Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Mark 11

Mark 11 beginning in verse 12. And on the morrow when they were come from Bethany, he was hungry. And seeing a fig tree afar off having leaves, he came if haply he might find any fruit thereon. And when he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for the time of figs was not yet. And Jesus answered and said unto it, “No man eat fruit of thee hereafter forever.” And his disciples heard it. And they came to Jerusalem and Jesus went into the temple and began to cast out them that sold and bought in the temple and overthrew the tables of the money changers and the seats of them that sold doves and would not suffer that any man should carry any vessel through the temple.

And he taught, saying unto them, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called of all nations the house of prayer, but ye have made it a den of thieves’?” And the scribes and chief priests heard it and sought how they might destroy him. For they feared him, because all the people was astonished at his doctrine. And when even was come, he went out of the city. And in the morning, as they passed by, they saw the fig tree dried up from the roots.

And Peter calling to remembrance saith unto him, “Master, behold, the fig tree which thou cursest is withered away.” And Jesus answering saith unto them, “Have faith in God. Verily I say unto you, that whosoever shall say unto this mountain, ‘Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea,’ and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass, he shall have whatsoever he saith.

Therefore I say unto you, what things soever you desire when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you shall have them. And when you stand praying, forgive if you have ought against anyone, that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses. But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father which is in heaven forgive your trespasses.”

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for your word and pray now that your Spirit would illuminate the text through understanding and would transform us by his indwelling power. In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

Had a wonderful weekend so far. Had a wonderful celebration at Fesus Day, the celebration of God that we had Friday. Wonderful dedication service last night. We were so pleased that Brett Baker could come last evening and share with us about the work of the CRA and lead us in prayer for our ministry here and for the work of the CRA.

I was talking to Brett afterwards and he said that at a meeting at his church, I’m not sure how long ago, they had Doug Wilson there after one of the conferences. This is probably several years back and they were asking Doug what was the most important thing we could do as a church in his estimation. What was his counsel to them? His counsel was to be dopes. Brett says what he meant by that was that as they were starting the CRA he sort of dubbed himself to be kind of a dope and he wants the men of the CRA to be kind of dopish.

In other words, not to take ourselves too seriously, not to think more highly of ourselves than we ought, to recognize that we are certainly redeemed in Christ, but still we have many flaws and shortcomings. We’re just kind of dopes from one sense of the word. What he means by that, I think, might be better alternatively phrased: we should be humble before God as we go about doing the work we’re called to do.

And I know that whenever I do the sorts of things that Chris did a couple of minutes ago, I always think of that, that God is having us publicly display our dopishness, publicly display our humility before him, recognizing that we really, in and of ourselves, can do nothing apart from him. And he accepts all of our flaws and our shortcomings.

So as we enter into what we’re going to talk about today, continuing this series on worship, we want to do it not with a sense of hubris or pride. We don’t want to say that we figured out what worship is. This is it and now all the other churches should be like this. But what we want to do is humbly say that in our view of reforming worship, we have taught here for the last six weeks and this will be the seventh sermon, what we think is a biblically regulated principle of worship. Worship that is regulated properly by God’s word moves in the way we’ve tried to form it here.

But understanding that as we say that, we recognize our dopishness. We recognize we’re humble before God and want to be learning continually and reforming on the basis of his word.

Having talked about that, then we’ve talked about how our worship is structured fairly self-consciously after a particular order of the structure of worship in the Old Testament. You know, if God, if you came here today and said, “Well, we’re going to do worship for you today, God. Please tell us how to do it. Give us a manual for how we’re to worship.” Well, of course, all the scriptures are that. And part of those scriptures was actually a manual on how to worship in the Old Testament. The whole book of Leviticus is written as a manual for worship. And actually, half of Exodus should be included in that because that was the instructions on how to build the tabernacle and then the temple and what to do there.

And then we get around to the first five chapters of Leviticus. We got five chapters written not to the priests, the Levites, but written to the children of Israel describing the offerings that would happen in the tabernacle and temple, describing the very offerings that our Savior would come to essentially do once and for all 2,000 years ago, but which would form our understanding of what our Savior has accomplished and would form what we think is a properly regulated, a revealed order of the service of God’s people, a liturgy in the context of the worship of the church.

So as we study Leviticus and the offerings that are portrayed for us there and the worship manual of the Old Testament, it helps to inform us when we get around to reading in Romans 12 and in various portions of the New Testament that our worship is a spiritual sacrifice. We talked about that last night from 1 Peter 2. We’re lively stones that we might indeed engage in this spiritual priesthood of sacrifice unto God.

What does it entail? And it’s informed by those things that informed us of what Christ has accomplished once and for all. And the great commemoration, the great feast of this weekend, the great feast of all feasts is the communion table of the Lord, the supper of the Lord. And that feast is a celebration of the event. If you were at Fesus Day, you remember celebrations are celebrations of events in the Old Testament. But all those events find their culmination in the celebration of the event, the work of the Lord Jesus Christ and his death, resurrection, and ascension. And that’s the worship that we enter into this day.

Now, for some of you who are visiting today, these first introductory notes will make little sense. But to those of you who have been going through this series and for you children who are in my Leviticus class and in the Sunday school classes the last month or two, this will begin to get a little bit of understanding. You’ll start to understand the flow of these various pictures of this revealed order of liturgy in the Old Testament.

When you went to church in the Old Testament, you would purify the environment through a purification offering. And then you would bring your ascension or whole burnt offering. And on top of that whole burnt offering, you would layer a tribute offering. And then when that was done, you’d have the peace offering. That’s the three-fold march as you go through the liturgy of the Old Testament. And it gives us this picture of what worship is about.

We come before God confessing our sins and pleading the blood of Christ our Savior as our ultimate purification offering. The Day of Atonement was a purification offering. That’s what it was. And it was preparatory for the feast. And our worship starts at the beginning of it with preparation through confession of sin. The emphasis in that purification offering is the death of the animal. But we move on from that to the word being preached.

In the Old Testament, you’d bring then another animal for the whole burnt offering and it would be killed of course. But the emphasis on this offering is ōlāh to ascend. The word burnt offering really is in the Hebrew which means to go up. So the emphasis in that second offering is the ascension of God’s people to union and communion with God as a result of his word coming and our consecration to his word at the altar. So that second phase of the offering system is this second portion of our service that we’re in now where the word is preached sharp, two-edged sword. It cuts us apart, not to the purposes of killing us but to the purpose of transforming us as God puts us back together. We consecrate ourselves at the altar as it were, an altar call every Lord’s day, and God receives us in the person and work of Christ to union and communion with him.

We go up and we ascend in the context of our worship service. And then the third movement in the Old Testament, then you’d get the peace offering. And that offering, the priest got some, you got some, God got some, everybody was eating together. And we come to the New Testament, we have the Lord’s Supper at the climax of our feast day and celebration together as we’re brought together in the peace offering as it were that Jesus effected through his work and the emphasis on the peace offering was food and eating.

So in the Old Testament system there was an emphasis on death, then an emphasis on transformation and consecration as a result, and an emphasis on food, an emphasis on forgiveness, death and God bringing us back to life through the purification offering, the Day of Atonement, the once-for-all Day of Atonement 2,000 years ago and God transforms us by means of his word doing his work and then God feeds us and has a meal with us.

And that’s the flow of what we believe is based on the scriptures, a scripturally regulated or revealed order of liturgy in the context of the Old Testament.

Now we can talk a lot about other ways that this is presented. We talked about the three main feasts in Exodus 23. Passover with unleavened bread is the first one. The next one is Pentecost. The final one is Tabernacles and it follows that same order. It recites the history of God’s people coming out of Egypt, being delivered, going from, you know, bondage to freedom in Passover and unleavened bread. And that correlates to this idea of death and resurrection, the purification offering, our confession of sins, and God bringing us, assuring us that we’re new persons in the person and work of Christ.

And then 50 days later, they received the law at Pentecost at Mount Sinai. And they commemorate that event in the second great feast. And that great feast is a picture of this transformation as God’s word comes to his redeemed and saved people to cause them to be transformed and to ascend into his presence on the mountain. And so Pentecost is that second part where the giving of God’s law comes and God transforms his people by means of his law. And then finally, the last feast of the agricultural cycle pointing back again to God’s work in delivering them was that they get brought into the Promised Land. A land flowing with milk and honey. A land flowing with wonderful things to eat and wonderful things to drink. The peace offering where God communes with his people and has a meal with them and they get to commune with one another. And so it moves to this third portion of our service today in the context of communion, the Lord’s Supper.

So the three main feasts designated in Exodus 23 follow this same pattern. And that same pattern is reiterated in the context of the architectural structure of the temple and tabernacle that we’ve talked about this weekend. In the Holy of Holies, at the very center is an altar, the mercy seat, seat of propitiation. And in that altar is the word of God. The word of God is only transforming us in the context of dedication at the altar of Christ. And then placed alongside of that in the Holy of Holies is the manna, the golden jar of manna, as well as Aaron’s rod that blossomed.

God gives us new personhood. Aaron’s rod blossoms. We blossom as we confess our sin before him at the beginning of our worship service. And he assures us that what we want—glory as people—is restored to us through Christ. Not to be had apart from him, but in him we have the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. And we go from glory to glory. He assures us of our new personhood. And we want to know things and he gives us wisdom and knowledge through his word placed in the context of an altar in the Holy of Holies.

And we want life. We want to celebrate. We want to rejoice with God and with his people. And he gives us that as a picture of the Holy of Holies, the golden pot of manna, heavenly food come down from God. And so we see these threefold pattern again reiterated in the context of the Holy of Holies.

And then as we move outside of the Holy of Holies, in the Holy Place itself, the same thing is going on. Now instead of Aaron’s rod and a watcher tree, an almond tree that blossomed, now we have a lampstand that is a stylized almond tree. Same thing. Very definite connections back to Aaron’s rod. In the Holy Place, we’ve got this lampstand. And in that lampstand, we have renewed personhood. Again, the spirit of God filling us with oil that we might indeed respond with amen to God’s gift of this new personhood that we have through forgiveness, through death and resurrection in our Savior.

And in that Holy Place, you also have a golden altar of incense where the prayers of God’s people represented by that incense ascend to God. Now, we mentioned the second offering was the ascension offering. Go from purifying the altar, ascension offering. And what we’re talking about today is the prayers of God’s people combined with the consecration of God’s people in response to the word. The tribute offering, which we’ll talk about in a little more detail in a minute, is connected with the ascension offering.

Whenever you put those pieces of the animal on there, you would also bring your tribute offering to the king and it would be made up of grain, oil, and frankincense. And you’d put that on top of the whole burnt offering as it’s ascending to God. And so we have this response at the altar of prayer, the golden altar of incense in the Holy Place connected with that altar seat in the Holy of Holies where the word of God is. The word of God is received. New wisdom and knowledge comes to us as we are supplicant to the Lord Jesus Christ and recognize that at his altar we consecrate ourselves and we ascend in the person and work of our Savior.

Also in the Holy Place finally was the table of showbread. Obvious correlations to the manna in the Holy of Holies. So you see this three-fold emphasis, these three gifts, these three main offerings of Leviticus, these three main feasts rather of Exodus 23, the three main offerings of Leviticus that it tells us about, and all these things correlate together to give us an order of liturgy that causes us to understand further, to be transformed at the depth of our being about what Jesus really accomplished on the cross 2,000 years ago and the delight that we enter into as new persons with new minds and new life of rejoicing in his presence.

These same things are pictured in the outer courtyard as well. We go from Aaron’s rod that blossoms—the glory of renewed personhood—to the watcher, the lampstand in the Holy Place and then in the courtyard in the temple, we have these two huge pillars named Jachin and Boaz. King and priest were anointed there in the Old Testament. In God is strength. He will establish. That’s what the names mean—the sovereignty of God placed there at the base of who we are as new persons now representing the work of our Savior in the context of our world.

Jachin and Boaz are in this same model. From the altar with the word in it in the Holy of Holies to the golden altar of incense, now we go out to the courtyard. And there’s the bronze altar where these fiery sacrifices would go up in smoke, correlating again to that transformation in relationship to God’s word to us. And then finally out there as well is a laver. The bread, the manna which goes to the showbread now becomes transformed into water. And in the temple, the later temple, it becomes an ocean. And then in Ezekiel’s temple, it becomes water, chariots with horses to take that water all over the world. And we’re filled with life from God at the communion table that we might take that life of our Savior and the power of the Spirit and transform this world, to move it away from its drought state, its famine of the word of God, to take that word with us and to be that fiery stream that issues from the throne of God to transform the world that God has placed us in.

All of these things hopefully build us in a sense of appreciation for what God has accomplished through the work of our Savior. Worship is this progression.

Now, if you’re visiting with us today, we think that this progression is culminated at the Lord’s Supper. But the Lord’s Supper is for God’s people. Therefore, God’s people have been brought into relationship in the context of the covenant through the initiation ceremony of baptism. So if you’re not baptized, we’d ask you to abstain from the table today.

Additionally, the table is for those who have understood that when they try to get glory for themselves, that’s sin that needs to be repented of. And they must accept forgiveness of Christ and his glory in their life. And when they try to get knowledge for themselves, that’s wrong. Knowledge has to be mediated through his word. So if you’re living in rebellion against Christ and refuse to acknowledge that you need his forgiveness and his glory as a person and his wisdom from on high, don’t go, don’t proceed to this third phase of covenant renewal that God enters into with us today. It has consequences. Stay away from the table.

And if you’re not sure about that, talk to myself or Elder Wilson before partaking. The supper is for God’s people. It’s for his family and friends. And if you feel uncomfortable taking the supper, I won’t feel a bit bad. I really won’t. If you want to absence yourself after the preaching of the word today during the offering so that you’re not here when the supper is taken, that’s all right.

If you’re here, if you stay in the context of this covenant renewal service, we believe you should take communion. And if you’re not able to because you haven’t been baptized, it’s okay to sit if you want to observe. But if you want to absent yourself, that’s all right, too.

You see, this must be understood in the context of this liturgy of worship given to us from one end of the Bible to the other, culminating in the union and communion we have with God through the person and work of our Savior.

All right, let’s talk now about prayer. We’re at that part of the movement of our worship service where our kids ask us, “Why is the prayer so long? What is all that stuff he’s praying for? Pastor Wilson is praying for individual families. He’s praying for our church. He’s praying for other churches. He’s praying for Poland. He’s praying for India. He’s praying for the whole world. This will never end. Why is it such a long prayer? And why do we have to hear it right after this long sermon? ‘Cause we’re pretty tired now. We got to move around a little bit as we consecrate ourselves afresh to our Savior bringing forward our tithes and offerings.”

Why do we have this long prayer here? And what does it mean? Why do we do it? Is it just an idea that these guys thought up when they got this church starting? No, it isn’t. It’s what the church has done for thousands of years. The Reformed church certainly understood the importance of this. And I think that what we want to talk about a little bit is the relationship of this prayer to the sermon and the offertory and the worship of the church.

To understand this, we have to understand Leviticus 2 a little bit. Leviticus 2 is the description of what is referred to in the King James version as the serial offering. It’s translated serial offering not because the word means serial offering, but because it’s mostly cereal or grain. The word actually in Hebrew means tribute. It’s what you would pay to a king. Fealty, submission, subjection. It’s the labor of your hands consecrated to that king. It’s your tribute offering, and that tribute offering as I said is put on top of the whole burnt offering. The whole burnt offering, the ascension offering is related to the word of God and the altar of the holy place, Holy of Holies and the altars that come out from it.

And so that tribute offering is layered on top. So you respond to the preaching of God’s word and the word cutting you up into pieces by bringing your tribute as you come to consecrate yourself afresh to the Savior. And you bring the produce of your hands, your tithes and offerings the way they would bring the cereal or tribute offering in the Old Testament. But the tribute offering has a couple of different components to it.

So first of all, the tribute offering has to be at this place in the service, or the things in the New Testament that correlate to it, have to be in response to the preached word of God. The tribute offering, as I said, is described in Leviticus 2. And it’s interesting because it tells us what these things are composed of.

Leviticus 2 says, “If you bring a grain offering”—bad translation. You bring a tribute offering to the Lord. His offering shall be of fine flour. He shall pour oil on it and put frankincense on it. He shall bring it to Aaron’s sons. And it goes on to say what to do with it. So we’re told right in the first verse what this offering, this tribute offering, consisted of. The first thing it consisted of was grain. The second thing was oil, olive oil. And the third thing is frankincense.

Now the grain wasn’t raw. We said last week that it’s value-added products. Man’s hand has had a part in these things. He has matured these things and he brings those things, symbolic of the whole world, into God offering them to our Savior. So he’s empowered to work on the basis of the new knowledge and life he’s been given by God. He brings the labors of that work here in a refined state. He presents them to God and God accepts them. And God through us is accepting, as it were, the maturation of the whole created order in the picture of this grain, oil, and frankincense.

Now, it’s interesting that if you think a little bit about what I’ve talked about in terms of the Holy Place, for instance, what do you have in the Holy Place? Well, you’ve got a lampstand filled with oil. And you’ve got a table of showbread, bread which is made out of grain, right? And then you’ve also got in the context of the Holy Place, you have a golden altar. Is this where the animals were burned, kids?

No. Oh, that’s the bronze altar out in the courtyard. In the Holy Place, this golden altar is specifically called the golden altar of incense. So incense would be burnt on that altar. So the tribute offering is sort of a mini representation of the whole Holy of Holies, which is a representation really of what the whole of the Christian life is about and all the created order is about. It’s a mini representation of that with grain, oil, and frankincense correlating to these three things.

Now, we’ve seen the usefulness of thinking of the transformation, the movement of the offerings of our Savior as pictured in the Old Testament informing us as to who we are in Christ. But this is another reminder that all of these offerings are bound together in the singular work of the Savior. That work is so profound, it can be described in an infinite number of ways. And God gives us lots of different ways. And here he says, well, we’re going to talk about the tribute offering as separate from the ascension and peace offering. Nonetheless, it sort of wraps it all up together, doesn’t it? Because it’s got those three things represented in the Holy Place. It sort of represents all of our movement as people in worship of God.

Let’s talk a little bit about what these three things are and what they represent. First of all, these things are grain. Grain is the first ingredient of the tribute offering. And we talked last week about the correlation of grain to our work. But grain also represents the people of God. You know, in Psalm 1, I think everybody here ought to memorize Psalm 1. By the way, I think all of our children should have Psalm 1 memorized. It is the introductory introduction to the whole of this Psalter. “He shall not wither.” So we’re this plant and it’s a tree, not a grain plant.

But contrasted with us are the ungodly and they’re like the chaff which the wind drives away. Where if they’re the chaff that the wind drives away, we’re the wholeness of the wheat kernel in opposition to that. Psalm 1 describes us as grain crops or really super big wheat plants that get so big they become trees. But in any event, it correlates us to grain. Grain represents the people of God. It’s interesting too that the people are represented in this offering.

In Isaiah 66:20, it says, “You shall bring all your brethren for an offering to the Lord.” And the word offering here is the word for tribute offering. So this cereal offering, when the Gospel comes and permeates all the nations, is described in Isaiah 66 as us bringing all of our brethren, all the nations come together as a tribute offering to God in response to his word. So the grain represents all of God’s people.

You know, this isn’t new to us. In the Gospels, we see the whole harvest of men described as a harvest of wheat, a wheat crop, grain crops. It is a wheat field that’s growing. And so the labor goes into the harvest field. There’s common imagery in the scriptures to correlate grain to the people of God.

What does the oil represent? Well, the oil represents joy and gladness and health. In Psalm 45:8 and Isaiah 61:3 and other places these things are talked about as the joy of gladness is represented in oil, the oil that comes down upon us. But also the oil represents preeminently the Spirit of God.

Zechariah 4, verses 1-7. Listen to this. “Now the angel who talked with me came back and wakened me as a man who is wakened out of his sleep. And he said to me, ‘What do you see?’ So I said, ‘I am looking. And there is a lampstand of solid gold with a bowl on top of it. And on the seven lamps with seven pipes to the seven lamps.’”

He saw that lampstand in the Holy Place. He saw the stylized almond tree. And the Hebrew word almond is watching. He saw the watcher tree. He saw people watching over Israel, the people of the nation watching over one another, watching over the world to bring back prayers to God for that world. He sees this lampstand. “Two olive trees are by it. Ah, why are these olive trees by the lampstand? One at the right of the bowl and the other at its left.”

“So I answered and spoke to the angel talking to me, saying, ‘What are these, my lord? I don’t get it. Why are these olive trees next to these lampstands?’” The lampstand rather.

“Then the angel who talked with me answered and said to me, ‘Do you not know what these are? You’re supposed to know this. You know what they are, kids? You know what those olive trees are doing next to that lampstand?’ You’re supposed to know.”

He says, “What? You don’t know this?” Well, if you don’t, he tells us. “This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel: ‘Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of hosts.’”

Not by might, not by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of hosts. God calls his people to govern, to be overseers, superintendent, supervisors, to overlook the world and each other, to govern in that way, but not by might, not by power, but by the Spirit of God. What makes those lampstands shine are those olive trees at either side. The olive trees fill those pipes, and those pipes fill up the lampstand, and the lampstand, like a stylized almond tree, shines forth over the world, over Israel represented by the bread in the Holy Place, but over the world that Spirit is what has to indwell his people.

So what’s the oil in the tribute offering? It’s the Holy Spirit of God empowering his people as they say, “Forgive us. We’ve sought to rule in our own power, by our own might, by our own strength.” God says, “Not by power or might, but remember the oil, the tribute offering. Remember the Spirit who empowers you.” And then when you get, you understand that, then understand Revelation when it talks about the seven spirits of God gone into all the world, going back to the sevenfold lampstand, people of God empowered by the Spirit of God to do their work in the context of the world.

The third ingredient of the tribute offering is frankincense. Grain representing the people, oil representing the Spirit, and frankincense now representing what? Well, frankincense was a resin. It was from the gum of a particular tree. They refined it out and when it refined, they would call it tears because frankincense is a result of sort of hurting the tree, as it were, gathering out the extract. Yet it purifies itself into teardrops, as it were. And that’s what this frankincense was. It was part of the general term incense in Exodus 30 that Moses was to place upon the altar of God, on that golden altar of incense, and it was probably the most important component of that incense since a portion of it was in the memorial offering before God.

A little more detail than we want to go into today, but it was an important part, was sort of like the center of the incense offerings that God would have accepted on his throne. It’s interesting because in a couple of verses in Isaiah 43:23 and Jeremiah 6:20, which we won’t go to, this frankincense is sort of used by way of summary to represent all the worship of God’s people.

This frankincense, well, this frankincense, I think, can be correlated to the prayers of God’s people, rather specifically both in the Old Testament and the New Testament. Psalm 141:2 says this: “Let my prayer be set before you as incense, the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.” So we have a direct correlation that this frankincense, the incense on the golden altar, would represent the incense of the tribute offering put on top, outside at the bronze altar. This frankincense, the incense, would represent prayers. “Let my prayer be set before you as incense.”

Revelation 8, we read this: “When he opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour. And I saw the seven angels who stand before God. And to them were given seven trumpets. And then another angel having a golden censer came and stood at the altar. He was given much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all the saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne, and the smoke of the incense with the prayers of the saints ascended before God from the angel’s hand.

Then the angel took the censer, filled it with fire from the altar, and threw it to the earth. And there were noises, thunderings, lightnings, and earthquakes. And the seven angels who have the seven trumpets prepared themselves to sound.”

See the scene. Incense out of all the offerings that are presented in the offering system, it is incense laid before God’s throne, directly correlated to the prayers of the people that result in now the fire from the altar being thrown to the earth and the trumpets of judgment being sounded forth, calling his people but also pronouncing doom and gloom on those who reject the person and work of the Savior.

Frankincense, part of our tribute offering, are the prayers of God’s people. And when we respond to the word of God, the altar scenario from the word inside, the mercy seat in the Holy of Holies, the golden altar of incense, the altar where the whole burnt or ascension offering would happen in the courtyard. All of these things come together. The word is preached. We consecrate ourselves anew. We ascend up to our Savior and we bring with us our prayers as incense rising before him.

You see how central then the prayer is of the church. It’s not just one little tiny component of the tribute offering. It has a great significance to our worship. It is as if all things can be seen to this point in the liturgy of preparing us that we might effectually bring our prayers and requests before God in heaven, that he would hear them, accept them in the person and work of the Savior, and move to change history as a result of the prayers of the people.

That’s what this is about. That’s why we place it here in relationship to the tribute offering, the ascension offering, the altar of the word of God being preached. And that’s its importance.

Now, all that is background. Let’s make some fairly simple points for Mark 11. All that is background. And I’m sorry if I left you behind a little bit. There are people here who are now getting into the flow of what this worship is. And I think this has been helpful to them. And if not, just focus upon what we’ve said about the tribute offering and frankincense.

At this point in the service, we have been prepared by God after the preaching of the word and our consecration to him. We have been prepared to offer up our prayers as incense. And God says the world’s going to be different. History is going to be changed as a result of the prayers of his people going up.

Now, when we understand all that Old Testament background, we come up to Mark 11 and we see our Savior cursing the fig tree, going in and overturning, doing work in the temple to restore it to what? To restore it to being a house of prayer. Then we see our Savior actually giving instruction as the text proceeds the next day to his disciples on how to pray. You see the correlation here? You see the importance? If the temple was dedicated so that it might be in summary a house of prayer, do you see why it’s so important for us to have the great prayer of intercession for all the world placed in the center of our worship service where it is?

You see, it’s that. That’s how you understand what Jesus says in Mark 11. Now he’s quoting Isaiah 56: “Even then I will bring to them. I’ll bring to my holy mountain. Make them joyful in my house. Prayer. Their burnt offerings, their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar. For my house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations. The Lord God who gathers the outcasts of Israel says, ‘Yet I will gather to him others besides these who are gathered to him.’”

It’s a prophetic text. Our Savior is saying that the house of prayer for all the nations is what he has come to effect, ultimately to send out that fiery stream from the throne of God to call all nations in through the prayers of the people, that they might join in those prayers. We have pictured for us in Mark 11, quoting, and I’ve listed the references in the other Gospels as well, quoting from Isaiah 56, the centrality of prayer in the context of the worship of the church.

We mentioned last night when Solomon dedicates the temple, what is he saying? Well, I’ll read it to you, a portion of it in chapter 8 of First Kings, verse 28 and following: “Yet regard the prayer of your servant and his supplication, Lord my God. Listen to the cry and the prayer which your servant is praying before you today. Why? What’s the answer to the prayer? That your eyes may be open towards the temple night and day, towards the place of which you said, ‘My name shall be there.’ That you may hear the prayer which your servant makes towards this place. And may you hear the supplication of your servant and of your people Israel when they pray towards this place. Here in heaven, your dwelling place. And when you hear, forgive.”

Solomon dedicated the temple and understood that those offerings that preceded the prayers of God’s people were central to them, the offering of incense and frankincense, the prayers of God’s people ascending, and God then moving in the context of history in relationship to the prayers of his corporate body.

1 Timothy 2, that’s why it says in 1 Timothy 2, here we have a manual from the New Testament of what a church is. And what does he say is the most important thing you do at church? To hear the word preach? No. To bring your tithes and offerings? No. Is it to sing songs of praise? No. He doesn’t start there. What he starts with in 1 Timothy 2 is: “Therefore I exhort first of all, of primary importance, that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings and all who are in authority, that they may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all sorts of men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God and one Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all to be testified of in due time.”

Paul told Timothy, “My house in the church is to be a house of prayer. The Master has trained the disciples to think of the worship of God’s people as a meeting together to pray and to pray specifically for kings and rulers and governors, to pray for the nations. Jesus says, ‘My house is to be a house of prayer for all nations.’ And so it is that we come together today to offer up prayers and intercessions to God on behalf of the nations.”

Calvin put it this way: “It must be observed that we are called into the church in order that we may call on God. We are called into the church that we may call on God. In vain do they boast who neglect prayer and true calling upon God and yet hold a place in the church.” He says, “Forget it if you think you be a member of the church and don’t see the central importance of prayer in the life of the church and life of God’s people.”

“In whatever place we are, therefore, let us not neglect this exercise of faith. For we learn from the words of Isaiah, as it is also said in Psalm 50, that this is the highest and most excellent sacrifice which God demands, so that the holiness of the temple consists in prayers being there offered continually.”

Deuteronomy 33 rather says the Levites are to do two things. “They shall teach Jacob thy judgments and Israel thy law and they shall put incense before thee and whole burnt sacrifice upon your altar.” They’re to instruct God’s people in the word and they’re to put incense before you, following the word, the prayers of God’s people. We know it’s prayers for God’s people that’s being referred to there as incense because in Joel chapter 2 it says, “Let the priests who minister to the Lord weep between the porch and the altar. Let them say, ‘Spare your people, O Lord. Do not give your heritage to reproach that the nations should rule over them.’”

Priests are pictured there as presenting this incense by bringing the prayers of God’s people into the presence of God. Indeed, when we get around to Acts 16:13, Paul describes the place of worship that he comes to on the Sabbath day there. He says, “We went out to the city to the riverside where prayer was customarily made.” He refers to the whole worship service as prayer being customarily made there. And so he went there to pray and to worship God by means of that prayer.

Prayer has, as it were, a centrality of prayer in the worship of the church. And we see in all of this that the scope of these prayers is nothing short of the nations. The scope of prayer in the worship of the church is the whole world. It is all the nations of the earth. Abraham prayed for Pharaoh. Abraham prayed for Abimelech. Abraham mediates God’s grace to the nations as a picture and type of the Lord Jesus Christ.

In Numbers 29, they were to bring at that last great feast, that Feast of Tabernacles, eight days of revelry, a series of bulls or oxen. And those bulls were 70 in number spread out over the week. And they represented all the nations, the 70 nations described in Genesis, being interceded for through the work of God’s people coming together, that they might be brought into the kingdom of God. 70 bulls for the 70 nations of the world.

Solomon in his prayer of dedication in chapter 8, verses 41-43, he lists lots of things in this chapter, but one of the things is: “Moreover concerning a foreigner who is not of your people Israel, but has come from a far country for your name’s sake. For they will hear of your great name, your strong hand, and your outstretched arm. When he comes and prays towards this temple, here in heaven, your dwelling place, do according to all for which the foreigner calls to you, that all peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you as do your people Israel, that they may know that this temple which I have built is called by your name.”

Even the temple of Israel had a global perspective in praying for the foreigners that would come, that all the peoples of the world might eventually join in the prayers of God’s people through the work of the Holy Spirit. Prayer is for all the nations. The scriptures repeatedly tell us that God causes us or wants us to pray for all the nations.

And so in Mark chapter 11, when our Savior says that the house is to be a house of prayer for all the nations, we understand what that means on the basis of all the scriptures and on the basis of what he’s called us to do today. We enter into prayer for all the world.

Finally, let’s talk about the efficacy of prayer and the worship of the church. We pray believing. We’re called on to pray these things, believing that God will cause them to come to pass. He has cursed the fig tree. They say, “Wow, that’s quite a deal. How did that happen?” Well, if you believe these things will come to pass—Jesus was telling them that the fig tree’s purpose was to be a house of prayer for all the nations. Israel was to be that. She had rejected that mission and she would be displaced. She would be cursed. She would be supplanted by the gathering in of the Gentiles.

Well, what’s their job then? And if we’re not going to be the house of prayer for all the nations at that point, we’re in deep trouble. We’re cursed by the Lord Jesus Christ. So he then tells us how to pray. He gives us another manual for prayer here.

“I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be removed and cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he’ll have whatever he says.”

Now Jesus, I don’t think, is saying here, well, here’s a neat deal. You can do some really neat stuff. You can move this house from, you know, Cedar or Elm Street down to Cedar Street, or you can move this building, you can move this hill that’s over here in Oregon City and move it over to that place over there. That’ll be a neat deal. That’ll people will see that. I don’t think he’s saying that. That’s not the point.

The point is that all the scriptures have taught that the mountain of God, where we go to worship, the high place, Jerusalem, Mount Zion, the temple, is going to be brought into the sea, the nations of the world, dispersed into them, and all the world will be brought under the mountain of the Lord. In that manner, he tells us again here that what we’re supposed to be doing is to pray that altar fire that God says will come in response to the prayers of his people be cast into the earth, that the mountain of God’s altar be cast into the sea, the Gentile nations. And the result of that will be increased judgments on the rebellious and the efficacious call for repentance of people into the church, and all the nations will be saved.

“Therefore, I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them.”

But the great ultimate thing he’s telling us to pray for is the conversion of the nations. And he’s assuring us—he’s assuring us—that as we pray in faith, that is his plan for history. He has prepared us to come to the prayer of intercession, that we might seek that the effects of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ done on the mountaintop may change the Gentile nations.

And Revelation 8 says when those prayers ascend with that frankincense and the incense and that tribute part of our offering service, God then takes that altar fire and throws it to earth and earthquakes start to happen and rumblings start to occur. Judgment starts to be manifested in the context of the world.

There are many things that we pray for in intercessory prayer. Read First Kings 8, verses 22 and following, to your family and you’ll see that God causes us to pray to him there to ask forgiveness for sins. When there’s famine, we’re to pray that God would give us food. When we’re defeated on the military fields, we’re to pray to God that he would forgive us our sins, that he would accept us. We’re to pray for the foreigners. We’re to bring them in to have them pray. And we look, we took the time to look at First Kings 8. It tells us.