Exodus 27:20-21
And thou shalt command the children of Israel, that they bring unto thee pure olive oil beaten for the light, to cause a lamp to burn continually.
In the tent of meeting, without the veil which is before the testimony, Aaron and his sons shall keep it in order from evening to morning before the Lord: it shall be a statute for ever throughout their generations on the behalf of the children of Israel.
Oil for the light.
The great, growing conviction in me is that the greatest need of our time is a true knowledge and understanding of the Holy Spirit and His work.
Such knowledge, spiritually apprehended, would really solve, I thought, the greater number of the problems which beset Christians and the church today.
If only we really lived in the good of the indwelling Holy Spirit, with all that means, as a matter of fact, how different everything would be.
Oh, I say again, I think the need of our time is for such an understanding.
So, I thought this morning just to touch on the very fringe of that matter, not by any attempt to fathom it or exhaust it. This simple fragment: “Thou shalt command the children of Israel, that they bring pure olive oil for the light.”
That is, this is a command to the Lord’s people. This is an imperative. This is a necessity. This is indispensable. This is an essential command.
This is not optional, left to choice. This is an obligation: command the children of Israel that they bring oil for the light.
Now, first of all, the place of the light. The lampstand, you know, was within the holy place, between the outer court and the most holy place.
It was in that place which, in type, is a between place—a place between heaven and earth, heaven and the world. There is the outside, and there is the inside. There is all that is here in this world on the one side; on the other side, there is all that which is essentially heaven, the very presence of God.
And in between, there was to be a place which united heaven and earth, and yet divided them.
I think the meaning is what our Lord meant in His great prayer. It seems to me that He was standing very much in this position when He prayed, as in John 17:
They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.
And yet, and yet, they are in the world. “These are in the world. I come to Thee. They are not of the world.”
It is so familiar, almost a hackneyed phrase: in the world, but not of it. Here is an in-between place which is the position of believers in this present dispensation, at this present time. It is our place, between heaven and earth, in a daily, real sense.
Well, we know that, do we not? We know that, on the one hand, we are here in this world right enough, and it is very real; and yet it is just as real that we do not belong. We are not of this world.
We are in an in-between place. You know that we are not yet literally and actually in heaven, and yet, somehow or other, we are deeply linked with heaven.
That is where the light was to be, or where the light was: that which divides heaven and earth, and yet brings them together.
There were no windows in that place—no windows in the holy place.
No provision was made for natural light. Natural light was excluded; but for this lamp, it would have been total darkness.
All that was there, represented in type and symbol—all the values and functions of that place—were only capable of being effective by a light which was not the light of nature: the light of the Spirit, the light produced by the oil.
That is very true, and touches very closely upon my opening remark.
This holy place, this in-between place, symbolized the position of Israel at that time. They were out of Egypt, but they were not yet literally and altogether in the land of the kingdom. They were in an in-between place, and oh, how they needed the light of heaven for that wilderness journey.
There are two aspects of the Christian life. In Christ, it is true, we are seated in the heavenlies. Peter will tell us that we are still pilgrims and strangers; we are sojourners. Always the two aspects.
And on this side, in this peculiar position, are God’s people at the present time: the pilgrimage aspect.
This is true to the very positive teaching in the New Testament. In this matter, God has made no provision for natural light. If you and I are going on our way to reach that full end, natural light, or one thing, will be no good to us. God has ruled it out. He has made no windows.
That is the argument of the First Epistle to the Corinthians, is it not?
The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him; and he cannot know them, because they are spiritually judged.
The whole point of the chapter in which that word occurs is that God has made no windows for that. Your reason does not come in here. The light of your natural judgment is not allowed here; it is all excluded.
The light that is here is the light from the oil; it is the light of the Spirit. So, the argument of the First Epistle to the Corinthians is the argument about the Spirit, is it not? What is spiritual—for guidance, for judgment, for counsel, for the knowledge of everything of the Lord.
No place for natural light, yet God’s own provision of light which is better than that. It is God’s own light.
Now look at the contents of this place, the holy place. Well, in addition to the lampstand, the golden lampstand, you know, there was the golden altar of incense. And then there was the golden table of the bread, of the loaves.
Simple symbols. God help us to understand the meaning of the light, the functioning of the oil. Just this, dear friends.
And, of course, we know the symbolism: the oil is the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is our light in all the things of God.
But this light is not just unto itself. It is to throw its rays upon, to light up, to illumine this whole matter of prayer.
And I am quite sure I carry you with me when I say, what a tremendous need there is that the people of God should know how to pray in the Spirit.
If only we knew how to pray in the Holy Ghost. That is a New Testament phrase: “Pray in the Holy Ghost.”
We need that. We shall never really get very far without that. We shall be going round in circles.
You see, the Lord, from time to time, called a halt in this journey for the setting up of the tabernacle again, with everything that it contained—right in the centre, this thing: the light in the holy place upon this matter of intercession and prayer, the altar of incense.
It is as though the Lord was saying, “We cannot get any further until we have put a new emphasis upon this matter of prayer in the Spirit, praying in the Holy Ghost. Our future, our progress, our fresh stages will require that we get into the Spirit of prayer again, and we get prayer in the Spirit.”
Now, it is difficult for me to convey all that I am feeling about that. But it depends, you will ask the point, if in our own prayers, our own prayer life privately, and when we come together for prayer as the Lord’s people, we were really praying in the Spirit, how much further we should get.
Instead of praying in our own judgments, our own impulses, our own ideas, our own reasoning—what ought to be, what we think should be, and so on—and uttering a lot of things out of our own natural light, if the Holy Spirit took hold of our praying and we brought in the Spirit, even one thing, how much further we should get.
You see, I do not believe it is possible to pray a thing in the Holy Ghost without an issue, without something happening, without something being reached, some movement taking place.
Look again in the Book of Acts. That is just what it was, you see. They prayed in the Spirit. And that did not mean that they just prayed in a kind of feeling.
The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of light, you see, and the Holy Spirit knows what God wants. He knows all the purposes of God, all the designs of God, all the ways of God, all the times of God. He knows when the time is due for such-and-such a thing. He knows exactly how that thing ought to be done. He knows it all. He is the Spirit of light.
Pray in the Holy Spirit, and you pray right on for the things that God intends, and they must be.
And I can do no more this morning than just make this appeal: that you and I seek the Lord yet more earnestly, that our prayer life shall be in the Spirit, illumined by the Spirit. We shall pray in the intelligence and the understanding of the Holy Spirit.
So, the oil for the light has a relationship to prayer in the Holy Spirit.
On the other hand, this light was thrown upon the table and the bread. And that surely indicates that we must feed upon the Word of God in the illumination of the Holy Spirit.
This is the extra factor that is so necessary. I feel perhaps more necessary today than ever, if that is possible.
You can take this Book, the Bible, and from the same Book, using exactly the same Scriptures, get a hundred different positions, every one of which is in conflict with the other. That is what has been done.
You see, nearly all the different aspects of Christianity today build themselves upon Scripture, support their position by Scripture; and very few of them can stand together. They are contradictory, if not antagonistic, to one another.
They take one thing out of the Word of God, and you get these different views which are absolutely in conflict with each other, and yet built upon Scripture. And that can be extended. Oh, there are so many things, so many ways.
Well, what are we to do? How are we to know? Not by leaving the Scripture and arriving at our own conclusions and judgments, but we need the Holy Spirit to tell us what the Scripture means.
There is something, you see, extra to the Word. The Spirit gave this Word, and He knew what He meant by it. And He never meant two conflicting and contradictory things. He is not like that.
The Spirit’s mind is one mind. Always very consistent is the Holy Spirit. And there are no contradictions in the Bible where the Holy Spirit is concerned. There are in our natural-light interpretations or apprehensions.
Do you not see how important it is to bring oil for the light? That, in the Word of God upon which we have got to feed—it is our bread. Christ has come to us as the bread, in the form of the Word.
Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.
Every word. Christ is the living Word; He is the living bread. But oh, we need the Holy Spirit to illumine this Word, and to interpret, and to convict, to save us from contradictions.
Ah, yes, but the Holy Spirit has no windows for our reasoning and our interpretation. Natural light here—everything is shut up to Him. Shut up to Him. Everything else excluded.
Well, time has gone. I think you see what I mean: the tremendous importance in our day of the Holy Spirit—knowing the Holy Spirit.
My last word is this: beaten. “Bring pure olive oil, beaten.”
There has got to be definite exercise about this matter—the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the illumination of the Spirit. It does not just happen, come about. It does not just come about.
We have got to get down to this matter: real exercise and energy, and make, shall I say, a business of it.
“Lord, Lord, rule out my feelings, rule out my likes and my dislikes. You come by Your Spirit and have absolute pre-eminence in my heart, in my mind, as I pray, as I read Thy Word.”
It is business. Beaten out. Real exercise about the place and the work of the Holy Spirit in our personal life with the Lord, and in our collective life.
And how we long to hear that note in our prayer gatherings: real laying hold—“Lord, now, Lord, tonight, in this hour, we must come into the mind of the Spirit in our praying.”
Real laying hold, getting it out.
Command the children of Israel that they bring pure olive oil, beaten, for the light.