Practical Wisdom from the Word of God

The Holy of Holies: The Place of God’s Possibilities
February 20, 2016

Hebrews 9:3 (NKJV) ³ and behind the second veil, the part of the tabernacle which is called the Holiest of All,

I want to finish my thoughts concerning praise and worship’s role in cultivating the sense that anything is possible. Psalm 100 is generally considered the Psalm of praise. In the fourth verse it lays out a principle that points to the tabernacle pattern for our worship life. We enter into God’s presence through the gate of thanksgiving and the courts of praise.

This follows the pattern of the tabernacle in that there was one gate into the complex and courtyards that had to be crossed in order to get to the door of the Holy Place. On the other side of this outer room was a second door where the Ark of the Covenant and the manifest presence of God dwelt. There was no other way to get to the presence. You had to go through the gate, the courts and the Holy Place.

This was not a matter of law. It was simply the order of how you got there. When I plan a trip I look at my GPS unit in my car and it gives me routes to get to the destination. There may be up three but often there is only one. I may not want to go that way but if these are the only roads that lead to where I want to go, I have to follow them. That is not law. The path to the Holy of Holies is not a matter of law but of geography.

Although I am not saying that the only way to have a praise and worship service is to follow the pattern I am suggesting, I think we must understand that the Lord is showing us a spiritual and emotional route to the place where God’s presence dwells. If we follow that route we will get to where we want to go.

That route begins with thanksgiving and praise. These two elements are both separate and the same. You cannot truly praise God without being thankful. You cannot be truly thankful without praising God. I believe thanksgiving comes first in the order because it is a decision we must make before we begin a time of praise and worship.

I must decide to focus on what God has done, both in my life and generally for man. This is really the definition of thanksgiving. I often say that if we cannot think of anything to thank God for, we should thank him for our salvation. In 10,000 years we will not care about anything that concerns us today, however, we will be very happy we are born again!

To me it is self-evident that thanksgiving and praise are vital to faith for the impossible. Thanksgiving stirs up our sense of what God has done in the past. Praise declares God’s greatness and his almighty power. It stirs us and reminds us that “all things are possible.” This makes believing that thought almost automatic. However, there is another reason why the thanksgiving and praise are important. They lead us to the Holy Place of Worship and ultimately the Holies place of all: The place where the presence of God dwells.

The gate of thanksgiving begins to open our hearts to God. In the courts there are two pieces of furniture. One is the bronze alter and the other the bronze laver or basin. The alter was where sacrifices for sins were made. As we cross the courts of praise, two things happen that are necessary in order to enter the Holy Place of worship. We offer the “sacrifice of praise” which gets our hearts and minds off of sin and we cleanse ourselves from the effects of the world.

It is obvious that we cannot go into the presence of God holding onto sin. If we come to our time of worship with sin in our life, we need to repent of the sin and leave it at the foot of the cross. We have no need of animal sacrifice. The sacrifice of Jesus Christ paid for our sin once and for all. However, that does not mean we do not have to acknowledge and ask forgiveness for the sins we commit as believers. If we do not, we are not accessing what God has provided and it will hinder our worship (1 John 1:8-10)

The priest could not go into the Holy Place without washing in the bronze laver. This cleansing was not a sacrifice for sinful behavior but a cleansing of the contamination of the world. The world is a sinful place. When we want to come into the presence of God we need to get rid of that contamination. In the praise and worship life of the Christian, praise is how we accomplish that process.

It is popular in some circles today to discount the importance of thanksgiving and praise in the process of true worship. They want to come in off the street, as it were, and enter right into the Holy Place. In the tabernacle pattern that was not possible. You simply could not get there if you did not go through the gate, thanksgiving, and the courts, praise. On your way through you had to pass by the brazen alter and the brazen laver. If there was any sin you got rid of it. You also were cleansed from the contamination of the world. We are naive if we think we do not have to follow the same path.

When we first give God thanksgiving and then spend time praising him, we leave the world behind. If there is sin, our sacrifice of praise (Hebrews 13:15) will bring us to confrontation with it and repentance. Our focus on the goodness and power of God will cleanse us from the contamination of the world until we are ready to enter the Holy Place of worship.

Worship is a place of intimacy. That is why it is not appropriate to enter without taking a shower first. Natural intimacy in marriage works the same way. If we want to be intimate with our mate it is important to be clean. Who wants to be intimate with a man who has just crawled out from under a car? If my wife has been cleaning the toilet I would appreciate a little cleanup before we enter the bedroom! It may not be mandatory and we would not make it a law, but intimacy is just better that way.

Many people think they are worshiping because they sing slow songs. Worship is about the heart. We saw in the definition of the word from the Hebrew that the posture is a posture of total surrender to the Lord. We can sing all the slow songs we want but that does not mean we are worshiping. Worship may not involve any singing. Some of the deepest worship is when we are silent before him.

Finally, there is the place called the Holiest of all or the Holy of Holies. This is the real goal of our worship life and the key to believing all things are possible. The Holy of Holies had one defining characteristic. The presence of God dwelt there all the time. If we want to believe that all things are possible, we need to get to the place where we are constantly aware of the presence of God in our lives.

The path from the gate through the courts, into the Holy Place and finally into the Holy of Holies was a journey the priests completed only once a year. They went part way often, however, that completed journey kept Israel right with God for the whole year. We can take the same journey every time we decide to praise and worship God. The important thing is that every time we choose to follow the process, no matter how fare we may get into the process, we cultivate the sense of God’s presence in our lives.

Our experience in every service will not be the same. Our praise and worship will reinforce the reality of the fact that we dwell in God’s presence. We do not just visit it. Our tabernacle is within not a building we come to during the week. Without an active praise and thanksgiving life, I do not believe we ever really enter the place of worship. Without an active worship life, I do not believe we ever come to the awareness of the ever present God. Without that awareness we will never believe all things are possible. With that awareness, we will never stop believing all things are possible.