All right. Is this on? I think it’s on. Yeah.
This is my second time—or, including last night, my third time. I remember two years ago, we were here under the training of Ministry of the Word. It was a trial-and-tribulation time. Many of us still remember. Everyone had about fifteen minutes, and I got that lot, so I shared.
Before I came here, I called Brother Khan and said, “I want to come here to retreat and to relax.” Now I get this assignment. I thought maybe two years ago I didn’t do enough, so this is time to make up.
Shall we open the Bible to Exodus 30? We will read from Exodus 30:22-33. I will read; everyone will listen.
Moreover the Lord spake unto Moses, saying,
Take thou also unto thee principal spices, of flowing myrrh five hundred shekels, and of sweet cinnamon half so much, even two hundred and fifty shekels, and of sweet calamus two hundred and fifty shekels,
And of cassia five hundred shekels, after the shekel of the sanctuary, and of olive oil a hin:
And thou shalt make it an oil of holy anointing, a perfume compounded after the art of the perfumer: it shall be a holy anointing oil.
And thou shalt anoint therewith the tent of meeting, and the ark of the testimony,
And the table and all the vessels thereof, and the candlestick and the vessels thereof, and the altar of incense,
And the altar of burnt offering with all the vessels thereof, and the laver and the base thereof.
And thou shalt sanctify them, that they may be most holy: whatsoever toucheth them shall be holy.
And thou shalt anoint Aaron and his sons, and sanctify them, that they may minister unto Me in the priest’s office.
And thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel, saying, This shall be a holy anointing oil unto Me throughout your generations.
Upon man’s flesh shall it not be poured, neither shall ye make any like it, according to the composition thereof: it is holy, and it shall be holy unto you.
Whosoever compoundeth any like it, or whosoever putteth any of it upon a stranger, he shall be cut off from his people.
Let’s read one more verse in Romans 5:5. Shall we read again together?
And hope putteth not to shame; because the love of God hath been shed abroad in our hearts through the Holy Spirit which was given unto us.
Pay attention to the second half of this verse: “The love of God hath been shed abroad in our hearts through the Holy Spirit which was given unto us.”
Can we pray?
Father, we thank You for such a wonderful time. We can come together in Your Son’s name. Lord, we just come under Your anointing so we can fellowship with You and with one another. May Your word be opened to us, and open our hearts and our ears that we can hear You and understand. May Your love touch all of us here. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
When God created human beings, we not only have this physical body; there is something else in this body which I think no computer can imitate. That is the five senses. We can feel, we can see, we can taste, we can smell—all these wonderful sensations we can experience in our body.
We just had our breaking of bread here. I think that’s the way our Lord teaches us: through touching the bread, tasting it, drinking it, seeing it, we learn. The Lord tries to tell us, “Remember Me.” Through these different sensations, we can feel something about the Lord and be reminded of how the Lord has worked in us.
Among these five senses, I think there is one that is very unique—at least I feel that way. That is smell.
This is the most beautiful time for me to come to Richmond. My thought about Richmond is always hot and humid, just like many of you have this impression about Seattle. Seattle is equivalent to rain, right? That is the kind of linkage our mind makes.
Smell can produce a very unique impression in a human being. I don’t know your experience: whether you enter a room, smell something, and immediately it triggers something way, way back in your childhood. You experienced something, and all the pictures suddenly come alive. The sensation of smell can really impress you deeply. You can never forget it.
I remember the first time I came to this country, in 1971. That was April. I arrived in Los Angeles, and they have a beautiful garden at Huntington Library. I don’t know how many of you have been there. Have you been there?
You will know, in springtime, you have this rose-blossom season, and the whole garden is permeated with this wonderful scent of roses. So every time I smell roses, Huntington Library comes to my mind.
The other thing: when I go to China, in Beijing there is a place, a summer palace for the queen in the old days. If you go into that place around a certain season, there are two kinds of trees there from the same family—golden osmanthus. Some Chinese names I cannot translate.
The flower is tiny, very small, pale white or like orange in color. They plant the trees all over that garden, and when you walk in, you smell a very sweet scent—just so pleasant. You know, the queen must have loved that kind of flower. It is nothing much to look at, only to smell. The flower itself is not something dramatic like roses, but that smell is just wonderful, wonderful. Every time you smell that, you remember the whole place.
Jesus used the wine and bread to remind us about Him. I think, here in the chapter we just read, Exodus 30, among all the utensils of the tabernacle, the furniture, and the priests, God used two things that carry scents we can smell, to remind us of something.
One thing we will fellowship about today, and I don’t think we have time to fellowship about the other subject, which follows the verses we just read. One is the holy anointing oil, and the second one is the incense.
Those two things carry special scents, and those wonderful aromas are supposed to remind us of something about God. So this morning I would like to use this time to meditate on this matter of the anointing oil.
We all know that the Bible uses oil to represent the Holy Spirit. In the New Testament, when the Holy Spirit was first introduced to us, it was when Jesus was baptized and the Holy Spirit came down and fell upon Him, using a symbol. I think the dove image was the image given to the people, to the public.
In the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit uses different meanings or symbols to express His meaning to all who serve within the house of God. This holy anointing oil had to be applied to all the vessels we just read about: the tent, the incense altar, the lampstand, the showbread, the ark—everything had to be anointed.
There must be a very special meaning concerning the holy anointing oil. The holy priesthood could not function unless they had been anointed by this unique, fragrant Holy Spirit.
Let us look at the ingredients in this oil. There are five components:
The incense also comprises five components. I think in the Bible, five often represents the grace of God. Let us consider these five components quickly.
First, let us talk about flowing myrrh. We all remember the story of baby Jesus. When Jesus was born, several Magi came to Bethlehem and offered gifts to Jesus: gold, myrrh, and frankincense. Remember those three gifts they presented to Jesus?
Then, by the time Christ was crucified, when they removed His body from the cross, there was another brother by the name of Nicodemus. He brought a lot of myrrh to spread on Jesus’ body. So we know that myrrh in the Bible always speaks about the death of Christ.
This first ingredient of flowing myrrh tries to tell us that this anointing of the Holy Spirit carries the power of the death of Jesus Christ. That is the beginning. Because He suffered for us, we can enjoy the anointing of the Holy Spirit. It also tells us that this death flows strictly from the love of God.
I think no better verses can describe this anointing than Song of Solomon 4. Let us read Song of Solomon 4:10-16. Brothers, verse 10; sisters, verse 11. We will take turns.
How fair is thy love, my sister, my bride!
How much better is thy love than wine!
And the fragrance of thine oils than all manner of spices!
A garden shut up is my sister, my bride;
A spring shut up, a fountain sealed.
Thy shoots are an orchard of pomegranates, with precious fruits;
Henna with spikenard plants,
Spikenard and saffron, calamus and cinnamon, with all trees of frankincense;
Myrrh and aloes, with all the chief spices.
Let us read verse 16 together.
Awake, O north wind; and come, thou south;
Blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out.
Let my beloved come into his garden,
And eat his precious fruits.
Here is the expression of the king to the Shulamite lady, and they use a lot of symbolic language. They use the oil, the spices, and all kinds of fruit trees to express that there is a beautiful fragrance in the garden. This garden represents the love between these two lovers, and that always represents the love between Christ and His church—us with our Lord.
You will see all these spices—cinnamon, cassia, and the others—all in this garden. These are very expensive spices. None of these ingredients were cheap in those times. They brought them out from Egypt when they were slaves there, and they brought out everything they possessed.
These plants could be found in North Africa, in that area, and some of these plants are hard to find nowadays. People tell us calamus is the pith of a plant. Do you know the pith? It is the heart of that tree trunk. You have to open it up, go to the core, and take that out. It has a very unique scent.
Cinnamon is the bark of the tree, and cassia is the flower of that tree. All this gives us a very clear picture of how the scent is brought out. Either you cut the tree up, or you have to cut the skin out; or, like the myrrh, you have to cut deeply and let the juice flow out.
I think many of you, if you have ever watched foresters collect gum from trees or collect maple syrup, know that they have to cut very deeply and let the juice flow out. There is a pot to collect all these things. It tells us that because the tree was injured and cut deeply, good juice flowed out.
Only because Christ suffered greatly can we enjoy His blessing, His grace for us.
Olive oil has the same principle. Two years ago, I was in Palestine, and we went from Egypt all the way up to the promised land. No—not walking, all of us! It is a long way—over forty years.
There was a garden where they had put all these typical-time tools so you could see what they mean when they talk about the olive press and all these things. Concerning the olive press, it is a big piece of rock, cut out, with a very heavy, round-shaped rock that goes around.
On this horizontal platform, you have carved channels. Whenever the heavy press rock rolls over the olives, the juice—the oil—is pressed out and flows through the channels, and you collect it at the bottom.
It all shows us that the oil comes because of the high pressure from the press, crushing olives, which are plentiful in that area. That produces the oil for us.
God purposely picked all these five ingredients and mixed them together to remind us of the characteristics of the Spirit of God and to remind us about Christ.
Every time in the Old Testament, the high priests served and ministered in the house of God, whenever they smelled the scent, they would remember what God had done for His people.
All these Old Testament pictures come back to our New Testament time. How do we experience this fact? I think the best picture for us to understand this is in Matthew 26. Let us turn to this familiar story, but I want to link these two together so you have a better understanding.
We will read Matthew 26:6-13.
Now when Jesus was in Bethany, in the house of Simon the leper,
There came unto Him a woman having an alabaster cruse of exceeding precious ointment, and she poured it upon His head, as He sat at meat.
But when the disciples saw it, they had indignation, saying, To what purpose is this waste?
For this ointment might have been sold for much, and given to the poor.
But Jesus perceiving it said unto them, Why trouble ye the woman? For she hath wrought a good work upon Me.
For ye have the poor always with you; but Me ye have not always.
For in that she poured this ointment upon My body, she did it to prepare Me for burial.
Verily I say unto you, Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached in the whole world, that also which this woman hath done shall be spoken of for a memorial of her.
It is a very beautiful picture. You see this woman pour out this precious perfume upon Jesus’ head. She is one of the few people who could do this before the resurrection of the Lord. In other words, only she caught the best time.
The reason she could catch this best time is that she had a heart of love and understood what Jesus would go through. She took this perfume and poured it out. It was a very expensive perfume, all over her Lord.
When she did this action, everybody else could not appreciate it. They grumbled. They said, “Why such waste? Why such waste?” But Jesus immediately defended her and told everybody else, “No, no, no. Don’t bother her. She has done this for Me.”
More than that, Jesus said whenever you preach the gospel, you have to mention what this woman did for Me. In Jesus’ eyes, His gospel and this love story belong together as a pair, letting people see the quality that Jesus is looking for.
There is the same response Jesus is looking for from human beings. The gospel is the love from God to us, and this perfume is a response from us to the Lord. They should come together, and that is a perfect picture. Otherwise, it is one-way love. We all know one-way love is very miserable. I hope “miserable” is the right word.
Concerning love, I think that is the most magical word, but so misunderstood. It is very interesting: every language has a way to express it. In English, we say, “fall in love,” right? That is something by accident—you just drop in.
For Chinese, when we talk about love, the ultimate of love is marriage, right? The Chinese word for marriage puts together a woman and fainting—I mean, passing out. So when a woman passes out, that is the time you get married.
Because love has no reason. When you have a clear reason, that is not love; that is reasoning. You fall in love. It is beyond reasoning.
Every time a father looks at his daughter dating another man, they always tell me, “What a jerk that guy is. How in the world can my daughter date that kind of person? Bad taste.”
Yes, from the third-party point of view, it does not make sense. But whoever has fallen in love knows it is just like that. Love is always beyond reason.
That is the way God fell in love with us. If you try to reason it, there is no reason whatsoever. It does not make sense. It is a bad investment. But somehow, He fell in love with us.
In the same way, God is looking for love to respond to His love. That is why Jesus so appreciated this woman’s offering. Right before Jesus would go to the cross, there was at least one sister who understood what the Lord was going through.
In this offering, she poured out the expensive perfume. That perfume filled the whole room, so that scent would remind all the disciples in that room what Jesus was really looking for. He said, “When you preach the gospel, you have to tell about this story,” because there is a love story behind this.
When God told the people of Israel that these priests were to use these five ingredients in the anointing oil, I think it was with the same principle.
In 1 Corinthians 13, that great chapter concerning love, remember verse 5? There are words that say love does not count. Remember that? Do you want to open it and read it?
Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not its own, is not provoked, taketh not account of evil.
“A wrong suffered”—that is added in. The original is just, “does not count.”
Any of us probably experience the same thing. Recently, we have a young brother in our fellowship. He told me, “You know, Jonathan, these days I really spend a lot of money in phone bills.”
I said, “What do you mean, a lot of money?” He said, “Yeah, my phone bill will go as high as six hundred dollars a month.” I said, “What kind of business are you running?” “No, no, I have no business. I make a lot of phone calls to New York.” I said, “To whom?” “Oh, my girlfriend.”
He will do it voluntarily and willingly. I remember twenty-some years ago, I had a couple of friends. The lady was here and the man was in Taiwan, so they had a lot of phone calls.
From a parent’s point of view, or from anybody else who has not been involved in this business of love, you would think, “You guys are crazy.” But when you have love, you do not count anymore, right? Just call. You know, that is called love.
But after you get married, strangely speaking, you start counting. I don’t think anyone would tolerate a six-hundred-dollar-a-month phone bill. Your husband will look at you: “Who are you talking to? You talk to your mom? Oh, that’s too much.”
From that, you can see the degree of your love. The deeper you love, the less you count. The more you count, don’t tell me you love me.
So ladies, remember that. If you want to test your boyfriend’s sincerity, let him do something beyond measure. Wait a minute.
When God loves us, He is so lavish. He pours out His love to us. If you try to count it, it is beyond all calculation.
We who receive the love should learn how to pour our love to God beyond calculation. There was a person who did that. Let us read 2 Corinthians 5:12-15.
We are not again commending ourselves unto you, but speak as giving you occasion of glorying on our behalf, that ye may have wherewith to answer them that glory in appearance, and not in heart.
For whether we are beside ourselves, it is unto God; or whether we are of sober mind, it is unto you.
For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that one died for all, therefore all died;
And He died for all, that they that live should no longer live unto themselves, but unto Him who for their sakes died and rose again.
You see, Paul said, “The love of Christ constraineth us.” Another translation says, “controls us.” I know some people tell us the best translation should be “bewitched.”
When a person falls in love, you are bewitched. You are just totally out of control. You are really under the compulsion of love. Here Paul says, “I am controlled by that love—my love for Christ.”
That is why, when he responds to God, he says many times, “I am beside myself.” To God, he is really beyond himself. But he behaves himself when he is facing brothers and sisters.
David was that way. When he welcomed the ark back, remember? He just jumped up and down, so joyful, praising God in front of the ark. You know who could not stand it? His wife. She said, “You must be crazy.”
Yes, it is crazy. This business of love is a crazy business. It does not make sense. We should have that kind of love.
When we do not have that kind of love, that is the most serious thing to God. Remember the seven letters? The first of them is to Ephesus. That church was almost perfect. They labored, they kept the name of the Lord, and they had done everything right, except only one thing: their first love.
When the Lord could not find that quality, God says, “We cannot continue.” The adjective “first love” does not necessarily mean first in sequence, but I think it means first in quality—the prime quality of love.
Love is something that deserves a whole life to pursue and to understand. It is really the most precious thing to keep us going in this house of God. If we lose that, nothing can work.
In any service, when we serve people and serve the Lord, that is the most important ingredient.
We can only love because He loved us first. We are touched, we are controlled, we are bewitched by God. Then we can serve with that kind of zeal. Paul shows us that kind of life.
Everything he suffered, everything he went through—without love, nobody can do it. You just cannot take it. But when love is in you, it does not matter. All these things become less important.
Paul is the best example in the New Testament for us to learn. In Ephesians—we are in Ephesians 2, right?—in Ephesians 4, Paul mentions the building of the Body. The Body builds itself up in love.
If we have this vision of the church, the centerpiece of God’s work, we should learn how to love God with that kind of immeasurable and counting-less love.
I would like to use this holy anointing oil, therefore, as a symbol this morning for us to think about and learn from. There are so many rich meanings deposited in these five ingredients. Whenever they come together, the scent comes out.
Paul explains this scent to us. Let us read 2 Corinthians 2:14-16.
But thanks be unto God, who always leadeth us in triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest through us the savor of His knowledge in every place.
For we are a sweet savor of Christ unto God, in them that are saved, and in them that perish;
To the one a savor from death unto death; to the other a savor from life unto life. And who is sufficient for these things?
Here Paul explains the real meaning of this aroma. This aroma, in the spiritual sense, is our knowledge of Him. The more we know about Him, the more we can live this life out, and this life will carry this marvelous scent. People can smell it.
This scent creates two kinds of results. To some people, you bring out life; to some people, you bring out death. Think about this. Paul says, “Who is adequate for these things?” However, through God’s grace, this is given to the church—to us.
We have to appreciate this aroma. That is what God wants from us. It is anointed on every service He wants and receives.
So this is what I share this morning. Let us pray.
Father, we thank You for today, that You have provided for us in Your Son that we can fellowship with You and enjoy the love You pour upon us so lavishly. Lord, we appreciate You, and we worship You. Thank You.
We pray that we may love You in the same manner. Although, Lord, we confess that in us there is no love, You have given us this life of love in the Holy Spirit. So, Lord, we ask You to help us to live in this reality, and that we may learn this lesson through our whole life.
May You bless Your word. In Jesus’ name we pray.