The Tabernacle Template - The Candlestick
Sermon • Submitted • Presented
0 ratings
· 8 viewsNotes
Transcript
Text: Luke 6:12-16
Intro: We are continuing our study of the Tabernacle today and it being a model for us in prayer. The reason that we are starting off here in Luke is because the Tabernacle represented the place that man could come to have a relationship with God and Christ fulfilled that physical Tabernacle and He did it through His body. When we consider the 12 names here from our text and if we were to study them today, we would notice that all of them forsook who they were and followed Christ, but we would also see that they differed in their relationship to Christ.
Jesus chose 12 men and of the twelve we know that eleven would remain. Of the eleven, we see a distinction regarding three of them and their relationship with Christ… (Peter, James, and John) We sometimes refer to them as the inner three or say that they were in the inner circle. The reason for this is because these three men, where with Christ at times the other were not...
And after six days Jesus taketh with him Peter, and James, and John, and leadeth them up into an high mountain apart by themselves: and he was transfigured before them.
When Christ raised Jairus’ daughter from the dead the Bible says,
And when he came into the house, he suffered no man to go in, save Peter, and James, and John, and the father and the mother of the maiden.
The last evening before His Crucifixion, Jesus went and prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane,
Then cometh Jesus with them unto a place called Gethsemane, and saith unto the disciples, Sit ye here, while I go and pray yonder. And he took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be sorrowful and very heavy.
I wanted to start here because I want us to consider a truth concerning these men. As we study the Bible, we see that the calling and equipping of these twelve men is exactly the same, but what made them differ concerning their access and nearness to Christ? Did God chose them specifically out of the twelve for a special assignment? It simply comes down to their willingness to be drawn into a nearness with their God!
So as we take our next steps into the Tabernacle, we will be leaving behind 9 men, that at least during the earthly ministry of Christ we never see move any closer than the courtyard.
The Tabernacle Tent: The Holy Place
As we grow in our understanding of Christ, we learn more about Him and He becomes more to us. Leaving behind the gate, where we recognized the four fold sonship of our Lord we come to the Tabernacle tent which entrance is held up by five pillars.
Imagine: I want you to close your eyes and envision this with me. The brazen laver is behind us now and we look towards the inner circle or the Holy Place with in the Tabernacle itself. As we approach we notice 5 golden pillars before us and they are stunning… Their hooks, their chapiters and the pillars themselves are gold with their sockets being brass. Each one with their golden chapiter, and each one making a statement concerning our Lord!
For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given:
And the government shall be upon his shoulder:
And his name shall be called Wonderful, Counseller, The mighty God,
The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.
We see hanging from its hooks a hanging for the door of blue, purple, scarlet, and fine twined linen with needle work like we have never seen before. As we step through this hanging and it closes behind us our eyes take a moment to adjust because there is no natural light in the Holy Place, and as our eyes adjust we are drawn first to the light source with in this room. It is just to our left, (South side) and we notice that it is a candlestick with 7 lamps that are all burning with fire!
Now in our pattern for prayer we started at the:
Gate/Court - Which is our time of thanksgiving and praise
Brazen Altar - Which is where we yield and present the members of our body a living sacrifice.
The brazen laver- Which is where we are washed and cleansed by looking into the word of God and seeing what God sees, saying what God says, and then doing what God says to do...
By the way, each of these first steps were in preparation for our entrance into the holy place of God!
The Candlestick - Is the place of emptying and filling!
John to the seven churches which are in Asia: Grace be unto you, and peace, from him which is, and which was, and which is to come; and from the seven Spirits which are before his throne;
And out of the throne proceeded lightnings and thunderings and voices: and there were seven lamps of fire burning before the throne, which are the seven Spirits of God.
Seven Spirits of God?!? Isn’t there just One?
There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling;
Yes there is ONE Spirit...
Their knops and their branches shall be of the same: all it shall be one beaten work of pure gold.
The Candlestick is all ONE piece of gold, and yet it has seven branches. This sets before us as a picture of the sevenfold manifestations or ministry of the ONE HOLY SPIRIT OF GOD!!!
And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him,
The spirit of wisdom and understanding,
The spirit of counsel and might,
The spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord;
It’s here in our prayer that we recognize the Holy Spirit and His work in our lives... It is the place in our prayer that we take the time to empty ourselves of ourselves so that we might be as (Ephesians 5:18) admonishes us to be… “filled by the Spirit of God;”
Hear me on this… It is only through our being filled with the Spirit that we are able to to what (Gal. 5:16) commands us to to which is to “walk” in the Spirit!
Don’t miss this, because it is only through our “Walking in the Spirit” that we are then able to manifest what (Gal. 5:22-23) calls us to manifest through our lives which is the “Fruit of the Spirit”
I can’t emphasis enough the importance of aspect of prayer on a daily basis! Because do you realize that the whole Christian life is actually wrapped up at the candlestick....
On a daily basis we all get two options… That’s it...
1. Filled with the Spirit
2. Filled with the flesh
Which will result in us either..
Walking in the Spirit
Walking in the flesh
Which then will result in us either...
Manifesting the fruit of the Spirit
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.
Manifesting the fruit of our flesh
Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.
As we consider that list this morning, I hope that God pricked your heart about something… Maybe your sitting there today, and God dealt with your heart about fornication, or idolatry, maybe their is an issue with hatred over someone that wronged you, or maybe their is an issue with wrath… Listen, I know what we do, because I do it too… God convicts our heart about sin, and we go, “Oh, man… I don’t have time here but when I get home I am work my tail off to ensure I don’t do that anymore...
That is the worst thing we can do...
Those sins already get enough attention in your life… They don’t need anymore attention, and focusing on those things is not the answer… That’s how we go from conviction about a sin, to consumption by that sin…
The answer to overcoming sin, isn’t working on them, it isn’t working at it, it certainly isn’t strong arming myself into submission or to suppress them...
The answer is being filled with the Spirit, so that we walk in the Spirit...
This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.
The answer to the flesh is never the flesh… The answer is at the candlestick… Where we empty ourselves by ourselves so that we can be filled by the Spirit, and then manifest the fruit of the Spirit!
2. The Illumination of the Holy Spirit!
After being at the candle stick in prayer we are about to walk to the other side of the Holy Place to the Table of Shewbread, which we will see is a picture of the word of God!
What we learn about the wisdom of God that is revealed in this book, in our flesh...
But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. Which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.
It is why Paul prays in,
The eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints,
This is the work of the Holy Spirit!
Open thou mine eyes,
That I may behold wondrous things out of thy law.
Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come.
Closing:
The Candlestick...
The candlestick is the place in our prayer where we empty ourselves of ourselves and where we are filled with the Spirit of God, it is where we receive that precious illumination of the word of God because a supernatural book required supernatural help in interpreting it!
Now, I said early that the Christian life is wrapped up in the candlestick, that is because it is. I can’t tell you how many years I walked this Christian life in my flesh… Trying to strong arm my way through, building and guarding strong holds, that only hurt people and hurt the God that I claimed in all of it to love...
But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me:
Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come. He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you.
Before Christ ascended in He said to His disciples...
And, being assembled together with them, commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which, saith he, ye have heard of me.
But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.
Could you imagine if they went out to preach without the Holy Ghost? What a disaster that would have been…
They waiting as Christ commanded them, they were empowered as Christ said, and as they were filled and walked, they manifested His fruit which resulted in three thousand souls being saved in Acts 2…
I am afraid that we live in a time, where we do not see the necessity of the Spirit of God! Christ earthly ministry didn’t start publically until the Spirit came upon Him like a dove. Why do we think that we are better than He?
The Christian life is wrapped up in the candlestick… I am only effective through and by the work of the candlestick...
Glow in the dark...
The longer I am with the light, the brighter and longer lasting my light will be, the longer I am away, the dimmer and less effective my light will be...
We began today with the twelve disciples. If you were to take an honest look at your life, I would like you to consider where in the Lords Tabernacle to you reside? Are you one of the nine that were content in the courtyard? Or are you like Peter, James, and John, who entered into the Holy Place?
Christ called all of us, He gave the same access to all of us… We must come to the realization that the only thing that is hindering us, is us...
When I consider the disciples, 25% entered in… Church, maybe that represents that not many will love Christ enough to go in… Can I challenge us with this? Let’s be part of that 25%...
I promise you this… It will be worth it ALL!
