Help at the Altar of Incense

Today’s blog post is an excerpt from my devotional A Place for Me in God’s Tent. Before you begin, you might want to read Exodus 30:1–10.

Once more, we stand at the altar of incense—a piece of furniture which will be separated from the ark by the veil alone. The smoldering coals on this altar aren’t burning sacrifices but incense, raising a sweet and spicy cloud of smoke before our faces.

To keep the embers from going out, Aaron and his sons will have to attend the golden altar morning and evening, freshening the coals and adding more incense. At the heavenly counterpart of this altar, however, Romans 8:34 says Christ is always on duty. There, He pours out fresh incense of prayer before the Father as He pleads for us day and night.

Whenever we go to the place of prayer, whether at the height of noon or in the wee hours of night, we will find our Great High Priest already there. Romans 8:26 says the Holy Spirit will also be helping us at the altar. He’ll be welling up from our heart’s depth to direct and energize our prayers. More than that, Christ is not only present as Priest, but as the altar itself, supporting our incense-filled censer and holding it up before the Lord.

But that’s not all. Revelation 8:3–4 paints a picture of an angel standing before the heavenly altar. He was “given much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all the saints.”

With the prayers of the saints. Did you get that? We bring our prayers to the Father and pour them out on the altar of prayer, then Christ takes His own pile of incense and dumps it on top of ours. What a cloud of smoke must rise! Can you see it?

When my heart is heavy and my concerns desperate, when my faith seems inadequate to form the right words, what a comfort it is stepping beside someone already busy at the altar. How wonderful to have Him pour His perfect prayers over my feeble ones, turning my wispy plume into a column of smoke rising to heaven.

Reverend Canon Falloon described the scene beautifully in this quote from Frederick Whitfield’s The Tabernacle Priesthood and Offerings of Israel.

“Here we see Christ engaged in His work above; receiving the prayers of His people into His censer; taking their requests all into His own hand; making them His own; laying them on Himself as their golden altar; adding to them the savor of His own merits, so that they shall not go alone, unaccompanied or unwelcome, into His Father’s presence; but . . . shall ascend up before God with a certainty of being heard and accepted there.”

(Whitfield 1884, 106–107)

Next time you go to prayer, remember Jesus is already there. Picture Him standing beside you at the altar of incense as your High Priest. Watch Him pour out the contents of His censer over your prayers on the coals. With His incense on top of yours, how could the smoke escape God’s attention?

Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered (Romans 8:26).

Prayer: Lord Jesus, here I am with my little censer of incense. My faith in my own prayers is not great. Let Your Holy Spirit well up within in me and help me find words to express what’s in my heart. Then pour Your incense over mine and carry the smoke of it to our Father.