until they melt into
tears and a flowing river. These strange things and secret decrees and
unrevealed transactions, which are above the clouds and far beyond the
region of the stars, shall combine the ministry and advantages for the praying
man."
Real prayer is immortal; it never dies. The Holy Ghost never inspires a
prayer that He does not mean to answer. Prayer lives on after the lips which
offered it are sealed in death.
A final picture of the altar of incense is found in Revelation 8:3-5: "And
another angel came and stood at the altar, having a golden censer; and there
was given unto him much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of
all the saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne." This takes
place after the saints are caught up in the rapture and God is pouring out His
judgments on the wicked nations of earth.
Notice, the revelator says that in that censer were contained the "prayers
of all the saints." Think of the prayers of the martyrs, the lonely missionaries,
and the persecuted saints, whose cries went up to God! Where they were not
answered in mercy, they are now being poured out in judgment.
O child of God, tested and tried, hold on; thy answer may be on the way!
