“Want God to laugh? Tell him your plans!” So goes the saying.  But what does God think about our prayers?  As Christians we talk a lot about how we pray, when we pray, and why we pray.  But what is God’s perspective on our prayer?   Join us as Rev. Bill Holiman leads us to examine Luke 18:1-8 and consider “God’s Point of View on Prayer?”

Smells are powerful.  Sweet, repulsive, alarming, soothing; smells invite, repel, attract, and remind.   No matter how highly refined, your sense of smell triggers a host of emotions and experiences.  Grief, romance, celebration, and warning are powerfully engaged by our sense of smell.   Hearing and sight are powerful, but smell is utterly compelling.

Bakeries know this, so they funnel smells from the kitchen to the sidewalk.   Natural gas companies add the repulsive scent of rotten eggs to odorless gas to warn us of a leak.  And perfumers create scents which excite romantic, pheromonic attraction.   Smell has a powerful unconscious effect on our brains.  Like the salmon who returns inexplicably to the pond in which it was spawned by ‘smelling’ the chemical signature, no matter how faint, smells add context to our memory.

The smell of a pipe takes me to daddy’s car.   While the smell of chicken frying returns me to Mama’s kitchen.  And the perfume, White Shoulders, transports me to 1986 and early days with my wife.  For most of us, the smell of a Weber Kettle and burgers grilling somewhere puts us at family gatherings, the lake, or happy summer days.   Smells are bound tightly to our memories.   And losing them induces a significant emotional amnesia.

Smells are important in the Bible as well, especially in worship.   Central to worship in the Old Testament were oils for anointing, incense for burning, and seasoned and cooked sacrificial meat and fat.   While no doubt, worship in the Tabernacle, and later the Temple, was visually stunning and audibly engaging, the smells would have imprinted all that was seen and heard deep in the memory of the worshippers.    The formulations for the oils, the incense, and the seasonings were exclusive.  To be used only for worship.   Replication was forbidden.  

There were to be no counterfeit smells from the scents of Old Testament worship.   God was not concerned with trademark infringement, but to ensure that the promised mercy and grace seen, heard, touched, and tasted in worship be deeply imprinted upon the people.   So deeply that the perpetual smell of worship wafting up and out from the Tabernacle would constantly remind them of all God’s promises.

Central to this feast of smells was the altar of burnt offering.   While the principal point of sacrifice is the exchange of one life for another, the Lord commanded that virtually every sacrifice be offered on the altar through burning.   Burning adds important perspective to the sacrificial offering.   The smell rises to God and is accepted as sweet.   The offering is cooked by the fire and eaten as a fellowship meal with the Lord.   Some offerings were completely burned up warning of the consuming judgement of God upon sin.   And every burnt offering would place a strong, sweet smell in the nostrils and memories of the people.   It was the smell of grace.

It was not enough for a sacrifice it be killed and offered.   It needed to be burned.  And the grace it pictured entered into the hearts, minds, and memories of the people through the aroma of the altar.   To smell the sacrifice was to smell the grace of God.   Burnt offerings reminded the people of God’s gracious promises, fellowship, and assurance.   Worship still does this.  Though now there is a sweeter smell.   Not the “smells and bells” of ritual, but the sweet aroma of a clear and complete gospel.   A gospel that sets before us gracious promises, fellowship, and assurance.  

Paul expresses this when he declares.

But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life.

2 Corinthians 2:14-17

Join us as we examine Exodus 27:1-8 and consider the instructions for the altar of burnt offering and the sweet-smelling gospel that replaced it.  We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube. 

The surest way to get rain is to put up a tent.   Campers know if you have slept in a tent, you have gotten wet in a tent.  Even high dollar tents rarely refuse entry to water.  Sometimes this is a problem of design – a rainfly that does not quite cover the edges, where rivulets inevitably flow.  Or perhaps a failure of routine maintenance such as proper seam sealing.  More commonly, however, getting wet results from a poorly pitched tent.  

Modern tents are imminently designed for ease of use.  With shock-corded poles, lightweight ripstop nylon shells, dome-shaped structures, guide sleeves and clips for the poles, and buckle-in, self-tightening rainflies, these tents can be erected in minutes.  And while ease of use is important, the novice camper soon learns that it is not the most important feature.   When the rains come down and the floods rise up, hastily pitched tents often fail to keep us dry.

Our family has been wet in every kind of tent on every type of campsite imaginable.   We learned long ago that no matter how easy it is to set up, if we are going to stay dry, we need to add significant amendments.  Carefully placed and folded ground tarps, a ginormous tarp to serve as an encompassing second rainfly along with the T-posts and parachute cord required to rig the right shape to drain the water away.  These are the basics. The non-negotiables. And worth every additional pound of portage.

Pitching a tent well involves careful thought.  And lots of layers. Layers for comfort. Layers for protection. And even layers for concealment.  Modern tents come in canary yellow, hunter orange, and sea-foam teal.   But the wise camper wants his tent to blend in to provide concealment for protection and aesthetics.   Pitching a tent is engineering and artistry.   “Pitch in haste and you will repent at leisure.”   A poorly pitched tent makes for a poor camping experience, plain and simple.

In Exodus 26, Moses is shown the design for a well-pitched tent.   The Lord God promised to dwell among his people.   Just as they lived in tents, He would dwell in a magnificent tent.   His tent was designed from a heavenly exemplar to teach the people that their ultimate purpose was to dwell with him in heaven not just on earth.  And his tent was placed in the center of the camp to remind the people that their lives revolved around him.  

And yet, though always visible, most Israelites would never see inside God’s tent.  He hosted no open houses.  Invited no tours. As one theologian commented, the layers of coverings, the veil at the entrance, and the veil concealing the Holy of Holies and the Ark of the Covenant “would visibly say ‘come in’ and then ‘keep out,’ ‘thus far’ and ‘no further.’

The description of the tabernacle leaves one lasting impression: that of the number of coverings and entrance curtains.  Though Israel had this tremendous privilege of the divine presence in their midst, there was to be no doubt that his is the Holy One, and that access to him was no easy matter, even though his palace and temple was right there in the centre of their camp…. The picture is one of limited access.   But now this has all changed.  ‘We have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is his body.’ (Hebrews 10:19-20)

John Mackay, Exodus

God’s tent is a marvel of engineering and artistry.  Portable but protective.  A microcosm of heaven on earth.  A place of God’s presence, provision, and promise.  A place where God bids us draw near yet warns that our approach requires a mediator. A place whose concealed treasures speak of unseen saving faith in an unseen God.   The author of Hebrews puts this together.

But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.  Therefore, he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance.

Hebrews 9:11-15

Join us as we examine Exodus 26:1-37 and consider the design, artistry, purpose and promises found in the Tabernacle.   We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube. 

Everything changes in the dark.   What is familiar and comforting in daytime, becomes sinister and disquieting in the dark of night.   Our closet is filled with looming, threatening forms.   And the area under our beds, which houses nostalgia by day, becomes a haunt for all manner of unimaginably malevolent beasts at night.    Even as an adult, I still sleep with my hands under my body.  A holdover from my childhood when I feared any uncovered hand drifting to the edge of the bed would be met by a slimy, cold, deadly grasp.

Darkness brings fear, uncertainty, complication.   It is hard to function in the dark.   You realize this on your first camping trip.  Without a flashlight or headlamp, movement is difficult.  Nothing is where you remember it being.  The simple becomes complicated.   And every squirrel sounds like Bigfoot.   We are all scared of the dark.   It is a fear we never outgrow.

The language of our distress makes this clear.   A trying time is “dark night of the soul.”  Depression is a “black hole.”  Death is the “valley of the shadow of death.”  Quite literally the phrase translated, “shadow of death” in the Bible means “deepest darkness.”   A darkness like that of a cave.  A darkness so thick that nothing can be seen.  A darkness in which you can only grope your way around.  A darkness that can be felt.   Felt in the deep places of your heart, mind, and soul.

 The phrase “deepest darkness” in scripture often describes fear, oppression, and judgment for sin.   Hell is described as “outer darkness.”  When Nicodemus came to Jesus by night, Jesus compared sin to darkness and salvation to light.

And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.”

John 3:19-21

And speaking in the Temple, Jesus declared, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” 

And elsewhere we read.

This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. 

1 John 1:5-7

It is not insignificant that the first element of creation is light.  God’s first creative order of business is to establish light and dispel darkness.  Light brings clarity, light reveals what is true, enlivens, empowers, and reflects and refracts the beauty of all God made.  In God’s eternal kingdom there is no darkness at all.  As Revelation describes the New Jerusalem as a city of light we read,

And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God, the Almighty and the Lamb.  And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light and its lamp is the Lamb.

Revelation 21:22-23

And in the Tabernacle, God’s temporal representation of this eternal reality he also provides continual light.   Significant among its furnishings was the Golden Lampstand.  God directed its seven lamps to be lit perpetually, providing light both for the priests as they ministered and for the people as they looked toward God’s tent and saw that his light was always on.   As with all the furnishings of the Tabernacle the Lampstand spoke of God’s abiding presence, continual provision, and redemptive plan for those who come to Him.

Light gives life.  Life to all created things.  And life to our eternal being.  In the opening of John’s gospel, the beloved disciple writes of Jesus as the true light.

In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind… The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God. 

John 1:4, 9-13

Join us as we examine Exodus 25:31-40 and consider the beautiful promises bound up in the Golden Lampstand and the true ‘light of life’ to which it points.  We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube. 

Remarkable faith is often found in the most unremarkable places.  Jesus exclaims this in two gospel stories involving those outside God’s covenant people.   First, Jesus declares of the centurion who asks healing for his servant, “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.”  And later as Jesus and his disciples vacation at the seaside, a ‘Canaanite woman from that region came out and was crying, ‘Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David; my daughter is severely oppressed by a demon.’”  Jesus tested her by putting her off, but she persisted and received healing for her daughter. 

Jesus, no doubt, shocked his disciples when he “answered [the Canaanite woman], ‘O woman, great is your faith!  Be it done for you as you desire.’”  A Canaanite?  A Gentile dog?  No, a woman of great persistence in prayer! Evidence, Jesus says, of a great faith.

Scripture teaches us about the remarkable promise and power of believing prayer.

“And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.”

Luke 11:9-10

But also warns us that prayer is no mere talisman.

But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. 

James 1:6

Even contemporary artist, Jelly Roll, angsts over the tension between itinerant, half-hearted prayer versus faith in the grace of a merciful God in his popular song, “Need a Favor.”

I only talk to God when I need a favor
And I only pray when I ain’t got a prayer
So who … am I, who … am I to expect a savior, oh
If I only talk to God when I need a favor?
But, God, I need a favor!

“Need a Favor,” Jelly Roll,

What does you prayer life look like?   Who does your prayer life resemble?  Is it more like Jelly Roll or the Canaanite woman?   Is your prayer more afterthought than wrestling match?   If you had been at Peniel would you have said with duplicitous Jacob, “I will not let you go until you bless me?”  Do you let go easily in prayer?  Or hold fast in unshakable faith?

Join us as Rev. Bill Holiman leads us to examine Matthew 15:21-28 and consider ‘believing prayer.’  We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube.