MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Exodus 25:31-40
THE CANDLESTICK
Christ is the “light of the world,” and His Church is the lamp-holder, the light-bearer. What does the candlestick teach in respect to the Christian Church?
I. The necessity of purity, if the Church is to diffuse the knowledge of Christ.
1. “The candlestick must be of pure gold,” Exodus 25:31. Again, Exodus 25:36, an impure Church cannot keep the light, and diffuse the light (Revelation 2:5). Here the Ephesian Church is warned that if they do not repent and amend, the light that is in them shall become darkness. An impure ministry cannot shed this light long. And, personally, if we are to be evangelists we must be pure.
2. The Church must be really pure. “Of beaten work shall the candlestick be made,” Exodus 25:31. It was to be solid, not hollow. The goodness of the Church, the minister, &c., must not be formal and ceremonial, but real and heart-felt.
3. And the lowest workers and instruments for Christ must be holy. Tongs and snuff dishes must be of pure gold. We are taught—
II. The grand mission of the Church of Christ. It is a candlestick—its great mission is to diffuse light. We see sometimes all pains taken with the candlestick—in its ornamentation, &c.,—and it is forgotten that the end of a candlestick is to give light. A church is grand architecturally, but what of that if it is not a light-giving centre? A ministry is eloquent, but what of that if it does not shed the clearer light which leads us to the Lamb? Exodus 25:37. We are reminded—
III. That the Church must declare the whole counsel of God as made known in Jesus Christ. The candlestick was seven-branched, Exodus 25:32. There is completeness and fulness of light in Christ, and the Church must seek to set forth fully the manifold light of the Gospel. On matters of belief and matters of duty, our relations to God and man, body and soul, this world and the next. Let nothing deter us from making known the whole counsel of God.
We are reminded—
IV. Of the beautiful fruits which will spring forth under the shining of Christian truth, Exodus 25:33-35. Flowers and pomegranates. Beautiful flowers and sweet fruits are the creations of the light. Thus, if the Church is faithful, the wilderness around her shall bloom. We are reminded—
V. Of the constant vigilance which the Church must exercise to keep the truth undimmed. In Exodus 25:38 we read of tongs and snuff-dishes. Let us watch, and carefully remove whatever would dim the shining of the light of Christ. Discipline in the Church; discipline in ourselves.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Exodus 25:31-40. The candlestick of pure gold comes next in order, for God’s priests need light as well as food; and they have both the one and the other in Christ. In this candlestick there is no mention of anything but pure gold. “All of it shall be one beaten work of pure gold.” “The seven lamps” which “gave light over against the candlestick,” express the perfection of the light and energy of the Spirit, founded upon and connected with the, perfect efficacy of the work of Christ. The work of the Holy Ghost can never be separated from the work of Christ.
—C. H. M.
Moreover, it is not a partial statement even of Divine truth that will suffice for the edification of the Church or of the nation. Not one or more of the seven lamps of the seven-branched candlestick must burn apart from others: all must burn together, and send their commingled blaze in combined and united radiancy around her holy place. A mutilated Bible, or a book of garbled extracts in the place of the Bible, ought to be the wonder and the grief of Christendom.—W. Mudge.
ILLUSTRATIONS
BY
REV. WILLIAM ADAMSON
Typology! Exodus 25:1-40. If you hold up your hand between the candle and the wall, what do you see? That shadow of your hand is not, however, of the same size and colour. It is only an outline. Holding up some beautiful object which we have never seen before, its shadow would give but a feeble impression of itself. So Hebrews 10:1 says, that the Law had a shadow of good things to come. Those good things have come; and
“Man has gazed on heavenly secrets,
Sunned himself in heavenly glow;
Seen the glory, heard the music,—
We are wiser than we know.”
—Mackay.
Candlestick! Exodus 25:31.
1. Macduff says that this unquestionably denotes the Church of Christ, just as do the golden candlesticks in Revelation
2. There, we are taken back to the sacred furniture—to the one candlestick with its branches or lamps. We are also reminded of the similar beautiful and suggestive vision of the prophet Zechariah, when he saw the candlestick all of gold, with its seven lamps, fed from the upper reservoir of holy olive oil, in Exodus 4:2. The priest attending to its lamps symbolises Jesus, the great High Priest. In Revelation
3. He is represented as moving in their midst, their common bond of union. It is no longer one planet, but a system, of which He is the glorious sun and centre. The light of the world is Christ. No candlestick, no Church shines of itself; from Him its light emanates.
“Come nearer, Sun of Righteousness! that we,
Whose swift short hours of day so swiftly run,
So overflowed with love and light, may be
So lost in glory of the nearing Sun,
That not our light, but Thine, the world may see,
New praise to Thee through our poor lives be won.”
—Havergal.
Candlestick-Branches! Exodus 25:32.
(1.) Elliot says that the seven branches were removable from the central chandelier; perhaps to typify how, under the Gospel Dispensation, the Church would lose the form of visible unity that it had possessed under the Jewish, and be scattered in its different branches over the world.
(2.) Law, on the other hand, says that Christ is the seven-lamped candlestick, and that the holy place wherein it shone, symbolises that heavenly home in which Christ is the full light. “The Lamb is the light thereof” (Revelation 21:23). The branches shine as clustered trees of fruit and flowers, to indicate the exquisite loveliness and surpassing fruitfulness of Christ.
(3.) Trench says that the Jewish tabernacle lamp was symbolic of the Church of God in its relation to the kingdom and economy of Israel. That ancient Church for ages stood alone in the earth as the Divine “lightgiver.” But no sooner did the Jewish Dispensation cease, than the tabernacle lamp-branches were separated into lamps, to signify the essential unity, though external diversity of the Church.
“And so the Church of Jesus Christ,
The blessed Banyan of our God,
Fast rooted upon Zion’s mount,
Has sent its sheltering arms abroad;
And every branch that from it springs,
In sacred beauty spreading wide
As low it bends to bless the earth,
Still plants another by its side.”
—Anon.
Candlestick-Beam! Exodus 25:37.
(1.) The sevenfold branches support sevenfold lamps. Each summit is a coronet of fire. Little would be the profit of the costly frame unless light sparkled from it. But its special purpose is to burn—to lighten the darkness that otherwise would shroud the holy place of the Church. And the mystic number, as well as the constant blaze, speak to the Church that her “light should ever shine a perfect light.”
(2.) The ancient insignia of the Waldensian Church was a candlestick, with a light shedding its rays across the surrounding darkness, and encircled with seven stars and the motto, “Lux lucet in tenebris. As the light of Christ shines in the darkness of the Church, so the Church thus enlightened shines in the darkness of the world. “Ye are the light of the world.”
(3.) Every believer shines in a world lying in darkness; therefore he should guard and tend his light, not only to lead himself, but all whom he can influence from the outer darkness of the world to the marvellous light of heaven. “If the light in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!” It is a total eclipse within and without—a blackness of darkness for ever.
“He that hides a dark soul, and foul thoughts,
Benighted walks under the mid-day sun)
Himself is his own dungeon.”
—Milton.