Gooding, David: 1 - The Oil and the Lamps

We read this evening, first of all, from the book of Exodus, chapter twenty five beginning in verse 31. Thou shalt make a candlestick of pure gold. Of beaten work shall the candlestick be made, even its base and its shaft, its cups, its knobs, and its flowers shall be of one piece with it. And there shall be six branches going out of the sides thereof. Verse thirty seven. and thou shalt make the lamps thereof seven, and they shall light the lamps thereof to give light over against it. And the tongs thereof and the snuff dishes thereof shall be of pure gold, of a talent of pure gold shall it be made with all these vessels. And see that thou make them after their pattern which have been showed thee in the mount. And then we shall read from chapter thirty of this same book. Chapter thirty and verse seven. which are verses describing the golden altar of incense. And Aaron shall burn there on incense of sweet sm- spices every morning. When he dresses the lamps, he shall burn it. And when Aaron lighteth the lamps at even, he shall burn it, a perpetual incense before the Lord throughout your generations. Then we go to next, the next book, Leviticus, and chapter twenty four. Leviticus twenty four and verse one: And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Command the children of Israel that they bring unto thee pure olive oil, beaten for the light, to cause a lamp to burn continually. Without the veil of the testimony, in the tent of meeting shall Aaron order it from evening to morning before the Lord continually. It shall be a statute forever throughout your generation. He shall order the lamps upon the pure candlestick before the Lord continually. And then for a final reading, we go to the next book, the book of Numbers and chapter eight. Numbers chapter eight and verse one: And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto Aaron and say unto him, When thou lightest the lamp, the seven lamps shall give light in front of the candlestick, or over against the candlestick. And Aaron did so. He lighted the lamps thereof so as to give light in front of the candlestick, as the Lord commanded Moses. And this was the work of the candlestick, beaten work of gold, unto the base thereof and unto the flowers thereof. It was beaten work, according unto the pattern which the Lord had showed Moses, so he made the candlestick. May the Lord himself instruct us as we think. We continue this evening our study of the candlestick, or as we ought better to describe it, the lampstand, whose function was to stand inside here in the tent and be the vehicle of the oil lamps. And we took it as a picture of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the vehicle of God's light and revelation to men. We noticed that the whole thing was made out of one solid lump of pure gold. It started off with a base of pure gold, and we took ourselves to the Gospel of John and, so to speak, read the parable in its details, step by step, with what the first chapter of the Gospel of John has to say about our Lord. Remember the chapter, uh, tells us that our Lord was the word of God. He was the very essence of God. He was also the vehicle of expression of the knowledge and delight of God towards men. And the first thing we noticed about this base was that it was made of pure gold, indicative of our Lord's divinity. We reminded ourselves about the evangelist statement, that in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God. Then we noticed how the shaft was made to look like a tree, as if it were growing up out of the base, as though it were alive. And we likened it to the evangelist's word about our Lord, he who was the Word of God, who was God, of him we read that in him was life, and that life was the life of men. We saw that that light, however, shining in darkness, but the darkness did not, uh, comprehend it, the darkness having come about, blinding men's eyes as a result of, uh, the fall of our forefather. Then we noticed that this central shaft had six branches going out of it. That is, the life of the central shaft extended itself out through these six branches. And when we got down further in that first chapter of John's gospel, we find he has a something very similar to say. He says that in the beginning was the word, but then, um, this one who was the Word, he came to his own people, the Jews, to his own things, and his own people, the Jews, received him not, but as many as received him, to them gave he the authority to become the children of God, even to those that believed on his name. We notice that our Lord extended his life, so to speak, to those who received him. He imparted his own very life, the life of God, if you will, so that these people are said to have been born of God, to have received the very life of God, and therefore to become the children of God through believing on the name of our Lord. And we notice that, um, the central shaft was adorned with knobs and flowers and fruit, uh, buds, you see, and flower and fruit, the three stages of growth. And if you please, we notice that the branches too were adorned with the same thing, with, uh, buds and flowers and fruit. And that the, uh, fruit of the central shaft was almonds, and that the fruit of the branches was almonds. Not really a thing to be surprised at. It would have been odd, wouldn't it, if the tree trunk had been almonds and the branches had been oranges. You would expect the branches to bring forth the same fruit as the trunk because they possess the same life and hence the same nature. And we read there in a parable that the secret of Christian character is not first and foremost effort. It is that every believer is joined to the Lord Jesus as branches are joined to a tree, and that the Lord imparts his life to them, and with his life comes his nature, so that it becomes natural, so that it becomes, I better put it, second nature to the believer to do the things that Christ would have him do. Second nature, mark you, because a believer never loses the old first nature, does he? But, uh, he has, in addition to that old human nature, the very life and with it the nature of God, and hence, um, is able to bring forth the fruits of Christian. But we must go further with our parable this evening. I want, first of all, to make one more point about the nature of the fruit that was, uh, i- i- i- represented on this lampstand. We noted a moment ago that it was almonds, almonds in the bud, in the blossom, in the fruit. Almonds. Now, um, uh, the Hebrews were rather simple, in the right sense, and picturesque people. They called an almond tree not an almond tree, uh, they called it a waker tree, meaning a tree that woke up, a waker tree. And the reason why they called it a waker tree was that, uh, the almond tree is one of the first fruit trees in the Middle East to wake up, so to speak, out of the deadness of winter and begins to put forth its blossoms and then its leaves and then its fruit. They loved the almond tree for that. It told them that the winter was over and that the new sap and the new life of spring was beginning to come up the branch, up the trunk and out through the branches. That nature, so to speak, was beginning to live again after the deadness of winter. The waker tree. We may also remember an historical incident in the Old Testament that will help us further to interpret this matter of, uh, almond blossom and fruit on this lampstand. You, uh, will recall the time when Korah, Dathan, and Abiram rebelled against Moses and against Aaron. And God showed his displeasure of Kor- Korah, Dathan, and Abiram for disputing the rights of the great, of the high priest Aaron, uh, by opening the ground and swallowing up Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, they went down alive into the pit. But then God gave positive evidence that he wished Aaron to be high priest and nobody else. He told the Israelites to assemble the heads of the tribes, twelve heads for the twelve tribes. And these twelve gentlemen, the heads of the tribes, were bidden to bring their stick of office, their staff, so to speak. And they got these twelve sticks, and they laid them up overnight in the tabernacle, uh, before the Lord. When they came in the morning, eleven of those sticks were nothing more than they were the night before, simply dead, lifeless sticks. But the twelfth stick, the stick that belonged to Aaron, if you please, had budded and sprouted and blossomed and had brought forth almonds. Not apples, not oranges, but almonds. The seemingly dead stick had come to life again. There had been, so to speak, a resurrection, and the life was showing itself in the form of almond buds, blossoms, and fruits. It is but a little step, I'm sure, for us to take, to go from that, to say that almonds in scripture are a symbol, when they are being used symbolically, are a symbol of the resurrection life of Christ. Is that not so? I remind you that, uh, not only did men dispute Aaron's high priesthood, men disputed Christ. In fact, the writer, uh, of the letter to the Hebrews recalls that incident of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram when he talks about those, the gainsaying of sinners against themselves. He says, does he not, that our Lord endured the gainsaying, the, the, uh, rebellion, the contradiction of... The authorized version reads sinners against himself, but it is a preferable reading to read he endured the gainsaying of sinners against themselves. They were sinners against themselves in that, in resisting the claims of our Lord, they were sinning against their own salvation. Well, now the phrase, of course, is taken from the core of Dathan and Abiram incident. After that terrible happening when God had judged those rebels and swallowed them up, God directed Moses that they were to take the incense burners, and he says, take the incense burners of those sinners against themselves, namely Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, and beat them out, uh, flat and put them around this altar as a terrible warning to people not to, um, dispute the claims of the high priest. So then our Lord, uh, sinners against themselves contradicted him, denied and opposed his claims, and put him to a cross. And how did God vindicate him? Why, he vindicated him by raising him from the dead and seating him at his own right hand. They laid his body in a tomb. It seemed as dead as dead could be. It was dead. But the third day, God raised him from the dead, set him at his own right hand in glory, called of God a high priest forever. I shall take it then as demonstrated that the almonds on this lampstand tell us not only of our Lord in whom is life, but they remind us that our Lord is not only life, but he is the resurrection and the life. That's even more marvelous. For life can die, but our Lord is not a life that ends in death, never to be again. Our Lord is the resurrection and the life, not the life and the resurrection, but the resurrection and the life. Those words come to us this evening, shedding, ah, such a lovely light on our darkened world. Look where you will around our world. Look where the sunlight of human joy shines brightest. Where it shines brightest, you'll see the darkest shadows, shadows that ever are lengthening upon us. The brightest of human joys will give place at length to the darkness of death. We live in a world that is ever surrounded like a letter of mourning with a black edge. Sad those people who have no light to shine upon life and shine over the grave and shine its rays over into eternity. Oh, come, let us look tonight, by the Lord's help, in the light of this lovely lampstand, in the light of him who is resurrection and alive. Come, let's look over the edge of life, on into the eternal. It needn't be, my friend, a great unknown. I must say, I think it's a sad thing when I hear my friends, they talk about their relatives maybe, or their friends that have died, and they talk about they've gone out into the great unknown. Well, my friend, it needn't be a great unknown. See, there's light to lighten its darkness. We remember the words of our Lord Jesus Christ in the Gospel of John in chapter eight we find them. We're speaking to the Jews, he said, he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. He that keepeth my word, says he, shall not see death. I love that phrase. He didn't say that if we, if a man keep his word, he shall not die. What he said was, if a man keeps his word, he shall not see death. And again, let it get, let us get it clearly. Our Lord didn't say that if a man keeps his word, he shall not experience the pains of dying. We all shall. Come quick, come soon, come quickly, come slowly. Unless the Lord comes, we shall see what, uh, dying is, and maybe for some it will be excruciatingly painful. But my good Christian brother, though you die a lingering and a painful death, and you know all too well what dying is, let the Lord tell you that you shall never see death itself. You'll never know what death is. For the very instant you close your eyes on this world, and you're absent from the body, you will be present, uh, with the Lord. You'll never see death. He himself saw death. When in the pangs of Calvary, God forsook him, and in spirit he went out into that vast unknown. But no believer that trusts him shall ever know or see what it is, in the real sense of the term, to be cut off from God and die. Lovely, isn't it? Listen to it again. If a man keep my word, he shall never see death. How do you make that out, said the Jews in a rather spirited conversation. What are you saying now, said they, young man from Nazareth? What do you mean? You say if a man keep my word, he shall never see death? The prophets are dead, they said, and Moses is dead, and Abraham is dead, and all our great fathers are dead. Who are you, said they? It was rather true, I'm afraid. They followed a very dead religion, that was very dead. Who are you, said they? Oh, said he, your father Abraham now, he rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it and was glad. They said, now we know you're round the bend completely. Because you're not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham? What are you talking about, young man, said they? People, uh, if they keep your word, shall never see death, and that Abraham himself rejoiced to see your day. What are you talking about? Hear his answer. Abraham saw my day. How? Said he, before Abram was, I am. Ah, what a wonderful moment for that human figure that stood before them on the very streets of Jerusalem, in the temple courts. See what he was saying. Not merely before Abram was, I was, but before Abraham was, I am. Timeless and boundless being. Coextensive with eternity and overflowing eternity's far-flung banks. I am, says he. I am. Ha. Made of solid gold, wasn't it? The base was solid gold. And he who came amongst men to bring the very light of God into our darkened world, he is he of whom 'tis said, I am he that liveth. True, I became dead, but I am alive again forevermore. Timeless and eternal. Ah, the man that keeps his word, the man that follows him, he shall never see death. My dear brother, even to the last moment on your dying bed, there shall be with you him whose eternal undying life shall be so bright as you'll never even see death. But hear again what he said when he spoke to Martha and Mary at the death of their brother, saying, I am the resurrection and the life. It is perhaps more marvelous than on times we think. You'll remember the scene. Lazarus had died. The two sisters were somewhat perturbed. They had expected the Lord to come and stop, uh, the course of death. They had sent to the Lord saying, he whom thou lovest is sick, and in that message was an implied invitation and a request that our Lord should come and heal Lazarus so he didn't die. But strangely, our Lord had waited at a distance, and Lazarus had died. And Four days had gone, and Lazarus had been in the tomb, now a corrupting corpse. Then our Lord came. Martha went out to meet him. Gently, but quite firmly, she hinted to our Lord that this was a mystery she couldn't understand. Lord, said she, if you'd come earlier, you know, if you'd have been here, Lord, she said, my brother wouldn't have died. Said our Lord, reading the sorrow of that statement. Martha, he said, your brother shall rise again. Ah, yes, she said, I know that, Lord. I know that much. I know he shall rise again at the last day. Where'd she got that from? Well, she'd heard the Lord, surely, and his repeat- his previous statements. Our Lord had said it before. We have it recorded in John six that, uh, he would save those that believed on him, and it was the will of his father that he should not lose them, but that he should raise them up at the last day. And Martha had believed that. She believed that because Lazarus in life had trusted the Savior, at the very last day, the Savior would right- raise him again. But the Savior had something even more wonderful for Martha than that. Said he, Martha, no, no, I'm not talking about that quite at the moment. Martha, he that, uh, believeth in me, even though he were dead, yet shall he live, and he that liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest you that? For, said he, I am the resurrection and the life. By this time, they were standing right near the grave. Mark it, our Lord says not, I am going to raise Lazarus one day, but with Lazarus already in that grave, says our Lord, I am the resurrection and the life. Martha, you trust me, and I have given you my life. You share my life. Ah, yes, just like those branches, you know. For she was one of those that had received him, and he had given her power to become a child of God. And standing there on that ground, Martha, you have my very life. Nice, good. What about Lazarus in the tomb? In life, he trusted me. While he still lived with physical life, I gave him my life. Martha, think a moment, the life I gave him, what kind it is. I am the resurrection and the life. And already have I given to you as I have given to him. Already have I given to you both. A life that knows how to defeat death. Already is he joined to me, and joined to me in the power of a life that knows no dying. The life I gave him is not a perishable thing. True, he sleeps physically, but he's not lost to us, Martha. True, he sleeps physically, but in all the most important things about life, he lives. Those of our loved ones who are physically asleep, are we accustomed to think of them as though they were lost from us? As though they were parted from us. We go up to the bed on which they lie. We speak, but they hear nothing. We show them things, but they see nothing. And then you've lost them. And they've parted from you. No, sir. They live still. Because our Lord is the resurrection and the life, mark what he said when he first heard, when he first knew that Lazarus had departed, said he, our friend Lazarus sleeps, sleeps, that's all. The disciples didn't understand, so he had to say plainly, well, in physical terms, our friend Lazarus has died. A death for a believer is no more than a sleep. They're not parted from you, my brother, they whom you loved and have lost a while. Not parted, not gone, not lost. They live. Have you never heard what God said to, uh, Moses at the bush? He said, I am the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob. Not, please, I was the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, as though to say I was their God when they were alive, but of course then they died, so the relationship was sundered. No, no, no. I, I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, for all live unto him. Comforting words indeed. And the Apostle Paul, by the Holy Spirit, makes them explicit to us in the letter to the Romans. Says he to believers, if the spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ Jesus from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his spirit who dwells in you. Think what it means. God raised up Jesus from the dead, but the spirit of God that raised up Jesus from the dead already dwells in you, my brother. And the power that brought our Lord out from the, uh, embalming w- uh, clothes and out through the rock sepulcher and past the Roman guards and seated him a living savior on the throne of God. Allow God to tell you that spirit already is in you, already in you. Then if the spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwells in you already, he that raised up Christ Jesus shall one of these days quicken your very mortal body, and mortality shall give place to immortality, and corruptibility to incorruption. Then shall be brought to pass the saying which is written, death is swallowed up in victory. Oh death, where's thy sting? Oh grave, where is thy victory? For a man that knows Christ and is joined to him, come disease, come pain, come death with all its sorrow, yet shall we sing triumphantly still, the Lord is coming. And God giveth us the victory. And so we may read into our Lord's word, a blessed program indeed, says he, he that, um, uh, believeth in me, even though he die, that is, even though he die physically, yet shall he live. And then something even more wonderful. And he that liveth, that is physically, and believeth in me, shall never die. No, I tell you why. Find me a man who is still, uh, we which are among those that are described as we which are left and remain until the coming of the Lord. A man who lives on to the coming of the Lord, physically. Find me such a man, and this is true of him, that the Lord shall come, and while he still physically lives, he shall be bodily taken up to meet the Lord. And he shall never die, not even physically. For the Lord shall descend from heaven with a shout, and the dead in Christ shall be raised first. Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them to meet the Lord in the air. So shall we ever be with the Lord. And hard on the heels of the facts comes the exhortation, wherefore comfort one another with these words, courage, my brother, courage. I can't promise you you won't meet a very painful death. I can't promise you you won't lose your loved ones, but courage, my good man. The Lord is coming. Though they sleep, though you sleep, yet shall you not be lost. You shall not even see the ugly monster that is death. For when the Lord comes, your very body shall be raised and united with the living Christians forever with the Lord. There's another deduction to be made from it all. You may remember when we were discussing this, uh, lampstand at the first, we pointed out how that shaft was made to look as if it were alive. And we recall John's statements, in him was life, and that life was the light of men. That is to say, our Lord was the one through whom all things was me- were made, and all the teeming life the universe threw found its origin in him. In him was the life. And that life was the light of men. We said that the only way to make sense of human life is to trace human life back to the author and the source of that life. And so, tracing it back to its author and source, should we find the purpose and meaning of life, so should we find light on life's ways. And then we notice the sad fact that though this light shines, it shines in darkness, and the darkness does not comprehend it. The world at large is gone from God. Men have turned each one to their own way. They are estranged from him who is the very root and base of their being. They're cut off from him, and cut off from him who is the very source of life, they are in process of withering away. The life that is cut off from God is cut off from the Savior. A life that has not yet been found by the Savior and reunited with him. That is a life that is walking already in darkness and knows not whither it goeth. Haven't you met them, friend? Haven't you met them by their hundred? Haven't you met them as they've come from a recent grave? And in all their sorrow, they have no hope, no hope, have no certainty within. The friends have gone from them, and they've gone out into what to them is a unknown, a great unknown. It's that that makes nonsense of life, that makes its passing joys seem oh so temporary and in the end empty. It is that that makes life's sorrows and pain a nightmare. No wonder the writer to the Ecclesiastes, when he looked around on the futility of life bounded by this little horizon of time, the round of daily chores that seems to get us nowhere, the round of study that never gets us to the end. The round of pleasure that is merely repetitive and gets us nowhere. No wonder he said, having sights that went no further than this life, said he, all is vanity and vexation of spirit. What a lovely contrast the New Testament is. I love the words of triumph. Here comes another preacher, but he, unlike the first, his sights are set beyond the grave. Not bound he by the narrow limits of threescore years and ten. Not he confounded by the mystery of human suffering and pain and death. He's found the Savior. He's been united to the Lord. And already on earth is he joined to one that triumphed over death, one who is the resurrection and the life. This man, the great apostle, already holds within his breast that Holy Spirit that one day he is confident will change his very body and make it immortal. My brethren, he says, Christ has risen. Though we sorrow, we sorrow not as those that have no hope. One day the grave shall be defeated. Thanks be unto God, says he. He giveth us the victory. But now, my brethren, what now? Why, seeing that Christ is risen and become the first fruits of them that slept. Wherefore, brethren, be always steadfast and unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord. Why so? Because you know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord. Though what you do for the Savior seems at last to crumble into the dust of the grave, my brother, there's not a minute's work that you did for him, but what shall outlast eternity. Life is worth living. However great its handicap, however great its pain, however great its difficulty and problem, life is worth living. Every inch of it can be meaningful. And he who has saved us will make even the pains of death in the end turn to his glory. He shall make us more than conquerors through him that loved us. Now we must turn to another thing. The function of this stand, I repeat, was to be the vehicle of the light inside this, um, holy. On its, uh, branches here were lampstands placed, uh, were lamps placed, and the lamps filled with oil and burned by means of a wick. I want to put the two things together to start with. The light light was, uh, oil light. We're not left to interpret the, uh, parable. I remind you that the prophet Zechariah, so he tells us in his chapter four, was once given a vision of another lampstand. It wasn't, if I may confide in you, it wasn't a real lampstand at all, of course, it never did exist anywhere. It was a lampstand he saw in a vision. It was a rather a mira- miraculous lampstand. Um, he saw it in a vision, and not only was it like this, but at the top here it had a very big bowl, a sort of a reservoir for oil to be in. And then standing each side was an olive tree growing out of the ground, and there were pipes from each of the olive trees that went in and they fed the, the big bowl, the big receptacle. And then there were pipes coming down from the receptacle, gravity feed, I expect, early model gravity feed, that went out through the branches and up into the lamps. And in consequence, the lamps never went out, you see, because the olive trees kept manufacturing the oil, which came down the pipes, which went into the receptacle, which went down the other pipes and into the lamps, which constantly burned. I- I say it wasn't a real lampstand, it was only a vision. It was given to, um, Zechariah as a- as a parable. Zechariah and his friends were living in the days when the, uh, second temple was built, that is the Solomon's temple repaired. A very small company of God-fearing people they were, pitted against the opposition of the ungodly pagan great empire of Persia. And they were having a lot of trouble from their enemies in keeping the testimony for God going in their locality. And God wanted to initiate Zechariah into the secret of keeping the light of testimony going for God. And so he gave him this vision of a supernatural, so to speak, and miraculous supply of oil into the lampstand of their testimony. And the lesson was summed up in these words. You see that oil and its miraculous supply? Learn from that this, that your testimony, Zechariah, for me is not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord. But just as the oil fed the lamps, so does God's Holy Spirit maintain the testimony of God's people. We get the idea then. So next we ask, well now, these lamps on this candlestick, what was their function? Well, as we said last week, it wasn't first and foremost to be the light of the world, you know, because the lampstand didn't stand out here. It stood inside here, and the whole thing was covered over with the curtains, and there was a, there's a thing up at the front here. So it wasn't primarily, was it, to be the light of the world. What was it for? Well, its first function is given us in Leviticus twenty four. You have to put the lamps on the candlestick, says God, that they may shine before me. So in the silence, when no other body was there, when no priest or prelate was there, the lamps shone, they shone for God's pleasure. You see, my good friend, you ask what human life is for, we really come down to this basic matter that we've toyed with so long. What is life for? What is its purpose? Why, life comes from God, but its purpose is to go to God. You were built, my good woman, for God's pleasure. He wanted to watch you living. He wanted to watch you behaving. He wanted to see the loveliness, sir, of your behavior, of your character. That's the purpose you live for. God made you, my good sir, to shine before him. Not to make money, you. Oh, you may have to do that in the process. But that isn't the goal of life. The point and purpose of life is that we shine before the Lord. I'm not sure that God, uh, cares so much whether you make a thousand a year or ten thousand, but he is concerned, my brother, how you make it. He is concerned to see the fruit of his Holy Spirit working in your heart, shining the glory of God back to God, so that he can enjoy you, enjoy your fellowship. Is not that a worthy end and aim in life? Can you make sense of life without it anyway? Of him, you see, are all things, but says Holy Scripture, to him are all things. They who surround God's throne, so we are bidden to think. Those who are, whose intelligence is more than human, they cry daily in the ears of God, worthy art thou to receive the honor and the glory and the wealth and the majesty, for for thy pleasure all things were and were created. It's when we come to see things in that light that we can begin to see the gravity of human sin. Human sin is not merely that we have gone out and bashed each other over the head and killed each other. That's a mere detail. Human sin is this, that we've taken personalities that were meant to live for God's pleasure, and we have all gone astray. All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way. Oh, it may be quite a decent and respectable way, but my brother, if it's your own way, it's absolutely meaningless and lost to God. Why, if only it was a motor car and you had made it, you'd want it to go your way, wouldn't you? And if your motor car would persist in going where it wanted to go itself another way, you'd scrap it, wouldn't you? You wouldn't have a motor car. You wouldn't put up with it. Not if you made it to go your way, if it constantly went its own way. And if men go their own way, in the end their life and existence shall become so meaningless, God will put them on the scrap heap of eternity. By time we who are redeemed, let us learn our chief function, our first function, is to shine before the Lord. And our next function? It's, uh, Numbers chapter eight. Now look, I wonder if you noticed how vivid that passage was. Ha. It says to Moses, now Moses, command Aaron, uh, when you light the lights on this lampstand, the lamp shall give light over against it, that is over against the central shaft, so placed that their lights, when they were lit, would shine, not so much in front of it, that's over here somewhere, but shine, give light over against it, the it being the central shaft. And you see the drama of the passage. Tell to Aaron that when he lights the lamps, the lights shall give, uh, of the candlestick, the lampstand, that is the central shaft. The seven lamps thereof shall give light over against it, the central shaft. Now that work of the central shaft, says the passage, that work of the lampstand, you see it, don't you? Aaron goes in and puts up the lights as told. The lights give light over against it. Oh, oh, look there, says Moses. Wow, uh, the uh, that that lampstand, look at that lovely beaten work. Yes, that was what it was meant to do. God didn't waste that declaration on there, you know. It was there so when the light shone, oh, your first impression when you went in there would be, oh wow, what a lovely bit, what a lovely thing, just look at those flowers, look at those blossoms, oh, I see all the fruit, I see the buds, yeah. Mature fruit and lovely, beautiful life and still more of it to come, buds with all their potential, yes. This thing is a parable. The Holy Spirit is coming, said our Lord to his disciples, he was, he was about to leave them. And, uh, I'm going to send him, in fact, I'm going to send the Holy Spirit, the comforter, to you, that he may be in you and abide with you and fill you. And what effect shall that have? Oh, listen. How be it when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he shall guide you into all the truth, for he shall not speak from himself, but what things soever he shall hear, these shall he speak, and he shall declare unto you the things that are to come. He shall glorify me. That's it. The lamp and the lamps that shone upon the central shaft, it shall glorify me. What a lovely function you have, my dear sister, and you, my dear brother. About your house, and when you come together in church, and the Holy Spirit is in you, and guiding your behavior, and last of all, your lips. What for? Why, so when other folks look at you, they shall be reminded of the loveliness of Christ. That's what for. Ministry? Oh, this is its aim. The Holy Spirit in you, my brother, is longing to direct people's attention to the loveliness of Christ. Ah. It sounds to be beyond us, doesn't it? When they look at me, they think of some crabbed old character who criticizes more and puts people into the dumps. That's not the Holy Spirit's fault. I have within me, you have within you, if you will be a believer, that gracious personality come down through you to shine upon the glories of Christ. God give us grace in our homes, in our churches, that we fulfill and attend to our ministry. My brother, if you fail to direct people in your church, in your daily living. If the light of your life fails to direct other folks to the loveliness of Christ, there's nothing you'll ever do will compensate for the loss. Hmm. And then what else? Well, it was, of course, obviously, uh, its purpose stood in there was to give light so that the people might come around, uh, to to minister at that altar, uh, and to feed with God at that table and to approach the veil and so on. It was there to afford the priests light on their ministry, to show them how to serve God in his house. And so does the Holy Spirit to this day. Time forbids that I should do more than remind you of a passage which we studied in another connection, but an exceedingly important passage. Those first four chapters of the first letter to the Corinthians. You will remember that chapter two of the first epistle to the Corinthians is full from end to end with blessed said truth about the person of the Holy Spirit. It says that nobody can know the things of a man, save the spirit of a man. It argues that no one can know God except the spirit of God, and all the lovely things that God has for us are only knowable by the power of the Holy Ghost. And we recognize at once it is true. But come, what is the point of this disquisition upon the Holy Spirit in chapter two of First Corinthians. Let me put it in its context. The point of this was this, that at Corinth, as they went about assembly life, they had begun to divide themselves, and some followed Paul, and some followed Peter, and some followed Apollos. At least these are names that are used for example's sake. I suspect it was that some people like Paul's, uh, uh, intricate theological thought, and other people said, no, we don't like theology, we love, uh, Peter's practical emphasis. And other people said, ah, but you know, they're hopeless preachers, both of them. What we like is Apollos and his beautiful eloquence and rhetoric moves your very heart. But that was lovely until they then began making groups, and some people made a group around Paul, and they call themselves the Paulites. And some people made a group around Apollos, and they call themselves the Apollosites. And some people made a group around Cephas and call themselves Cephasites. And alas, Christendom has followed their example. See here a brother, and he's got now the idea of salvation. Oh, the beauty and glory of salvation has filled his soul, and he wants to tell everybody about salvation, and that's delightful. So then he gets some Christians, and he joins them around himself here, and he gets a church, and he separates it from the other churches, and he calls it a church about salvation, as distinct from other Christian churches. Oh, what a tragedy. Tragedy. One good brother finds that the Bible has all that we need about how we should guide our churches, full of assembly truth, and he wants to tell the believers, his fellow believers everywhere, what a treasure he's found in the wisdom of God about church truth. Lovely. And then he begins to separate churches off and, uh, give them churches that stand for church truth as distinct from... Ah, my brother. Why distinct? Oh, but said the Greeks, you know, we found it's a very good way. You see, in the world, now you take our politics, uh, or if you like, you take our, you take our philosophical societies. We're all seeking the same truth, but you see, some of us follow Zeno and our Stoics, and some of us follow Aristotle, and some of us are more convinced that Plato is nearer the truth. Now, you see, what we do is, uh, we form a society around Plato, some of us, and we push to the world what Plato thought. You see, if we didn't join up and all do it in a bunch, then the world might lose that particular emphasis. And the other fellas over there, they don't belong to our group, they belong to another group. They think that Aristotle has got some better slant on truth, and so they push the Aristotle line. And others, they say, no, no, the cynics have got the answer, and they push the cynic level, and they divide themselves up into their little groups so that in any city you'll find a group of cynics, and you'll find a group of Plato people, and you'll find a group of Aristotelians. And is not the cause of truth said that way? Listen, says Paul, in the name of God, I outright and downright forbid you to do it. Lovely that you should have found some truth. Never, my dear brethren, get yourself into little groups. Never you dare take a name or a label that is not common to all Christians. But you say if we don't, if we don't take a special name, nobody will know what we stand for. Who said that was your responsibility? Do you want to emphasize to the world that Christians are divided? Do you? Anyway, cut a long story short. You'll only get to know God, says Paul, by his Holy Spirit. And his Holy Spirit says that if you still call yourself different names and separate yourself into huddles and call yourself separate names that are not common to all God's people, then you are carnal, and you walk as men, and the results will be carnality and weakness spiritually. You say it works in the world? I don't care, says Peter. If any man thinks he's wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise. You may muster all the arguments you can find to show that denominationalism is right, and that you must have your join-ups and your synods. And when you're finished, God will say, and thank you very much. Now, my dear sir, it sounds all very wise, but will you please let it go and become a fool, will you? And learn to do as my Holy Spirit tells you. The Israelites were not sun worshippers, you know, the other nations were, but the Israelite, when he entered this place here, he turned his back on the light of the sun, and he came inside the tent that had no ordinary daylight at all. There was soul there, the light of that candlestick. When it comes to the way we organize our churches, God help us to give ear to his book. We must not divide God's people by setting up a denomination of our own. We must not call ourselves by a name that is not common to all God's people. And if need be, let's become fools and forsake our worldly wisdom and be guided by God's Holy Spirit. Finally, on the practical side, did you notice there were seven lamps on that candlestick? Not one? Yeah. It's not just one lamp, you know. It's our Lord and his people, all his people. And whether you have prominent gift, my sir, or not, God wants every single member of the body through whom to show light upon the person of Christ. And in church, he doesn't just want one man doing it all, you know. Are all evangelists? Certainly not. Are all teachers? I shouldn't think so. Are all prophets? Definitely no? But God has given many gifts, and he doesn't want you, my brother, however brilliant you are, he doesn't want just you. You're only a fraction of the light. God wants all the gifts in turn and in order being used through which to shine upon the person of his son. Let's not forget that that light was, after all, connected with the design of the flowers, wasn't it? There is a connection, my brother. But if I stand up in your assembly and I deliver you such a learned message all about the lovelinesses of Christ from the scripture, and you turn round and see my life full of crookedness and hates and spite, so well you'll say, ha ha ha, but the light doesn't match the character. Then let us give good heed that first we develop Christian character so that we may shine the more effectively. Let's bring oil, let's listen to the command that bids us be filled with the Holy Ghost, and then let us finally take courage. You know, those lamps on there, they were, after all, only lamps, and they were only oil lamps, they weren't even electricity. And, uh, you know what lamps will do. Sometimes they, they soot up, don't they, and the wick gets all, uh, full of dirty, dark, black stuff, and then the light begins to burn low, and presently, if you're not careful, it will begin to smell a bit and chase your visitors away. Ha. So it did there. But when the old lamps got a bit thick with, uh, uh, lamp black, then the high priest came, and he took the lamp down, and for a moment he put the light out, and he pared the old wick, and he made it clean again so that it would shine brightly. But while he did so, lest any should be offended by the nasty smell, he burned incense on the altar of incense before God. Oh, how lovely. And my brother, the best of us sometimes, we get a little bit suited up, don't we? And where there ought to come out light, there comes out a rather dirty smudge, and sometimes a bit more smell than light. Hey, what? Hi. Then we would be wise to withdraw into the presence of the great high priest and let his fragrance fill the place while we submit the wick of our personality to his gracious pruning. But let us not be afraid to shine. Humble, poor little spitting wick I may be. But you know, when Aaron lighted the lamps and the flame was beginning to flicker and spit and spark all over the place before it got a steady hold, while Aaron lighted, then again he burned incense. My good brother, do your knees knock when you contemplate getting up and publicly giving thanks at the Lord's Supper? Do they? And you're afraid to do it in case you make a muddle of it. Remember, my brother, that before you rise from your seat, there has been a greater than you, raising the incense of his intercession in the presence of God. So be it. He might encourage that, uh, flickering flame of your testimony. I don't care how flickering it is, he wants to see it shine, to add its little to the glories of Christ. Let's take courage from his ministry, and by God's grace, let us shine.