The 27th chapter, the book of Exodus.
Book of Exodus chapter 27, at verse 20.
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 tense of meeting, without the veil
which is before the testimony, Aaron and his
son shall keep it in order from evening
to morning before the Lord.
It shall be a statute forever throughout their
generations on behalf of the children of Israel.
Oil for the light.
It is my growing conviction, dear friends, that
the greatest need of our time is a
true knowledge and understanding of the Holy Spirit
and his work.
Such knowledge, if spiritually apprehended, would really
solve by far 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 that means, as a matter
of light, how different everything would be.
So I say again, the pressing need of
our time is for such knowledge, such understanding.
So what follows this morning is just a
touching on the very fringe of that matter.
Not by any means an 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.
Notice this is a command to the Lord's
people.
This is an imperative.
This is a necessity.
This is indispensable.
This is essential.
Command.
It 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 note the place of
the light.
The lampstand, as you know, was in 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's the outside and there's the inside.
There is all that is here in this
world on the one side, on the other
side.
There's all that which is essentially heaven.
The very presence of God.
And in between heaven and earth this light
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.
Seems to me that he was standing very
much in this position.
Then he prayed as in John 17.
They are not of the world.
Even as I am not 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's so familiar a truth.
Almost a hackneyed phrase.
In the world but not of it.
Here is an in between place which is
the place of believers in this present dispensation.
At this present time.
It is our place between heaven and earth
in a very real sense.
Well we know that don't we?
We know that on the one hand we
are here in this world right in us.
And it's very real.
And yet it is just as real that
we don't belong.
We are not of it.
We're in an in between place.
We know that we're not yet literally and
actually in heaven.
And yet, and yet somehow or other we
are deeply linked with heaven.
The place between.
That's where the light was to be.
Or where the light was.
Place which defines 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 stand it would have
been totally dark.
All that was there represented type and symbol.
All the values and the functions of that
place were only possible, 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, was
symbolic of the position in which Israel were
just at that time.
They were out of Egypt.
But they're not yet literally and altogether in
the land of Canaan.
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.
But Peter will tell us that we're still
pilgrims and strangers.
We're sojourners.
Always the two aspects.
And on this side peculiar, peculiar position of
God's people at the present time.
The pilgrimage aspect.
And this is true to very positive teaching
in the New Testament.
In this life God has made no provision
for natural life.
If you and I are going on our
way to reach God's full end, natural life
for one thing will be no good to
us.
But for another God has ruled it out.
He has made no windows.
That's the argument of the letter to the
first letters to Corinthians isn't it?
Natural man receiveth not the things of the
Spirit of God, neither can he know them.
And the whole course of the chapter in
which those words occur is God has made
no windows for that.
Your reason doesn't come in here.
The light of your natural judgment is not
allowed here.
It's all excluded.
The light that is here is the light
from the oil.
It's the light of the Spirit.
So the argument of the first letter to
the Corinthians is the argument about the Spirit
isn't it?
And what is spiritual for guidance, for judgment,
for counsel, for the knowledge of everything of
the Lord?
No place for natural life.
Yet God's own provision for light, which is
better than that, it's God's own light.
Now look at the content 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
bread of the loaves.
Simple symbols that help us to understand the
meaning of the light, the functioning of the
oil, does this dear friend?
And of course we know the symbolism is
that the oil is the Holy Spirit and
the Holy Spirit is our light for 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'm 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's a New Testament phrase, praying in the
Holy Ghost.
We need that.
We never really get very far without that.
We'll be going around 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, but right in the center,
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 can't 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's difficult for me to convey all
that I am feeling about that, but, dear
friends, you will grasp the point.
If in our own prayers, our own prayer
life, privately, and when we came together, we
come together for prayers, 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 feelings, our own impulses, our own ideas,
our own reasoning of what ought to be,
what we think should be, and so on,
and uttering a lump of things out of
our own natural light, if the Holy Spirit
took hold of our praying, and we prayed
in the Spirit, even one thing, how much
further we should get?
See, I do not believe it's possible to
pray a thing in the Holy Ghost without
an issue, without something happening, without something being
reached, some moving taking place.
Look again in the Book of the Ends.
That's just how 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,
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 intended,
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's possible.
You can take this book, the Bible, and
from the same book, using exactly the same
scriptures, get a hundred different positions, in every
one of which is in conflict with the
other.
That is what has been done.
That is what nearly all the different aspects
and forms of Christianity today build themselves upon
scripture, support their position by scripture, and very
few of them can stand together.
They're 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 over 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's 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's 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've 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, every word.
Christ is the living Word as 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's gone.
I think you see what I meant, the
tremendous importance in our day of the Holy
Spirit, knowing the Holy Spirit.
And my last word is this.
Beaten.
Bring pure olive oil.
Beaten.
There's got to be definite exercise about this
matter, of the guidance of the Holy Spirit,
the illumination of the Holy Spirit.
It just does not happen, come about.
It does not just come about.
We've got to get down to this matter.
The real exercise and energy, and make, shall
I say, a business of it.
Lord, Lord, roll out my judgment.
Roll out my feelings.
Roll out my likes and my dislikes.
You come by Your Spirit and have absolute
preeminence in my heart, in my mind, as
I pray, as I read Thy Word.
See, it's 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.
One does long to hear that note in
our prayer gatherings, real laying hold to Lord.
Now, Lord, tonight, in this hour, we must
come into the mind of the Spirit about
it.
Real laying hold of God.
Beating it out.
Understand.
Command children of Israel that they bring pure
olive oil.
Beaten.
For the light.