He did good, didn't he? Give him a hand. All right, we're going on with our series of the tabernacle. We'll be in Exodus chapter number 30 tonight. Exodus chapter number 30. I'll preach on the sweet savor of Christ's intercession and this is part of our series of the treasures within the tabernacle which are shadows of Christ. and it'll be specifically tonight about the last piece of furniture in the holy place and we went through the outer court all the way up to the candlestick and the showbread and now we're at the veil going into the holy of holies and just before that veil is the altar of incense, and so we'll begin reading in chapter 30 of Exodus, and if you're watching at home and you'd like to join us, open your Bible, I'll read it, and if you have a Bible, follow along. I found that it kind of helps me to visualize things better if I follow along in the scripture as it's read. Exodus chapter 30, verse number 1, And thou shalt make an altar to burn incense upon, of Shittim wood, and shalt thou make it a cubit shall be the length thereof, and a cubit the breadth thereof, four square shall it be, and two cubits shall be the height thereof. The horns thereof shall be of the same, and thou shalt overlay it with pure gold, the top thereof, and the sides thereof, round about, and the horns thereof, and thou shalt make unto it a crown, of gold round about, and two golden rings shalt thou make to it under the crown of it. By the two corners thereof upon the two sides of it shalt thou make it, and they shall be for places for the staves to bear it withal. And thou shalt make the staves of Shittim wood, and overlay them with gold. And thou shalt put it before the veil that is by the ark of the testimony, before the mercy seat that is over the testimony, where I will meet with thee. And Aaron shall burn thereon sweet incense upon it every morning, when he dresseth the lamps, and he shall burn incense upon it, and when Aaron lighteth the lamps that even, he shall burn incense upon it, a perpetual incense before the Lord throughout your generations. You shall offer no strange incense thereon, nor burnt sacrifice, nor meat offering, neither shall you pour drink offering thereon, and Aaron shall make an atonement upon the horns of it once a year with the blood of the sin offering of the atonement. Once in the year shall he make atonement upon it throughout your generations. It is most holy unto the Lord. Father, I pray that you'd bless in the few minutes we spend together to study your precious word. Lord, we're seeing so many things in this tabernacle that are shadows of Christ that we see him clearly now, but as we study through it, Lord, you can show us how Christ was present and reflected in those shadows as we study through it. Lord, help us to love him more, to see him more, to acknowledge him more. Lord, to love him and cling to him more than ever before. We pray you'd bless us tonight. In Jesus' precious name we pray, amen. So on our journey through the tabernacle so far we have seen the fence around the court, we've entered into the court through the gate. at the east end and we walked forward to the brazen altar where sin was taken care of once for all forever for us in the shadow that's reflected to us. They had to offer it often, daily, and have a sin offering once a year and other offerings. And then we'd go past that brazen altar and we'd come to the laver of water where the priests would wash. before they could start serving the Lord and that was a symbol or a shadow of the holiness of God and how we need as servants of the Lord. If we're going to serve Him we have to be clean and we need daily cleansing if we're going to serve Him with power, with unction and with success. And so then we go on past the laver and there was a veil over the entry to the holy place The two compartment tent in the front part of it, the candlestick was on the left or on the south side and on our right as we enter into the holy place would be the table of showbread and so Christ the light of the world is shown in the candlestick. He's the light we need more than any other light. We need light from Christ because without His light there is no real light. and that table of showbread would reflect him as the bread of life. He said I am the bread of life and he's our sustenance and we live having our provisions met through Christ. So we've finished that. Now the third item, third piece furniture in that holy place was right in front of the veil that separated the holy place from the holy of holies and that that place was the closest of all that altar of incense was right against that door veil that would go into the holy place where the Ark of the Covenant was where the presence of God was and so we see we'll see tonight as we see the the reflection of Christ as our intercessor in prayer, the closer you are to God, the more you're praying, the more you're closer to God. And so we're going to look at that tonight. So what do we get out of studying the articles of the tabernacle anyway? What do we get out of studying about the altar of incense? Well, I got six things I listed. All of them start with a G. I usually don't try to make my sermons alliterated anymore where each point starts with the same letter. Sometimes I do, but I don't want to belabor it and make something artificial. But this just happened. I started out and everything except one point out of these six started with a G, so I had to look for one more. to start with a G. Here it goes. What are we going to gain from this study? Well, number one, we go through some pertinent scriptures. If you've never studied much about the altar of incense, we're going to go through some scriptures that will point us to the truths that are reflected in the altar of incense. Number two, we'll get a mental image of what this altar looked like for a better understanding. Some of these things that we read about in scripture We read the words but we don't form a mental image of what it might have looked like and so we'll get a little better of a mental image after studying this. What else? Well, we gain biblical details about its purpose. Why was it there anyway? What did it perform? What does it mean to us now in the New Testament? And number four, we can grasp its ultimate relation to our Lord Jesus Christ. As we look at that altar of incense, our hearts are going to be more closely knit to the Lord Jesus. And I'm always for that, aren't you? And number five, we grow closer to our Savior by expanding our love and our faith in Him. And number six, it'll help us to ground others, especially our own family members and people that are close to us. Once we learn more about something like this, somebody else can ask us a question. What does that mean anyway? And what significance did it have? And what does it mean to us? Well, you'll be able to help ground them. We're supposed to be, as Christians, we're supposed to be in the discipleship business, right? We want to win people to Christ, but once we've won them, the Bible says, to grow in Christ and so if we're going to help people to grow we don't want to just win them and push them out the door and leave them to struggle on their own. We want to teach them and disciple them and if we have more knowledge about things like this we can pass it on. The Bible says in the New Testament that we ought to be able to teach others also So we begin then by looking at the design of the altar. Let's go into the scripture. Look at verses 1 and 2 a little more closely. We're in Exodus chapter 30, verse 1 and 2. It says, And thou shalt make an altar to burn incense upon. And he begins to describe it, how it's supposed to look. God gave these instructions to Moses on Mount Sinai, and so we're just now reading about it, but Moses already knew. And so he says, build an altar, and the purpose of it is going to be to burn incense on. The incense, its purpose would be to fill the air where the priests are serving God, and the closest to the presence of God. It would fill that tabernacle, it would fill the tent sweet perfume. I came out here today earlier and worked around here for a while. This building shut up through the day and through the week, and so every time I think of it, I'll try to do some things to freshen the smell in here, to keep it from smelling stale. And so I used some different things. One of the things I usually do on Wednesday is several hours before our service starts, I'll fire up that diffuser out there and put some tropical essential oils in it and that kind of fills the air with a sweet smelling savor and then maybe I'll come in here and we've got some industrial deodorizer that doesn't really have a scent but it just takes away a stale scent and so I'll go around and spray over the seats and on the carpet around here and do that and then If I find anything else, you know, maybe sometimes I'll even make a pot of coffee in the middle of the daytime. Nobody here to drink it, but if there's some old coffee here and I think it's already getting old and we need to use it up anyway, I'll make a small pot of coffee so that aroma fills the air. Can you think of a better thing to smell than coffee? And sometimes I'll make some tea, some sort of flavored tea back there early on Wednesday so that the fragrance has time to fill the building. When we come to this altar of incense, we see it as having the purpose for lifting up, that burned incense would lift up a sweet-smelling savor for the service of those who are serving God. He says, A cubit shall be the length thereof, and a cubit the breadth thereof. Four square shall it be, two cubits the height thereof, and the horns thereof shall be of the same. Well, this was the tallest piece of furniture in the holy place. And it was about the height of an ordinary kitchen cabinet that you use today, about 36 inches. It's two cubits high. How much is a cubit anyway? A cubit was 18 inches in those days. They didn't have Stanley tape measures. And so they would measure from a man's elbow to the tip of the middle finger Now not everybody's arm was exactly the same size, so as you can imagine, their measurements might not be down to the 16th of an inch, but it was a general way of measuring things. A cubit was from there to there, and it would be about 18 inches. So if you double that, 18 and 18 is what? 36. So it's two cubits high. That little altar that they burn incense on, it was set right in front of the veil going into the Holy of Holies, just before you go into the Holy of Holies, and candlestick over here and showbread over there and this thing would be about as high as a work table or kitchen cabinet. It needs to be where you can keep your hands fairly close to a bent elbow of 90 degrees and so that's the height that was. It was a cubit, a cubit wide and a cubit deep. So it's 18 inches square on top. And it also had a crown around it, an edge. You know how landscapers will put a little rail around a flower bed or something to keep their mulch from spilling over into the yard? Well, this altar of incense had a gold crown around it, a gold edging. It doesn't say exactly how high it was, but I would assume maybe about that high according to some of the pictures I've seen. I don't know how accurate those would be but you would expect that it wouldn't be a huge thing but it would be a fence around the top of that table so when they put the incense on there it wouldn't spill over the edge. They had a bowl to carry hot coals off of the brazen altar to put on there fresh every morning and every evening, coals of fire off the brazen altar. Then they had another bowl, a censer that would hold the fresh incense and they'd lay it over there so it could be dumped on top of the hot coals and then it would give off its fragrance. They did that twice a twice a day, and it had horns on each of the four corners, somewhat similar to the brazen altar, which had horns, one on each corner, kind of curled outward, and it was made out of wood as well, this whole thing made out of wood, but overlaid with gold, and so those horns, once a year, when they're making their yearly sacrifice, Day of Atonement, the priest would take a drop of blood, take some blood and sprinkle each one of those four horns with blood for that year. And having that, did we have a picture of that at all? I didn't turn and look. That's the only one, okay. You can kind of see it's not a real bright picture, that's somewhat accurate with the candlestick on the left, the showbread on the right, and it's almost like a little podium, the table of incense, the altar of incense, and it was right in front of the veil that would go into the Holy of Holies. two cubits high, 18 inches square on top, and then the other thing it had was rings on all four corners. It had gold rings and poles, they were gold-plated as well, and they could slide the poles into those rings, two on each side, they slide the gold, plated gold through there and they could pick it up and carry it that way. And so that was to be able to transport it as they traveled through the wilderness. It was constructed of wood overlaid with gold. The wood speaks of Christ's humanity as we have found in other areas. The gold pictures his deity. Together they show Jesus the God-man. He's altogether God and He's altogether man, never lost His deity when He came to earth. The table of showbread was crowned and horned and the crown represents His kingship and His victory. Now think about this, as we're thinking about the Lord Jesus Christ, He is the King of kings. He is the King of the universe and that crown would represent His kingship and His victory. The horns signify strength. and the power of atonement. It stood before the veil. It was the closest piece of furniture to the Holy of Holies. It reminds us that prayer draws us closer to God. As a teen, many people probably remember, if you had such a time as a teenager, spending time on the telephone, maybe talking to somebody you considered a sweetheart. And back when I was a teenager, we didn't have cell phones, of course. This was back when dinosaurs roamed the earth. And we would have either a wall phone or a desk phone, and it would have a long curly cord on it. And teenagers would talk to each other. A boy and a girl would call. They'd make up. One of them would call the other one, and they'd sit and talk and talk and talk and talk. Why? Because they loved each other. And they'd talk and talk and talk. And parents finally have something. All right, time to get off of that phone. But teens would do that because they loved talking to their sweetheart. And this altar of incense represents the power of prayer and the power to draw us closer to God. Why would we want to pray and why would this altar of incense give us picture of our relationship with Christ in prayer? Well, because the more we love Him, the more we want to talk to Him. I mean, it was a ritual here. The priest would go in there and burn that incense every morning and every night when he trimmed the candlestick. And that All through the scripture, the altar of incense, the incense itself reflects on prayer. And so when we love the Lord, we want to talk to Him, and not just in a ritual, not just in our time that we set aside. Maybe you've got a time where you set aside to pray every morning, or every night, or both. Maybe you got appointed times during the day. I think David prayed, didn't he say, like three times a day or better? And so he'd pray morning, noon, and night, Well, those appointed times are important, but what about just walking along and thinking about the Lord and just carrying on a conversation with Him? Why? Because you love Him, you just want to talk to Him. Now, people think you're a little weird. A lot of people don't know about talking to the Lord. They think it's something you just do at church or maybe something when you're kneeling beside your bed or something like that. But you can talk to the Lord at any time, and the more you love Him, And when your prayers go up, it's like sweet incense going up before the Father. So we talked about the shape, the design of this altar. Now let's talk about the duty at the altar. Back in our text in chapter 30, are you with me? Chapter number 30, verse number 7. It says, And Aaron shall burn thereon sweet incense every morning and at evening, A perpetual incense before the Lord. This incense consisted of four main ingredients according to Exodus 30 and verse 34. You can read them down in the same chapter and it'll tell you what they were to make the incense out of. I don't know. I guess frankincense is the only one I'm really familiar with. These others are all from wood, plants, seashells, etc. And most of it was from trees, various types of trees, where you could cut that tree, cut the bark off the tree and it would give off a gum, a resin, and they would let it dry and then they'd grind it into a powder and they'd combine it with these other things. In addition to those that were mandated in verse number 34, they added eight others, and salt was one of them, which was practically part of every sacrifice, salt. They'd make 368 pounds of incense every year, and about a half a pound would be burnt in the morning, about a half a pound in the evening on the altar of incense. So that would last a pretty good while and it would make a really strong, sweet odor. The tabernacle was a portable tent which was carried with the Israelites through their wilderness wanderings. And it wasn't until they got into the land, remember they crossed the land at Jericho and went into the Promised Land, and once they got to their permanent place, later on Solomon built a temple. in honor of the Lord and the tent of the tabernacle was not used anymore once that glorious, glorious temple was built. David wanted to build it and God said, no, I'm not going to let you build it but I'll let your son build it. You can gather materials and he can build it. And so he built a glorious, this was one of the richest times of Israel's history when Solomon was king and so he built a beautiful, just an unimaginable temple. And so a lot of the tabernacle ceremony, ritual, and service got carried over into the temple. And so the temple, first built by Solomon, what happened to it anyway? Well, remember a little judgment came upon them called the Babylonian invasion? The children of Israel, because of their wickedness and forgetting God, clinging to idols, they got carried off as hostages, kidnapped, deported into Babylon for 70 years. The Babylonians destroyed Solomon's beautiful temple. And then later on, when they were released from their captivity, remember the next temple was built, it was more modest than the one Solomon built. In fact, many of the old people who remembered Solomon's temple wept when they saw the new one because they remembered the glory of the previous one. But then something happened to that one. In Zerubbabel's time, the temple got built, but it wasn't very big. Then when King Herod came on the scene, he contracted to have this temple remodeled and rebuilt and expanded, and it became a much more elaborate temple than Zerubbabel's temple was. So there was part of it that was still the same temple as Zerubbabel's temple, but it had become bigger and more elaborate, so it was called Herod's temple. Herod wanted to get the glory out of it. And so that temple stood during Jesus' time. So whenever you read in the New Testament about Jesus going into the temple, It's Herod's temple, the one that was expanded from Zerubbabel's temple. Now what happened to that one? Well, in 70 AD, remember, the Roman army came in and they knocked it to the ground. Jesus had prophesied that. And it came to pass, just as he said, man, they raised it to the ground. And it is said by tradition that soldiers even took tools and went through the mortar between the joints of the stones to see if there was gold or some kind of precious stones or something valuable in there. Well, the temple of Jesus, Dave, when we read in the New Testament the priests offering sacrifices and the rituals and all, It's that temple and here's kind of the way it went. If you want a kind of bird's eye view, how did the day go for those priests in the temple? Well, during the morning and evening sacrifice, They would take a golden censer of incense and a gold bowl containing fresh coals from the brazen altar. They'd get fresh coals off that brazen altar in a golden bowl and they'd carry that and dump it on the altar of incense. Another priest would carry the other bowl, the censer, with fresh incense in it and he'd go over as soon as the coals were placed on there and he would dump the incense on top of that. Now, what would happen before they would do all of that though, they would hit a big gong and it would alert all the other priests that they were about to have prayer and the morning and evening sacrifice was about to start. So, once the ashes were cleaned off of that altar of incense, the new coals were put on, then the incense was put on then they would exit and leave the chosen lot priest. There would be one priest left after those coals were dumped on the altar of incense. The assistants would leave and only the appointed priest, remember they drew lots for the priest who would burn the incense and all those priests drew lots to see when they'd serve. You'll remember John the Baptist's dad, Zacharias, he was chosen by Lot to serve at that brazen altar. or not the brazen altar, I'm sorry, the altar of incense. So what would happen, the assistants would leave, they'd go back out into the courtyard and get ready for prayer, all the other priests would all be face down out there in the outer court, they're ready to be praying, and this priest that's in there, the singular chosen by lot priest takes that censer of fresh incense and puts it on there and then he exits out. And so, it was an impressive ritual and it was used every morning and every evening when they would go in, one priest would trim those wicks on the candlestick at the same time that's when they would go through their ceremony of cleaning off that altar of incense and putting fresh coals and fresh incense on it. It was done twice every day signifying that there was an ongoing communion with God. Do we have that? In our own lives, do we have a never-ending communion with Him? It was reserved for sacred use only. That altar of incense was not to be used for blood sacrifices. It was not to be used for drink offerings. They were not to put strange incense on it. It had to be made according to the pattern given to Moses in the mount. So they couldn't offer strange incense on it. In our day and time I think in our church services we see a lot of strange incense being introduced. Anytime the music sounds more like a casino than it does a church house, that might be strange incense. If it sounds more like a nightclub full of entertainment or more like a circus than it does a place where the preaching and worship of God is going on, that might be strange incense. And so we have to watch out for the things that can detract away from the holiness of God. And once a year there was a blood required for that incense altar. Exodus 30 verse number 10 commands atonement blood to be put on those horns. Prayer is effective only through the blood of Christ. When we approach God in prayer, it's the blood of Christ that connects us to the Father. Zechariah, I mentioned him a minute ago, one day old Zechariah, man, he'd been praying for a son for a long, long time. His hair's turned gray and probably some of his teeth have fallen out. He might have been half deaf and half blind. He'd gotten past the age where they normally respect anybody to have children. Well, he had been chosen by Lot to go in that day into the temple tend to his duties. So the coals were already carried over there in the golden bowl for that altar. They're sitting there and they're all ready, ready for the incense. The incense is sitting on the ground in its censer and it's ready to be added. And there's Zechariah in there alone. There's old Zechariah. He'd been faithful. He'd been praying for a son, but he thought, man, I guess that's one prayer that didn't get answered. But here he is in there that day serving God still, faithfully serving God. He pours the incense on and while he's standing there, lo and behold, there's an angel shows up. He's supposed to be in there alone. But God intervened and sent an angel. The angel said, Zacharias, your prayers have been heard. This altar of incense represents prayer, but the angel said, we've heard your prayers from way back when you wasn't even in here. We've heard your prayers and you're going to have a boy. You're going to have a baby boy, kind of like Abraham and Sarah. Your prayers have been answered. Have you ever felt like maybe some of your prayers didn't get answered the way you thought it should be and kind of thought, well, I guess that one didn't work? Sometimes it just takes time to tell. It was so in Zacharias' case. And so when he came out, you remember what happened, right? When he came out, he couldn't speak. The angel said, you're going to be dumb until the day of your son's birth. When they gave him a tablet to write on, he wrote down the name of his son to be John. Remember that? John. Later to become John the Baptist. Don't give up on prayer. It works in God's timing. There's another time when there was prayer offered up that was intercessory prayer. In Numbers 16, a plague had begun among the rebellious Hebrew people. Moses said to Aaron, he said, quick, take some fire, take some incense, make a sacrifice and see if we can intercede for the people on behalf of the people to God. So incense was burned, signifying again prayer, and as the incense was burned, They were going to God on behalf of the people around them. Intercessory prayer. Now notice also, in the third place, the devotion that's symbolized here. We can read it in Revelation chapter 8, verses 3 and 4. It says, And another angel came. This is tribulation time. Another angel came, having a golden censer, that he should offer it with the prayers of all saints. So again, we see the tying of the censer, the incense, on the altar of incense, it's tied to prayer, even in the tribulation time. And it says that this represents the prayers of all the saints. And the smoke of the incense ascended up before God. Incense represents prayer. Psalm 141, verse 2, David said, Let my prayer be set before thee as incense. Luke 1.10 says that the people prayed outside while the incense was burned. Christ is our great intercessor. John 17.9, he said, I will pray for them which thou hast given me. What's he doing? What's Jesus doing when he says, I'll pray for them? His disciples, his apostles are going to pray for his children, people that are saved. He said, I'll pray for them. In other words, Jesus is going before the Father in intercessory prayer, which is symbolized by that burning of incense. In Romans 8, 34, it says that Christ maketh intercession for us. In Hebrews 7, 25, it says, He, Jesus, ever liveth to make intercession. Aren't you glad that you've got Jesus praying for you? I appreciate the prayers of other people. I've got some of our missionaries that will send me a text on Saturday night, Sunday morning. They'll say, preacher, I prayed for you. I just want you to know you've been prayed for. Well, that's a good feeling to know you've been prayed for. And I can sense the difference when somebody's prayed for me. But you know what? Boy, it's really something to know Jesus is praying for you. Doesn't that make you want to love Him more? You know He's praying for you. You may feel like you're not a very important person. You may not feel like you're doing much for God. You may feel like your service before the Lord is so minuscule that nobody will ever notice. He does. He prays for you. Christ is our great intercessor. And our prayers ascend, our prayers. Now He's interceding for us before the Father, but our prayers make it to God through Jesus. It's because of Him our prayers ascend, and so our prayers are like that incense going up from the altar of incense into heaven. and it's a sweet-smelling savor to God. When you pray, you may feel like your prayers don't amount to much. You may feel like your prayer is ineffective. You may feel like your prayer is unanswered. You may say, what's the use? Well, the Bible says it's like a sweet odor going up to God. So if your prayer doesn't accomplish anything else, God loves the sweet-smelling savor, but it does accomplish other things. Our prayers rise on the wings of Christ's merit. Adrian Rogers once said, Some folks treat prayer like a spare tire. They only pull it out when something's flat. But real saints know it's the steering wheel, not the spare. Do we treat prayer that way, as a spare tire? Oh my, I've come to the end of myself. I can't do anything else but pray to God. Well, he's probably glad we got to that place. It's about time, right? We ought not to pray as a last resort. We ought to pray at the very beginning. And we ought to pray in advance of problems. Let me give you the fourth and last thing, the duty of the believer. We're called to pray. 1 Thessalonians 5.17 says, Pray without ceasing. James 5.16 says, The effectual and fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. Our prayers are heard in Christ. John 14 13 Jesus said whatsoever you shall ask in my name. Hebrews 14 16 come boldly unto the throne of grace. Prayer is a sacred ministry. I know people that used to serve God physically and serve God in their presence at church maybe visiting, maybe doing things in the church house, but they can't go anymore. But you know what? Their prayers are a valuable thing. I'm glad they're praying for our church. I'm glad they're praying for me. I'm glad they're praying for you. It's a sacred ministry. When we kneel before Christ, we're partnering with Him. When I intercede, listen, when I intercede on behalf of somebody else, I release sweet incense going up to the nostrils of God. Intercession, you know what it is? It's when you go in place of somebody else to the Lord. Intercession, like the little boy. I think I told this story before about the mom. She just had it with her little boy. Man, he showed out in church for a long time. She's threatened him, she's tried to pinch him, she's tried to set him still, and he just keeps on acting up. Finally, she just grabs him up by the hand and arm, and she's leading him out of the church. She's going to take him back and whoop him. In fact, she just grabs him up and tucks him under her arm, and as they go out the door, the little fellow looks back and says, That's intercessory prayer, I think. He needed somebody to be on his side. And when we pray for somebody else, we're praying on their behalf. We're on their side. In a small town in Mississippi, there's an old saint by the name of Miss Clara. And every morning before the sun came up, people could see the light in her window. What's that old woman doing up so early? She ain't got nothing to do. Neighbors said, well, that's Miss Clara. She's up praying again. She does it every day. And somebody said, Miss Clara, what do you pray about so long? And she smiled and said, well, I start with the preachers and then I move to the prodigals and I end up with the politicians. She said, in that order. The politicians need praying for just like the rest of us. Amen. If they're going to make decisions on our behalf, we need to take them before the throne of grace. Ask God to give them some good sense. Well, the altar of incense reminds us that our prayers matter. And they're not forgotten. In a case like Zechariah, he'd been praying for years. God finally answered his prayer. Now, it wasn't that God had forgotten. Zachariah had, he probably couldn't even remember what he'd prayed about that boy so long, his son, but Jesus knew. Jesus is our intercessor and it's through him that we can go to the Father. If it was not for Jesus, your prayers would not arrive in heaven. We go through Him and by interceding for others we're being like Christ. You're much like Christ when you intercede and pray for somebody else. Pray for the preachers, pray for the politicians, pray for the prodigals. Do you need to rekindle your altar of incense? Will you intercede for your family? Will you intercede for your pastor? Will you intercede for the prodigals? Will you intercede for the missionaries? Will you intercede for your country? We've got a lot of crazy things going on continually in our country. Wisdom needs to prevail and it might be that our prayers will help get that done. Let your incense rise as a sweet smelling savor to the nostrils of God. The smoke is sweet, the throne is open and Jesus is praying still. Let's pray together now. Father, I pray that you'd bless us As we contemplate the altar of incense and what it shows us about Christ, how He is always praying for His own people, how He intercedes for us, and Bible Scripture shows He's interceding for others. And Lord, help us to be like Jesus, pray for others, intercede for them. May that be a sweet smelling savor, like the incense that comes up from heaven. Thank you for the offer of incense. If you need to refresh, you're on offer of incense. I've got it right now.