This is the second installment in the Holy Place series. The golden altar of incense represents yet another aspect of our ministry before the Lord. It was at this altar that the Levitical priest burned incense during the morning and evening sacrifice. We find a meaning to this ritual in Psalm 141:2: “Let my prayer be set before You as incense, the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice”. The association of incense with prayer is reinforced in Revelations. An angel “came and stood at the altar, having a golden censer; and there was given unto him much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne. And the smoke of the incense, which came with the prayers of the saints, ascended up before God out of the angel’s hand” (Rev 8:3,4). As saints and priests in the order of Melchizedek, our prayers ascend to God, and the altar of incense represents this ministry, and specifically, even exclusively, a ministry of petitionary prayer.

Recall that the shewbread table represents our gifts of worship and fellowship. Every Sabbath, the Levitical priests removed its pure frankincense and burned it, not on the golden altar of incense, but outside on the bronze altar. It was an offering made by fire, a memorial, and a sweet aroma to the Lord. Petitions aren’t gifts, and are unsuited for the shewbread table. Therefore, the altar of incense provides the setting for this type of prayer. Conversely, gifts could not be set upon it. Ex 30:9 prohibits burnt offerings (due to its small size, this would have been but a pigeon or turtledove). Grain and drink offerings were proscribed, as well as “strange incense.” The appointed incense for the golden altar, called sweet or fragrant incense, was a special compound, consisting of sweet spices, stacte and onycha and galbanum, along with pure frankincense (Ex 30:34). It might be said that God was able to discern with his nose what type of prayer wafted up to him-worship from the bronze altar; petitions from the golden altar.

It’s important to note that the golden altar of incense was an altar, a place of slaughter and propitiation. Intersessions, confessions, and supplications are all products of a sinful, fallen world and the hurt within it. Every year on the Day of Atonement the high priest placed the blood of the sin offering on its horns (Ex 30:10). On that day, court was in session. The high priest entered past the veil of testimony into the holy of holies to make his case before the Lord, who sat as judge above the ark of the testimony and the law contained within it. He was shielded from immediate death not by the pure frankincense associated with worship, but by the compound incense associated with man’s sorry state. He was shielded because a just judge allows a case to be heard before pronouncing sentence. The cloud of incense afforded an opening for the high priest to advocate for the people by applying the blood of the sin offering on and before the lid of the ark, which resulted in an acquittal, good for a year.

The law was punctilious concerning the standing of the one person who could advocate for the people on that day. Should he be compromised at any time of the year, either by his own sin or that of the nation as a whole, the blood of a young bull must be applied to the horns of the altar of incense (Lev 4:1-21). Now we have a high priest Jesus Christ who was never compromised by sin and was himself the sin offering, whose blood presented before the heavenly court resulted in our acquittal, as Paul would have it, our justification, once and for all.

Yet, there remains a prayer ministry and the placement of the altar of incense reveals its significance. Only a curtain divided it from the ark of the covenant, the earthly throne of God. In the opening chapter of Luke’s gospel, the angel Gabriel appeared to the right of the golden altar. Zechariah, the incensing priest, had the honor to be chosen by lot that day to enter the temple and burn incense. The angel heralded a great salvation. Priests of our order are not chosen by lot. Each of us has the honor every day to present our requests before the throne of God and hear from him.

In the Torah, the service of the table and the service of the altar are carefully delineated to highlight the importance of each. In the order of Melchizedek, we may mix worship and petition. It’s done all the time in Psalms. Note, though, that the table sat just inside the entrance to the holy place, its wine offering an expression of our love to God. The incense altar sat further in, an expression of God’s love for us. We should “enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name” (Ps 100:4).