Weekly Pursuit – Week 3 of September
Verses:
Exo. 27:20 “And you shall command the children of Israel to bring to you pure oil of beaten olives for the light, to make the lamps burn continually.”
Excerpts:
The proper way of meeting is related to the Old Testament type of lighting the lamps in the Holy Place. The lighting of the lamps always took place in the tent of meeting. The tabernacle was a place both for God’s dwelling and for the meeting of the children of Israel. If we are asked in what way we meet in the church life, we should reply that we meet in the way of lighting the lamps. To meet properly as Christians is to light the lamps. Whenever we come together for the church meetings, we need to light the lamps. Furthermore, everything we do in the meetings should cause the lamps to shine. All the singing of hymns and the giving of testimonies must be the lighting of the lamps.
The one who lights the lamps is a holy person, a priest, a person possessed by God, saturated with God, and living absolutely for God. Whatever such a person does in the Holy Place is the lighting of the lamps. He gives light in all he says and does. All his actions are the lighting of the lamps.
Meeting together to light the lamps in the sanctuary comprises every aspect of our spiritual experience in the Christian life. It includes our experience of Christ as the embodiment of the Triune God, our experience of the divine nature, our experience of the uplifted humanity of Jesus that burns to give light before God and before His testimony, our experience of the Spirit of God as the oil pressed out of the fruit of the olive tree, and our experience of Christ in His process with the steps of incarnation, human living, crucifixion, and resurrection. Furthermore, it includes our wearing the priestly garments, that is, our expression of Christ. (Life-study of Exodus, Chaps.114-115)