I. This light shines because it is light, without effort, spontaneously. If the lamp is kindled, it will shine; and so this emblem has its beautiful felicity in that it points, as the highest definition of all Christian men, to the effortless, spontaneous irradiation and streaming out from themselves of the fire that lies within them. Like a light in an alabaster vase, that shines through its transparency and reveals the lovely veining of the stone, so the grace of God in a man's heart will shine through him, turning even the opacity of his earthly nature into a medium for veiling perhaps, but also in another aspect for making visible, the light that is in him.
II. The light was derived light; and it was fed. We have a Priest who walks in His temple and trims the lamps. The condition of the light is keeping close to Christ, and it is because there is such a gap between you and Him that there is so little brightness in you. The candlestick was really a lamp fed by oil; that symbol, as Zechariah tells us, stands for the Divine influence of God's quickening Spirit.
III. The light was clustered light. The seven-branched candlestick represented the rigid, formal unity of the Jewish Church. In the New Testament we have the seven candlesticks, diverse, but made one because Jesus Christ is in the midst of them. In this slight diversity of emblem we get the whole difference between the hard external unity of the ancient Jewish polity and the free variety in unity and diversity of the Christian Church, with its individual development, as well as with its binding association.
A. Maclaren, Contemporary Pulpit,vol. iv., p. 253.
References: Exodus 25:40. Phillips Brooks, Sermons Preached in English Churches,p. 1; A. Rowland, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xx., p. 140. 25 Homiletic Quarterly,vol. iv., p. 125; Preacher's Monthly,vol. ii., p. 303. 25-27. Parker, vol. ii., p. 2221 25-31. W. M. Taylor, Moses the Lawgiver,p. 232; J. Monro Gibson, The Mosaic Era,p. 105.Exodus 26:6. H. Macmillan, The Olive Leaf,p. 15; H. Downton, The Sunday Magazine,1877, p. 490. 26 Homiletic Quarterly,vol. ii., pp. 113-115.