Episode Transcript
Hello, I'm Dr. Kylie Fisher. Welcome to Heavenly Harmonies.
Revelation, chapter 12:10 says. And I heard a loud voice saying, in heaven now is come salvation and strength and the kingdom of our God and the power of his Christ. For the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night.
The death of Jesus on the cross was a pivotal moment in the great controversy, demonstrating conclusively that in God's character, mercy and truth are met together. Righteousness and peace have kissed each other. The death of Christ was an argument in the sinner's behalf, in my behalf, that could not be overthrown.
We can indeed rejoice that Christ the Lord is the rightful King of the universe, not only by creation, but also by redemption. Stay with me. To discover heavenly harmonies in this song that can keep you near to the heart of God, we have been tracing the everlasting gospel from its beginning in eternity past through centuries of dark persecution.
And we're now tracing the restoration of the sanctuary truth during the time of the early Reformation, which was cast down during the terrible persecution of God's church, when it had to flee into the wilderness, as depicted in Revelation, chapter 12. Now, our hymn for today has much to say to us about the sanctuary, so let's get straight into it. Did you pick up what this hymn is? It was hidden in the text of the introduction there.
So it is indeed. Rejoice the Lord is king. Rejoice, the Lord is King.
Your Lord and King adore Rejoice, give thanks and sing and triumph evermore. Lift up your heart, Lift up your voice. Rejoice again, I say rejoice.
Jesus the Saviour reigns the God of truth and love when he had purged our stains he took his seat above. Lift up your heart, Lift up your voice. Rejoice again, I say rejoice.
His kingdom cannot fail he rules o'er earth and heaven the keys of death and grave Are to our Jesus given. Lift up your heart, Lift up your voice. Rejoice again, I say rejoice.
Rejoice in glorious hope. Our Lord the Judge shall come and take his servants up to their eternal home. Lift up your heart, Lift up your voice.
Rejoice again, I say rejoice. Yeah, so just such a wonderful and uplifting hymn. So let's consider first of all, the key text on which this song is based, which, as we will see, does indeed tie into our sanctuary theme.
So the really overriding theme of this hymn is to rejoice and to praise God. And so that's really identified really brought out in the first verse of the song, you know. Rejoice the Lord is King your Lord and King adore Rejoice, give thanks and sing and triumph evermore.
It's really dwelt on in the refrain, which is a repeated passage. A refrain is a repeated passage at the end of a song. This song has a refrain.
It has that repeated passage at the end of each verse. Lift up your heart, Lift up your voice. Rejoice.
Again, I say rejoice. So that's heard at the end of each verse. Now, let's think a little bit about the structure of this, because we are trying to think about ways that we can memorise these songs.
You know, if we think about the structure of hymns, that can help us in our memorization. So, first off, we have these two answering phrases that are written in the style of a psalm. Lift up your heart, lift up your voice.
And in that we've got like three repeated words. And then the final word changes, so it changes from heart to voice. Now, heart and voice are connected because the first is an inner feeling, but the second is the outer expression of that feeling.
The first is the centre of purpose, the last is the result of the purpose. This type of connection is what we call parallelism, and that's typical of Hebrew poetry. So if you look at, like, say, psalms, particularly psalms, you see this sort of thing running all through psalms, often in, like, there'll be one phrase and then there'll be a balancing phrase.
Sometimes there's groups of three, but often it's. It's often groups of two and there's one phrase, that balance is another one. And this is written in a style of Hebrew poetry, even though the words are English.
So, yeah, we don't have time to look at Hebrew poetry. And I'm not actually really an expert on Hebrew poetry, though I do find it absolutely fascinating to think about. But, yeah, it's fascinating to think about it just a little bit.
And as I said, when we think about it that way, we can. It can help us in our memorising. So because we want to be able to just pull out that sword of the spirit at a moment's notice.
That's why we're looking at these songs, so we can hide present truth in our hearts and this wonderful chorus to memorise when we're down and discouraged. And so the final part of this refrain that we're talking about, so we've looked at the. Lift up your heart, lift up your voice.
This final part of the refrain has a word that Rhymes with voice, which is rejoice. So this last bit, rejoice. Again I say rejoice.
That comes straight out of the writings of the Apostle Paul. So Philippians, chapter 4 and verse 4 says, Rejoice in the Lord always. And again I say rejoice.
We can see that refrain just comes straight out of there. Now that I find to be extremely interesting, because Philippians, when he was in the book of Philippians, when Paul was writing that book, he was in prison and he was in fact imprisoned because he was preaching the gospel, because he was preaching Christ. So during this time Paul was being persecuted.
How then could he rejoice? Well, I believe that the answer to this lies in Romans, chapter 8 and verse 35. Another letter of Paul or epistle is the old word, Romans 8. 35.
And in this verse talks about persecution. Notice what Paul has to say here. He says, who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness or peril, or sword.
And verse 37 he says, Nay, in all these things, we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. So Paul in here, Romans 8. 35, he says, even when you're suffering persecution, we are not separated from the love of Christ.
And so that was how Paul could rejoice, even when he was in prison being persecuted, because the prison walls could not shut out Christ. And so what a wonderful thing that was. Yeah.
So Paul, yeah, has this amazingly triumphant phrase that even during this time he was more than a conqueror. And now why is this? Well, let's have a look at the preceding verses and we find out more about this and more about what Christ is doing. Paul speaks there.
So let's start from looking at verse 31. So Romans, chapter 8, verse 31. Let's have a look.
What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? Verse 32. He that spared not his own son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea, rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.
Notice here that, as we've said, Paul realised that he could not be separated from the love of Christ. And verse 30. Well, in these preceding verses, he's talking about what Christ is doing.
And notice that Christ is at the right hand of God, and he's making intercession for us now that points us straight to the sanctuary. And so we have been looking at the first apartment of the sanctuary and what went on in the earthly sanctuary, which is a copy of, or it's modelled on, it's a pattern of what Christ was to do for us in heavenly sanctuary. So obviously in the earthly sanctuary that was built first of all at the time of Moses, and then Solomon built that great temple and then, which was later destroyed, and then that was replaced by what was called Herod's Temple, which was the temple that was in existence when Jesus came here to earth.
So that was when the earthly sanctuary was being used. But all of those services in the earthly sanctuary prefigured the work that Christ was to do for us in the heavenly sanctuary, starting from the time when he went back to heaven. And so this point that we've noticed, actually just backtrack slightly.
So, yeah, as we've been saying, the work that went on in the earthly sanctuary prefigured the work of Christ which he was to do in the heavenly sanctuary. Now we have been learning about the furniture that was in the earthly sanctuary. So we've looked at the table of shewbread, we've looked at the golden altar, we've looked at seven branched candlestick.
And so this furniture was just beautiful. It was. The golden candlestick was just completely of gold.
But the other things like the altar and the table, they were covered in gold. So furniture was just absolutely beautiful. The sanctuary was just a gorgeous, gorgeous structure.
And so, you know, it's just wonderful to think about this absolutely gorgeous furniture. But it would mean no use to have beautiful furniture without a priest to perform the ceremonies that relate to it. And so Jesus work as our high priest in heaven is the focus of today's episode.
And we're going to see how that ties into our soul. Now, this point about Jesus making intercession for us, and that's the cause of our rejoicing, right? That was the cause of Paul's rejoicing even when he was in prison. And I mean, like being in a Roman prison, I mean, it's nothing like, I mean, today, those who are in prison today have, you know, don't.
I'm not saying they have an easy time, but, you know, many of them, well, I guess depends what country of the world you're in and so forth, what your conditions are. But, you know, Rome in prison, it was just, it was terrible. So, yeah, you know, the situation that Paul was In he was far from being in a position where he would feel like he could rejoice.
And yet here he says to rejoice. And he was rejoicing because of the intercession of Christ. The point about Jesus making intercession for us relates especially to the altar of incense that was in the heavenly sanctuary.
Now, John in vision saw an altar of incense in heaven. And so the angel in the scene burns incense and the smoke from this ascends up to God's throne. But in those verses which we read a few weeks ago, something comes up with the incense, which is prayer.
So the work that Jesus is doing for us in the heavenly sanctuary indicates what his followers are to do here on earth. Now, Jesus cannot present prayers to his Father on our behalf if we don't offer them. So that's why Hebrews 4:16 says, let's ever come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in our time of need.
We have to pray for our prayers to come up before God. And so this was a truth that was rediscovered in the early Reformation. And the early reformers also recognised the importance of God's Word.
We've seen that. And the Wesleys, they realised the power of the Word of God in the life of the Christian. And they realised that God's Word has sanctifying power.
And so that was a truth that Luther, Martin Luther, for, you know, the many truths that he discovered and did many great things, but that was the truth that he sort of seemed to grasp innately, but he found it really hard to see it from the word of God. But the Wesleys, who were living, you know, a few hundred years later, they were able to understand that better. And, yeah, so God's Word has creative power.
And by living out its truths, we as Christians become the light of the world. And so, of course, that's represented by the seven branched candlestick. Now, Jesus promised to send the Holy Spirit to his followers after he returned to heaven.
And that promise has never been removed. So the Holy Spirit is to be with God's people right to the end of time and beyond. It's really amazing when we think about these pieces of furniture.
They were in the first room of the sanctuary and they symbolise aspect of the plan of salvation. But when I speak today about another piece of furniture that was in the sanctuary and that was encountered even before those that were in the first apartment, because understanding this other piece of furniture gives us a deeper understanding of our hymn today. And so to do this, we have been doing a little bit of review, but we're going to go back and do even more of you and we're going to learn something new as well.
So you've got a bit of a two for one deal, because we're going to backtrack to and learn some new things about the hymn Crowning With Many Crowns. And so we've already had a programme about this, but I want to include some points about it here because this song, Crown Him With Merry Crowns, it has a lot of sanctuary imagery and I ran out of time to cover this in the programme about Crowning with many crowns. And we really need to understand it to understand our hymn for today.
And so going back to Crown Him With Many Crowns, the song opens with the words Crown him with many crowns, the Lamb upon his throne. And so now this reference to Christ as a lamb immediately points us actually to the courtyard of the sanctuary where there was another altar. Now, this altar was made out of brass.
It was not the same as the golden altar that was in that first apartment, but it was the altar of sacrifice. And as a person entered the courtyard of the sanctuary, this was the very first piece of furniture he or she would see the altar of sacrifice. So different animals were used in the sacrifices.
But perhaps the most well known sacrifice was a pure, innocent lamb. And many lambs were slain. And these lambs all pointed to Jesus, who, in the words of John the Baptist, was the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world.
And there's so much we could say about this, but essentially the altar of sacrifice and the Lamb's sacrifice on it represent the death of Jesus on the cross. And that's the focus of verse two, which speaks about Crown him, the Lord of love. Behold his hands and side.
And so, as we discussed in episode three, this refers to the wounds that Jesus suffered when he was placed on the cross. Now, verse two goes on. No angel in the sky can fully bear that sight, but downward bends his wondering eye at mysteries so great.
Now, would you believe this adoration and wonder of the angels at the great love of God in yielding up his son to die is actually depicted in the sanctuary. Now, I find this just so incredible, you know, the detail in sanctuary, there's only one little point, so many points I could say that I don't have time to look at. So I hope that you're inspired to study these things more closely as you're thinking about these amazing hymns and your soul is hopefully being filled with these heavenly harmonies.
So Exodus chapter 25 verse 20, speaking about two angels which are on a piece of furniture that we haven't looked at, but notice this. The cherubims shall stretch forth their wings on high, covering the mercy seat. So actually, it's the ark of the covenant.
There's the one in there, the one that's especially relevant to us today. So there'll be more programmes about that, we hope, when we talk specifically about this, because it's so amazing. So these cherubims, which is the type of angel, shall stretch forth their wings on high, covering the mercy seat with their wings, and their faces shall look one toward another, toward the mercy seat shall the phases of the cherubim be.
So these two golden angels were on this, above this arc of the sanctuary, and they were to be looking down. And so I just find that just so amazing. So, yeah, as it says in Crowning With Many Crowns, no angel in the sky can fully bear that sight, but downward bend his wandering eye.
So I hope when you think about those words in Crown Him With Many Crowns, you can be thinking about these angels in the heavenly sanctuary. So, yeah, so the adoration and wonder of the angels that the great love of God in yielding up his Son is shown by that expression. And, yeah, the angels are just so amazed at God's forgiveness of the sinner who has transgressed the holy law of God.
And so, yeah, crown him with many crowns. So much sanctuary language. There's even more, but we're running out of time.
So this portrays the courtyard scene of the altar of sacrifice. And Jesus became our sacrifice because of his love. He chose to become the Son of God.
And so thus it is that he's the rightful King of the universe. Now, at the death of Christ, Satan and his evil angels were cast down as we were reading. And yeah, as we've seen in earlier programmes, and notice the first part of Revelation 12:12.
Therefore rejoice ye heavens and ye that dwell in them. And so we've looked already at Paul rejoicing because Christ was seated at the right hand of the throne of God. And so also the angels rejoiced at the casting down of Satan.
So all heaven rejoiced in the Savior's victory. Which brings us back to our hymn for this episode. And so the rejoicing of heaven is captured, as we've said in the first verse of Rejoice, the Lord is King.
Now moving on to the second verse. Speaks about Jesus, the Saviour reigns. And when he had purged our stains, that's when he died on the cross, as we've been saying, represented by that altar of sacrifice in the courtyard of the sanctuary.
It says he took his seat above. And so Christ is now seated at the right hand of God. Friends, there's so many verses about this.
Mark 16:19, Acts, chapter 7, verse 55 and 56, Colossians 3, verse 1. There's heaps more. I hope that you've got time to look those up.
Now look, friends, there's so many more verses that I could talk about, but we are just so much running out of time. So Christ is seated at the right hand of God. I think this is really amazing because we've spoken about the table of showbread.
Now the table of showbread represents, oh, the bread that's on it. It represents the word of God, but Jesus is also the word of God. And so the fact that there's that bread, which is called the bread of the presence in the heavenly sanctuary, I think points to the fact Jesus is actually seated at the right hand of God.
So that's a really wonderful thing for us to think about, you know? Yeah, so it's just really a wonderful, wonderful truth that Jesus is seated at the right hand of God and that he is making intercession for us. And I just want to read just a couple of quotes from some early reformers who discovered these truths about the sanctuary. Some of them did realise it and there are just so many.
Samuel Mather, Thomas Taylor, John Owen, Christopher Love, Isaac Watts, the Wesley brothers. They wrote extensively about Christ as our high priest. Also William Tyndale.
And he speaking about, speaking about the book of Leviticus. He says that the ceremonies that are described in the book of Leviticus were to the children of Israel as an abc. They were like the Alphabet to help them to learn to spell and read.
It helped them to understand the truths of the gospel in the days before Christ was actually there. So look, friends, there's so much more we could say about this song but we've so much run out of time. So let's go on.
We're going to listen to the Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra singing for us. Rejoice the Lord is king and triumph Ra Sa let's praise God for Jesus and his work for us today. Dear God, we're so grateful that Jesus is our representative in the heavenly cause in the heavenly sanctuary.
May we avail ourselves of the help. The grace that you extend to us today is my prayer in Jesus name. Amen to thank you so much for joining me today on Heavenly Harmonies.
I would love for you to join me again next time for more historical foundations of present truth. But until then, may your soul be filled with heavenly harmonies that will keep you near to the heart of God.
