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Hillside O’Malley SDA Church

Sanctuary, Salvation & Our Savior

David Shin

Sanctuary, Salvation & Our Savior: Back to the Father’s House

Sanctuary, Salvation & Our Savior: It’s All About Jesus

Sanctuary, Salvation & Our Savior: Justified in the Courtyard

Sanctuary, Salvation and Our Savior: Sanctified in the Holy Place

Sanctuary, Salvation and Our Savior: Glorified in the Most Holy Place

Sanctuary, Salvation and Our Savior: Burnt Offering

Sanctuary, Salvation and Our Savior: Cleansed at the Laver

Sanctuary, Salvation and Our Savior: Fed at the Table

Sanctuary, Salvation and Our Savior: Altar of Incense

Sanctuary, Salvation and Our Savior: The Lampstand

Sanctuary, Salvation and Our Savior: The Law in the Ark

Sanctuary, Salvation and Our Savior: Sabbath and Sanctuary

Today we are focusing on the altar of incense in the sanctuary.

And we noted that the candlesticks is like witnessing, the altar of incense is like our prayer life, and the table of showbread is the Word of God.

And God has given us these wonderful things to keep us alive after we have become alive.

It is the way that we sustain ourselves in the Christian experience.

And if you're noticing that you are struggling in your Christian experience, or you've lost your first love, just do a quick assessment and ask yourself, how is my prayer life?

Have I spent time in the Word, and am I sharing the love of Jesus with others?

And Usually what you'll notice is in at least 1 of those areas, you have kind of just not been the same or you've seen a decline in your prayer life, your Bible study, or in sharing your faith.

We noted that you come into the courtyard, you accept Jesus as your Savior at the altar, you're baptized, but that's not the end.

God wants to have us grow in Christ, and we need to eat, we need to exercise, and we need to breathe as a Christian and the altar of incense is our prayer life, our breathing.

I still remember to this day the moment my son was born.

These things are just etched in your mind.

And I remember when he took his first breath, just, you know, you praise God for that.

In other words, you can have a successful birth, but if there's no breathing after birth, there is no life.

So we need to be born in Jesus, but we need to breathe.

It is the breath of the soul, the secret of spiritual power.

Bible study, 1 person put it like this, feed, read, prayer, air, and witness, fitness.

So those are 3 ingredients that are important to our Christian experience.

Psalms 141 verse 2, let my prayer be set forth as incense and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.

So the altar of incense can represent our prayer life.

Prayer is the breath of the soul and the secret of spiritual power.

Steps to Christ says, prayer is the opening of the heart to God as to a friend.

Now sometimes we can get into this idea that prayer is to be this formal occasion, this formal thing, and there is a place and time for that like during our worship service but prayer is much more raw organic in real than formalities how do you talk to your friend you talk to your friends and oh thou What you know it's not it's it's not in that way though How do you talk to your father in a relational way it is intimate in its highest?

Optimum sense prayer is the opening of the heart to God as to a friend.

And this is the very breath of the soul, the secret of spiritual power.

This is from Susan Scott in her book, Fierce Conversations.

She says, our lives succeed or fail gradually, then suddenly, 1 conversation at a time.

While no single conversation is guaranteed to change the trajectory of a career, a business, a marriage, or a life, any single conversation can.

When I read this, I said, this is profound, because I thought conversations were about the relationship.

But in the sense, the conversation is the relationship.

I remember when I was dating my wife, and she was in Kenya.

And I was in Berrien Springs as a youth pastor.

I would go out weekly to the international food store because they had these calling cards for Africa.

They were like 80 cents a minute and I would buy a stack of those, burn through them in 2 weeks, and it was worth every single minute.

Because in order for that relationship to continue, we had to have conversation.

And I treasured every moment on the phone.

And it was not burdensome to blow through those cards.

And I look back on my credit card bills for that time, $400 to $600 a month in calling cards to keep that relationship.

And in our dialogue, our conversation with God, This is the foundation, the ground of our relationship.

When we talk about our relationship with God, sometimes we think of it in these ethereal, nebulous terms, but in reality, the ground and the foundation of our relationship with God is our conversation, is our prayer life.

I used this illustration with my youth group when I was a youth pastor and I said, look, if Jesus were to walk into this sanctuary right now, what would be your immediate reaction?

Let's say right now, in the middle of church, wouldn't that be wonderful?

The back doors opened and Jesus walked in.

What would be your honest response to that?

I remember at a camp meeting I opened the doors to go to the men's restroom and there in front of me was Doug Batchelor and it was the most awkward thing because I knew about him because I'd seen him on television but I didn't know him.

So I opened the doors, and I was just like, oh, it's Doug Batchelor.

And I was so just flabbergasted, I just didn't say a thing.

Is that the way that you imagine it would be like Jesus?

Jesus walks into a room, and you're like, oh, I know about you, but I don't know you.

It's just this awkwardness, like you see a star on the street or something.

Or have you bumped into someone that you have a relationship with, maybe you haven't seen them in person for a long time, but you bump into them at the street or at Fred Meyer and it's like, oh, how are you doing?

You give them a hug, you know, instant connection.

And 1 day we're going to see Jesus in the flesh.

And the way that we have a relationship with Jesus is through conversation.

And by the grace of God, when we see him in the flash, just pick up where you left off.

Embrace continuation of that relational dynamic.

I was at a minister's meeting and I was bunked up and roomed up with a colleague of mine and I just enjoy these occasions because you get to know your fellow pastors better than you would before and so we began to dialogue 1 evening before we're going to bed and he was telling me the story of how he Met his wife.

He met his wife online Adventist connect.com or 1 of these online dating sites and she was in Asia and he was in America And I said, how did that go?

He said David you'll never guess this we we talked over the phone our entire relationship, and I proposed to her before ever having met.

Furthermore, the wedding date was set and I flew over there by faith and married her.

And I said, my brother, what were you going to do when you get off the plane And you look at this woman that's about to be your wife and you say, oh Lord, what have I done?

I said, like, how, I said, that is so beyond me.

I mean, you mean to tell me you, you proposed to this woman without ever having met, you continued this relationship, and then you, you went over there and married her?" And I said, how has your marriage been?

And he said, David, it was so weird because we had spent so much time talking to her that when we got there, our relationship just picked up where it left off.

And I think in an analogous sense, we can have that sort of intimacy with God right now.

We can dialogue with him through prayer and that's what prayer is.

It is communication with the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.

1 Thessalonians 5 verse 17 says, pray without ceasing.

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Series

Sanctuary, Salvation & Our Savior

Sanctuary, Salvation and Our Savior: Altar of Incense

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

Witnessing to the Wealthy, Worldly, and Well-Educated

04-Witnessing to the Wealthy, Worldly, and Well-Educated Pt. 2 and Q&A

1h 44m

There Is A Promise In It

23m

Look Up

30m

Prophecies of Hope

29. God’s Washing Machine

41m

The Last Supper

20m

Faith and Reason in the Christmas Story

35m

These Things We Know

These Things We Know: God is the Finisher

49m

Seminars

Origins of Self-Supporting Work

1h 9m

The Unhindered Gospel

God’s Sustaining Power

47m

Biblical Missionaries

Exiles As Missionaries

58m

Eye Care

Touched by Grace: Reflecting Christ Through Practical Community Eye Care

44m

A Witness to all Nations

27m

Sound Doctrine