OBLIGACIÓN DE EXPEDIR COMPROBANTES MEDIANTE DOCUMENTOS DIGITALES

When the anointing of God rests on human flesh, it makes everything flow better. One of the clearest pictures of the anointing and its purpose in the Bible is provided in the Book of Esther. When Esther was being prepared for her presenta-tion to the king of Persia, she was required to go through a year of purification during which she was repeatedly soaked in fragrant anointing oil (ironically using virtually the same ingredients of the Hebrews’ worship incense and anointing oil). One year in preparation for one night with the king! A logical side benefit of all those soaking baths in perfumed oil is that every man who came near to Esther would think or say, “My, but you smell good.” Nevertheless, Esther wouldn’t give them the time of day for the same reason that you and I should never be distracted by the pursuit of man’s approval:

The purpose of the anointing is not to make man like you, but to make the King like you.

It is far more important that the King approve of you than the people. David was anointed by God long before he was crowned by the people. He sought God’s approval over man’s—

he was a God chaser!

We have prostituted God’s anointing too many times. We prepare for Him and we soak in His precious, sweet-smelling anointing, but then all we do is parade it around for man! We end up flirting on the way to the chamber of the King and never make it, seduced by other, lower lovers. We need to remember that our King is not going to have “soiled goods.” Only the vir-gins are fit to go in to the King. I’m saying that we prostitute the anointing in the sense that we say, “That was good preaching!”

or “That song was really good!” and we give man the glory and the attention (or we seek man’s glory and attention). We seek to please man (the flesh). Even our services are structured to please man. The anointing really does do a lot of wonderful things in our lives, and it breaks the yoke of oppression. But that is only a by-product. It is much like when I splash cologne on for my wife.

The by-product is that I smell good to everyone. But the pur-pose of the perfume was for her, not them! The problem comes when we use it to impress and flirt with one another, overlooking the primary purpose of the anointing, which is to camouflage the stench of our own flesh.

When Esther entered the king’s “house of women,” she was given oils and soaps for purification and subjected to a soaking process designed to turn a peasant girl into a princess. Again, the real purpose of the anointing is not to make us sound good, look good, or smell good to man. That happens as a by-product, but the real purpose of the anointing is to give us favor in the King’s chamber. Our flesh stinks to God and the anointing makes us acceptable to the King. It’s God’s process of turning peasants into princesses—prospective brides-to-be!

The anointing may make us worship or preach better, but we need to remember that the anointing—whether it falls on us indi-vidually or on a congregation during a service—is not the end, but just the beginning. Some would prostitute the anointing by

“dancing around in front of the veil” of God’s presence, not realizing that its whole purpose is to prepare them to enter in, to go past the veil into His glory. The King’s chamber, the Holy of Holies, awaits the anointed. The holy anointing oil was liter-ally rubbed on and into everything in the Holy Place, including the garments of the priest. They then took “powdered perfume” to anoint the very atmosphere.

And he [Aaron and his successors] shall take a censer full of burning coals of fire from off the altar before the Lord, and his hands full of sweet incense beaten small, and bring it with-in the veil:

And he shall put the incense upon the fire before the Lord, that the cloud of the incense may cover the mercy seat that is upon the testimony, that he die not (Leviticus 16:12-13).

Under the ordinances of the Old Testament, the last thing the high priest did before he entered into the Holy of Holies was to place a handful of incense (symbolic of the anointing) into a censer and thrust his hands and the censer through the veil to made a dense screen of smoke. Why? To “…cover the mercy seat…that he die not” (Lev. 16:13b). The priest had to make enough smoke to camouflage or conceal his flesh from God’s presence.

The anointing speaks of the action of man in worship. It was anointed worship that filled the Holy of Holies with smoke and made it possible for a man to stand in God’s presence in a con-cealed place and live. At other times in the Old Testament, God stepped out of the Holy of Holies and made His own cloud of covering so mankind wouldn’t see Him and perish. Under the old covenant based on the blood of bulls and goats, the priest of flesh had to make so much covering smoke that every-thing he did in the Holy of Holies had to be done by touch and not by sight. We walk by “faith,” and not by sight! God, I know You’re in here somewhere.