Sermon Transcript

0:00:14.0

In the life of the Christian there is no more important activity than prayer.  Now, you would expect me to say that in church.  And most of us who are followers of Jesus Christ understand that to be true.  No more important spiritual discipline to learn.  No more important spiritual activity to learn than prayer.  We understand that, but there is somebody else who also understands that very well.  And that is Satan, the devil.  He will spend and his minions will spend night and day, day and night to try to distract you and distract me from doing the most important thing we can do in our Christian life, and that is to pray.  I say it’s the most important thing because when I peek inside the early Church in the book of Acts…and we could go a lot of places to make the case for it, but I’ll just go to the early Church in the book of Acts.  Acts 1 we find those early believers—120 of them, the Bible tells us—waiting for the coming of the Holy Spirit.  And they were gathered in an upper room in Jerusalem waiting, as Jesus told them to do so.  And the Bible tells us in Acts 1:14, “All these with one accord were devoting themselves to prayer.”  They were devoting themselves to it.  Then you go on a little bit further.  Acts 2:42-27, a wonderful glimpse inside the early Church.  It says, “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.”  And then a little bit later in chapter 6 there is a little crisis that arose in the Church.  There were some Greek widows who were being unattended to.  And they sort of pushed back a little bit and raised their need to the attention of the apostles.  And it was a legitimate need.  But the apostles didn’t want to get distracted by that.  Can you imagine that?  And so the Bible tells us that they found seven men full of the Holy Spirit.  We call them the first deacons.  And they delegated the responsibility for those widows and tending to their needs to the deacons.  And here is the reason why the apostles said they did this.  Chapter 6 and verse 4, “Because we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the Word.”  As crass as it sounds, the apostles could not allow themselves to get distracted by a little thing over here that was happening in the…legitimate need.  But they delegated that responsibility to somebody else—we call them deacons—to serve the needs of those widows so the apostles could do the first and primary thing that they were called to, which is to pray and the ministry of the Word.  And notice the order there.  It’s prayer and the ministry of the Word.  Not the ministry of the Word and then, if we get around to it, pray.  But the first and foremost and most primary thing the apostles could do was to pray, and then to deliver the Word.

0:03:35.0

What does this have to do with our study of the Old Testament Tabernacle?  Well, we’ve been walking through the Tabernacle, as it were, stopping off at each place, at each piece of furniture.  And we’ve been learning a pattern for how we can enter into the most Holy Place of God.  And we had the bronze altar and the bronze laver.  The bronze altar being a picture of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, the bronze laver being a place where we receive daily cleansing from our sins.  If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us.  We talked about that.  And then we go into the Tabernacle itself, which has two rooms: a Holy Place and then a Most Holy Place.  And inside the Holy Place there were three pieces of furniture.  Remember?  The golden lampstand, a picture of Jesus who says, “I am the light of the world,” and a picture of believers who walk in the light and shine their light.  And then the table of showbread, a picture of Jesus who said, “I am the bread of life,” and how He satisfies our every spiritual need and so forth.  Well, there is a third little table in there or an altar in there called the altar of incense.  And the altar of incense, like the other pieces are pictures of spiritual realities and pictures that point us to Jesus Christ, well, the altar of incense is a picture of intercessory prayer.  Now, you might have walked in this morning and you said to yourself, what’s that smell?  What’s that sweet smell?  Others of you said, what’s that stank in this place?  Well, we burned a little incense in here because we wanted to give you, well, a fragrant experience and give you some sense of what it was like in the Tabernacle when they burned incense continually.

0:05:24.5

I’ve got a group of people I’m heading to Israel within the next few days.  And we’re gonna stop off in some places like the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and other places in Bethlehem and in Jerusalem.  And you walk in and you smell the incense.  They’re continually burning incense.  Well, in the Old Testament and in the New Testament incense was a picture, again, of intercessory prayer.  I’ll define what I mean by intercessory prayer a little bit later, but it’s a picture of prayer.  It’s a fragrant fellowship that we enjoy with God as our prayers waft up into the presence of God.  It is an aromatic experience.  It is a fragrant fellowship that we experience.  It is something that permeates every aspect of the Tabernacle and should permeate every aspect of our lives because that fragrance travels.  It travels from the Holy Place and—we’ll out in a little bit—it travels even into the Most Holy Place, because God has placed such a high value on the prayers of His people.

0:06:26.7

Now, some of you are here this morning and you say, “Pastor, I’m with you so far.  I understand prayer is so important.  It’s a priority in our relationship with God.  But my prayer life, there just ain’t nothing happening there.  I feel like I’m talking to myself in the room.  God doesn’t hear my prayers.  He doesn't answer my prayers.  I just don’t have much of a prayer life.”  And you’re discouraged in your prayer life.  Well, let’s just retrace some of our steps here and understand how God and when God hears our prayers.  Because God doesn’t hear the prayers of everybody.  Okay?  He doesn’t hear the prayer for the person who rushes into His presence, bypassing the bronze altar or bypassing the bronze laver.  Prayer is in the Holy Place, and it is deep in the Holy Place just on this side of the Most Holy Place.  And if you try to skip the first couple of steps, you’re gonna find that your prayers are not heard.  They’re not answered.  You’re talking to yourself in the room.  First place you have to come to is the bronze altar.  The first prayer God hears in the life of an unbeliever is the prayer of repentance at the cross of Jesus Christ.  Up until that time, friends, the reality is you’re talking to yourself.  You have to stop off at the bronze altar.  God hears the prayers of His children by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

0:07:52.0

Secondly, God hears the prayers of a child who has come to the bronze laver.  “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”  One of the reasons for unanswered prayer in the life of a believer—yours or mine—is that we have sin in our life that we’ve not dealt with.  The psalmist says, “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.”  And so as we think about this matter of prayer that, yes, is as simple as “Ask and it shall be given unto you, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you,” Jesus said.  But there are some steps that we need to take, patterned for us in the Tabernacle.  You want to enter into the holy presence of God and have an intimate conversation with Him?  You come first to the bronze altar.  You come to the cross of Christ.  You enter into His family.  Then, as a believer, as you're walking through this world, you come to that bronze laver.  You make sure you are cleansed and purified of those defilements we pick up.  Then you’re ready to walk into the Holy Place and have a conversation with your heavenly Father.  That’s how prayer works.  Sometimes we treat God like a cosmic slot machine, you know.  “Hey, God.  I asked.  I sought.  I knocked.”  But we haven’t done the first things.  We haven’t come to the cross of Christ and acknowledged that we are a sinner in need of a savior.  And as Christians, well, we’ve picked up too many defilements, too many impurities in our lives to walk into the holy presence of God.  So let’s make sure we retrace those steps.

0:09:31.3

And with that in mind, prayer—let me just demystify it a little bit—prayer is simply communication with God.  It’s having a conversation with God.  And it’s a dialogue, not a monologue.  It’s a dialogue.  And you says, “Well, Pastor, how does God speak to us today?”  Well, primarily He speaks to us through His Word.  And you can never divorce the Word of God from an effective prayer life.  In fact, if you want to pray the will of God, know the Word of God.  Because the Word of God will tell you the will of God.  And when we pray the Word of God back to Him, we’re always praying in the will of God.  So He speaks to us through His Word.  He speaks to us through the inner promptings of the Holy Spirit.  That’s a mysterious thing, but the Holy Spirit lives inside of us and sometimes has a conversation with our spirit.  The Holy Spirit talking to our spirit.  And then He speaks to us through wise, godly counsel.  He speaks to us through circumstances.  God is speaking today, and prayer is a dialogue.  That’s why sometimes it’s good to just sit in silence before the Lord as you're reading the scriptures, and let Him speak to your heart before you…don’t rush into His presence so quickly with your list of things or my list of things.  It’s a dialogue as much as it is anything else.

0:10:53.1

And the picture we have in the Old Testament, the altar of incense, again, is a picture of what I call intercessory prayer.  And I want to take you to two places in the Bible where we see the activity of the priest in an Old Testament economy lighting the incense at the altar of incense in the Tabernacle.  The first is found in Luke 1.  I want to take you to the Christmas story for a moment and to one of the lesser-known characters in the Christmas story.  I know you know Mary and Joseph and baby Jesus, but do you remember a guy named Zechariah?   Zechariah was married to Elizabeth, who was Mary’s cousin.  And their pregnancies overlapped each other.  Elizabeth was ahead of Mary for about six months in her pregnancy with her child named John the Baptist.  Well, Elizabeth was married to Zechariah.  And Zechariah was a priest.  And in Luke 1:8-10 it tells us, “Now while Zechariah was serving as priest before God, he was chosen by lot to enter the temple of the Lord and burn incense.”  Now, remember the temple was later the permanent structure that was the Tabernacle.  The Tabernacle was the portable worship facility, less permanent.  Later it was made more permanent in the temple.  And Zechariah was one of many priests who served the Lord every day.  And it was just his turn to go in.  And it says he goes in, he enters the temple of the Lord to burn incense.  Verse 10, “And the whole multitude of the people were praying outside at the hour of incense.”  Underline that phrase “the hour of incense”.  I love that phrase.  There was a specific time during the day they called the hour of incense, and the people gathered around the temple to pray as the priest, still under an Old Testament economy, went into the temple representing the people and went into that Holy Place.  And he went to the altar of incense, and there were fragrant incense stuff in there.  And he lit it up, and the fragrance began to fill the space there in the temple.

0:13:14.3

But I love that phrase “the hour of incense”.  Do you have anything akin to an hour of incense scheduled in your life on a daily basis, where you spend time in prayer with God?  If it’s not an hour of incense, do you have 5 or 10 minutes, maybe 15 minutes where you’ve scheduled some time to get alone with God, to open up your Word, to have a holy conversation with Him.  By the way, He desires to have that conversation with Him probably more than you and I will ever desire to have the conversation with Him.  He loves to sit down and hang out and have conversation with His kids as much as you and I love to do that.  Cathryn and I’s kids are in college.  And, you know, with the miracle of technology—I don’t have my phone up here—but, you know, we love to get text messages and phone calls and emails and just any time of the day or night we love to have conversations with our kids.  And God desires to have a conversation with us too.  He misses our time with Him and His time with us.  Do you have anything in your life that looks like an hour of incense, an hour of fragrant fellowship with God?  Where you say, “This is a priority time in my life and in my day where I spend time with God, and I’m not gonna let anything interrupt this.”  That’s an important thing to do. It was scheduled into the economy of the Old Testament through the activities of the priest, and we see it through Zechariah.

0:14:43.6

Now I want you to go to the last book of the Bible, to the book of Revelation.  And keep in mind here that the Tabernacle itself, remember it was a pattern of something that was already kind of built in heaven.  That’s why God was and architect.  He handed the architectural plans to Moses.  But we see a pattern of this Old Testament practice in heaven itself.  And in Revelation 5:8 it tells us that, “When he [that is, Jesus] had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp,” now, listen to this, “and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.”  Do you know God keeps a record of every prayer we pray that gets through to Him, of course, after going to the bronze altar and the bronze laver?  You know, He keeps a record of every one of those prayers in a golden bowl of incense.  That just fascinates me.  It tells us that God places such a high priority on our conversations with Him and His conversation with us that is makes it into the worship experience in heaven and these mysterious things called “golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints,” the scripture says.

0:16:09.8

And then a little bit later in the book of Revelation 8.  Turn with me there.  Beginning in verse 3 it says, “And another angel came and stood at the altar with a golden censer, and he was given much incense to offer with the prayers of all the saints on the golden altar before the throne, and the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, rose before God from the hand of the angel.”  Again, just a picture of how much God values the prayers of His saints.  I’ll even say it this way: how much His economy depends on the prayers of His saints.  God has obligated Himself and the working of His economy to the prayers of His saints.  Did you know that?  I think this is what Jesus was saying to Peter when He said in Matthew 16, “Peter, upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.”  First time He ever mentioned the Church.  And then He says, “Peter, I’ve given you the keys of the kingdom.  Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven.  Whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”  Notice the order there.  The binding and the loosing starts on earth and then it’s reflected in heaven.  And how do we bind, how do we loose but through prayer?  In some strange way without compromising His sovereignty, God has obligated the economy of heaven to the prayers of the saints on earth.  “Whatever you bind on earth, whatever you loose on earth will be bound in heaven, will be loosed in heaven.”  How much more motivation do we need to build into our day a sweet hour of incense?  God is waiting for His people to prayer individually, corporately.  It’s part of the worship experience in heaven.  It’s part of the economy of heaven.  And our prayers move us into a very, very holy place.  A very, very holy place.

0:18:12.1

In fact, there is some discussion about exactly where the altar of incense was located.  I don’t mean to get tedious and pedantic with the scripture here.  And some of you saying, “That’s not the question I woke up with this morning.  ‘Pastor, where was the altar of incense exactly located in the Tabernacle?’”  But I need to address this for a moment because some people point to what they consider to be an apparent contradiction in scripture between the Old and the New Testament.  Follow me real carefully here.  In the Old Testament it’s clear the altar of incense was located in the Holy Place on this side of the veil that separated the Holy Place from the Most Holy Place.  It’s one of the three pieces of furniture inside the Holy Place.  But if you go with me to Hebrews 9, (0:19:00.0) and in verse 3 the writer of Hebrews drawing up on the Old Testament imagery says, “Behind the second curtain,” which was the veil, “was a second section called the Most Holy Place, having the golden altar of incense and the Ark of the Covenant.”  Now, wait a minute.  The Old Testament says the altar of incense was on this side of the veil in the Holy Place.  The writer of Hebrews says it was on the other side.  The writer of Hebrews have it wrong?  Again, I’m not trying to get tedious with the scripture or pedantic with it.  But this goes to the whole issue of the trustworthiness of scripture.  This is one those apparent contradictions that people love—those that want to discredit the Bible—love to camp out on and say, “See, the Bible is not inspired by God and inerrant.  The writer of Hebrews made mistake here.”  (0:20:00.0) Did he?  Well, what I want you to keep in mind is that when we talk about the inspiration and the inerrancy of scripture—that is it’s trustworthy, it’s perfect, and it has authority in our lives—we’re talking about the original autographs.  We’re talking about the original autographs that were first penned by those writer under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.  We don’t have the originals.  We have copies.  And we have copies of copies, and we have translations of copies.  That’s not to say that what we hold in our hand as an English translation of the scripture is not good and trustworthy.  It just means that it’s gone through a translation process.  And sometimes things get lost in the translation from the Hebrew language or the Greek language or even the Aramaic language into the English language or whatever language.  And as good as the translators are, the scholars that they are, sometimes they miss it.  Okay?  Or sometimes, because of the limitations from one translation or one language to another, they have some decisions to make.  So one of the explanations as we reconcile Old and New Testament here with regard to the altar of incense is that what the writer of Hebrews is referring to here is not the golden altar but the golden censer.  That’s how the King James translators rendered it.  “Having the golden censer of incense and the Ark of the Covenant.”  A censer was a little plate or a little bowl where they carried some of the incense and, clearly here, into the Most Holy Place.  The priest did that once a year.  The particular Greek word that the writer of Hebrews uses here could be translated “censer” or “altar”.  Okay?  It’s just a little bit vague when it goes to the translation.  The old King James said “censer”.  Okay?  That’s one explanation.

0:21:45.7

Secondly, beginning in verse 4…and I know this is getting tedious, but this goes to the trustworthiness of scripture, because somebody’s gonna come along and maybe point this out to you.  And you don’t know how to answer them.  The second has to do with a present participle.  I know we’re getting deep into grammar.  I’m not trying to make this a grammar lesson.  But verse 4 says, “Having the golden censer,” or the “golden altar.”  It’s a present participle in the Greek language.  And the particular word here is a word the writer chose to talk about something that was in association with something else.  If the writer was talking about a special relationship—this is here and this is here—he would have chosen a different word in the original language.  But the word he chooses here gives us an indication he’s not talking so much about a special relationship but an association between the altar of incense, which is in the Holy Place, and what happens in the Most Holy Place.  Think of it in a practical way.  It’s a fragrant aroma in incense, and it travels, does it not?  It permeates the entire Tabernacle.  It starts in the Holy Place on this side of the veil.  But the writer of Hebrews kind of gives us a wink and nod that there is an association between what happens in the Holy Place and what happens once a year when the high priest goes into the Most Holy Place.  That fragrance permeates the veil.  It goes further into the Most Holy Place.  And you may accept that as an explanation or not.  I’m fine with it.  It satisfies my curiosity between what we see in the English translation here.  And it also suggests that this is why the writer Moses in Exodus in describing the altar of incense in Exodus 30:10 says it is something that is “most holy to the Lord.”  That’s Holy of Holies language.  Later he says, “It shall be most holy to you.”  That’s Holy of Holy language.  And, again, it’s just describing the association between being in the Most Holy Place of God and how our prayers from the Holy Place make their way into the Most Holy Place we can ever experience with God.  You get the picture so far?  I hope that helps you understand just how important our prayers are, even as they waft into the presence of God.

0:24:33.2

Now, with that in mind, let’s talk about the intercessory prayer ministry of Jesus, because this altar of incense is a picture of that.  And what do I mean by intercessory prayer?  An intercessor is someone who stands in the gap between God and people.  And when we talk about the intercessory prayer ministry of Jesus, we’re talking about Jesus who stands in the gap between us and our heavenly Father, pleading on behalf of another.  And the intercessory prayer ministry or work of Jesus Christ is three-fold.  First of all, Jesus prays for us.  Hebrews 7:25 says, “Consequently, he is able,” that is Jesus, “able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him.”  Now, listen to this.  “Since he always lives to make intercession for them.”  What’s the priority of your life?  If somebody were to say this is what you always live to do.  I always live to watch my Dallas Cowboys play football.  I hope that’s not the priority of your life.  I always live to work and make money.  I always live to do this… You fill in the blank.  You know what Jesus always lives to do?  To pray for us.  To make intercession for us.  He dies on the cross.  He rose from the dead.  Forty days later before He sent the Holy Spirit He ascended to the right hand of the Father.  And the Bible says He always lives to make interssion for the saints.  Why?  Again, because of the high priority of prayer in the economy of God.  Jesus prays for us.

0:26:21.0

When I was a pastor in Washington, D.C., I had another pastor on my staff who, interestingly enough, his brother was a Catholic priest.  That had to make for great theological conversations at Thanksgiving and Christmas when you’ve got a Protestant and a Catholic clergyman there.  But his brother was a Catholic priest.  And his brother was a part of a priestly order that gave themselves entirely to prayer.  I never met his brother, but I was always impressed with that.  Yeah, we’ve got theological differences between Protestants and Catholics.  But I thought, wow, here is somebody who gave his life to the ministry prayer.  Off in some monastery somewhere, he and his brothers in this priestly order, that’s what they did all day long.  They got up.  And they realized that the ministry of the Church globally was generated by prayer.  It’s the gasoline in the engine of the Church.  And so much of this was a priority that there were priests who just gave themselves to the…well, Jesus is our high priest in a New Testament sense.  And He ever lives to make intercessions for the saints.  He prays for us.  And if you want to know what He prays, just go to John 17 sometime.  This is the high priestly prayer of Jesus in John 17.  He prayed for His disciples on the night before He was crucified in the upper room.  I don’t have time to go through the whole, you know, chapter there.  It’s a fascinating read and a holy, holy read.  I call it the real Lord’s Prayer.  I know we talk about the Lord’s Prayer, “Our Father, who art in heaven,” and all that.  That’s really the disciples’ prayer.  It’s a model prayer.  But the high priestly prayer of Jesus, John 17.  Read it this week.  You’ll be fascinated by how Jesus prays for us.  In verse 20 He says, “Father, I do not ask for these only,” referring to the disciples in the upper room, “but also those who will believe in me through their word.  Do you know Jesus prayed for you and for me in the upper room on the night before He was crucified?  He looked long into the hallways of history and time and saw one disciple after another carrying the Word of God until it found you and it found me.  And we are the answer to that prayer if we’ve come to that bronze altar, the cross of Christ, and accepted it.  He prayed for that.  And that should be an encouragement to us.  It should also be an example for us.  So Jesus prays for us.

0:29:02.7

Secondly, Jesus prays in us.  Romans 8:26-27, “Likewise, the Spirit,” that is the Holy Spirit, “helps us in our weaknesses, for we do not know what to pray as we ought.  But the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words, and he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.”  Have you ever been in a circumstance where you just don’t know how to pray, what to pray, what to say?  Well, here is the good news.  If you’re a believer in Jesus Christ, if you’ve been to the bronze altar, to the cross of Christ, and you're a child of God through faith in Jesus Christ, you have the Holy Spirit in you.  And what a gift He is.  And He prays in us.  He prays in us, Paul says, “groanings too deep for words.”  There you are in the middle of the night.  It’s 3:30 in the morning.  You don’t know what to say.  You don’t know how to pray.  All you can do is groan a little bit, and the Holy Spirit picks that up.  And He prays for us.  And the Bible says He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.  Now, I always say if you want to know how to pray the will of God, get to know the Word of God.  But you may know the Word of God but you still…you're struggling to know the will of God in a particular situation.  Be encouraged to know that as part of Jesus’s intercessory prayer ministry that He has given to us the Holy Spirit who is in us.  And while Jesus, in the mystery of the trinity—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—as Jesus prays for us, the Holy Spirit He gave to us who lives in us is praying in us as well, groanings and words that cannot be uttered.  But He is praying the will of God in that situation.  So stay in that moment of prayer.  Stay in that hour of incense and let that fragrant fellowship waft up into the holy presence of God.

0:31:11.4

And then, finally, Jesus prays through us.  This is where you and I become intercessors, standing in the gap for somebody else.  It’s no secret to suggest that intercessory prayer, when we pray for someone else, is the highest form of prayer.  It’s an unselfish kind of prayer.  Oh, I can selfishly come to God everyday with my laundry list of things I need from Him, right?  Treating Him like a cosmic slot machine.  But to take the time, that precious time we’ve all been given, to pray for someone else?  That’s a high and holy calling.  That’s an unselfish act.  1 Thessalonians 5:27 Paul says to the believers in the church in Thessalonica, he says, “Pray without ceasing.”  Pray without ceasing.  Colossians 1:9, “We have not ceased to pray for you,” Paul said to the Colossians.  What does it mean to pray without ceasing?  Does that mean you join the monastery and you go away to some place and you just give yourself…?  Well, maybe God is calling you to do that.  But praying without ceasing just means I’m in constant conversation with my heavenly Father.  Yeah, there are times I may be down on my knees, down on my face in a quiet place, even in my prayer closet, as it were, enjoying that hour of incense with an open Bible and listening to the Lord and having conversation with Him.  But like most of us, you’ve got to get on with your day, right?  But, you know, praying without ceasing means I could even be praying while I’m driving down the road.  Now, don’t bow your head and close your eyes when you’re doing that, especially if I’m in the lane next you, okay?  I think of Nehemiah in the Old Testament.  Nehemiah was a prayer-driven man before he was a task-driven man.  It’s what I love about his leadership.  And he was surveying the old, torn up Jerusalem to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem.  And he was going to leave his position in the capital city of Susa in the government there serving the king and go back to Jerusalem and rebuild the walls.  And he prayed about it, and he surveyed the land at night.  And then there was a time when he just had to do a practical thing.  He had to go into the presence of the king and ask for supplies to rebuild the walls.  And he says, “As I walking into the king’s presence, I prayed to the Lord my God.”  Now, does that mean that, you know, Nehemiah fell down on his knees, you know, as he’s walking into the…  No, he shot up one of those, what I like to call, arrow prayers.  As you're driving down the road.  As you’re walking into this appointment.  As you’re walking into the hospital in a crisis situation.  You pray without ceasing.  You’re in constant conversation with God.

0:34:04.1

Through technology today Cathryn and I are in constant conversation with our kids.  Text messages, email messages, phone messages.  Any time of the day or night we can dial one another up.  Sometimes it’s late into the night.  You know, ping, ping my cell phone goes.  But our kids are in constant conversation with us.  We’re in constant conversation with Him.  That’s why it’s important to keep short accounts with God.  Make sure you’re on praying ground as a believer in Jesus Christ.  That you’ve come to the bronze laver.  Because if you have a crisis moment and you need to have a conversation with your heavenly Father but you haven’t been to the bronze laver, you haven’t had that cleansing for a while, you’ve got a little work to do here first.  Keep short accounts with Him.  “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us.”  All of that.  Keep short accounts with Him.  Take that spiritual bath every day, every moment the Holy Spirit brings something to our attention so you're always on praying ground with God in that Holy Place where you can have a conversation with your heavenly Father.  Samuel said it this way.  1 Samuel 12:23.  Write down this reference.  He says, “Far be it from me that I should sin against God by ceasing to pray for you.”  Wow, Samuel the prophet, a great Old Testament figure, just understood the high and holy aspect of prayer.  And he says, “Just that I would neglect praying for you.  Far be it from me that I would sin against God in that way.”

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And then one more thing I just want to add.  This kind of prayer is spiritual warfare.  That’s why it’s so hard to pray.  That’s why it’s so easy to be distracted, because the enemy doesn’t want us pray.  He knows the economy of God works on the prayers of the saints.  And so Paul in that great chapter, Ephesians 6, talking about spiritual warfare, he says, “We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against the powers, against the spiritual rulers in dark place.”  There is a spiritual reality happening in the unseen spiritual realms, unseen to the naked eye, where the devil and his demons are actively involved.  One of the things they want to do is distract you and I from prayer.  And as Paul goes through every, you know, piece of spiritual armor, teaching us how to fight spiritual battles, he comes to verse 18 and says, “Praying at all times in the Spirit with all prayer and supplication.  To that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplications for all the saints.”  Prayer is spiritual warfare.  We fight spiritual battles, friends, on our knees.  You may be in the think of a battle right now, whatever that battle might be.  There is a spiritual battle perhaps going…there is a spiritual battle going on in our country right now.  Do you have the spiritual eyes to see beyond a political campaign and to see the spiritual battle that is fighting for the soul of a nation?  We fight spiritual battles with spiritual weaponry.  And prayer is a part of that.  We fight those battles on our knees.  And so, so many reasons for us to be people of prayer, to carve out and schedule that hour of incense.  But, yes, to be people who pray without ceasing, to understand that this is one of the most holy things we can do is, having been to the bronze altar and the bronze laver, having stepped into that Holy Place, now we’re ready to have conversation with God.  And that conversation wafts like a fragrant fellowship into the Most Holy, Holy Place we can ever go.  Let’s pray together.

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Father, thank You for Your Word.  Thank You for inviting us to pray and have a conversation with You.  “What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you would even care for him?”  Father, who are we but children of God by faith in Lord Jesus Christ, created in the image of God.  We have a heavenly Father like You who so desires to have fellowship with us in a Holy, Holy Place.  Father, help us to be men and women of prayer.  I pray that a message like this would do for all of us, to energize our prayer life, to point us in the direction of what the real priority in our ministry should be, to become people of prayer.  Father, to do that, some need to come to the bronze altar today.  Oh, they’ve offered up prayers of desperation, but maybe they never understood the first prayer is a prayer of repentance.  “God, I’m a sinner.  Save me through the blood of Jesus Christ.”  It’s just that simple.  Others, Father, are just dirty and need to come to the bronze laver, that place of washing and cleansing today, to get on praying ground again.  And, Father, as we do, just take us into that Holy Place to enjoy the sweet, sweet fellowship, that fragrant fellowship that is prayer, that is conversation with You.  And we ask You to do this in the name of our Savior Jesus and for His sake, amen.

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