But our subject scatters them like the chaff of the threshing-floor. The holy of holies, where God waits to meet with us, is not reached in any way we please. The heart’s incense must be carried within the holy place before it can be offered. There stands the only altar on which it can be burned. But to get there we must first find an atonement at the altar of burnt-offering in the outer court. There is no getting near to God but through the blood of Christ. There is no salvation in any other name. Only as a sinner, contrite and believing in a dying Jesus, can you find God. Go, stand by the cross: there, with deep repentance and humble faith, seek for an interest in the pardoning blood of the Son of God, and then may you pass through to the holy place, and pray and praise and worship. But without first coming to the atonement of Jesus Christ, all your pretended regard for God is mockery; your religious service is but strange incense, which God abhors.
Before we close, let us lift our eyes upward from these patterns of heavenly things to the heavenly things themselves. For in heaven, John tells us, he saw the golden altar, and the angel with the incense-censer before the throne. This incense-offering is the prayers of saints. In that world of blessedness the altar stands without the vail before the throne of God. There the redeemed worship face to face; there they gaze upon the Godhead, and cast their crowns at the feet of Jesus. Faith gives way to vision, and they behold the face of God in righteousness. Oh what a prospect lies before the saint. Are we preparing for such a service? Do we expect to join in the worship before the throne? How diligent should we be to cultivate a spirit of devotion while in this tabernacle below. Though we are now outside the vail, how should we strive by faith to meet with God, and find answers to our prayers. What a solemn hour should this be to us in the sanctuary, when we appear before the mercy-seat and offer the incense of our prayers and thanksgivings.
XI.
Eating under the Juniper-Tree.
ARISE AND EAT; BECAUSE THE JOURNEY IS TOO GREAT FOR THEE. 1 Kings 19:7.
These words, though originally spoken to the prophet of God under peculiar circumstances, may still have a meaning when applied to the believer. Though written aforetime, they were written for our instruction when we are brought into straits and trials.
They came to the prophet in one of the darkest hours of his ministry. Though he had gone through Samaria with signs and wonders, and though he had signally triumphed over the prophets of Baal, and had witnessed their destruction, still the reformation of the nation which he had looked for seemed further off than ever. All the miracles he had wrought, and all the teachings he had uttered, seemed to be worse than in vain; for now, instead of submission, there is nothing but exasperation, and the abandoned Jezebel swears vengeance upon the prophet. He despairs of the redemption of Israel, and turns his back in flight from Samaria. Without any special divine direction, he wanders over into the territories of Judah as far as Beersheba. But there is no rest for his troubled and dejected mind; and he flies from the haunts of men and plunges onward and onward into the wilderness towards Horeb, as though, in the savage wildness and solitude of nature, he would find sympathy with the desolation that reigned within him.
But night overtakes the wanderer, and he is forced to halt and lie down under the protection of a juniper-tree. There his troubled thoughts dwell upon the past, and he revolves in his mind the complete failure of his mission to Samaria, the miracles which he had wrought, and the vengeance which was pursuing him. All was lost. ’Twas useless to undertake to preach more or to labor more for that idolatrous people. Disappointment has crowned his every exertion, and not a ray of hope shines from the future, to call back the request of the Tishbite that he may die. In his despair and anguish he mutters, “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life.”