0:12 Almighty God, father of lights, what an honor, what a privilege to be in your presence, to not be completely consumed by your unapproachable light and glory. Father, we are all undeserving. I am undeserving, and yet here I am standing in your place with your people, ready to speak your word. And so, God, we need you. God, I need you.
0:47 And so I ask that you would illumine our minds, that you would shine your face to us through your scriptures, through your truth, and that you would use me as your vessel to proclaim truth and only truth for the building up of those around me. And I pray in the name of Jesus, the light of the world. Amen. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.
1:22 All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. There is a man set from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to bear witness about the light so that all might believe through him.
1:48 He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light. The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world and the world was made through him yet the world did not know him. He he came to his own and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to be called children of God who were born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
2:26 And the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, Glories of the only son from the father, full of grace and truth. I'm here today to tell you about this word, the true light. But first, let's travel back nearly thirty five hundred years to the time of Moses and the Hebrew people. A young nation delivered out of slavery in Egypt and into a covenant relationship with the creator of the universe. This god, who revealed himself to Moses in a burning bush by the name Yahweh, led his people to Mount Sinai where he delivered the law and the instructions for the tabernacle to Moses.
3:17 What was the tabernacle? Well, as many of you know, it was the predecessor of the temple. It was a portable tent, but not like the one you go camping with with your family at a nice campsite with barbecues and all. This was a wooden skeletal structure overlaid with gold that would serve as the sanctuary where the transcendent, infinite, and holy God would dwell in the presence of his people Israel, looking forward to the day when God in the presence of his son would dwell humanly with his people. And the word became flesh, and lived or dwelt or tabernacled among us.
4:04 Amidst the many components of the tabernacle, including the altar for incense, the table for the bread of the presence, the ark of the covenant, and the bronze altar, there was the lampstand hammered from pure gold with glimmering blossoms and ornate branches symbolizing a tree recalling the tree of life in the Garden Of Eden. It is this tabernacle item that I want us to look at closer today. Please turn with me in your bibles to Exodus 27 verses 20 to 21. You shall command the people of Israel that they bring to you pure beaten olive oil for the light, that a lamp may regularly be set up to burn. In the tent of meeting outside the veil that is before the testimony, Aaron and his sons shall tend it from morning evening to morning before the Lord.
4:56 It shall be a statute forever to be observed throughout their generations by the people of Israel. After recording God's manual for the stunning blue, purple, and scarlet curtains, the the massive horned altar, and the the spacious courtyard, all in IKEA level detail, Moses here proceeds and gives the instructions for how the lampstand should function in the tabernacle. By the way, the Hebrew word for lampstand is menorah. So the the menorahs that many Jews still have today in their homes that they use for Hanukkah and so on are modeled after this lampstand. So in your mind, you can picture a giant golden menorah.
5:43 So to sum up this passage, Moses is given a call from God to call all of Israel to bring pure beaten olive oil to serve as the fuel for the lamp which the priests would set up and tend to daily so that the lamp would burn regularly as an eternal statute in Israel, a statute, a decree, an ordinance. There are three truths that I want to bring before you about the tabernacle lamp. Number one, the lamp needs to be set up. Number two, the lamp needs to be tended and filled with pure fuel. And number three, the lamp burns perpetually.
6:31 Firstly, the lamp needs to be set up. There are many pieces to the whole lamp lighting process. Before setting it up, you'd have to gather all the materials. So starting with the lampstand, for example, and in Exodus twenty five thirty one through 40, you can read about how the lampstand would be crafted, hammered with pure gold, elaborate with flowers and blossoms, etcetera. Secondly, you would have pure beaten olive oil, which would have to be brought by the people of Israel.
7:04 Then you need the utensils, wicks and tongs and trays all for the service of the light. Only then would the high priest have to put everything together, light the light, and keep it burning always. The tabernacle was not open to much natural light, so it would be a dark place. And so this lamp would serve the vital purpose of illuminating the whole structure. Now you might be wondering why am I giving you so much information about this ancient structure millennia ago.
7:41 Well, all of us are born with darkness, devoid of light. The apostle Paul calls this state the domain of darkness in Colossians one thirteen. In other words, if light is good and darkness is bad, we are born with a natural bent towards evil, towards this darkness, what we call the sinful nature of man. And our experience with children confirms this fact. My friend who's studying psychology who's actually here today reminded me or told me actually that there is evidence that children lie from the age of two.
8:23 Your mother didn't have to teach you to lie about eating sugar when you weren't supposed to, or to steal the candy from the store. You just figured it would taste good, and that it'd be it benefit you in the short run, and so you you did it. We are born in sin. King David in Psalm fifty one five says, in sin did my mother conceive me. Paul in Romans five twelve writes, therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, so death spread to all men because all sinned.
8:57 If there is one way, one way in which the evil and darkness which brings forth death in each of us, can be thwarted. Jesus said, as he was speaking to Nicodemus, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. This supernatural rebirth, being born of God, not of the flesh, causes the supernatural opening of our eyes to the light of the gospel by the power of the Holy Spirit to receive God's free great free grace in Christ. Only after divine intervention can there be human transformation. Only after divine intervention can there be any human transformation.
9:51 So I mentioned earlier how setting up the lamp in the tabernacle required several pieces to be brought together by the high priest who would then set up the light to shine in the darkness. Perhaps you have all the pieces. All the good things, in your life whether it's a knowledge of the gospel, a Bible, a local church, a Christian community and friends, along with a dissatisfaction with your current lifestyle or uneasiness with any darkness you might still have or doubts or struggles, along with a felt need for something greater, something beyond yourself, something more, perhaps a perfect love which nothing in this world can meet. Yet you don't have this whole outfit put together so that it could produce a light. Merely having all the materials for a lamp doesn't make a light just as merely having all the ingredients to a delicious shawarma recipe, chicken, the meat, whatever you have, pita, the pickles, the salads, the the whatever sauce seasonings, doesn't make a shawarma sandwich.
11:05 You need a master chef or a hard working group of church volunteers to take to put the pieces together and make a tasty meal. Thanks to all of you who did that just a few weeks ago. Likewise, you need a strong and a wise high priest to take all the pieces of your life, whether it's your intellect, your biblical knowledge, a church, a degree, or a passion, along with your heart, which is likely hammered with all sorts of pain and and dark experiences, sufferings, doubts, and put them together masterfully along with your deepest longings and desires in order to set up a brilliant lamp which can shine with rays of hope, healing, and holiness. Good news. Our high priest, fully God and fully man, he is an expert in this business.
12:07 Now this God, he he has no darkness in him. He alone has no darkness, and he in the person of Jesus suffered as we did, was tempted as we are so that through his death, he might destroy the devil and the power of darkness in our lives so that we could be delivered through lifelong slavery to fear? His name is Jesus. Have you let him set up his light in you? Secondly, the lamp needs tending and filling with pure fuel.
12:45 While it is true that the light of Christ cannot be overcome by darkness, the degree of brightness with which our light shines once it's been set up can largely be altered. I'll say this again. The degree of brightness with which our light shines once he set it up changes. If the God who said let light shine in the darkness has shown in our hearts the light of the knowledge of the glory of God and called our body the temple of his holy spirit, we must ask a question. To what extent is the temple of our body filled with the light of the lamp of the lamb of God?
13:32 To what extent is the temple of our body filled with the light of the lamp from the lamb of God? Is every nook and cranny visible and every corner uncovered, or are there crevices of darkness and shame that we are keeping closed off to the light in our lives? It would be good for us to pray as David did. Search me, oh god, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts and see if there be any grievous way in me, any darkness, any hardness, anything unilluminated by your glorious light.
14:17 We tend our light by examining our hearts. In John three nineteen through 21, Jesus said, and this is the judgment. The light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works are evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.
14:51 Are we resisting the confessing the sins that dim our joy, doing anything that if a spotlight were to expose it, we would cower and hide in shame, or or perhaps we're holding on to any burden or habit or past that suppresses the power of the spirit to refine us today. Friends, we must confess often and tend to our temptation prone hearts often, and be so careful to see if there's anything around us or in us that will dim our light. For those of us who are not actively living in sin, are we actively living in the spirit? Making sure there's not a single area in your life in which you are not quenching the sanctifying fire of the spirit, time itself will cause a lit candle to burn low. Our hearts are the same.
15:53 We don't naturally gravitate to holiness, but to hardness. We don't drift to righteousness, but to wretchedness. So let us tend to our light. And we tend our hearts through the confession of sins to God and close brothers and sisters in Christ by the close examination of our heart and motives and also by repeated filling of our hearts with the right fuel. What is this fuel of the heart?
16:26 What is the secret to permeating radiant light? My answer is simple. Pure communion with god. God is light. First John one five.
16:43 Commun with god, and you will have light. It's as simple as that. The lampstand ran on olive oil for there was an abundance of olive trees in ancient Palestine. Who would supply the oil for this ever burning light? God's people.
16:58 The people of Israel had to obey Moses to come to collectively bring the fuel to light the lamp that it might perpetually burn in the temple. In those days, people could not just flick on a light switch and voila, perfectly lit room. There was an elaborate process that began with tending to the olive tree until it was ripe for harvest, and then at the right time shaking it and beating it violently for the for the fruit to fall, and then you'd have to bring it to a stone press where they would be crushed and cleansed, and only then would the people be able to bring this oil to the priests to then tend to the light and continually refuel so that the light would not go out. God has placed us in an abundant orchard of biblical knowledge, of churches, of Christian community, of online sermons, of good books. Yet if we don't heed the command to not only be hearers of the word, but doers who transform this dark world into a light show, then it says if we shake the olive trees around and stomp the olives into the dirt rather than bring the lush resources before God to infuse this world with his light, his love, his hope to all people.
18:22 Jesus says in Matthew five sixteen, let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works and glorify your father who is in heaven. The light we are to shine before others requires the elaborate process of getting pruned, getting shaken up by the world's antagonism, getting crushed by godly discipline, and being filled with the oil of God's Holy Spirit to get the wick of our hearts aflame with the passion and the fervor for the gospel. It is not easy. Not easy. We can't merely pray for five minutes and briefly before meals and expect, voila, radical love for Jesus and a hatred of sin.
19:04 We can't just think that if we went to church or finally read our bibles that will mean, voila, immunity to temptation. We can't neglect fellowship and service with brothers and sisters in Christ and expect, voila, overwhelming love for people like Christ. And we can't just read the word and expect to delight in it without attentively listening to and desperately seeking the divine author who gave it to us. Rather, a sustained light requires sustained communion with God in the body of Christ. A sustained light requires sustained communion with God in the body of Christ.
19:51 How are we as a body of lamps to make sure our flame persists? Jesus told his disciples in Matthew five fourteen, you are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. If we are to be the light of the world, surely, it can we cannot be alone. He says, a lamp, a city of on a hill.
20:18 A city. Right? Think of a single lamp on a towering hill that would have a minimal effect, But a city of lights, a city of bright and radiant stars in the midst of a wicked and crooked generation, radiating as a lighthouse into the great global gloom, now that would be hard to overlook. Remember, it was a team effort of the Israelites to bring the oil for the lamp. So let's review what our fuel is.
20:54 Pure communion with God being in his manifest presence. We practice this by acts of pure obedience that serve as lifelines for our shine. We can commune with God, surely, in everything that we do from mundane errands to physical labor to conversing with friends. But here, I want to address two vital acts of obedience, ingredients you could say for a life generating, a light generating communion with God. Firstly, pure communion with the word.
21:30 Christ is a person we seek to know intimately and delight in. Not merely a historical figure, a study we study or whose teachings we observe and admire. You can know everything about Jesus' life, his miracles, his sayings, his claims to divinity, and yet not know him personally. Bart Ehrman. I don't know if any of you have heard of him, but he is a classical example of this.
21:58 He happens to be a graduate of Moody, of Wheaton, and of Princeton Theological Seminary, and yet he currently serves as a professor of New Testament at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as agnostic atheist who seeks to unravel the faith of students by showing them all these sexual variance, all the his the things he studied since he has written over 30 books on the historical Jesus, on the New Testament. So this man knows his stuff, but he surely does not know his creator. There's a danger, as the great preacher Leonard Ravenhill said, that we know the Word of God, but we don't know the God of the Word. Right? There's a danger that we can know the Word of God really well, but do we know the God of the Word?
22:52 Do we pride ourselves over an impressive knowledge of scripture? Perhaps even justify the smallness of our heart because of the largeness of our head? Do we look at Jesus from afar merely as an admirable figure to emulate rather than a treasure to celebrate? The goal ultimately is not to know about Christ or to live like a moral person, moral, but it is to be united with him and in him so that we are conformed to him in love and holiness. Abide in me and I in you, he said, and abide in my love.
23:29 That is what we need to do. Read the word. Delight in the word. Cherish and celebrate it, but don't seek it as an end in itself, but rather see it as the means by which you commune and which you love and delight in the divine author, God himself. Secondly, pure communion through prayer.
23:53 We can pray in a way that displeases God. Yes. We can pray just as we can read his word in a way that displeases him. One way in which we avoid this is frankness not fakeness. We must refuse to be safe and content with conventional prayers that are mere formalities.
24:18 If we learn to lament, learn to come honestly before God with the the ugliness of our condition, the the the the weight and the heaviness of our emotions and the audacity of our requests, God will hear us and he will be sure to receive us and to forgive us, to comfort and to bless us. He is not afraid of our harsh language if we are honest and sincere. David said, why have you rejected me, the God who said, I will never leave you or forsake you? The sons of Korah said, awake, oh Lord, rouse yourself. Why are you sleeping, The God who does not faint or grow weary?
25:03 Jeremiah said, Lord, you have deceived me, and I was deceived. The God who is truth and who cannot lie? Did God heard the honesty of their cries and blessed them in their pleas? If you only ever come to God with mere matter flattery or praise or merely petty requests without seriously wrestling with God, like Jacob at the Jabbok, then you will not leave transformed, let alone blessed, weeping because of the overwhelming grace of God which He meets His desperate, brokenhearted children who seek him. Only pure, unbridled prayer will set us apart as beaming lights, restored and awakened people who have truly communed with the living God, leaving the prayer closet with glistening eyes at awe of this majestic God in the midst of this shattered world.
26:02 Tozer, a w Tozer had some wise words on honest prayer. He says, when you come to prayer and you have no taste for it, tell God so without mincing words. If God and spiritual things bore you, admit it frankly. God loves the honest soul even when in his ignorance, he is actually guilty of rashness in prayer. The Lord can soon cure his ignorance, but for insincerity, no cure is known.
26:33 Do your words in prayer outrun your feelings? Eloquent words, maybe biblical words, maybe truthful words, and yet your heart is is not in it, and there's this disconnect. They're not synced together. I know I've been there. Are we merely praying formalities before each meal the same structure, the same thing, rather than taking that moment to acknowledge the giver of all good gifts and the meal we're about to eat?
27:06 Back when I was a little boy, all of my, prayers essentially would have sound something like this. Dear God, thank you for this day. Thank you for mom. Thank you for dad and Abby, and thank you for everything. Amen.
27:20 Maybe I'll throw it in Jesus name in there too. I prayed that way as a formula because it was it was all that I knew. And if we pray the same way today, then chances are we don't really know how to pray. If your prayers are always shallow, chances are you don't know how to pray. If you don't know how to pray, how can you commune with God?
27:50 And if you don't stop a prayer loving God more, chances are you don't know how to pray. If you feel like you can just go through the motions or that you do because that's what you're supposed to do, that's what Christians do, then you are missing out on the blessing of God, which he has given us through prayer. If you are physically able, get on your knees in private and call out to God begging for the Spirit's help in our prayer. He promises it, and speak honestly and audaciously, speaking with reverence and humility. Remember, it was pure beaten olive oil that the Israelites brought for the light in the temple.
28:34 We can surely obey from impure motives or for other reasons than than truly knowing God, But God seeks pure communion. And pure communion, of course, is only possible through the Holy Spirit. He is the helper. He is necessary for any light, any obedience, any resistance to temptation. He is the counselor, the teacher who clarifies scripture and makes it more than black words on a page.
29:05 How often do we beg God to enrich the time we spent in scripture reading with the Holy Spirit, our inward teacher? Of course, the sword of the spirit is the word of God. How often do we rely on the spirits training to effective effectively wield this sword when temptation comes? Paul writes in Romans eight twenty six that we don't know what to pray for as we ought, but the spirit helps us in our weakness. How often do we rely on his guidance in our prayers?
29:39 Listening intently to his promptings. Jude 20 tells us some can be interpreted scary words. He says, pray in the Holy Spirit, which seems to mean that you could pray not in the Holy Spirit. We should take that all as a warning in our prayer lives. Now there's a reason obedience often seems so hard.
30:05 It's impossible. On our own with our flesh, there's a reason Jesus promised us a helper. If the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in us, we will surely have the power to rise up from the our laziness, our boredom with spiritual things, our lust, our worldly ambition, our idolatry and technology and ourselves in so far as we walk according to the Holy Spirit. So again, the main two acts of pure communion are through word and prayer by the power of the Holy Spirit. So we'd read a review our first two points.
30:46 The lamp needed to be set up, and secondly, needs to be tended and filled with pure fuel which is found in pure communion with him who is pure light. Now before my third point, I want to add something else for those of us who may think that we are shining brightly enough. It's it's easy to get comfortable with our current state of brightness, especially if it's been that way for a really long time. And perhaps that's because we've lost sight of the brightest one who's ever lived who is calling us to this expansive, blinding fluorescence. We don't see our potential as children of light, literally children of the most high God who is light and the father of light, and so we don't desperately seek the dazzling brilliance that he wants to give us if we seek it.
31:46 Oh, Satan knows the potential we have to shine. He knows how brightly each of you can shine. He himself was one of the greatest he was the greatest angels in the manifest presence of God in heaven. And yet he wants to convince us that the light we are currently shining is sufficient or that it's permanent for this life. That it's okay.
32:10 You don't need to shine more. It takes work. It's harder. It'd be a shame for for him to know more about our lights potential than we do. Lastly, the lamp burns perpetually.
32:31 In Leviticus 24, we read that Aaron shall arrange the lamp from evening to morning before the Lord regularly so that it would continually burn in the tabernacle as the sole source of light in the dark place. As the lampstand burned regularly from the tabernacle, there is a true light that burns bright from his infinite self existent glory from his throne in heaven, giving light to everyone who receives him. This self existent light, his name is Jesus. Yes. Jesus is the light of the world.
33:08 The everlasting light in whom no darkness can be found. And yet it is interesting. Did he not also call us the light of the world in Matthew? How is this how is this possible? Well, the moon shines brightly in the night yet it has no light of its own.
33:29 It is essentially a giant rock. Every speck of brightness that it has is a reflection of the blazing sun. Therefore, every ray of light that we shine is a mere reflection of the blazing sun of God, far brighter than any sun or star, shining through us and only through him can we have a source of light, let alone be the light source of the world. Rather, we must find our radiance from the inexhaustible source of light and life who alone has the power to dispel the darkness of any doubt, any depression or anxiety that we might struggle with and fear from our lives and propel us into this reflective brilliance into our communities and our schools and our workplaces and our families here on earth. In his cross and in his resurrection, he conquered the power of darkness and longs to shine like the sun into the crisp cold hearts of sinners with rays of light, hope, and peace.
34:46 If this reality does not move you, if this reality does not hit you to the core and move your inner being, then you either blind or so hard into the life changing light of Christ, your knees, and beg the Lord to shine in your heart, to give you the eyes to see and the ears to hear the shining savior of your soul singing your name, calling you home. If our lives are disordered by a lack of discipline that makes us perpetually late or procrastinate, a laziness that does not make the best use of the time God has given us to be great at what we do, or if we're dimmed by a busyness that often puts us in such an aggravated state that sees other people as obstacles in our way rather than reflections of God for whom to pray. If our lives are disordered and dim as was the pre sculpted universe, the God who spoke light into being wants to speak light into your being in Jesus name, and he wants to do this right now. If you have any darkness in your life, whether it is from sin or sorrow, whether it is from illness or injury, loss or illicit love, call on him and let there be light to shine in their darkness.
36:12 Let there be light to shine in your financial dilemma. Let there be light to shine in your family conflict, in your rocky marriage, in your parents fighting, in your fear for what the future holds. And may the God who said let there be light separate the light from the darkness in your light in your life, for children of the light have no fellowship with darkness. Just over a couple weeks ago, I went to a Hanukkah dinner with, my parents at a friend of my mother's from bible study, whose family is Jewish and does not yet know Christ. And as the Jewish mother was walking through the history of Hanukkah, she briefly mentioned in passing that Jews, even today, in the synagogues right above where there's the Ark that contains the scrolls of the Torah, they have the Ner Tamid, the eternal lamp, which is there as this, follow through of this commandment in Exodus 27 that they still keep.
37:15 What this Jewish family was missing, and what so many people today miss, is that this eternal lamp is a person. This person was in the beginning with God. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. He came to his own people, and they did not receive him.
37:44 But to all who did receive him, he gave the right to become children of God, children of light. Let's pray. Oh, Lord, have mercy on us and shine upon us your light that alone gives life, that alone gives us purpose, gives us meaning, gives us peace. Father, would you rid us of any darkness, any doubt, any anything that is separating us, distracting us from you? Would you bring any of us who have been wandering all the way home into your radiant, warm arms as you just want to embrace us and forgive us.
38:34 Lord, we pray that you would equip us all as your church, as your hands and feet in this world to be the light that shines in the darkness, not to be dim, not to settle for anything less than dazzling brilliance, the same brilliance that that Jesus shown in the transfiguration. And Lord, we pray that above all that you would be enthroned on our hearts as the lamp of the body that you've given us to shine through us and in us forever. We pray all these things in the precious name of Jesus Christ, the one in whom light dwells and in whom darkness may never come. Amen.
