Page 209 - The Faith I Live By (1958)

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The Incense of Righteousness, July 10
And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given
himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a
sweetsmelling savour.
Ephesians 5:2
.
The showbread was kept ever before the Lord as a perpetual offer-
ing.... It was called showbread, or “bread of the presence,” because
it was ever before the face of the Lord. It was an acknowledgment
of man’s dependence upon God for both temporal and spiritual food,
and that it is received only through the mediation of Christ.... Both the
manna and the showbread pointed to Christ, the living bread, who is
ever in the presence of God for us.
In the offering of incense the priest was brought more directly into
the presence of God than in any other act of the daily ministration. As the
inner veil of the sanctuary did not extend to the top of the building, the
glory of God, which was manifested above the mercy seat, was partially
visible from the first apartment. When the priest offered incense before
the Lord, he looked toward the ark; and as the cloud of incense arose,
the divine glory descended upon the mercy seat and filled the most holy
place, and often so filled both apartments that the priest was obliged
to retire to the door of the tabernacle. As in that typical service the
priest looked by faith to the mercy seat which he could not see, so the
people of God are now to direct their prayers to Christ, their great high
priest, who, unseen by human vision, is pleading in their behalf in the
sanctuary above.
The incense, ascending with the prayers of Israel, represents the
merits and intercession of Christ, His perfect righteousness, which
through faith is imputed to His people, and which can alone make the
worship of sinful beings acceptable to God. Before the veil of the most
holy place, was an altar of perpetual intercession, before the holy, an
altar of continual atonement. By blood and by incense, God was to be
approached—symbols pointing to the great Mediator, through whom
sinners may approach Jehovah, and through whom alone mercy and
salvation can be granted to the repentant, believing soul.
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