The Tabernacle Open to Show Its FurnishingsBible World
30:5Exodus 30:5
And thou shalt make the staves of shittim wood, and overlay them with gold.
The verse prescribes the carrying poles for the golden altar of incense, made of shittim or acacia wood and overlaid or covered with gold. The poles fitted the portable sanctuary for removal as Israel journeyed through the wilderness. The altar itself stood in the holy place before the veil or curtain separating the holy from the most holy place and from the ark, glittering like burnished gold, where incense was burned morning and evening so that a cloud of fragrance ascended daily before God with the prayers of Israel. No further meaning is given for the wooden, gold-covered staves themselves.
Its heavenly reality is a real altar standing in the first apartment or holy place of the heavenly sanctuary or temple in the holy city, reached through a door and raised first veil, before the second veil leading into the holy of holies, together with the seven-lamped candlestick and the table of showbread and the censer, and all the furniture of that apartment is purest gold and reflects the image of Christ as He ministers there. The work of that altar is intercession: as the prayers of the saints come up in faith to Jesus, the incense smokes and He offers up their prayers with the smoke of the incense to His Father.
The incense ascending with Israel's prayers represents Christ's merits and intercession, His perfect righteousness imputed to His people through faith, with His blood and righteousness making sinful people's worship, prayers, praise, and confessions acceptable to God, bringing light and glory from the Father through Jesus to those who prayed, so that repentant believers receive mercy and salvation. As the priest directed his prayer in faith toward the unseen mercy-seat while the incense filled the sanctuary, God's people are to direct their prayers by faith to Christ, their unseen Mediator before the mercy-seat in the heavenly sanctuary, and claim the benefits of His mediation. The altar before the veil represents perpetual intercession and the altar before the holy place represents continual atonement, with blood and incense together symbolizing Christ as the great Mediator through whom sinners approach God.
The verse prescribes the carrying poles for the golden altar of incense, made of shittim or acacia wood and overlaid or covered with gold. The poles fitted the portable sanctuary for removal as Israel journeyed through the wilderness. The altar itself stood in the holy place before the veil or curtain separating the holy from the most holy place and from the ark, glittering like burnished gold, where incense was burned morning and evening so that a cloud of fragrance ascended daily before God with the prayers of Israel. No further meaning is given for the wooden, gold-covered staves themselves.
Its heavenly reality is a real altar standing in the first apartment or holy place of the heavenly sanctuary or temple in the holy city, reached through a door and raised first veil, before the second veil leading into the holy of holies, together with the seven-lamped candlestick and the table of showbread and the censer, and all the furniture of that apartment is purest gold and reflects the image of Christ as He ministers there. The work of that altar is intercession: as the prayers of the saints come up in faith to Jesus, the incense smokes and He offers up their prayers with the smoke of the incense to His Father.
The incense ascending with Israel's prayers represents Christ's merits and intercession, His perfect righteousness imputed to His people through faith, with His blood and righteousness making sinful people's worship, prayers, praise, and confessions acceptable to God, bringing light and glory from the Father through Jesus to those who prayed, so that repentant believers receive mercy and salvation. As the priest directed his prayer in faith toward the unseen mercy-seat while the incense filled the sanctuary, God's people are to direct their prayers by faith to Christ, their unseen Mediator before the mercy-seat in the heavenly sanctuary, and claim the benefits of His mediation. The altar before the veil represents perpetual intercession and the altar before the holy place represents continual atonement, with blood and incense together symbolizing Christ as the great Mediator through whom sinners approach God.