And let's read verse 7 and 8.
Verse 7 and 8. And he came, that is the Lamb,
and took the book out of the right hand of him that sat upon
the throne. And when he had taken the book,
the four beasts and four and twenty elders fell down before
the Lamb, having every one of them harps and golden vials full
of odors, which are the prayers of saints. I want to speak to you this morning
for a few moments on these golden vials that are full of odors,
which are the prayers of the saints. And I hope this morning
that the Lord will give us something that we can carry out of here
with us and never forget as long as we are in this world. Now
the vision of the fifth chapter here of the book of Revelation
is very remarkable indeed. And if you look very, very carefully
at the reading of the word here, you find it exalts the Lamb of
God as being the one that is worthy to take the book. And
John, he said he wept much, in verse 4, because no man was found
worthy to open and to read this book. neither to look thereon. There was no man found worthy,
there was nobody in heaven, there was nobody in earth, nobody under
the earth that was able to open this book and to look thereon.
Nobody was worthy to do it. And then one of the elders, one
of the four and twenty elders said to John, he said, weep not,
weep not. Don't cry anymore, don't weep
anymore. He said, behold, he said, look,
I want you to look. Here's the line of the tribe
of Judah, the root of David. He has prevailed to open the
book and to loose the seven seals thereof. And John said, I beheld. I was told to look and I did.
I looked because I wanted to see this. I wanted to see this
one that was worthy to take the book and to open it and to loose
the seals thereof. I wanted to see this. And oh,
isn't it wonderful if we can always come to the house of God
to listen to the word of God with such anticipation. Oh, who
is this that the preacher will be talking about? Who is this? And oh, that we might see Him. Because you know, beloved, to
see Him by faith is salvation. Jesus said this is the will of
Him that sent me, that everyone that sees the Son have eternal
life. Now that's not seeing with the
physical eye, that's seeing with the eye of thing. If you could
see Jesus, if you could see Him, that is worthy. If you can see
Him, that is Heaven's best. If you can see Him whom God demands
that you believe upon, and if you can believe upon Him, then
you will be saved. But to see Christ, and to anticipate
this. And John says, and I beheld. I saw Him. I looked at Him. And
lo, in the midst of the throne, and of the four beasts, and in
the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as it had been slain. Here stands this Lamb, and this
is the Lamb of God. This is that Lamb that John the
Baptist talked about. Here is this Lamb of God that
was slain on Mount Calvary. This Lamb that was slain in the
mind of God from all eternity. Here is this Lamb of God. Now then, we see that he stood,
and Jesus was the fulfillment of that type, the Old Testament
type, the Passover Lamb, and here he is. Christ, our Passover,
was sacrificed for us, Paul said. And here he is as a lamb, he
stood as it had been slain, having seven horns, seven eyes, which
are the seven spirits of God sent forth into all the earth.
And he came and he took the book. out of the right hand of him
that sat upon the throne, and when he had taken the book, the
four beasts and the four and twenty elders fell down before
the Lamb. They fell down worshiping the
Lamb, having every one of them hearts. and golden vials full
of odors which are the prayers of saints. Now I do not intend
to go into all the details of this chapter. I don't know all
the details of this chapter and I don't know anybody that does. But no doubt this is a vision
referring to some special occasion, but at the same time I think
we may regard this as descriptive of the usual worship that is
offered before the throne of God and the Lamb. I say it can
be regarded as the usual worship that is offered before the throne
of God and of the Lamb. Now, it will suffice us to believe,
at least, that it represents, in general, the homage that is
rendered before God's throne by those who come to worship
Him. Now then, let's think just a
minute. We recognize that this is not
only supposed to be the end group in heaven that is to render this
homage, unto the Lord, but we're told in verse 13, and you might
look at that here in this chapter, and every creature which is in
heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as
are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying,
blessing, and honor, and glory, and power be unto him that sitteth
upon the throne, and unto the Lamb forever and ever. And so it's not only the inner
circle alone who thus resounds Jehovah's praise, but widening
and ever widening, the praise encompasses all space and fills
immensity, not heaven alone, but all creation yields the Lord
the praise that is due unto His name. Now, then, I want us to
get into this part of the verse where it talks about these golden
vials that are full of odors. Now, the idea here, I think the
Greek idea for golden vials is that it's a vessel that is both
shallow and broad. A better rendering would be golden
bowls, I suppose, or golden goblets full of odor or full of incense,
which are the prayers of the saints. Now the idea is that
each one of these twenty and four elders here, that they each
one have an open bowl or a censer that is filled with smoking incense
that pours forth a sweet fragrance or perfume before the Lord. And this is a symbol of the supplications
of the people of God of all days, of all years, of every generation,
those that have lived on earth and called upon the Lord in prayer. We believe in prayer. The Word
of God teaches us to pray. We know that one of the evidences
that one is a child of God is that they pray. Prayer is as
natural to a child of God as breathing is to a natural man. Prayer is to be performed by
those who God has saved. I believe that all saved men
and women are saints of God. They are all saints of God. They
are holy ones, made holy by virtue of their union with Him that
is holy. They are holy because the Spirit
of Him that is holy dwells in them, and they're alive because
of their union with Christ. And they're saintly, holy people
because of their having been joined to, married to the Lord
Jesus Christ. Now then, I want us to look at
this a little bit. Because it's very important we
all believe in prayer and I hope that we've been offering up prayers
unto God. And I hope that as we have been
doing so, we've been conscious of a few things. Now we need
to remember that prayer, that believer's prayers are as sweet
incense to God. that God smells, there's a fragrance
about the prayers of His people, about the prayers that ascend
up unto Him. And the fact that prayer is pleasing
to God, we must understand, is not due to any natural excellence
or merit that believers possess in themselves and by themselves,
because that's not true. Far from it. We do not have anything
about us that would enable us to offer a prayer that would
smell good before God. Now, think with me just a moment,
if you would. In the best prayer that you ever
offered, in the best prayer that I ever offered, in the best prayer
that the holiest man on earth ever offered unto God, there
was enough imperfection and sin in that prayer to render it to
be looked upon or accounted as a polluted thing if the Lord
had looked upon it by itself alone. What I'm saying is that
every prayer that we pray There's something the matter with it.
There's imperfection in it. Sin is in that holy thing, that
holy prayer that we make unto God. Sin is in it because we're
sinful. Because we are sinful. When we approach nearest to the
throne of grace, we fall very short of being what we ought
to be. We fall very short, I say, of
being what we ought to be. Now, listen, let me say this,
that when we come to God in prayer, we're often unfit. I mean by
that, that we come to God and we're not prepared to be there.
We really are not prepared. Let me ask you this, let's say
for an example that you had in the morning, you'd received an
invitation to appear in the morning, before maybe the mayor of Great
Falls or some one of the maybe you were going to go before the
commissioners in Great Falls or maybe you had a meeting with
somebody that maybe even the governor of the state of Montana
and you had certain requests that you wanted to make. Would
you give any thought Before you got up in the morning, you'd
probably sit up half of the night thinking, how am I going to address
the governor? How am I going to speak? What
am I going to say when I stand before these commissioners? What
am I going to say? How am I going to say it? But
we come before the God of heaven and we come before the God of
the universe, the great sovereign of the world, and we're unprepared. We don't have anything to say.
We've got nothing in our hearts. We're blank. We're hollow on
the inside. We've got nothing to say to God. And we come to prayer and we're
in a mess. And not only that, but we often
come before God and our hearts are full of pride. We come and
if we pray a good prayer, we thank my soul what a good prayer
that was. Surely God's gonna hear that
prayer because, my, that, why, look at the words I used. I used
big words and I'm sure I impressed everybody that heard me pray
and, you know, that just shoots prayer. That ruins prayer completely. If you have pride in your heart,
one dash of the Pharisaic spirit, it'll mar all our devotion to
God. If we're a Pharisee and think
we're somebody, when we're praying, and think we really got some
skill along them lines, we've ruined our prayer. I'm just trying
to show you that there's something imperfect about our prayer. And
our prayer as it stands by itself is not, it doesn't smell good
in the sight of God. I'm leading up to something,
you follow me. Then I think at other times We're
so full of doubt. We're assailed with some suspicion
as to the faithfulness of God. Somehow or other we're just so
full of doubt when we pray that we really don't believe at all
that God is going to hear us and that God's going to actually
do. We're just going through the motions. We're just playing
as it were. We're not really believing God
and coming with a serious heart of conviction, believing that
God's going to do something for us when we offer our plea to
God. Beloved, I say it's hard to begin
and continue and end a prayer in the Spirit. Would you agree
with me? I say it's a very difficult,
a very hard thing to do to begin, to continue, and to end a prayer
in the Spirit. I mean to pray as we ought to
pray. No, the prayers of the saints
of God by themselves considered would rather be, I think, an
offense to divine holiness rather than it would be considered to
be a sweet fragrance to God. I think it would be an offense
to God. I think most of the prayers that this group right here would
pray left to themselves and the prayer standing on its own two
feet would be an offense to God rather than be a sweet fragrance
to God. And that's due to our nature
and due to the fact that we're sinners and due to the fact that
we're unable to enter in and participate in holy things left
to ourselves and to our own strength. We just can't do it. Our consolation,
beloved lives, in this. Now you listen to me. Here I
am. I've described your prayer life
and I've described mine and it's not been very pretty what I've
had to say about your prayers and about my prayers. It's not
been very pretty at all. But we've got a consolation and
I want you to listen as I tell you this. our consolation, I
want to find out how it is that the prayers of the saints of
God, how that the golden goblet or golden bowl, how that it's
full of incense, the prayers of the saints, and how that smells
good before God. I'm interested in that because
I know about myself and you know about yourself and I tried to
help you and lead you to the understanding of that this morning.
But my consolation lies in this, that our beloved intercessor
who stands before God for us, even Christ Jesus, possesses
an abundance of precious merit that he puts fragrance into our
supplications and imparts a delicious odor to our prayers. The Lord
Jesus does that. He makes our intercession to
be through His merit what they could not have been without it. acceptable before God. Smell good before God. A great fragrance as incense
burning would give off coming up into the nostrils of God,
the Lord Jesus. Now I want to illustrate this.
I read this story about a man by the name of Ambrose. He was
one of the early church fathers. And he gave this illustration,
and I thought it was very good, and I'd like for you to hear
it, because it will explain exactly what I'm trying to say. Well,
he used this illustration concerning the prayers of believers, and
he said that we're like children. that go out into a flower garden
or outside into a garden to gather flowers. We want to get a bouquet
of flowers that would please maybe our father or please some
other member of our family. And so we're like children, we
go out and we begin to pick various flowers out of the garden. But
we're ignorant because we're children, we're ignorant of flowers,
we don't know much about them. And I've seen this happen several
times, how little children go out and pick a bouquet of flowers
and they come in with all kinds of weeds and everything else
in the bouquet. Well, that's exactly the way
that we are. And so as this child goes out,
he plucks many weeds as flowers and some of them are very noxious
weeds. And he carries this strange mixture
into his hand and he starts out toward the house and he gets
to the door and his mother meets him at the door. and says, little
one, you don't know what you've gathered. You don't know what
you have in your hand. You just don't know. You think
you've got a lovely bouquet here that's going to please your father,
but really, you don't know what you have. And so she takes them
and she unwraps them and she takes the mixture and takes out
of it all the weeds and leaves only the sweet flowers and then
she takes some other flowers that are sweeter than those that
the child had picked and inserts them instead of the weeds. puts
them into the bouquet and makes it a real nice bouquet. Then
she puts it all together and puts it into the child's hand
and then he runs it to his father and this illustrates what we're
talking about. Jesus Christ in more than motherly
tenderness, he deals with our supplications. And if we could
see our prayers after Christ Jesus has amended those prayers,
we wouldn't recognize it. We wouldn't recognize it. Just
like that child, when he got that bouquet back into his hand,
I'm sure he said, well, this is amazing. I didn't know that
I picked such a lovely bouquet. Well, certainly he hadn't. And
so our prayers are the same way. When we pray, the Lord Jesus
has got to amend those prayers. And if we were to see them after
he gets done with them, we wouldn't recognize them. Now, Jesus has
such a skill that even our good flowers would grow fairer in
His hands. And we are not able, you see,
to pray as we ought. Now, if I could see my prayer
after the Lord Jesus has prayed it, I would discover that there's
a lot of things missing that I put in it. And I'd say, well,
I wonder where that is. I wonder where that is. A lot
of things missing out of the prayer that I put in it. And
there just ends up being none of mine in the prayer. Now this is very important and
I want to say this to you because I'm sure that none of us would
be proud, it wouldn't make us proud if we were to see what
Jesus had done with our prayers. How beautiful they are when they're
presented to the Father. How well they smell, what fragrance
is there when Jesus intercedes for us and presents them to the
Father. Now, none of you doubt, of course,
that Jesus is praying for you. You remember the Lord Jesus said
to Peter, He said, I have prayed for you that your faith fail
not. I have prayed for you that your
faith fail not. And you remember that it says,
with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous. Jesus, the righteous
one, is our lawyer, our go-between between us and God. There's one
mediator between God and man. It's the Lord Jesus, and He is
constantly taking our prayers, and the Holy Spirit, we're told
in Romans 8, Help with our infirmities, because we don't know what to
pray for as we ought. And the Spirit of God and the
Lord Jesus amends our prayers, and when they're offered to the
Father, there's that bouquet, a lovely bouquet to the Father. Now isn't that a beautiful, that's
a beautiful illustration, and I believe that it's something
that will not make us proud at all. We look at the prayer and
say, boy, there's a prayer come in before, my prayers come in
before God, and it was so beautiful. But that don't make me proud
because the glory goes to Him that amended it and took out
and added to the prayer according to the will of God, that which
ought to have been there. I have often prayed, and I think
it's very scriptural to pray this way, It is right for us
to pray, Lord, if this should not be in my prayer, and I prayed
about something, to censor your prayers and to make that bouquet
beautiful when it goes before the Father, would you consent
to that? Would you consent to it? Well, praise God, I'm all
for it. I'm all for it. I know that's
exactly the way that it ought to be. So then, through the prayers
of God's saints or His precious incense, there would never be
a sweeter fragrance to God were it not for the Lord Jesus Christ. It would not be unless it was
for Him. Now, I want you to notice that
these prayers, these intercessions that is spoken of here which
are the prayers, it says that these are the prayers of saints.
Golden goblets full of prayers of the saints. Now, nothing is
said here of the prayers of church officials or the prayers of priests. It's the prayers of the saints. Now, the prayers the Lord accepts
are not the chantings of functionaries and the litanies of priests or
the devout tones even of an organ, they are the prayers of the saints. The prayers of the saints. Now the acceptability comes through
the Lord Jesus. The acceptance comes through
the Lord Jesus, but these are the prayers, we're told, of the
saints. They're made lovely and beautiful
and given the fragrance of incense by the merits of the Lord Jesus,
but they are the prayers of the saints. And who are these saints? Let me say quickly that they're
those that were chosen by God in old time. They're those that
the Holy Spirit of God by His power has brought into a living
relationship with God through faith in Christ. And these He
has washed in His precious blood. These He has cleansed. These
He has given, made new creatures in the Lord Jesus. And they're
the saved of the Lord. They're those that that God says,
they're mine, they're mine, they belong to me. And the Father
said, I chose them, they were mine. But He said, I've given
them unto you, give them to Christ. And then Christ said, I died
for them. And the Holy Spirit said, then I worked that great
salvation that God has planned and purposed. And Jesus paid
for and bought, I've worked it into their lives. Then these
have been set apart by God, sanctified. That's what the word sanctified
means. They're set apart to worship God as His worshippers. They
love Him. They praise Him. They bow before
Him with solemn awe. They lift up their souls and
songs in adoring love to the Lord Jesus Christ. They are worshippers
of God. Their thoughts, their desires,
their longings, their confessions, their pleading, their praises
are all sweet to God. This is music to God. This is
perfume to the heart of God. This delights the infinite mind
of God. It is pleasant to the Spirit
of God for His people to come before Him in worship. The saints,
the prayers of the saints to be offered unto God. God is spirit
and we worship God in spirit and in truth and you cannot after
any other fashion worship God. He is worshiped in spirit and
in spirit only. John 4 and 24 tells us that. Now these prayers, they are compared
to incense. And the incense that was used
in the temple was made, it was made up of different sweet spices
that was compounded together according to the work of the
apothecary, Ezekiel chapter 37 verse 29. And these prayers that
are sweet to God is not the words used Not the words used, but
the heart and soul that is in the prayer. The fervency, the
zeal, the enthusiasm, and the heart and the soul that goes
into this prayer. Now, beloved, let me tell you
there are some ingredients that our apothecary has mixed together
these things, there's at least three things that I think that
must be in every prayer of the saints. Number one, our prayers
can be very beautiful in appearance and they can sound real good.
But there may not be an ounce of devotion in them, true devotion
to God. There may be nothing in them
that really is of any interest to God. But there are three things
that, let me mention them briefly and quickly, I think is in every
prayer of the saints. Number one is faith. Now when
I hear somebody pray, I can't tell you whether they believe
God or not. Now if they confess in their prayer they don't believe
God, or they just can't believe, then I'm more inclined to believe
that they are believing than if they don't indicate that they're
having trouble and struggling with faith. You remember the
apostles? They said, Lord, help our unbelief. That's what they
said. Lord, help our unbelief. help
our unbelief. Now, beloved, the people of God
know that they're only going to believe God if God helps them.
And so when you come, you must come believing. We talked about
that last week, that it's impossible to please God. And we told you
that Enoch walked with God, and the reason we know that his walk
Was pleased into God was because the Bible says Hebrews 11 6 without
faith Immediately after says he he that he had this testimony. Please God that he they believe
God and without faith It's impossible, please God. So it's got to be
there. You've got to believe God You've
got to trust him and this is part of the fragrance This is
the part of part of that which which is mixed by the our apothecary
as it were the Holy Spirit and into our prayer and is the incense
before God, faith. Now I'm not able, like I said,
to tell when a person is praying in faith. that God can tell. God catches the slimmest hint
of faith in your prayer. And you say, well, I just barely
believe. That's enough. That's enough. Maybe you ought to believe more,
and I'll not give you any comfort in just barely believing, but
if you believe, God knows it. He knows it. Does not the scripture
say that the Lord knoweth him that trusteth in him? The Lord
knoweth them that trust in Him. Other people may not know what
you do, but the Lord knows whether you trust Him or not. And that's
the thing that's important. And while we can't tell, God
can. He perceives the faith, whether it's little or whether
it's great faith. and the prayers received or rejected
as the case may be. The Lord Jesus, you remember
on several occasions, said, if thou canst believe. There was
a man that came to him and said, Lord, would you do this? Would
you do that? And Jesus said, well, and he
said, can you do this? Well, if you can believe, if
you can believe. And says that what things soever
you desire, excuse me, when you pray, believe that you receive. And you shall have them. Believe.
Believe God. So too, then, in prayer, there's
another, I think, true frankincense besides faith, and that is love. Love to God. Now, it is very
difficult for me to see how anybody could pray, and I know that all
of the saints of God, they love God. That's one thing that can
be said. I know somebody you love if you
truly have been born of God. If you've been born again, if
you're a Christian, a new creature in Christ, you love God. You
love God. Now, I say that because we've
been taught of God to love Him and to love one another, if we're
Christians, if we're believers. Now how can a man pray to a father
whom he does not love? If you don't love God, how can
you pray to him? How is it possible that somebody
could pray to a God they don't love? How could you trust a God
you don't love? If you don't trust God, if you
don't love God, you can't trust Him. There's no way that you
can. Well, our hearts are cold toward God if we don't love Him.
Our hearts are cold toward God. And whatever prayer that we think
we're praying is frozen, is frozen. It can't be a prayer that is
going to be in any way, shape, or form pleasing to God. And
there's need of one more thing. I said there was three things
that are apothecary that he puts into this incense. One, of course,
was faith. The second was love. And the
third, is humility. Humility. You remember when old
Jacob come to God, he said, I'm not worthy of the least of your
mercies. I am not worthy of the least
of your mercies. Now beloved, I think everyone
here this morning feels that way. You humble yourself before
God. You know that God's been long-suffering
with you. You know that He's been long-patient
with you. You know that He ought to cut you off long ago. You
know that there's no reason in this world, as you stand on your
own two feet and on your own merit, as your life, as you look
at it, there's no reason why that God ought to have mercy
on you and why God ought to save you. And so therefore, my friend,
there needs to be this grace of humility that's mixed with
these other ingredients. And the man who don't pray humbly
will be just like that Pharisee When the Pharisee and the Publican
went up, you remember, to the temple? And the Pharisee, why? He, thank God, he wasn't like
other men. But I tell you, there was a whole lot of precious spice
in that Publican's prayer when he dared not so much as lift
up his eyes to heaven But smote upon his breast, saying, God,
be merciful to me, a sinner. I tell you what, there, brother,
is some sweet fragrance in the nostrils of God. For to think
that anybody would come into God's presence, I mean somebody
who was born a sinner, somebody who come forth out of his mother's
womb speaking lies, somebody who is dead to God until God
gives him life. And a man who is so dead that
he doesn't even know he's dead until God gives him life, and
that man indicate before God that he's deserving of something
and ever come as anything but a sinner before God. That kind
of a fellow stinks in the nostrils of God, and that's why that Pharisee,
he didn't go down to his house justified, I'll tell you that.
Scripture says that that poor publican went down to his house
justified. He went down, he went down without
anything. God said, you're justified, there
isn't anything against you. I don't have a thing against
you. Because he said, you be merciful, O God, to me a sinner.
Be merciful to me. He recognized he was a sinner
and confessed it. And God forgave him. Humility! Humility. Well, you don't see
much of it anymore. But I'll tell you, the saints,
the true saints of God, they're humble before the Lord. And much
of this needs to be added to every one of our prayers. Lord,
You know who I am. You know who I am. You know who
my daddy was. Lord, you know who my mother
was. Lord, you know my grandparents.
You know things about me that I don't know about myself. Lord,
you know all about me. And Lord, I come, and I come
as a poor sinner. I come, Lord, I don't recommend
myself to you. I just come as an empty, bankrupt,
poor, hell-deserving sinner. And I come that way. Would you
have mercy on me? Would you forgive me? Would you
undertake for me? Lord, would you grant me this
request for Christ's sake, for Jesus' sake? Would you grant
me this request? Alright, well, I've got to hurry
on here because the time is getting away. There's some other things
that I want to mention right quick that I think are very important. The question that comes to us,
Dan, why... I want to spend just a little
time on this and then I'm going to let you go. I guess I've run
on here longer than I thought I would. Why are the prayers
of the saints so sweet to God? I want to give you two reasons
why. And I had to come back to this
and so I want you to see this. Now the prayer that God accepts
is offered to Him alone and He presents it, the Lord Jesus does,
to the Father. Now get this. Why are our prayers So sweet
to God. Well, first of all, because of
the work of the Spirit of God. They're the work of God's Spirit.
We pray in the Spirit. There is no acceptable prayer
in the world but that which the Spirit of God inspires. That's why the old writers used
to say that true prayer is the breath of God in a man returning
from whence it came. The Holy Spirit in a man breathes
the prayer that God will accept. and we are dependent upon the
Holy Spirit. Now listen to me. The Holy Ghost
knows what the mind of God is, and He writes that upon the minds
of God's people, and then He makes intercession for the saints
according to the will of God, Romans 8 and 27. And when God
sees, hear me now, when God sees His own will reflected in the
bosoms of His own children, He cannot but accept the work of
His own Spirit. Therefore God will hear that
prayer because it's acceptable and beautiful to Him and it smells
good in His nostrils. Did you get that last statement?
When God sees His own will reflected in the bosoms of His own children. You see, when God with the Holy
Spirit reveals and puts into your heart His will and shows
you what to pray for, and then even if you can't pray for it,
when the Spirit does it for you before God, then your prayer
becomes acceptable to God. Because the Spirit has prayed
that prayer on your behalf. Read the Bible, Romans 8 and
27. He cannot but accept the work
of his own spirit. Now, this last thing here, and
I want you to be thinking about this as you leave. Number two,
the prayers of the saints of God are acceptable with Him also
because they are the pleadings of the Lord Jesus. They're the
pleadings of the Lord Jesus. The saints of God are members
of Christ's body. All believers are in the body
of Christ. Now, He's the head, and we're
the members. And when we plead with God, it
is Christ pleading with God. Now, Christ pleads in us. Christ pleads through us. And
the very strength of our pleading lies in this, that they urge
the merits of the Lord Jesus Christ. We argue the merits. We plead the merits of the Lord
Jesus Christ. And the Lord delights, hear me
now, to be reminded of His Son's excellency. The Lord delights
to be reminded about the excellencies of his own son. He delights in
that. He doesn't grow weary of that.
It is a theme that his very soul delights in. He loves to hear
about his son. Now listen to me. You may ring
that bell as long as you live in this world and the father
will never get tired of it. He'll never weary of it. to Him
about His Son. Plead with Him on the basis of
His Son. Tell Him what His Son has done.
Remind Him of Gethsemane. Remind Him of Calvary. Remind
Him of the five bleeding wounds. Remind Him that He raised Him
from the dead. And remind Him that the raising
of Him from the dead was proof of the fact that He accepted
everything that He had done on behalf of His people. And you
know He's well pleased with Christ. He must be! He must be! He raised Him from the dead.
You plead that before God in earnestness, and God will never
weary of it. It smells good to Him. Tell Him of His promise to His
Son. He said, You will see your seed. You will see the travail
of your soul. You will be satisfied. You can't displease God by dwelling
upon this topic. You can't displease the Lord
by dwelling upon this. Hold on to Him with a resolution
of a Jacob. You remember how old Jacob wrestled
with the angel and said, I won't let you go unless you bless me. I'll not let you go. Well, we
must not let God go because we must hold on and plead the name
and the merit of His only begotten Son. Plead the name and the merit
of His only begotten Son. Everything about Christ is sweet
to God. Remember that. Everything about Christ is sweet
to God. It pleases God. You see, beloved,
we've labored here in this place to emphasize our being in Christ
and that our acceptance with God is in His beloved Son, the
Lord Jesus Christ. Getting you to see that God respects
and that everything about Christ is sweet and precious unto the
Father and they that honor the Son honor the Father. And if you don't honor the Son,
you don't honor the Father. And we're honoring Him here today. Listen, believers, if their prayers
are full of Christ, let me make this statement, if your prayers
are full of Christ, they are sweet to God. They're sweet to
God. Now, you see, I didn't Say that
if your prayers were full of you, that they be sweet to God. No, no, no. If they're full of
Christ, they're sweet to God. Think about those golden bulbs
and that incense that is burning and that fragrance going up to
God. Prayers of the saints. Now if God ever has heard any
of this, and I believe He has, If God ever has answered any
prayer for anybody in this room, and I believe He has, it's for
the very reason that I've told you here this morning. And the
people that have heard from God and got their prayers answered
are people that has pled with God on the basis of Jesus Christ
and His merit and righteousness and His perfection, His loveliness, And He has given to our prayers
a sweetness that they never could have had, never could have had
any other way. That's what I think this verse
is all about. And I hope this morning that
the Lord give us remembrance of it. The Lord has blessed us,
and He will continue to do so. But beloved, pray, pray, and
remember these things if you do so. May the Lord help us with
this. Father, in the name of Jesus,
We thank you and we give praise to you. Do thou own the message,
for Christ's sake. Amen.