Exodus 30:7-9
7 And Aaron shall burn fragrant incense on it. Every morning when he dresses the lamps he shall burn it, 8 and when Aaron sets up the lamps at twilight, he shall burn it, a regular incense offering before the LORD throughout your generations. 9 You shall not offer unauthorized incense on it, or a burnt offering, or a grain offering, and you shall not pour a drink offering on it.
Only Aaron, the High Priest & the high priests from his hereditary line may perform the function of burning incense upon the altar. The purpose is very specific — only incensed may be burned; not any other type of burnt offering. The Altar of Burnt Offering & the Altar of Incense were intentional furnishings where burning were supposed to take place & were performance art. The divergence was that the Altar of Burnt Offering were made of ovwerlaid with bronze & was visible in the sight of entire community of Israel. The Altar of Incense was overlaid with gold & hidden from sight of the entire community of Israel — only Yahweh God witnessed & oversaw this performance.
Because it was a performance before Yahweh God, the manner & location of performance was significant as it required the specificity of the offering on the site of the Altar. In other words, the gross display of killing & burning the animals upon the Altar was strictly forbidden inside the Tent of Meeting, which was the rectangular structure within the Tabernacle Complex located to the far west of the entrance. It was further subdivided into two sections called the Holy Place & the Most Holy Place. Inside the Holy Place, three specific items were to be constructed : The Lampstand, The Table of Show Bread & the Altar of Incense. A purple veil covered & divided the enclosure to the Most Holy Place, which housed the Ark of the Covenant.
Therefore, because we can conclusively assume that the Tent of Meeting represented the Presence of Yahweh God as His dwelling place it was to remain free of any foul & foreign ordors. Thus whatever taint & blemish that was occuring outside in the Courtyard of the Tabernacle would not be introduced nor be made visible due to the coverings that surrounded the Tent of Meeting. However, the Incense did provide the most elementary of its most basic function — to rid the Tent of Meeting of any adverse & foul stench emanating from the Courtyard that could infiltrate & overwhelm the Tent.
In a sense, the Tent of Meeting in both literal & figurative sense stood as the only Holy object in the sight of all Israel. As the burnt offerings were being performed outside the Tent in the Courtyard of the Tabernacle, the community would see the Tent as being Wholly “Other’ — untouchable from whatever was occuring to the east of the Tent; the drama would inspire both terror & awe that the Presence of God would be so close & yet so far away — separated & segregated from the commiunity at the same time.
The main problem of representation, analogy, & symbolism is that at the most fundamental level, they leave no trace of ‘actual’ existence — you cannot touch, taste, see, hear, or smell metaphors. Thus the three objects inside the Tent of Meeting — the Lampstand, the Table of Show Bread & the Altar of Incense — were to be visible reminders of the real Presence of God. To constantly & daily remind the people that God resided with them in their midst even as His residence was set apart.
How do you represent an Individual’s presence? Their fragrance, their perfume, & their smell — what they leave behind & what they did as they took up residence. The Incense was the visceral reminder through the smell of the Person & character of God — Holy. And yet, only a select few were able to witness this — the entire community were forbidden to enter the Tent of Meeting — why?
For what purpose did God enact this prohibition? To display for the entire community of Israel that the Presence of God can only be had if & only if they themselves were holy & set apart. The problem was that unless you were Aaron himself or one of his sons & born into Aaron’s family, you were immediately excluded. This creates a rather terrifying conundrum — if by being in His presence represented that His Favor rested upon you, how would you know as a member of this community that His Favor rested with you if you were not allowed entrance into His Presence to begin with?
And this is where by sheer observation, an individual must come to the conclusion that Yahweh God would engineer a better & newer way. He would cultivate from this symbolic representation of His very Real Presence into the Person of the Messiah. And He will become the very Real manifestation of what the Tabernacle was foretelling. Therefore, in the Person of the Messiah, the community would believe in Him to receive in them the new birth necessary to gain entry into His Presence. The entire Tabernacle structure from its many furnishings to its partitions demonstrates the problem of the natural state of human life & of living — that it is predicated upon birth & genealogy.
But a new birth in Christ as our Messiah will do away with the natural order of human life & engineer a type of people created in His image & His likeness so that they are no longer barred from His Presence. They will have gained an entry that not even Moses & Aaron could have gained — into the very Face of His Presence. A community must change their entire disposition & of being — from a human nature that despises & displeases God to a divine nature that loves, worships, & is accepted by God; from mortal flesh to immortality; from dead souls to resurrected souls; from body to Spirit.
The Church of Thyatira is that community embodied in the Spirit of Christ as that embodiment of the resurrection they are made new into His Image — not any other image or any other likeness; not any other fashion nor any other work — they are products of His work & His engineering. Thus, they have betrayed their own refashioned likeness from the Image of Christ into something other — in effect, relinquishing the work God had made through the finished work of Christ. What is this, but an attempt to make themselves unlike that very image; to remove the fellowship & union with Christ — this is why Christ calls them followers of Jezebel.
Her name is not only synonomous with idolatry & sexual immorality but also her very name means — ‘Un-husband-ed’. In other words, The Church of Thyatira is not promiscuous because of their singleness or wanting to remain single & disdain marriage. Rather ‘un-husband-ed’ means they are already married & choose to flee from intimacy with their true partner — their husband. To remain in Christ is both a call to action & an innate Spiritual byproduct — it is a choice to manifest from the human flesh that action that is required for eternal life; it is also a response from that innate natural instinct born of the Spirit of Christ to obedience.
Though the command comes to us into our human flesh to obey, the Spiritual Nature imbues into that flesh the innate response that that command requires. It is not an impossible task to obey Christ & follow His commands because of the endowment given to us in the Person of the Holy Spirit to both enable & transform mortal flesh into conformity.
“Tear down this Temple & in Three Days it shall be Raised Again!”
