The Vision of the Tabernacle |
The Incense Altar: The Center of the Tabernacle |
If we pay attention to the design of the tabernacle, we will see that the altar of incense was located exactly in the center. This indicates that not only all of our service to God but also our entire Christian life needs to be centered on prayer. In order to preach the high gospel to reconcile people to God and bring them to enjoy the bread of the Presence and know spiritual truths, to help them live in the Holy of Holies all the time, we need to be people who live in prayer.
Prayer is the ground we give the Lord so that He can use us as His co-workers. Let us take preaching the gospel as an example. On one hand, we need to preach the gospel to the people we are with daily in our work place or at school. On the other hand, sometimes the Lord will lead us to go out specifically to preach in certain area of our locality. For this we need to spend much time in prayer in order to empty ourselves of our sins, our self-confidence, our fears and our own knowledge, and to be filled with the Spirit. The Lord may even lead us to fast for this purpose. (A fast that is genuine and acceptable to God is a spontaneous result of our being involved with God’s work – this causes such a burden in our heart that we lose the desire to eat). In this way, when we preach the gospel, we will feel that people are waiting to receive the word because the Lord has prepared everything. If we do not pray, we can use the right words and behave in the right way, but we will not have a positive result. And in the case that the result is positive, the person will not have a genuine and deep spiritual experience. But when we pray, everything is different. We may speak timidly and even stammer, but God will have a way through our words.
If we are burdened for people to be saved, receive spiritual food and want to enjoy the word, we must pray. This also goes for the church meetings. The spiritual food in a meeting depends on our prayer and our willingness to speak for God. The more we pray for God to give us light in His word and that every person in the meeting will receive His light, the more God will do. This is His desire, but God needs our prayer to carry it out.
Today, in the age of the New Testament, our service to the Lord must be in spirit, not only according to the faculties of our soul. Speaking more exactly, our service to the Lord should not be according to our own natural concept, will and emotions. No doubt, we need to use our mind, will and emotion, the three parts of our soul, in our service to the Lord, but they must be under the control of our spirit. For this, a new and living way was opened for us by the death of the Lord Jesus, giving us a free entrance into the Holy of Holies. When the veil in the temple was split, the Holy of Holies “invaded” the Holy Place. This shows that after being regenerated, the spirit can invade our soul and be dispensed into it.
As we saw in the first chapter, oneness is essential for Christian service. However, oneness is possible only when we are in the spirit. Unfortunately, we do not always remain in the spirit. When we meet with other saints to make a decision regarding the Lord’s work, we pray very much and give all the decisions to the Lord. But when the decisions need to be made, opinions arise and with them, divergences and misunderstandings, and the oneness is broken. This happens because the Holy Spirit, who is in our spirit, has still not saturated our soul sufficiently.
The light from the Holy Place came from the lampstand whereas the light from the Holy of Holies came from God’s glory. When the veil was split, a new way was opened for us and the light of God’s glory shined into the Holy Place. However, it did not fully illuminate it because there were some places that did not completely receive the glorious light (see the diagram at the end of this chapter). This symbolizes the fact that sometimes we are in the spirit and sometimes in the soul. Nevertheless, because the incense altar was right before the veil, it fully received the light of glory. Consequently, if we remain in prayer, praying without ceasing, without a doubt, we will be in spirit.
We do not want to delay the Lord’s coming. The world events and the increase of the number of cities with the testimony of the oneness of the church, indicate that we have very little time left. For this reason, we cannot live or try to serve the Lord in the flesh; we must serve in the spirit. If we realize that in ourselves there are still many things of the old creation, the old man, such as opinions, preferences, capabilities, etc., we must allow the Lord to cleanse us of all this. This is how we will hasten His return. How can we do this? We can do this through prayer. The more we pray, the more we will be enlightened and cleansed by the light of the glory of God.
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