Sermons church in Bangalore
God desires for His people to be a house of prayer and worship. The Tabernacle of David with day and night prayer and worship is being restored in the Church, which will see an in gathering of souls into the Kingdom of God. Lets be a house of prayer!
May this sermon minister to you and enrich your walk of faith in Jesus Christ. We welcome you to make use of the free sermons, Christian books, and daily devotionals available on this website.
Complete Sermon Video:
{ccconsent}{/ccconsent}
Review:
The Lord Jesus is building HIS Church.

Pictures of the Church, used in Scripture :
  • The Body
  • The Household of God (Family of God)
  • The Pillar of Truth
  • The Temple of God
  • A House of Prayer
  • Zion - The Assembly of God's People
  • The Bride
  • The Vine and the branches (John 15)
  • The Lampstand (Revelation 1:20)
  • The Army of God (Matthew 16:16-19)
Key Points :

Key Point #1 : Church is primarily who we are in relation to Him.
Without our relation to Him, there is no Church. A body without the head can no longer live and function.

Key Point #2: Out of our relation to Him, we then relate to one another and to the world.

Last week we studied about The Church as The Bride of Christ.
Today we take a look at The Church as A House of Prayer.

Pictures of The Church : A House of Prayer (And Worship)

A Royal Priesthood
In both Testaments we see that God desired a people who would be His "royal priesthood".

Exodus 19:3-6
3 And Moses went up to God, and the LORD called to him from the mountain, saying, "Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel:
4 'You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to Myself.
5 Now therefore, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be a special treasure to Me above all people; for all the earth is Mine.
6 And you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.' These are the words which you shall speak to the children of Israel."

1 Peter 2:5  
5 you also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

We are a holy priesthood called to offer spiritual sacrifices.

Our worship and our prayer is among the important spiritual sacrifices that we offer up to God.

A Perpetual Fire

Lev 6:12  And the fire on the altar shall be kept burning on it; it shall not be put out. And the priest shall burn wood on it every morning, and lay the burnt offering in order on it; and he shall burn on it the fat of the peace offerings.
Lev 6:13  A fire shall always be burning on the altar; it shall never go out.

The first fire upon the altar came from heaven (Leviticus 9:24), so that by keeping that up continually with a constant supply of fuel all their sacrifices throughout all their generations might be said to be consumed with that fire from heaven.

Fire falls on sacrifice. We provide the sacrifice, God provides His fire.

God wants this to be ongoing, never ceasing.

The Tabernacle of David
Around 1000 BC, as an outflow of his heart, king David commanded that the Ark of the Covenant be brought up on the shoulders of the Levites amidst the sound of songs and musical instruments to his new capital, Jerusalem. There he had it placed in a tent and appointed two hundred and eighty-eight prophetic singers and four thousand musicians to minister before the Lord, “to make petition, to give thanks and to praise the Lord” day and night (1 Chronicles 15:1–17:27). This was unlike anything that had been done in Israel’s history, but it was God’s plan for Israel.

1 Chronicles 16:4  And he appointed some of the Levites to minister before the ark of the LORD, to commemorate, to thank, and to praise the LORD God of Israel:

The Davidic Order of Worship

Although the tabernacle was replaced by a temple, the Davidic order of worship was embraced and reinstituted by seven subsequent leaders in the history of Israel and Judah. Each time this order of worship was reintroduced, spiritual breakthrough, deliverance and military victory followed.
  • Solomon instructed that worship in the temple should be in accordance with the Davidic order (2 Chronicles 8:14–15).
  • Jehoshaphat defeated Moab and Ammon by setting singers up in accordance with the Davidic order: singers at the front of the army singing the Great Hallel. Jehoshaphat reinstituted Davidic worship in the temple (2 Chronicles 20:20–22, 28).
  • Joash (2 Chronicles 23:1–24:27).
  • Hezekiah cleansed and reconsecrated the temple, and reinstituted the Davidic order of worship i(2 Chronicles 29:1–36, 30:21).
  • Josiah reinstituted Davidic worship (2 Chronicles 35:1–27).
  • Ezra and Nehemiah, returning from Babylon, reinstituted Davidic worship (Ezra 3:10, Nehemiah 12:28–47).

Subsequent to this Amos prophesied:

Amos 9:11,12
11 "On that day I will raise up The tabernacle of David, which has fallen down, And repair its damages; I will raise up its ruins, And rebuild it as in the days of old;
12 That they may possess the remnant of Edom,  And all the Gentiles who are called by My name," Says the LORD who does this thing.

"Edom" refers to the unsaved, Gentile world.
We see in Scripture, God fulfills in the Church spiritually first, what will be fulfilled literally in Israel.

Act 15:16,17
16 'AFTER THIS I WILL RETURN AND WILL REBUILD THE TABERNACLE OF DAVID, WHICH HAS FALLEN DOWN; I WILL REBUILD ITS RUINS, AND I WILL SET IT UP;
17 SO THAT THE REST OF MANKIND MAY SEEK THE LORD, EVEN ALL THE GENTILES WHO ARE CALLED BY MY NAME, SAYS THE LORD WHO DOES ALL THESE THINGS.'

In the Early Church when there was a debate among the apostles whether it was right to preach the Gospel to the Gentiles, and whether the Gentiles who follow Jesus should also follow Jewish customs, James quotes from the prophecy of Amos (Amos 9:11,12)
James quoting from the prophet Amos (9:11,12) indicates that the Church is the spiritual fulfillment of the rebuilding of the Tabernacle of David. In David's tabernacle there was 24/7 praise and worship of God.
The rebuilding of the Tabernacle of David will see an ingathering of Gentiles to the Lord. There is a direct relationship between the reviving of 24x7 Davidic order of worship and the winning of souls to the Lord.

A House of Prayer and Worship

Isaiah 56:6,7  
6 "Also the sons of the foreigner Who join themselves to the LORD, to serve Him, And to love the name of the LORD, to be His servants— Everyone who keeps from defiling the Sabbath, And holds fast My covenant—
7 Even them I will bring to My holy mountain, And make them joyful in My house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and their sacrifices Will be accepted on My altar; For My house shall be called a house of prayer for all nations."

Matthew 21:12-14
12 Then Jesus went into the temple of God and drove out all those who bought and sold in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves.
13 And He said to them, "It is written, 'MY HOUSE SHALL BE CALLED A HOUSE OF PRAYER,' but you have made it a 'DEN OF THIEVES.'"
14 Then the blind and the lame came to Him in the temple, and He healed them.

1) God intends for us to be a house of prayer for all nations. We need to be engaged in constant prayer for the nation(s).
2) A House of prayer for the nations will become an oasis of healing for the nations - people will come into the Temple to receive healing.

A Visit To The Throne Room

Summarize Revelation 5:1-14

Emphasize vs 8

Revelation 5:8  Now when He had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each having a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.

harp = worship
bowl = prayer

There is continuous worship and prayer rising up in the Throne room.

Pause

Life is busy - but we need to pause to spend our time in worship and prayer.

Movements of Prayer And Worship

History shows that through the Centuries there have been times when 24x7 prayer and worship was practiced by communities of believers.

400 A.D. Alexander Akimetes and the Sleepless Ones
Around 400 A.D. a monk named Alexander Akimetes gathered between 300-400 monks in Constantinople, where he established laus perennis to fulfill Paul’s exhortation to pray without ceasing (1 Thessalonians 5:17). Driven from Constantinople, the monks established the monastery at Gormon, at the mouth of the Black Sea. This became the founding monastery of the order of the Acoemetae (literally, the sleepless ones) and the Sleepless Ones.

The Moravians
The Hundred-Year Prayer Meeting and Subsequent Missions
In 1727 the little Moravian community in Herrnhut, led by Count Zinzendorf experienced what is seen as the Moravian Pentecost. Zinzendorf said August 13th was "a day of the outpourings of the Holy Spirit upon the congregation; it was its Pentecost." Within two weeks of the outpouring, twenty-four men and twenty-four women covenanted to pray “hourly intercessions,” thus praying every hour around the clock. They were committed to see that, “The fire must be kept burning on the altar continuously; it must not go out” (Leviticus 6:13). The numbers committed to this endeavor soon increased to around seventy from the community. This prayer meeting would go non-stop for the next one hundred years and is seen by many as the spiritual power behind the impact the Moravians had on the world.
 
From the prayer room at Herrnhut came a missionary zeal which has hardly been surpassed in church history. Many of the community went out into the world to preach the gospel, some even selling themselves into slavery in order to fulfill the great commission. This commitment is shown by a simple statistic. Typically, when it comes to world missions the Protestant laity to missionary ratio has been 5000:1. The Moravians, however, saw a much increased ratio of 60:1. By 1776, some 226 missionaries had been sent out from the community at Herrnhut. It is clear through the teaching of the so-called father of modern missions, William Carey, that the Moravians had a profound impact on him in regard to their zeal for missionary activity. It is also through the missions-minded Moravians that John Wesley came to faith. The impact of this little community in Saxony, which committed to seek the face of the Lord day and night, has truly been immeasurable.
 
Prayer Mountain in Seoul, Korea
In 1973 David Yonggi Cho, Pastor of the Yoido Full Gospel Church in Seoul, South Korea, established Prayer Mountain with night and day prayer. Prayer Mountain was soon attracting over a million visitors per year, as people would spend retreats in the prayer cells provided on the mountain. Cho had a commitment to continuous prayer, to faith and to establishing small discipleship cells in his church. Perhaps as a result, Cho’s church rapidly expanded to become the largest church congregation on the globe, with membership now over 780,000.

The International House of Prayer, Kansas City
On September 19, 1999, the International House of Prayer in Kansas City, Missouri, started a prayer and worship meeting that has continued for twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week ever since. With a similar vision to Zinzendorf, that the fire on the altar should never go out, there has never been a time when worship and prayer has not ascended to heaven since that date.

There is a lot more that is happening all around the world as believers seek to establish local communities of 24x7 worship and prayer.

Day And Night

Isaiah 62:6,7
6 I have set watchmen on your walls, O Jerusalem; They shall never hold their peace day or night. You who make mention of the LORD, do not keep silent,
7 And give Him no rest till He establishes And till He makes Jerusalem a praise in the earth.

Luke 18:1  Then He spoke a parable to them, that men always ought to pray and not lose heart,
Luke 18:7  And shall God not avenge His own elect who cry out day and night to Him, though He bears long with them?

Psalm 134
“Behold, bless the LORD, all you servants of the LORD, who by night stand in the house of the LORD! Lift up your hands in the sanctuary, and bless the LORD. The LORD who made heaven and earth bless you from Zion!”

Let us become a people who will cry out to God day and night.

Establishing A House of Prayer And Worship

We as a church must move in to this. We as a community must see the establishing the tabernacle of David, with the 24x7 Davidic order of prayer and worship in our city – so that His Kingdom will come in our city.

We believe ministry is done best when our lives are rooted in prayer and worship that focuses on intimacy with God, as we intercede for a breakthrough of the fullness of God’s power.

(Much of today's sermon was preached earlier on 28 Feb 2010).


All Peoples Church in Bangalore is a Spirit-filled, Word-based, Bible-believing Christian fellowship of believers in Jesus Christ desiring more of His presence and supernatural power bringing transformation, healing, miracles, and deliverance. We preach the full Gospel, equip believers to live out our new life in Christ, welcome the Charismatic and Pentecostal expressions in the assembly of God and serve in strengthening unity across all Christian churches. All free resources, sermons, daily devotionals, and free Christian books are provided for the strengthening of all believers in the Body of Christ. For further equipping, please visit APC Bible College.

Subscribe

Subscribe to weekly sermon email from All Peoples Church,
announcements on free books being released and APC-Bible College updates.

 

You can unsubscribe any time.