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NewCity Orlando Sermons
Leviticus Is For Lovers | Leviticus 6:13
Pastor of Formation & Mission Benjamin Kandt continues our fall series, Leviticus Is For Lovers, preaching from Leviticus 6:13. He reflects on his own quest to cultivate a community centered around prayer, realizing the vital role of God’s presence, as symbolized by the biblical fire in this verse. His story underscores the enduring importance of prayer and divine power in revitalizing both personal lives and ministry, offering a profound philosophy of maintaining spiritual fervor in every aspect of life.
Hello everyone. This is Pastor Damian. You're listening to Sermon Audio from New City, orlando. At New City we believe all of us need all of Jesus for all of life. For more resources, visit our website at newcityorlandocom. Thanks for listening. Please join me for the prayer of illumination. Please join me for the prayer of illumination. Holy Spirit, open our hearts to hear your word and, through your word, create in our hearts a home for your presence that we might live for the glory of the Father and the kingdom of his beloved Son. Through Jesus Christ, we pray amen. Today's scripture reading is Leviticus 6.13. Fire shall be kept burning on the altar continually. It shall not go out. This is God's word.
Speaker 2:You're welcome. That was a mercifully short Leviticus reading. No, no long. Lobe of the liver, none of that stuff, no blood. Well, we're in a series called Leviticus is for Lovers, and this text might be the first time you actually like lean into it and go. Okay, maybe I get it a little bit more. This is what's really going on here.
Speaker 2:When I was in seminary, I had heard this statistic done by a research group out of Duke that 85% of seminary graduates are not in pastoral ministry within five years. Now, if you're a pastor-to-be, that's a significant stat that you want to pay attention to, right. And so last Sunday was my five-year anniversary of being an ordained pastor here at New City and thank you, and I'm alive and well and so glad to be here. I love being a pastor, especially to this people here at New City. So the reason why I say that is because I think Leviticus 6.13 is a big reason why. It's a big reason why and I want to give you, I want to unpack that a little bit so in 2019, when I was studying for ordination, I was at the beach, new Smyrna, and I had my feet in the sand and, as I was listening to a book called the Red. It was called Red Moon Rising by Pete Gregg. If you've never read it, it's fantastic. Get it on Audible. It's awesome.
Speaker 2:And I heard stories of God working through his people's prayers over and over and over again and it was fanning into flame some embers in my heart and I kind of had this moment with the Lord where I basically kind of drew a metaphorical line in the sand and said, hey, if you really are calling me to this thing called being a pastor, I will not run a church, I'll lead a church and we will not play church, we're going to be the church. And what being the church meant in that moment, and still does to me today, is we will be a house of prayer for all nations. That's the calling of Jesus on his bride, on his people. And so, as I kind of make that decision, it had already been in my heart. In fact, I'd looked a couple years earlier. I'd crafted this document which is, if you're on staff, you just know that's kind of something I do I crafted a document of like the vision and the strategy and tactics of how we could become a praying church here at New City. But those embers had kind of died out in some ways and this was just fanning them back into flame for me.
Speaker 2:And in 2021, I was feeling overwhelmed and on the verge of burnout. I was nervous because of that, but the stat that I started with was beginning to make sense to me Now. You know, it's a little bit of a baptism by fire when your first year of ordained ministry is 2020, right, and New City was among the best of the best as far as churches to lead, but we all felt that year it was challenging. So I get to 2021, and the Spirit of God uses memorizing the Sermon on the Mount and a few books to really reawaken this pastoral imagination of what he's really called me to do. And one of those books was a biography of a pastor named Jack Miller.
Speaker 2:Now Jack Miller pastored a church in Pennsylvania and after pastoring for enough time, he burned out really bad and he went and quit both his job as a pastor and his job as a seminary professor. He resigned and spent three weeks crying and after those three weeks, blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. After those three weeks, he came back and asked for both of his jobs back, contingent upon a three-month sabbatical. So he goes to Spain and in Spain he studies all that the New Testament has to say about the work of the Holy Spirit in the church, and he comes back renewed because he realized and I realized through his biography that the problem maybe one of the biggest problems for pastors and for anybody in any vocation, is doing the Lord's work in the power of the flesh rather than the power of the Spirit. It's exhausting, it's exhausting, and so I was both convicted and encouraged, and it was all of the marks of the Holy Spirit at work in somebody's life.
Speaker 2:And so Jack Miller came back. His heart was revived by this revelation of who the Spirit is and what the Spirit's work looks like. So he comes back from sabbatical and he starts a prayer meeting. That flopped and he says it's because he talked for most of the time it's what teachers can do sometimes and he realized that he had a theology, but he had no models. He didn't know what this actually looked like in practice. So he went to Switzerland to meet with Francis and Edith Schaeffer at a place called Labrie, where what he described is he had for the first time he had an experience of a praying community. And he came back. And when he came back, he led his church as a praying church, as a praying community, and reignited this prayer meeting that met in his home and out of that became you could argue this came the early 2000s gospel resurgence, from which New City was planted. This is our story. We're connected to this, and so I tell you all that because when I read this, I knew I needed my own Labrie experience.
Speaker 2:Somebody has said for anything you do anything changing diapers, leading a church in prayer for anything you do, you need a theology, a model and a practice. I had the theology. I lacked a model. I'd never seen a praying community. All this, all the data show that America is not a praying church. We don't do that, and so, in 2023, I reached out to my friend Matt, who was part of the beginning of a community who prayed 24 hours a day, seven days a week for 25 years. One stat says that maybe 50% of all the prayer that's gone up from the United States of America came from this one prayer room. Needless to say, it was a praying community.
Speaker 2:I found one, and so I went, and on the back of the prayer room, in big, bold letters, was Leviticus 6.13. Fire shall be kept burning on the altar continually, it shall not go out. And this verse became a banner of the prayer movement. Because in 1727, a prayer meeting began in Herrenhut, Germany, that lasted for over a hundred years and sparked the modern missionary movement. And I came back from this trip with proof of concept. This does exist, it is possible. I had my Jack Miller praying community experience. I had the theology. Now I have a model and some practice.
Speaker 2:And even Damien remarked he said, something seems different in you. And what I would say is I carried my calling differently. Now I had maybe a philosophy of ministry that said that I was called to pastor through prayer, from verses like Acts 6, for instance, but I didn't know what to do. I didn't know how to do that, and so increasingly, moment by moment, I learned that I do have to shoulder the load, but God's going to carry the burden. And there was something that was remarkable my preaching got better, not my words, but God's going to carry the burden. And there was something that remarkable my preaching got better, not my words, but the power. People were beginning to be changed by the same amount of sermon prep and, I don't think, any more ingenuity. I was beginning to see what this actually looked like in practice and in God's smiling providence. I didn't choose this, but I got scheduled to preach on that verse Leviticus 6.13, on a Sunday when my friends Matt and Dana are here repaying a visit to join us here at New City. And so there's this profound honor to witness the ways in which God writes stories.
Speaker 2:What's the big deal about Leviticus 6.13? Well, let's look at this text together under three questions. Here's the three questions what is the fire? Where is the altar? How is it kept burning? What is the fire? Where is the altar? How is it kept burning?
Speaker 2:Look with me at the text. If you have a Bible or a device, you can get Leviticus 6.13 in front of you. I know most of y'all have it memorized because why not? This is what it says Fire shall be kept burning on the altar continually. It shall not go out. My first question is what is the fire? Now, I know what some of you are thinking. You're thinking well, fire is a state, process or instance of combustion in which fuel or other material is ignited and combined chemically with oxygen, typically giving off light, heat and flame. I get it. That's what I was thinking too, but not so fast.
Speaker 2:The high priest Aaron didn't just flick his bick and light up the altar. That's not how it worked. Like I searched the Exodus instructions for the tabernacle. There's nowhere in there where the altar has a pilot light built into it. It doesn't exist.
Speaker 2:This is significant. There's something really important here. The fire on the altar came down from above, if you were to scroll forward or flip forward and Leviticus 9 24 says this and fire came out from before the Lord and consumed the burnt offering and the pieces of fat on the altar. And when all the people saw it, they shouted and fell on their faces and began to sing Billy Joel's. We Didn't Start the Fire. That last part's not in there. That's important for you to know. I added it.
Speaker 2:But this is significant the fire came from God. This is a principle for all of life. Right here we build the altar. God sends the fire. That's practical and it's a principle that works out in every area of your life. I assure you of that. We build the altar, god brings the fire, and so if this fire originated from heaven, can you see the significance of keeping it lit? It matters that you don't let that fire burn out. So if this fire is not simply a combustion of substances combined chemically with oxygen. Da, da, da da. If it's not that, what is this fire from heaven? I wanna submit it's the very presence of God, and I get that from the rest of the Bible, if you remember, from us going through Exodus over a couple years.
Speaker 2:Fire plays a significant role in the book of Exodus. Moses' calling comes from an unburning bush right, and then fast forward a little bit and the people of God are led through the wilderness by a pillar of fire representing the presence of God. They come to Mount Sinai and the whole mountain is on fire as God speaks to his people. In the New Testament, jesus, as I already said, came to baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire, and it's no surprise to students of the scriptures that when you get to Acts, chapter 2, the day of Pentecost, it says that the Holy Spirit came and tongues of fire rested on each one of them. Why? Well, because the fire of God was filling his new temple, the people of God. And in 1 Thessalonians 5, paul commands us not to quote extinguish the spirit. That implies that the spirit of God is like a fire.
Speaker 2:Revelation 4 describes that there are seven torches of fire burning before the throne of God, which is the spirit of God, and in Hebrews 11, just some, or 12 summarizes all of this by just saying our, our God is a consuming fire. Simply put, this fire, throughout the story of scripture, is the very presence of God, by his spirit. That's the fire that is on the altar. So if that's the case, where is the altar? Where is the altar? Look at Leviticus 6.13 again. It says this fire shall be kept burning on the altar. Look at Leviticus 6 13 again. It says this fire shall be kept burning on the altar continually. It shall not go out. You see, altars are places of, of sacrifice and encounter. They become. Altars are kind of like hyperlinks between heaven and earth. Altars are these portals into a transcendent dimension and in that sense, many religions have altars. Even the irreligious have altars.
Speaker 2:This is what I mean. I think that there's God has imprinted on the human soul an ache for infinity, and that ache doesn't go out. Even if you don't have any concept of transcendence or a divine being that's above you, that ache is there. And so what do we do? We take this burning for religious encounter and we put it on imminent things. This is what I mean.
Speaker 2:You want a great body your altar is the gym. Your sacrifice is your sweat. Your sacrifice is your body. You want money or status. Your altar is your workplace. Your sacrifice is the time and effort and energy you pour into it. You want influence your altar is your phone. Your sacrifice is your attention. We, as a culture, we have altars to the gods of money, sex, pleasure, power, politics, the self. We are awash with altars, trust me. And so where are the altars in your life? What the scriptures call the high places? If you're reading in the McShane Bible reading plan we're getting into the books of 1 and 2 Kings you'll hear a lot about high places. Where are the high places in your life? If the Spirit of God is going to come in power, we have to tear down the high places and rebuild altars, altars on which the God, who answers by fire, will come and bring flames.
Speaker 2:Now, when the church has a name for what I just described, the church has a name for when God sends his spirit on his people like fire on an altar. It's called revival. Duncan Campbell was a Presbyterian preacher and a key figure in what's called the Hebrides revival, which was the spiritual awakening that took place in the 1940s in the Hebrides Islands, which are off the coast of Scotland, and he described it like this he said revival is a moving of God in the Hebrides Islands, which are off the coast of Scotland, and he described it like this he said revival is a moving of God in the community and suddenly the community becomes God-conscious. I love that language. It's why sometimes people call revivals awakenings, because people are waking up to the reality that there is a living and true God and he's not far off and he's not abstract, he's actually near and deeply relevant. It's this God consciousness that awakens people. That's what happens when the spirit of God is poured out.
Speaker 2:The spirit of God begins to change the conversation in the cultural moment. We've seen this happen before plenty of times. Even in our own nation's short history. In the 1960s this happened and Jesus was on the front page of Time Magazine Changed the conversation of a culture. He's done it before. He can do it again, but not unless we ask for it and ache for it and long for it. We don't earn it by those things but God.
Speaker 2:Throughout the story of scripture and human history, god comes where he's wanted, and so Duncan Campbell, reflecting on this said that for revival to come, god's fire must fall on four altars. So my question where is the altar? There's four of them. You'll see them behind you. They are heart, home, church and region. Heart home, church and region. Let's look at this the altar of the heart. Augustine of Hippo says it like this our heart, when it rises to him, is his altar. To him we offer the sweetest incense when we come before him, burning with holy and pious love. To him we devote and surrender ourselves. To him. We offer on the altar of our heart the sacrifice of humility and praise, kindled by the fire of burning love. This has a historical pedigree in the church. We've been talking about these things for a long time.
Speaker 2:And so if the fire, if there is fire on the altar of your heart I don't assume that for everybody in this room, but if there is fire on the altar of your heart, it came from heaven. It's all of grace. You didn't earn it, you didn't deserve it. Therefore, you can't unearn it or undeserve it. Your heart has been ignited by the Spirit of God being poured out, but the tendency of fire is to go out. All it takes is the experience of sitting around a campfire, and you know, if you don't keep stoking the flame and stirring the fire, it trends towards going out. That's also true in your own heart. That fire, for some of you, is languishing. It's a faintly burning wick, as the prophet calls it.
Speaker 2:And so I want to ask you what douses the flame of the fire of your love for Jesus? Of the fire of your love for Jesus? I'll go first. Late night, algorithmic YouTube binges, too much sugar, unconfessed sin, not enough sleep, interpersonal conflict that leads to bitterness, to name a few. I could keep going.
Speaker 2:My second question what fans the flames of your affection for Jesus? I listen to worship music alone in my car, singing loudly. I call it my sanctum sanctorum on wheels, and when I'm there, something stirs up in me to be able to praise Jesus, to exalt his name. Psalm 22 says that he is enthroned upon the praises of his people. He comes and draws near in that moment.
Speaker 2:I also read books that stir the desire for my soul, for God. Usually, for me, it's biographies, it's anything by Augustine of Hippo, it's Charles Spurgeon on the Psalms, something about the fire of these people, the communion of saints who are in glory, now experiencing firsthand the things that they wrote about here on earth. It stirs my affections for Jesus. Here's another one being around other people who have a burning for Christ. Here's another one being around other people who have a burning for Christ. As we all know, a fire that's gone out. You just pull the embers together again, breathe on it and it begins to burn. You have to have a community of people around you who have a fire of affection for Jesus. These are just some of mine. What are yours? What are these things for you that either douse the flame or fan the flame of your affections for Jesus? That's what keeps the altar on the fire burning.
Speaker 2:But remember, we build the altar, god brings the fire. Second one the altar of your home. The altar of your home. Your home, whether you're single or married, is your first church. This is what I mean.
Speaker 2:Matthew Henry, well-known commentator on the Bible, says it like this the families of Christians should be little churches, that wherever we have a house, god should have a church in it. I want to say it like this if the church were more like a family and the family were more like a church, I think we'd see more fire on the altar. Let me say that again if the family were more like a church, I think we'd see more fire on the altar. And we say that again if the church were more like a family and the family were more like a church, I think we'd see more fire on the altar. You see, mom and dad are priests in their home.
Speaker 2:But, fathers, this is your responsibility. You will stand before God and answer for the spiritual vibrancy and vitality of your home. That's what it means to be the head of your house, as Ephesians 5 puts it. And so that matters because, remember I said earlier, in your home you stack the kindling and then you pray and ask God to send the fire in your children's hearts and lives. And so what would it look like for you, mom and dad, to make Jesus an unquestionable and undeniable reality in your house? Kids just grow up in that atmosphere, breathing that climate. Of course, jesus is a bright, living reality. He's not in your home. Your home could be a counterculture of life and beauty, of laughter and joy, a place where, whether you're single or married, your home can be a place where you host the presence of God in a way that radiates the love, joy and peace of Jesus to all who enter. We build the altar, god brings the fire.
Speaker 2:The third one, the altar of the church, new City. Our calling is to be a living, breathing demonstration of the reality of the living God on earth. No big deal, that's our calling. Where our neighbors get to see that Jesus Christ is alive and well even in the darkest days. Where our neighbors get to see that Jesus Christ is alive and well even in the darkest days. Like I just think about this principle, which is just. It's true if you study church history If the Spirit is here, the world will want what the church has. If the Spirit is not here, the church will want what the world has. It's pretty simple, and so I want to ask you which one is truer of our generation? It's pretty simple, and so I want to ask you which one is truer of our generation? Which one is truer? Does the world see us as a people holding nothing back, offering all on the altar, burning with the fire of God? Is that what the world sees when it looks at the church, when it looks at New City?
Speaker 2:The question here is what did Jesus die for? Did Jesus die for middle-class malaise, christianity? Did Jesus die for American politics, christianity? Did Jesus die for theologically progressive. We only believe whatever doesn't offend our modern sensibilities Christianity. Did Jesus die for big-headed, small-hearted, theological, intellectual Christianity? Did Jesus die for feelings-first, therapeutic Christianity? No, he didn't die for those things. What Jesus died for is a people set on fire, so burning with the love for him that the world comes from miles and miles just to watch us burn. That's what Jesus died for.
Speaker 2:Now, don't hear what I'm not saying. I'm not talking about a church full of people doing a bunch of religious things in order to get God's attention. That's not what I'm talking about. Legalists and lovers can look really similar on the surface. They can both do pretty extreme things. Paul puts it like this If I give away all I have but have not love, I gain nothing. Jesus puts it like this lovers sell everything to buy the pearl of great price, the rigors of religion and the relishes of romance. They can look similar, but they feel different. So I say that because Jesus didn't die to make a bride who just grits her teeth, struggling to say no to sin, but secretly wishing she could indulge in a little immorality. Jesus died for a bride who's preoccupied with the one who died. That's what he came for A church who's growing stronger in her. No to anything that might make her heart cold towards him in her affections. New City we build the altar. God brings the fire. Fourth and finally, the altar of the region. The altar of the region.
Speaker 2:There's a scholar named James Edwin Orr, a revival historian with PhD from Oxford, and he studied the move of God in the history of humanity and he said that every time the Spirit falls on the church, it's always preceded by extraordinary, united kingdom-focused prayer, always. And so some of you've heard about Seek Orlando. Seek Orlando is not a new city thing, we just carry it with other churches in our area. Why? Because we believe this, we believe in the united part of that, that if we don't link arms and hearts with our other brothers and sisters across this city and cry out for a move of God in our generation, then the spirit of God won't come without that fire, we won't come with fire without that altar being built in our region. So if we want the church to wake up, so that the city will stop perishing and revival will be poured out, god consciousness will be awakened, then we must unite with our brothers and sisters in prayer. And so we call it Seek Orlando.
Speaker 2:Seeing everyone enjoy the King S-E-E-K. This is what we're after. So we've done prayer and worship nights for the last two years. We've kicked off the new year with four hours of prayer leading up to midnight. We have a Wednesday afternoon prayer meeting from two to four. Every Wednesday. We gather with brothers and sisters from churches and ministries and all these things to ask God for this. We gather as with, as and for the church in Orlando saying we're building the altar. Lord, would you just send the fire? We believe you've done it before. Will you just do it again? And so when this happens and God sends the fire, the city can be changed overnight.
Speaker 2:You just read stories, the Hebrides revival, for instance, and there's one that comes to my mind right now. These coal miners were. They had donkeys that carried that pulled carts, okay, and the donkeys stopped pulling the carts because the miners stopped kicking them and cussing at them, because they had come to know Jesus, and so the coal mine shut down and they were wondering why is the coal mine so unproductive these days? It's because the miners stopped kicking and cussing at the donkeys to pull the carts to get the mine out. So when I say, when I talk about this. I don't mean just in here, holy huddle, I mean out there in your workplaces. You see, one of the primary callings of the priesthood of all believers is to be an intercessor, to stand in between you, standing between God and your neighbor, god and your coworker, god and your public's clerk, god and your barista, god and your Amazon delivery person. This is the calling of the priesthood in our region. And if those kind of people were all around Orlando with hearts and homes and churches ablaze with the presence of God, the gospel would spread like wildfire throughout our city. That's what the history of the church and the Bible seems to teach. And so we build the altar. God brings the fire.
Speaker 2:Third and finally, how is it kept burning? How is it kept burning? Look again at Leviticus 6.13. It says this fire shall be kept burning on the altar continually. That's positive. It's continually burning on the altar, it shall not go out. That's positive. It's continually burning on the altar, it shall not go out. That's negative. It's putting it negatively. Same thing, three ways. Keep it burning continually, don't let it go out. This is the point here. This is the point of the text. This is what really the author wants you to know, the altar burned in the tabernacle with unceasing fire as a sign of God's perpetual presence with his people.
Speaker 2:If this fire is burning on any of those four altars, it came from heaven, it's all of grace. God's the one that ignited it. But we all know that fire must be stacked, started and stoked if it's gonna keep burning. And so in Matthew 24, 12, jesus warns us. He says that in the last days the love of many will grow cold. I believe biblically, theologically, we live in the last days that there's a real temptation for the love of many to grow cold, that the fire on the altar of your heart will diminish over time if you don't stack and stoke it. So maybe that's some of you. This morning You're hearing me talk about what could be how we build the altar and God brings the fire. Some of you are wondering if you are too cold, if the fire has gone out in your heart, are wondering if you are too cold if the fire has gone out in your heart.
Speaker 2:Isaiah 42.3 speaks about Jesus and it says that he will not snuff out quote a faintly burning wick. It says that he's tender with the flickering candle of your heart. Why? Because he started the fire. He's committed to not letting it go out. Only the love of God for you can kindle your love for God. Only the love of God for you can kindle your love for God.
Speaker 2:In Luke 12, 49, jesus said I came to cast fire on the earth and how I wish it were already kindled. I'm telling you, I believe, from that text, that the love of God is the fire that Jesus came to cast upon the earth. Jesus died for a bride who's preoccupied with the one who died. He wants fire burning on the altars. He came for it.
Speaker 2:Song of Songs the other book that you probably don't read, like Leviticus, chapter eight, verse six, says it like this it says that God's love is like flashes of fire, the very flame of the Lord. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it out. Remember the fire comes down and it consumes the sacrifice on the altar On the cross. The fire of heaven came down and consumed Jesus. The cross is our altar. Jesus is the single sacrifice On the cross.
Speaker 2:Jesus was consumed for all of the fickle flickerings of your false altars On the cross. Jesus was consumed for all of your fickle flickerings of your false altars On the cross. Jesus was consumed for all of your cold heartedness On the cross of Christ, all that douses the fire of your affections for Jesus. All of those things. Jesus came and was consumed for those things on the cross why? Because what God's after is he wants you to be like that unburning bush on fire but not consumed. He wants you burning vibrantly, radiating the love and beauty of God. That's his plan for humanity.
Speaker 2:Saint Irenaeus said it like this the glory of God is man, fully alive, burning, bright, beautiful, radiant, but not consumed. And so, wherever you find yourself, as we draw near to Jesus, right now, in this moment, you are warming your heart at the cross of Christ, knowing that the flashes of fire, the very flame of the Lord is there, igniting, warming, thawing your hard heart, and you receive this bright blazing of the glory of God on the cross of Jesus Christ. And as that happens, I want to remind you that Jesus rose from the ashes. He rose from the ashes in order to ignite the embers in your heart. One person has said it like this revival is the application by the Holy Spirit of the resurrection of Jesus. In our time. You want some of that. You want the Holy Spirit to come and apply the resurrection of Jesus to our time, to our day and age, to your heart, your home, your church, your region. We draw near to God with our hearts. We draw near to Jesus. You cannot possibly draw near to him and offer him your heart, whatever state it's in, and not find it strangely warmed by the affection he has for you, shown on the cross.
Speaker 2:And so that's what we're doing in New City. We're rebuilding our altars, we're stirring the coals of our heart, we're asking God to send fire, because fire, I believe, is waiting to fall. Let's pray, jesus. We are convinced that there's nothing so wrong with us, nothing so far gone, that a good resurrection couldn't fix. We believe that that is your spirit who comes with power, your spirit who falls like fire. Here we are, lord, here's our heart, here's our home. Here's New City, here's our home. Here's New City, here's Orlando. We want to build these altars, we want to repair the breaches, we want to cast down the high places. Come with fire upon your people, like you've done for millennia. Not for our sake, oh Lord, not to us, but to your name and for your sake. We ask these things, amen.