Keeping the Charge of the Altar (12/02/2001)

Good to see you today. We're going to be in 2 Chronicles here shortly, so you can turn to chapter 28, the last verse of the chapter.

We've been talking about the duties of the priest as enumerated in the scriptures and then reminding ourselves that we are believer priests.

And we have talked about first that the great duty of the priest is to offer sacrifices to the

Lord. We find in Hebrews 13, 15 that that is praise from our lips.

We find in Hebrews 13, 16 that it can also be the giving of our substance to other brothers and sisters who are in need is a sacrifice we can offer.

Then in Romans chapter 12, verse 1, we find that our bodies are to be given as a living sacrifice unto the

Lord. So we've talked about that. And then last time we began to speak about the keeping, keeping the charge of the tabernacle.

And we didn't finish that. So we're going to pick up on that topic again this morning. Now we're going to be primarily in 2

Chronicles chapter 29. We're going to look at the last verse of 28. But before we do that, let me read to you numbers 18, 5.

It says, and ye shall keep the charge of the sanctuary and the charge of the altar, that there be no wrath anymore upon the children of Israel.

That picture is very clearly that there will be wrath or can be wrath from God upon those who do not keep the sanctuary and the altar in a proper way.

And that was given to them, but it's given as a picture and symbol for us. And that's what we're studying.

He says, and I behold, I have taken your brethren, the Levites, from among the children of Israel.

To you, they are given as a gift from the Lord to do the service of the tabernacle of the congregation.

That's the outermost parts of the tabernacle. The Levites took care of that.

Therefore thou and thy sons, now this is talking about the priests, shall keep your priest's office for everything of the altar and within the veil.

So the priest has to do specifically with the altar, which is right at the veil. You can't get into the

Holy of Holies without passing next to the altar. And so that is the part that the priests are supposed to keep the altar and then going inside to the

Holy of Holies, the innermost part of the tabernacle where the presence of God was.

And we see then, this is laid out in Numbers chapter 18, verse five, that they are required to keep the charge of the sanctuary and we're required to do the same thing.

And that's what we're studying today. Let's go to the Lord in prayer and then we'll get into our passage. Father, we thank you so much for each person who's here today, a special group of people that are here because we're supposed to be here.

We're called to be here. And Lord, we pray for our brothers and sisters who are ill today and are traveling or who couldn't be here.

We know that they'll miss us and we miss them. We ask you to watch over them and bring them back safely to us.

And Lord, while we are here today, though, we're here and there is business to be done for we know you shall work in our hearts and you will teach us today.

You will move in our hearts. You will meet with us today and give us your mind and your heart on the issues that we study.

You have a message for each of us and that's why we're here. And at the same time, Father, we do want to give you praise and thanks.

And Father, we cannot utter the words that will say in a magnificent enough way how we thank you for the

Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you for giving your only son his life for our lives and for giving us to him as a love gift.

And Father, we know that it has nothing to do with our own merit. We're all vastly aware of that if we've lived very long in this world.

We know ourselves well enough to know that we can't be saved by us. And we know that the only reason that we are is that you gave us to the

Lord Jesus. And thank you that he loves us and he counts us as brothers and sisters.

And Lord, we pray that he would be lifted up today and we pray in his name. Amen. Well, we know that we're to offer sacrifices, but what about this keeping the charge of the tabernacle?

The word charge in the Hebrew language means to watch, to keep custody of, and to preserve.

Now, the Corinthian church is kind of well -known. It's known as the baby church or even worse than that really because there's absolutely nothing unspiritual about being a baby

Christian. Baby Christians are usually the most spiritual people in the room at any given time. But there's a difference between that and a carnal

Christian. And the first Corinthian book written to the church at Corinth makes it very clear that this was a carnal church.

Paul told them, you are carnal, right to their faces. And yet it is this church that you find in first Corinthians 316 where the

Lord has to remind you by saying, know ye not that your body is the temple of the living

God, as if to say they didn't know it. And that probably is why they were in fact carnal.

They didn't understand that God indwelt their bodies. I suppose that proves as well as any other verse in the

Bible that you don't get saved by a feeling. They had not felt the Holy Spirit. Now, some of you did.

Some of us did when we got saved and certainly have since then. But not everyone does.

You don't get saved by a feeling. You get saved by the Lord Jesus Christ coming into your life and your heart.

Now, this church had a real problem, carnality. They didn't understand that their body was the temple of the living

God. And so they were not keeping charge of the temple at all.

And it will create a problem in any church where the members of that particular local church do not do their priestly duty in this area, keeping charge of the temple.

Now, as we go into 2 Chronicles 28, verse 27, where it speaks of Hezekiah coming to reign and being a good king, let's go right on into chapter 29 in verse 1.

It speaks how long he reigned. Verse 2 reminds us that he did that which was right in the sight of God, according to all that David had done and taught.

And in the first year, which means he did not waste time in taking care of this matter, the first year, the first month, that I believe means the first month of the

Jewish year, at least what God told them the first month of their year should be, which was the time of the

Passover. The first thing he did was he opened the doors of the house of the

Lord and repaired them. And we talked about last time in Revelation chapter 3, verses 13 through 22, how

Jesus knocks at the door of our hearts. Not a salvation verse, but a verse that is for people who already are saved, but who have allowed the door to become broken and closed to the

Lord. And that's what we discussed last time. It sure bears thinking about.

We have to picture some things now as we use the Old Testament tabernacle, whether it be the wilderness tabernacle or later on the temple, to picture spiritually what's going on here.

Let's remember a little bit about the configuration. As you approach, let's say that you've already fixed the door and you can get into the temple itself, into the outer place of congregation.

If you can come on into that place and approach the veil that is actually the door to the

Holy of Holies, just outside that is the altar and the altar of burnt offering.

And you have to go by that to get in. Now remember in their day, only one man could go in that place one day a year and that was the high priest.

But in our time, because we're this side of the cross, if you belong to the Lord Jesus Christ, then you can go boldly before his throne.

But the pictures still tell exactly how it works.

It was impossible for that priest to get through that door, the veil, into the

Holy of Holies without first stopping by that altar. In fact, in those days, they had to offer the sacrifices on the altar and to sprinkle the blood on the altar, on the floor, on the ground, and apply it to themselves and to the whole people of Israel.

And they could not go through that door until all that was done properly. There was cleansing. There's also a labor there at the door where they washed their hands, cleansed themselves and so forth, which can certainly picture what the

Lord does to us when he washes our feet, when he, even though our sins are already completely removed.

Paul, check on that, baby. Thank you very much.

Our sins are completely removed, yet we walk through this world and we're contaminated by the world, the flesh, and the devil, aren't we?

And so we have to come to the Lord in confession, and I believe that little labor of water pictures the confession.

First John 1 .9, it pictures it. Now you can't go through that veil into the

Holy of Holies without stopping by that altar. Now some interesting things about the altar that we have to remember.

First of all, they had to sanctify the altar with blood, and yet then what's interesting about it is once the altar is sanctified, then when they put the offering on the altar, it sanctified the offering.

Now when we come to the cross, we discover that Jesus is all of it in one.

The cross, I guess some would say, could have been his altar. It is certainly where the blood was shed, but he then becomes not only the sacrifice, but he is the altar.

The altar pictures the Lord Jesus and the sacrifice. He's both. You cannot get through the door into the

Holy of Holies where the Father dwells, which is pictured by that mercy seat. You cannot get to that place without going through Jesus Christ.

He pictures both that altar that's at the door, but he also pictures the sacrifice that was on that altar, and yet as we read in the book of Hebrews, let me have you turn to Hebrews chapter 10, verse 12, just to see this.

Keep your hand there. We're coming back to 2 Chronicles. Hebrews 10, 12 says, but this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down on the right hand of God from henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool.

Now look at verse 14, for by one offering he hath perfected, that's past tense, hath already perfected forever them that are sanctified.

How can anyone read that verse and not begin to have the Holy Spirit teach them about eternal security?

Because we are secure by that offering, not by what we do. As Brother Otis taught so clearly in Sunday school this morning, if it had anything to do with a reason that we could create our own salvation, then we could do away with it as well.

And yet it says that by this one offering of Jesus Christ, the one that this altar pictured all through the hundreds of years, as the priest would come and sacrifice the offering on that very altar before he could enter into the

Holy of Holies where God was, all through those years it pictures Jesus Christ and what he did once and then the fact that it perfected forever them that are sanctified.

Hebrews 12, 2, let's look at that one. Looking unto

Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, that presents salvation not as a once accomplished job only.

It speaks not only of the finished work of Christ, but it presents it as well as a continuing present work of Jesus.

He is not only the one who began our salvation, but he is the one who is finishing our salvation who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame all of the sins of God's people throughout history placed upon him.

And then is set down at the right hand of the throne of God is set presents clearly that it doesn't say

Jesus did sit there. It said he was set there, which means the father placed him there for consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself.

Lest we be wearied and faint in your minds. Now I want you to think about this word, consider him, consider him.

Did you know that even in the old Testament, there are verses that say specifically and very clearly that the sin offering.

Now I'm not talking about the burnt offering, but the sin offering was done as a remembrance of sin, even in the old

Testament. Now we know in the kingdom age that the, uh, the whole system of offerings sacrificial system will be brought back into being, and it will be as a memorial, which means as a remembrance of the sin, but also of what

Jesus Christ has done and what he has accomplished and what he did accomplish that one time on the cross.

So as we see this altar that the priest walked beside and that he was given the duty of keeping the charge of the altar, making sure that altar remained sanctified, making sure that it was used, making sure that the proper offerings were given on that altar at the right times as God had laid out.

And all of that was this priest's job. It is our job too.

But remember that this altar was a remembrance of the sin, but also of the

Lord Jesus Christ, the sacrifice, the once and for all sacrifice who perfected us forever.

It is not enough for us human beings, even sanctified human beings to be taught that Jesus did this for us once and to never think about it again.

We have to have a memorial. That's just the way our minds work. If we get away from walking,

Brother Otis talked about in Sunday school where it said exhort one another daily. You know, that could be an interesting lesson in and of itself, that one verse.

Do you know that I've learned in my life for the last couple of years, I've tried to have coffee with Brother Otis a couple of times a week, and I meet with other brothers in this church at least once a week, every opportunity

I get. And others of you that I don't, I'd like to meet with you more. But I have found that the more that I meet with brothers and we have true fellowship, which means, yeah, we talk about what's going on in the world, but we also all of a sudden eventually gets back into the word, that it causes me to walk more closely with the

Lord. It is so important for us to exhort one another daily. Call one another up.

Talk about what you learned in the word. Have coffee together. Whatever you can do throughout the week will cause you to be more spiritual.

It just will. It's not the cause of it, but it's a help. It's like a catalyst. Well, in many ways, this altar is a remembrance.

It pictures the fact that we cannot enter into the holy place, which is something in the

Old Testament, you know, as I said, one man once a year could go in this place. We can go in here as we choose with this if in front of it, this condition.

We must go by the altar and view it. And the altar and the sacrifice that's on it only pictures

Jesus. So we cannot get into that place with the Father without first the remembrance, which is caused by our relationship with the

Lord Jesus Christ on an ongoing basis, day to day, moment by moment. At any moment in our lives, if we want to go into that place, into that holy of holies where God's presence is and come before him either with a request, with a praise, with a thanksgiving.

If we want to simply bow down and worship him in his presence, if we need strength and power, if we need comfort, whatever we need from the

Father, we must come to that place by Jesus Christ by remembering where we were, our sins, and where he has taken us out of that darkness into his marvelous light.

We must come by that altar. We cannot come past that altar if we don't keep the charge of it.

Now, physically, I can tell you that there were times in history when

I can think of Antiochus Epiphanes, who apparently the priest did not keep proper charge of this place, and he was allowed into this place, and he is a type of Satan.

He came into this place and offered a pig on this altar. He defiled the temple.

It defiled the altar. It defiled the people, the nation, the priests that were supposed to be there keeping charge of this temple.

I don't know where they were, but they weren't keeping charge of the temple. And probably there had been things over long days and months and even years that led up to this awful event.

It didn't just happen overnight. They gave up the charge of the temple slowly, and it didn't start by just ignoring what they were supposed to be doing physically.

It started in a deeper place than that. It started in a place of not caring why they were doing it.

Yes, they continued to focus on the outward things they were doing because they had to. That was their job. In fact, they were paid to do it.

So they continued to do the outward things, but they forgot that it was God that it was all about, a relationship.

It created for them the possibility of relationship with a holy God, and they didn't have the relationship.

And so eventually, even the physical things were made impossible because the enemy came in that place and took control of it.

What a horrible picture. And spiritually, what does that picture for us? If all of this is written aforetime, for those of us who are in the last days as an example, what does it picture when

Antiochus Epiphanes walked into that place, unhindered by any priest, and offered a pig at the altar, right by the door of the holy place?

Well, it certainly pictures neglect. I have not yet learned all that that pictures.

It never even crossed my mind until last week that when I was reading the verse, and it's interesting that it happens to be in Corinthians, the carnal church, but in 2

Corinthians 7, 1, having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh, that I've understood forever, and spirit.

That's mysterious. Filthiness of the spirit? He addresses this to the dearly beloved, that's the brethren, that's us.

Let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.

What does that mean for us? Well, I don't know all that it means, but I think if we continue to study this

Old Testament passage, and we see what they are doing, we will begin to see that it pictures our own life.

There is a part of us that acts as the Levites, and we keep this outer temple clean, and we create better character, where we take better care of ourselves, on into the inside, perhaps even to the interface between the spirit and the body, which is the soul.

Maybe the Levites, that's the part of you that sort of takes care of that part, but then there's the priestly part of you that has the charge of the altar, which is

Jesus. It is your relationship with him. It is your constant, daily, you realize they use this altar every day, not just during the feast times, every day for the sins of the people, they walked to this altar.

Your relationship with Jesus, your conscious, ongoing thought life with him, your communion with him, is the daily tending of the altar, which is the priest's job.

It's that part of you which is supposed to do that, which to me is your spirit. The neglecting of that part, or just doing it out of duty.

Now, I've been there before, and that's a frightening place, where I just get the Bible out and read it because I'm supposed to. Don't stop doing it because you're supposed to.

I don't want to discourage that, but man, that's dangerous territory to get in, ladies and gentlemen, because that's exactly where these priests got,

I don't know how many days, weeks, months, and years before Antiochus Epiphanes walked in unhindered, but that's what led up to it.

They were going about the daily duties. They, oh Lord, thank you. Lord, thank you for this food.

Amen. You know, all the little prayers we do all day, the coming to church that we do, coming to Sunday school, we do this because we're supposed to.

Great reason to do it, but I want to tell you, if it goes very long, and that's the only reason we're here, before long, the enemy will walk right in and desecrate that inner place if we don't keep charge of it, which means keeping it in order, but keeping the heart right, keep doing it for the right reasons, and it's all about a relationship and a communion with a holy

God and the opportunity that because of that altar, which to us is Jesus, that's all it ever pictured.

All that has to do with the altar and the sacrifice on the altar is Jesus. That's our relationship with him when we neglect it.

First of all, we can't get through the veil into the innermost part and have holy fellowship with the father at all, but we begin to neglect the taking care of that altar.

We've just started walking down a path that leads to disaster in our personal lives as pictured by the slavery of Israel and the taking away of them into Babylon, naked, tied together with hooks through their chests and all that that pictures.

It didn't happen overnight. It happened because the priest neglected their job to take charge of the tabernacle.

Well, now, as we go back into 2

Chronicles 29, we see that in verse three, they prepared the doors, which got the whole process started.

Now, as you continue on, notice in verse eight,

I'm sorry, I'm in the wrong place. 2 Chronicles 15, eight, I want to read this to you.

This is a different point in history, but it talks about the process that's about to take place.

Now, remember last time we talked about the fact that they first repaired the door, but they went straight from the door to the innermost part and began to cleanse the innermost holy of holies.

That's where they went straight, and then they began to work their way outwardly. Now, that's not the first time this happened in history.

Turn to 2 Chronicles 15 in verse eight, and let's go back and see this little time period.

And when Asa heard these words and the prophecy of Obed the prophet, he took courage and put away the abominable idols out of all the land of Judah and Benjamin and out of the cities, which he had taken from Mount Ephraim and renewed the altar of the

Lord. That was before the porch of the Lord. Now, think about this renewing.

Why did it need to be renewed? It means in the Hebrew to repair or the cause to be rebuilt, to repair it.

It was in disrepair. Here we had another time in the life of Israel when they were neglecting this very most important duty of theirs to take charge of the altar.

Now, a couple of New Testament verses that deal with us. The spiritual truth that all of this is picturing.

Romans chapter 12, verse two, and be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

Do you begin to see how we begin to allow the altar and the innermost parts to be neglected?

It says that confirmation to, or being conformed to the world begins to cause this.

So the more we allow our minds to go off into worldly things, the things that are happening in the world system, the more or the least we keep our minds and hearts renewed.

And this is the beginning of the road that these Old Testament priests took that allowed everything to be defiled.

We're commanded not to do this, but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds.

Colossians chapter three, verse 10 says the same thing. You have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him.

And Ephesians chapter four, verse 23 says, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind.

Now, in second Chronicles chapter 29, verse four, we can begin to see how this sanctuary got filthy in the first place.

Now, next Sunday, well, we have two Sundays where Brother Russ is gonna speak. When it's my turn again, we're going to see the end result of the cleansing of this temple, the actual process that they used to cleanse it.

And there is some awesome, beautiful types in this passage.

But today we're gonna ask the question, how did it get defiled in the first place?

How did they ever come to the place where it was defiled, where the altar wasn't used properly, where the holy of holies was neglected?

Well, it's all here. Second Chronicles 24, four, and he brought in the priest and the Levites as soon as they fixed the door and he gathered them together into the east street and he said unto them, hear me, ye

Levites. Now, isn't it interesting that Jesus is not only the priest, but he's also our king.

So now we can have him speaking to us as the king, telling us to get these things straightened out.

He's not only the priest, he's the king. So the king speaks. He says, hear me, ye Levites, sanctify now yourselves and sanctify the house of the

Lord God of your fathers and carry forth the filthiness out of the holy place. Notice that as soon as they got the door repaired and open, they went straight into the very deepest part of the whole temple to the holy of holies.

And that's where they began first. But before they did that, they had to sanctify themselves.

We must be brought back to the Lord Jesus Christ, first John 1, nine, and all that it pictures and means.

But then we go straight to the heart of the matter. Now, it's interesting because verse six kind of, you have a little parenthetical here, and that's what we're going to study the rest of this morning.

Later, it's going to tell us what they did once they went into that place and how they brought the filth out and then the role of the

Levites and so forth. But first, it's going to take us to the place of how did it get this way?

Look at verse six. For our fathers have trespassed and done that which is evil in the eyes of the

Lord our God and have forsaken Him. You see, they had forsaken

Him. They were still doing the things, the duties, the religious acts, but they had forgotten for whom they were doing it and why they were doing it.

And so they had forsaken Him and they in fact turned away their faces from the habitation of the

Lord and turned their backs, which means literally the nape of the back of their neck.

Now, if you're going to turn the back of your neck to the Lord, what does that do to your face?

It turns it where you cannot even see Him anymore. So this whole process begins from getting to the place in our daily walk where everything is so mundane and so dutiful that we don't have a burning zeal and heart for God and we turn our face from Him towards the things of the world usually and we stop gazing into that face, the face of the

Lord Jesus Christ, which the Bible tells us when we see Him, we'll be like He is. So if we can see

Him by faith now, even though it may be through a glass darkly, that extent to which we see

Him every day, we will be more like Him. So if we turn the nape of our neck to Him and we look out this way at the world, our downfall begins.

So that's the first thing that they did. They pursued the Lord, turned their faces away from Him.

It's interesting that in Galatians 5, 16, it says, for the flesh lusteth against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh and these are contrary the one to the other so that you cannot do the things that you would, the things you want to do for God, you find yourselves unable to do because you're in the flesh but you don't just get in the flesh what we do is we turn our face from Jesus in the minute we stop looking at Him, we go to the flesh.

When we go into the flesh, we still operate in a religious fashion. That's what is so dangerous about it.

We still continue, we don't want the brothers and sisters to know anything's changed. We operate in a, we're like on cruise control as if that's the way it works.

I'm saved now, cruise control. I'm saved, won't be any problem now. And we try to live that way and we get where we don't look at the

Lord Jesus Christ in the face. Isn't that the same as in Revelation 3 where it says the door is shut and Jesus is knocking saying, behold,

I'm standing at the door. Repent, return to the way, to the first things,

I'm standing at the door. Boy, what a tragic place. Look at verse 7, 2

Chronicles 29 verse 7. Also they have shut up the doors of the porch. So first they turned their face from God, they ceased having a personal relationship and before long it led to the fact where they didn't even do the things out of duty anymore.

I mean, that lasted a long while but eventually they just shut the doors. Now look what else they did.

Look at verse 7b, and put out the lamps and have not burned incense nor offered burnt offerings in the holy place unto the

God of Israel. My goodness, do you see everything that this pictures?

Put out the lamps, the lamps symbolize the eternal presence of God.

They were commanded never to let that lamp go out, that fire, that fire pictured that God is eternal, that God is omnipresent.

The presence of God, the eternal nature of God was pictured by that fire and they put the lamp out.

They did not want a relationship with the eternally present God. It reminds me of Romans 1 28 and even as they did not like to retain

God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind to do those things which are not convenient.

They didn't even want to think, they did not want this personal relationship. So they just put the fire out because it reminded them that God is always,

God is always and that he's always there for them. Now it says they didn't burn incense anymore.

You know what that pictures? The New Testament tells us it pictures the prayers of the saints.

The book of Revelation teaches us that. So they didn't have real prayers. Oh yes, they continued to have the social prayers where they pray to each other, but they didn't have the prayers that originated in heaven, were delivered to our hearts and minds by the

Holy Spirit. And then we were moved to pray those prayers back to God. They didn't have the real kind of prayer where God was involved anymore.

There was no more incense being burned. They had put out the lamps.

Isaiah 8, 19 says, and when they shall say unto you, seek unto them that have familiar spirits.

Like Harry Potter. When the people begin to say, seek unto them that have familiar spirits.

When the people in your nation and in the world begin to say, hey, let's go to the sorcerers. That's really where the fun is.

That's where the excitement is. For the vast masses of our little children today, the

Harry Potter thing is huge. And it says when they begin to say to you, seek them out that have familiar spirits and into wizards that peep and that mutter.

That is interesting because when you get into the language on muttering and peeping there, it's very similar to the form of modern false tongues that's going around the world.

Gibberish, ecstatic utterances that are nothing like what happened in Acts, where it says very clearly that it was known languages in the world that these people miraculously spoke and heard.

But a type of muttering and peeping that's done by people even today in Hinduism, the

Mormons take part in it. I've even heard the testimony down at Brother Roloff's of a young man that was a warlock who said in their coven meetings, they spoke in those kinds of tongues.

It is a counterfeit of the real thing. And yet do not let that frighten you, my dear people, because Joel tells us in the last days that these kinds of signs will be in place again.

There will be people speaking in tongues again as we come closer to the second coming of Jesus, but it will be true, miraculous gifts of languages.

It won't be ecstatic peeping and muttering like the wizards do, the same that the witches do.

You can tell a difference. Linguists can certainly tell the difference. But it goes on and it says, should not a people seek unto their

God for the living to the dead to the law and to the testimony if they speak not according to this word, listen to this, it is because there is no light in them.

You see, when people start saying you need to go to the wizards and so forth, it's because there's no light in them.

People start to say, oh, there's nothing wrong with Harry Potter. It's just, you know, we've always had stories of wizards, knights and so forth.

Yeah, but seldom have we had stories that taught that was what you want the children to be. You want the children to learn to be the wizards.

That's not what, what's his name, Lewis? What's the author? C .S.

Lewis. That's not what he teaches in his books. And they try to say, well, if you like those books, why can't we have these books?

It's the same. And they ridicule us for being against Harry Potter and being for C .S. Lewis. Well, it's because Harry Potter is teaching us that the children ought to be little wizards.

Well, listen, when the world begins to say this, it is because there is no light in them. And when the

Christian community begins to accept it and the children that are in the churches begin to read these books, it's because there's no light in them.

What did these people do? They shut the door. And the first thing they did was they put out the light that symbolized

God. And then they ceased to offer the incense.

No more prayers going up to the Lord. I had an example, and for sake of time,

I won't go into it. But in James 5, 17, if you want to mark it, there's a place where it talks about Elijah says that he prayed that it rained not, and so it stopped raining.

And then he prayed that it rained and it start raining. If you go into 1 Kings 17 and verse 1, you'll find out the reason he prayed for rain to stop is because God told him the rain was going to stop.

That's true prayer. He didn't change God's mind and cause God to think, oh, maybe

I better stop the rain. Okay, that's, see, that's Arminian prayer. That's what we have in the churches today.

Let's move God's mind. Let's get God to be a genie in a bottle. We can get all the stuff we need if we can just rub on that bottle just a little bit today.

And that's not the kind of, now that's the kind of prayers that hang around after the incense stops going up. Are you with me?

The incense pictures true prayer. Now, it also says in that verse back in 2

Chronicles 29 that they ceased to offer burnt offerings.

Boy, that was the last and most dangerous in the stages that they've taken.

The burnt offering, remember, is different than the sin offering. The burnt offering is a free will offering in the

Old Testament. And it's pictured by us offering up praise of our lips to the Lord in Hebrews 1 15, as we mentioned earlier.

I'm sorry, that's not the right verse. The verse in Hebrews that gives us and we share, it pictures in Romans 12 1 the giving of our bodies as a living sacrifice.

All of that ceased. All that pictured that, they stopped doing. They no longer burnt any burnt offerings on the altar.

It means they weren't offering anything up to God at all. And so they turned away their faces.

They shut the doors of their hearts. They put out the lamps, the lights that pictured the presence of God, the eternal nature of God and the omnipresence of God.

They burn no more incense, which pictures their prayers were not going past the ceiling.

And then they offered no more praise, no more worship, no more service, no more sacrifice to God.

Verse 8 says, Wherefore, the wrath of the Lord was upon Judah and Jerusalem. What do we see happening in America today?

The Christian nation. Well, if you go through these same steps, the same result will happen.

It's even worse though, because instead of speaking of a temple that's built out of bricks and mortar, you're talking about your life.

You're talking about your heart. You're talking about an innermost place in your being, where because of lack of watchfulness and lack of maintaining possession of that place, as the priest is supposed to, to take charge, one of the words is to possess it.

The lack of watching over it and preserving it. Then the enemy comes into that place and defiles it.

Now, when that happens, the wrath of God comes upon his children. It says he was, it was upon Judah and Jerusalem and he hath delivered them to trouble, to astonishment and to hissing as you see with your eyes, for lo, our fathers have fallen by the sword.

The enemy comes in and destroys, but look what happens to the daughters and the wives, gentlemen.

You let that heart of yours get to the place where it's cold and unswept and dirty.

Our daughters and our wives are in captivity for this. Now, ladies and gentlemen, it remains to be seen whether Babylon will walk into this country and carry your wives and daughters off.

The great Islamic movement would be to do just that, but I don't know if they're physically strong enough to do that yet in this point in history.

But I will tell you this, our true enemy, the devil, can carry your daughters and your wives into sinful captivity, into captivity to certain sin habits and destroy their lives and your family.

Trouble, astonishment, hissing, death from the sword, captivity of the wives and the daughters specifically.

All of this happened because they shut the doors, put out the light, quit praying and stopped doing sacrificial service unto the

Lord. Have we ever done that in our lives? To the extent that we have or are in that area, wherever step we are right now, we need to reverse it.

We need to ask the Lord to come into our lives and cause us to realize that we are believer priests and that the highest duty that we have is to guard that place, our hearts, where the new man dwells in oneness with Jesus Christ.

You can't ever get into that holy place before God and have fellowship with God unless you are connected with Jesus Christ at the altar.

That daily relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ has to be maintained as he brings us to the

Father. And only then can we live the life that we want to live for him.

We'll find ourselves wanting to do things for God and unable to do it and wondering why.

Oh, I will to do this, but my body carries me this way. Have you ever been there? This tells us how it happens and it tells us the cure.

And next time I get to preach, then we'll go into the total how they fixed this problem.

I hate to leave you in this place, but I guess the Lord gonna let you think about this for a while. But three weeks from now, we'll talk about how to fix it.

If you want to read ahead, it'll be OK with me. Let's stand and have prayer together. Father, we thank you for this day together.

We thank you for your word, this stern warning. You give it to us because you love us and you don't want us to get to the place that these people found themselves in.

And Lord, don't let us get to this place. Always move in our hearts. We know that we're cold sometimes, that we turn the nape of our neck to you sometimes.

And Father, we thank you for your Holy Spirit who always whispers and says, turn back to the

Lord. Face Jesus. Look at him in the face. Look at him in the eyes. And that is our salvation.

And so we thank you so much for that. We ask you to bless our fellowship together. And Lord, we know there'll be plenty of food for us today.