MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Exodus 27:20-21
THE OIL FOR THE LAMPS
Consider the provision for the lamps as a service. The children of Israel were to bring oil for these lamps for ever, and the priests were to trim the lamps and keep them brightly burning. Notice:—
I. The service of the people. Is not the duty of the people in relation to this service most suggestive? a pattern of service to all after-times?
1. They were to bring their first. “The olive berry is first green, and assumes, later, a purple and black colour. The best kind of oil is obtained from the unripe green olives.” We are not to give God the gleanings of our power, or time, or influence, or life, but the first-fruits.
2. They were to bring their best. It was the purest and costliest oil. We are not to give to the cause of God anything that is inferior. We are to hold our best for God, and for His service.
3. They were to give freely their first and best. “Beaten oil. That is such oil as could easily be expressed from the olives after they had been bruised in a mortar; the mother-drop, as it is called, which drops out of itself, as soon as the olives are a little broken, and which is much purer than that which is obtained after the olives are put under the press.”—Clarke. Does not this signify that our service for God should flow freely from a loving heart? “God loveth a cheerful giver.”
II. The service of the priests. The priests were to feed the lamps. “Aaron and his sons shall arrange it from evening to morning before the Lord,” &c., Exodus 27:21. A daily constant service. And thus it must be in this dispensation, if the Church is to be a brightly burning lamp. Every morning the priests cleansed the lamps and replenished the oil: and the Christian ministry must keep the Church pure, and preserve all its ordinances in vigour and brightness. As the lighthouse-keeper preserves all his lamps in cleanliness, and each evening sends for the guiding light, constant as the stars; so must the ministers of Christ’s Church see to it that no impurities dim the glory of the Church or impair its efficiency.
III. The glorious result when ministers and people are faithful in their service. The Church then stands forth with a guiding, warning, cheering light. If the people are unfaithful, it cannot be so. They are to bring the oil, and if that oil be wanting in quantity, or inferior in quality, the light is defective; and so if the members of the Christian Church do not bring the pure oil of a loving, generous, spiritual service, the lustre of the Church is dimmed. And if the ministers be slothful, or selfish, or unspiritual, the lamps are tarnished and the flame flickers. When ministers and people are faithful, the Church is the light of the world, the day-star of a grander world.
THE LAMPS OF THE TABERNACLE
Consider these lighted lamps as a symbol. The golden candlestick, lighted as in the text may justly be regarded as a symbol of Christ—the light of the world. Observe—
I. The purity of the light. “The oil prescribed for the holy service is of a white colour; it gives a better light and little smoke. The holy oil was pure, and unmixed with oil of any other quality.” Was not this significant of the light which God has given us in Jesus Christ? In our philosophies we have truth mixed with error, as much smoke as light; in the various religions of the heathen world we have the true and the false strangely blended, and giving forth a most uncertain ray; in Christ we have the true unclouded illumination. “God is light and in Him there is no darkness at all.” “For with Thee is the fountain of life: in Thy light shall we see light” (Psalms 26:9). In that pure light it is our privilege to walk.
II. The perfection of the light. On each of the seven arms of the candelabrum rested a burning lamp. Seven, the note of perfection. On all the great questions touching our salvation from sin, our moral discipline and development, our duty to God and man, our preparation for the life beyond, we have sufficient light in the Lord Jesus. We have no need to resort to the philosophies of man. The speculations of the natural reason. No need to resort to ecclesiastical traditions. Opinions of the Fathers, &c., as in Catholicism; as if the New Testament did not contain all that was necessary for salvation, character, and destiny. All; spiritual light is in Christ, as all natural light is in the sun. The light in Christ brings conviction to the understanding, assurance to the heart. Don’t add to the lamps; don’t take any away. The doctrines of Christ are all necessary; they are all that are necessary.
III. The perpetuity of the light. That light on the candlestick was to burn on for ever. The light we have in Christ is not an artificial light to guide us through some passing perplexity, it is the essential and everlasting truth. It is not a light to be superseded in this world. Some tell us that Christ is destined to be eclipsed by greater teachers, that His Gospel is destined to be eclipsed by systems of moral and spiritual truth far more full and reliable than His own. The greater teacher, the grander gospel, has not yet appeared, and gives no sign of appearing. We need expect no grander light. The seven-branched golden candlestick of the Jewish Temple is buried, if we believe tradition, in the bed of the Tiber; but the Light of the world shall shine through all time, the master light of all our seeing.
“Our little systems have their day;
They have their day and cease to be:
They are but broken lights of Thee,
And Thou, O Lord, art more than they.”
It is not a light to be superseded in the world to come. “The Lord God and the lamb are an everlasting light.” In Christ we have the light of eternal truth, love, righteousness, felicity. “All flesh is grass,” &c.
“O house of Jacob, come ye, and let us walk in the light of the Lord.” (Isaiah 2:5).
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
You will observe,
1. The requirement of oil to cause the lamp of the sanctuary to burn. “Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun.” (Ecclesiastes 11:7.) In the absence of that glorious luminary, artificial light becomes a great convenience. The Tabernacle possessed no windows; whence the necessity for an ever-burning lamp. A lamp, however, although costly in material and exquisite in form, can emit no radiance of itself; oil, therefore, must be furnished for its use. In like manner, the Church of Christ must be illuminated by extraneous aid. It is not in mere human intellect, how rich soever in resources and attainments of a worldly kind it may be, to discover the way of life: it must consequently be taught of God and replenished with wisdom of a heavenly kind. It is the inspiration of the Almighty which alone giveth true and saving light unto mankind; and the oil that must burn in the lamp of our understanding is, the Holy Ghost.
—Mudge.
ILLUSTRATIONS
BY
REV. WILLIAM ADAMSON
Mosaic-Ritual! Exodus 27:1-21.
(1.) Beautiful and rich as were the materials employed, there was a remarkable simplicity about the tabernacle and its adjuncts. And why? Glance at the books designed for the instruction of children. They may be rich in design and ornate in execution, but how mono-syllabic they are! What pictures of simplicity they contain! When the child develops in body and mind, the thoughts and words are also proportionately developed. We do not dream of instructing the babe-mind in the mysteries of algebra, or the intricacies of science.
(2.) God speaks, by the mouth of a later prophet, as of Israel as His child at this time. As a child, Israel’s host could but receive milk of truth—the elementary truths of Divine wisdom. Pictures interleave the Divine manual of saving instruction—pictures such as the tabernacle, the altar of burnt-offering, the outer court with its brazen laver, and encircling curtains, and solitary gateway.
(3.) And as Israel grew, so the instruction was raised. The theocratic nation was schooled in the deep things of God, while its saints and seers were permitted to drink deeply at the Fount of Divine Wisdom, searching diligently into the mystery of redemption, until the Teacher Himself became Incarnate. Thus the Law was alike the pedagogue leading to, and the schoolmaster instructing as to, Christ—the End of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth.
“And when the last trumpet shall sound through the skies,
When the dead from the dust of the earth shall arise,
With bright millions I’ll rise far above yonder sky,
To wear Christ’s Righteousness for ever on high.”
Olive-Oil! Exodus 27:20.
(1.) Dr. Burden observes that by the expression “oil-olive” this oil is distinguished from other kinds. The addition “beaten” indicates that it is that oil obtained from olives pounded in a mortar, and not pressed from olives in the oil-mill. The oil obtained from pounded olives is, according to Columela’s observations, much purer and better tasted, does not emit much smoke, and has no offensive smell. From passages in the books of Joel and Micah, it would seem that the olives were usually crushed in the mill by men’s feet, just as in the vintage operation.
2. In the museum of Naples is a graceful olive in bronze, on whose spreading branches the various members of some old Pompeian household used to hang up their little lamps when they came from their different employments, and mustered in the family apartment around the symbolic family tree. Figure of each member of the Church of Christ, each of whom should contribute the small lamp of a Christian life, fed with the pure oil-olive of Divine Grace, to be suspended on the fair olive-tree of the Church (Psalms 52:8).
“God’s saints are shining lights; who stays
Here long, must pass
O’er dark hills, swift streams, and steep ways
As smooth as glass.
But these all night,
Like candles, shed
Their beams, and light
Us into bed.”
—Vaughan.
Olive-Symbolism! Exodus 27:20. The word “tree,” as pointed out by Grindon, actually means “intellect” in both English and Hebrew. It is even “intellect” in its widest sense amongst the Hebrews. The personifications of Scripture are not like those of merely human poetry, which are addressed simply to the object. On the contrary, they always involve a direct reference to the mental, the moral, or the spiritual. “The trees of the forest clap their hands.” Here the figure is borrowed from the waving of the branches; but the figure is itself figurative. The idea is that of the joys of the redeemed being expressed to God. When, therefore, particulars kinds of trees are mentioned in Scripture, it is in reference to specific mental gifts, moral virtues, or spiritual graces. It is the “tree department” of the language of flowers in its highest and noblest use. The olive has from time immemorial been identified with peace, forgiveness, charity, reconciliation, and similar high attitudes of virtue. In the sphere of Revelation and Grace, its oil thus symbolises “the Graces of the Holy Spirit.”
“For Nature dwells within our reach;
Yet though we stand so near her,
We still interpret half her speech
With ears too dull to hear her.”
—Anon.
Olive-Oil Objects! Exodus 27:20-21. Thomas calls attention to,
1. The Plant, whence the oil came, as an emblem of Jesus, the Plant of renown, full of grace and truth; to,
2. The Properties of the oil, as expressive of the purity of the Spirit of Christ;
3. The Process of its manufacture, as predicting the sufferings of Jesus ere the Holy Spirit’s full descent at Pentecost;
4. The Persons receiving and dispensing, as types of the true Israel of God, who receive of Christ’s fulness, and grace for grace; and,
5. The Purposes to which the oil was put, as symbolic of the Divine Light ever shining in the holy place of the Church, and of the temple of the Christian heart.
“The Rites of God are fair for nought,
Unless our eyes, in seeing,
See hidden in the type the thought
That animates its being.”
—Anon.