Now, with a view to God's help and his guidance, let's turn to the passage in Exodus, chapter 25, and verse 31. Exodus 25, at verse 31, where God instructs Moses to make a lampstand of pure gold. You shall also make a lampstand of pure gold. Now, of course, with the Lord's help, we're returning to our study of the tabernacle, which you'll remember is just a vast and visual collection of symbols and types of the Lord Jesus Christ. In other words, everything in the tabernacle is designed to highlight the person and work of a coming Savior. And of course that Savior would not appear in person in the world for another one and a half thousand years. It's a long time between the building of the tabernacle and the advent of the Christ. That was foreshadowed in the tabernacle. But nonetheless, that is the function of the tabernacle, to highlight aspects of the person and the work of the coming Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, we've entered, we entered last time, the first compartment of the tabernacle. And you'll remember we're making our way into it, right to its heart, following the worshipper as he did so. And the first compartment of the tabernacle was called the holy place. The second, or the inner compartment, was the most holy place. But here we've entered the holy place itself. And that, you'll remember, is a representation of heaven. And the Bible doesn't just suggest that, it makes it plain. It tells us in Hebrews chapter 9 that Christ has not entered the holy places made with hands, that's the earthly tabernacle. We're told that these are copies of the true So he has entered into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us. So the holy place is a picture of heaven itself. Now you'll remember that there are three pieces of furniture, three pieces of golden furniture inside the holy place. And they represent the Lord Jesus Christ in heaven. not before he came down to this world, of course, but after rising back to heaven in his ascension. So these three pieces of furniture represent Christ, exalted, ascended unexalted in heaven, and they represent that Christ working on our behalf here upon the earth. So when we see these three items of furniture, we think of Christ working on our behalf in the lampstand, giving light, in the table, giving fellowship, and in the altar, interceding for us in prayer. Some of these things, of course, we haven't come to in detail yet. Now, just as the priests under the old covenant were privileged to step inside and to see these things, so we as priests under the new covenant understand ourselves to be inside that heavenly place too. We link with it by faith. We see there ourselves united to Christ who is still working like this on our behalf. So we enter, of course, that fellowship in faith and in prayer. And you'll remember the link, of course, between the bronze outside and the gold inside. if we are justified, if we are washed with blood and with water, we have the privilege of entering into this glorious fellowship and understanding it for what it is, Christ our light and indeed our bread of life and our altar. Now, of course, we're seeing him at this particular time as our lampstand. Now, I don't wish to go over everything that I said last time. Although I'm conscious in coming to something like this that it's very difficult just to deal with it without setting some measure of context each time. I think it's just enough to say that we should remember that this lampstand was not plain in its design. God could of course have made it plain, but he chose to make it ornate. And, in fact, it is in the form of a tree. It's in the form, specifically, of a naman tree, and it has branches, bulbs, blossoms, and fruit. So, in that way, you can understand that the lampstand contains two images which are woven together in one. We are essentially seeing Christ as the bearer of light, certainly, but we are also, in the same lampstand, seeing Christ as the bearer of fruit. Christ as the bearer of light, and Christ as the bearer of fruit. And again, we began by seeing him bearing light. And if you'll remember from last time, in the Bible it's very plain that light symbolizes two things. They're very related, but nonetheless they're distinct. First of all, light represents knowledge. Just as ignorance is represented by darkness, so knowledge is represented in the Bible by light. To have light is to know, and to know is to have light. But it also represents holiness. Just as sin is darkness, so holiness is light. So the light from the lampstand has to do with knowledge, and it has to do with holy living. So we keep that in our minds all the time, knowledge and holy living. Now the Bible teaches us that God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. Now that's not just telling us that God knows everything, and that God is altogether holy, it's telling us that, but it's also conveying to us the idea that he is the source of all our knowledge and the source of all our holiness. There's no true knowledge apart from God himself, who is light, who is knowledge. Neither is there any true holiness of life and character apart from God, who is the source of all holiness of life and character. Now, he has always communicated these things through his son. His Son is the medium through which we see himself. John opens with that sublime declaration that in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Now, Word itself was a a concept that John's readers understood even apart from spiritual things. The philosophers spoke of the logos as the eternal word or the eternal reason. They recognized that there was an eternal word or an eternal reason. Now John is very happy to use that term and to apply it to the second person of the Trinity. In the beginning was the eternal truth. In the beginning was the eternal reason. He was, as a person, with God, and mysteriously, he himself, as a person, was God. Now by calling him the Word, pre-eminently the Word. John is telling us here that Christ is the, if you like, the communicator on the part of the Trinity towards fallen man. The knowledge that God desires to give the world is given through the medium of His own Son. This, as John says, is the true light which lightens every man that comes into the world. And in a measure that is true. To the extent that we have any good, any knowledge, any understanding, that emanates from the one who is the Word of God. Now, when God created man, male and female, he made us as the children of light originally. And of course, we were in our forefathers, we were made in light, and we walked in the light. That meant that Adam and Eve had real knowledge and real holiness. Real knowledge meant that they knew God. They had a proper knowledge of God and a proper understanding of who and what he was. Now, not an exhaustive knowledge, of course. And I'm quite sure it would be a knowledge that would progressively grow had not sin darkened their lives. But it was a true knowledge of God, an accurate knowledge of God. And as well as that, they had a true and accurate knowledge of themselves. They understood themselves as creatures in God's image and likeness. They knew what that meant and its ramifications. They also had a true knowledge of each other, which is important, which enabled mutual fellowship based on that mutual knowledge and understanding, not just of one and another, but even male and female, and husband and wife. These things they knew and understood. And, of course, they had a true knowledge of creation as a whole. They understood how it worked, how it was formed and fashioned, and the relation that every part of the creation had to the other. In all that, true knowledge. And just in the passing, when you think of things like that, it makes you realize just how much was lost and, in some respects, how little of it we've regained. People think of the world of science, which is a word that means fundamentally knowledge. That's what the word science means. It means to know. People think that they've shed all this stuff and that we now know things, whereas the reality is that things were known and understood that have been lost and forgotten. And to the extent that God is allowing us to rediscover these things, we are only making our way back to things that were known and understood before sin entered the world. There was a real knowledge when God made us. And as well as having that true knowledge of God, the light of the true knowledge, they had the light of true holiness. In other words, they were not just created in the light, but they walked in the light. They walked with God, particularly, as I alluded to last Sabbath, in the cool of the day. They walked with God in the garden. That was just a reference. I mean, sometimes when you read that, you tend perhaps to take it as a kind of one-off event. You'll remember after Adam's sin that God appeared in the garden in the cool of the day and said, Adam, where are you? You may be tempted or inclined to think of that as a kind of one-off event, but The thing that was unusual there was not that God was in the cool of the day in the garden, but that Adam wasn't there to meet him. That's what was unusual. The presence of God with Adam and with Eve was a natural thing, a daily thing. It just pleased God at a certain time each day to manifest himself in a particular way. So Adam may have been conscious of the Lord's presence all the time, which he was, but God granted that special manifestation. That's not unlike the way he deals often with ourselves. We may have a sense of his presence, but nonetheless we sense it especially at particular times. And so they had, through holiness of life, walking with God and walking with each other. And their nakedness symbolized that. There was nothing in their nakedness to produce shame. In other words, their outward appearance was a faithful reflection of their inward character and life. No need for self-consciousness of that wrong kind or guilt or anything of that kind. they had the light of true holiness. Now, as you well know, and as we all know, tragically, sin plunged us into darkness, and that meant that we lost the light. We lost the true knowledge of God. We corrupt that knowledge. We corrupt God. We lost the knowledge of ourself, to think of ourselves as better than we should. We lost the knowledge of each other, constant misunderstanding and misrepresentation, and we've lost the true knowledge of the world. And at the same time, our lives are characterized by sin. Now, God could have left us like that. He could have left us in the dark, and the dark in which he would have left us is an ever-darkening darkness, let that be said. because the end of it would be everlasting darkness, which is what we'll consider partly tonight when it comes to Lazarus and the rich man, because our destiny, certainly, if we are without Christ, without hope, without God and the world, our destiny is to be in the dark, to be dark ourselves, to be in darkness, absolutely without hope. But the Lord did not leave us like that. The fact of the matter is that immediately following the fall, a new light began to shine. Now the source of that light is still His own Son. His Son, the Word, remains the same channel of communication. But the fact is that He is bringing a new knowledge that was hidden before. which is often called in the Bible a mystery. This is a wonderful new knowledge of the love of God that is particularly revealed in mercy, in forgiveness, and in reconciliation. That light began to shine. And like I said, it's a new light. And the purpose of this light is to give us a new knowledge, of course, but also to make us into something that we have lost. It's to restore us into the fellowship of God and to renew us into His image, to be again holy, just as God is holy. Now that light that shines is, of course, Christ, and the truth that is conveyed in it is the truth of the gospel. And you'll remember that the purpose of the gospel is to renew you in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness. And for that to happen, the gospel tells us right from the start that God's own Son must take our place, and that we can only be saved in a spiritual union with Him as the way and the truth and the life. Now that light will come into the world one and a half thousand years after this tabernacle is built. The true light will shine, bringing that knowledge of God as a merciful, redeeming Saviour. He will shine when he comes into the world himself as the light of the world, to make that known. But the fact is that even though that's when the light would come into the world in the person of the Lord Jesus, who is himself the light of the world, it's through that the rays of light that emanate from him as the source of light, the rays of that light would stretch way back in time to the moment of the fall. That's when the truth of God saving us in Christ, that's when the truth was first communicated. That's when the rays of that light hit us. You know, people speak about the light of stars hitting us after so many years, so that you see events that took place a long time ago. Well, that's through here. The light of the world came into the world 2,000 years ago. But the fact is that the light which emanated from that cast itself backwards right to the point at which man fell. And that's why it was possible there and then to announce the gospel. And God announced it. The first ray of saving light came in Genesis. And it came in Genesis chapter 3. And interestingly, it came through God speaking to the serpent. It's a remarkable thing that it's not the first promise of the gospel is indirectly to us. It is actually addressed to the serpent. And from there, as it were, to us, where God says to the serpent, I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed." Now that just sounds like a general conflict between good and evil, but you'll notice it's brought down to a particular person. He, that is her seed singular, so someone who is born of a woman, he shall bruise your head. and you shall bruise his heel." Now, there's a difference between your heel being crushed and your head being crushed. The image that you actually have here is of a foot stamping down on a head and crushing it. In the process, the heel is wounded. The heel is badly bruised. but nonetheless the heel comes down on the head and crushes the head. So the Saviour will be wounded indeed, and grievously wounded, but in the process He shall crush your head. If you were to ask why the first proclamation of the gospel comes in the form of an address to the serpent, I don't know the full answer to that, certainly. But one thing I can say is this, that God is fundamentally, fundamentally concerned with his own glory, his own honor, and his own majesty. And the one who has been the means of bringing this terrible destruction into the world is the one who will be addressed. And he is assured that all the evil that he has done and will be done will be dealt with, and it will be conquered, and there will be deliverance. He has brought sin into Eve's life. She will now be the mother of the dead. But remarkably, God will make sure that she is the mother of the living. She is the mother of the living, and that's why Adam named his wife after this event. We're told that Adam then called his wife's name Eve because she became the mother of the living. Now, the living there is not a reference to physical life. It's a reference to spiritual life, which tells us in itself by the way that Adam took a hold of this message. He took a hold of this promise. He knew there was hope. and that there was deliverance and that there was salvation. And it's as much as to say that my wife shall actually give birth to the living. There shall, in spite of this catastrophe, be a seed that will serve God. And of course, as he is progressively taught, he realizes that the whole world itself shall be renewed at last into a new heaven and a new earth. And of course, in conjunction with that, God told Adam and Eve the way of salvation, to kill the animal. They were clothed with its skin, and that substitution is the means by which they live. Now that is light. That's light. That's the light of Christ shining from the cross, the light of Christ from the cross shining back, way back to when it was first needed as a means of knowledge and of true holiness. And to receive that message meant that you knew and that you began to live, and that you began to be conformed into the likeness of Christ. Now, when Christ was about to be born, John the Baptist's father, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, said that the day spring from on high has visited us. Now, he's thinking in terms of light. He knows that the Messiah is about to be born. He knows that the birth of his own son is telling him that the Messiah himself is about to be born. The day spring from on high has visited us to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death. And even Simeon, that old priest, and priest I believe he was, When he held Christ in his arms, he said, "'A light,' he says, "'to bring revelation to the Gentiles.'" This is God's revelation of salvation. "'A light to bring revelation to the Gentiles, "'and the glory of your people Israel.'" Of course, when the Savior began his ministry, he introduced himself as the light of the world. I am, he says, the light of the world. Now, of course, that meant that he was bringing the knowledge of salvation and the way to holiness and the way into fellowship with God. The real question was how would people respond to it, but the Lord Jesus himself tells us that. He tells us that light has come into this world. And men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. So they don't want the light. Everyone practicing evil—now this is an unholy life—everyone practicing evil hates the light. And they do not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does the truth will come to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God. And John 2 tells us in the prologue, which we read together, that when he came into the world and tabernacled amongst us, he came into the world like that, he tabernacled in the flesh. And although he made the world, and the world was made through him, the world did not know him. He came to his own and they did not receive him. But to as many as received him, They saw the light, of course. To them he gave the authority to become children of God, those who believe in his name. Not born of blood, this new birth doesn't come like the ordinary birth. They were not born of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man. They weren't made Christians by other people, neither were they made Christians by just deciding simply to be so, but they were made Christians by the will of God, who begot them. begat them, so he gave them the right to become the children of God who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. So he comes into the world as the light of the world. But he tells them that he's not staying long in that capacity. As long as I am with you, he says, I am the light of the world. Now that's an indication that he's going and that he's taking the light with him. In fact, when he's closing his public ministry, he says, a little while longer is the light with you. A little while longer is the light with you. While you have the light, walk in the light, he says, unless darkness overtakes you. Less darkness overtakes you. In other words, you have the light of the knowledge of God and the way to life with God. You have it with you. Well, he says, learn to live in the light of that knowledge before the darkness of sin and ignorance utterly overwhelms you. You are in it already, he says, but it will utterly overwhelm you. And again, just going back to what I said earlier, that is what's being taught in the parable, if we call it a parable, of the rich man and Lazarus, where the rich man is overwhelmed with the darkness and ignorance and sin. Now, in that respect, when he says, yet a little while is the light with you, while the light is with you, walk in the light and live in the light. That leads us to think of the cross as a place where light is extinguished, or at least that's how you would instinctively or intuitively think of it. If Christ is with us temporarily as the light, then the cross is somehow an extinguishing of that light. And certainly that's how the world sees it. I mean, their purpose in killing him was to extinguish his message. And they rejoiced that he had no seed, that he had no followers, that with his death the followers who had already scattered and spread, showing their weakness, would just melt away like snow in the sun. And they believed that they were silencing his message and just quenching the light. But the facts were otherwise. Although the Lord ceased to shine in this world in that way, the light did not go out. The fact of the matter is that the lampstand was only transferred. It was transferred from this world and into the holy place not made with hands, where it still stands and where it still shines today. It shone for that brief time on the earth directly. Now it shines from heaven itself. And it doesn't shine in the bronze of suffering. It shines in the glory of divinity, in the golden glory of divinity. That's why the lampstand is not in the courtyard. As a means of entry, the lampstand is on the inside. Now, that helps us to understand the role of the seven lamps. Now, the seven lamps on the lampstand is, of course, a sevenfold source of light. and it symbolizes the Holy Spirit of God in His sevenfold fullness, bringing that fullness of gifts and graces into the world. Now, when we see the Holy Spirit in glory in the book of Revelation, we always see Him intimately connected to the second person of the Trinity in a special way. For example, in Revelation 5-6, we see the throne of God, and God the Father, as always, is not brought before us in ordinary symbolic forms, just in terms of things like lights and rainbow and emeralds, just an impression of glory, that's all, not an impression of a person. The Lord Jesus Christ is brought before us on his heavenly throne as a lamb, But we're told that the seven eyes are in the Lamb, or the Lamb has seven eyes, which we are told are the seven Spirits of God, or if you like, the sevenfold Spirit of God. And the reason the Holy Spirit is so intimately connected with the Lord Jesus Christ is because that's the way his ministry continues under the new covenant. The Holy Spirit is emphatically the Spirit of Christ. It is the Spirit of Christ whose seven eyes go to and fro over the face of the earth to find out those who are loyal on his behalf. That's a wonderful text in Chronicles. that the seven eyes of the Lord, which are his Holy Spirit, they go to and fro over the face of the earth to find those whose hearts are loyal on behalf of the Lord. Is that your heart today? Is it mine? He's looking for that loyalty. He's looking for that commitment and for that love. He's looking for it. The seven lamps are the same. The Spirit who comes into this world is emphatically the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the Spirit of the Ascended Saviour. And all these teachings are designed to convey to us that the man who walked this earth is none other than the second person of the Trinity. He's not something less than God. He is in the midst of the throne, and in that capacity, as the God-man, he has the authority to send the Spirit in his own name and to accomplish his own work. So the seven lamps in heaven represent the Lord Jesus Christ as the source of our light, working through the Holy Spirit, bringing the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, as we'll see in a moment. So then the lampstand is the exalted Christ, still shining, still shining by means of the Sevenfold Spirit. The light was not extinguished at Calvary. It shines in the full brightness of the Sevenfold Spirit. Now, where does this lampstand cast its light? Well, strangely enough, we can begin by saying, generally, that it casts light on itself. The light shone on the furniture. It was by means of the lampstand that you saw the golden altar of prayer. It was by means of the lampstand that you saw the table of fellowship with the loaves on it. And of course, it was by means of the lampstand that you saw the lampstand itself. Were it not lit, you wouldn't see it. But once lit, you see it. the light casts itself back on the light bearer, and you see the gold, and you see the bulbs, and the branches, and the blossoms, and the fruit itself. Now, there's a way in which we could be tempted to say that since the light shines in the holy place, that Christ is shining light in heaven. And that's true. That is true. After all, we're told that in heaven there is no need of the sun or the light of any lamp. For the Lord God gives light in heaven. So it's a direct emanation from God himself. It is his glory that illuminates heaven. Again, in the same book of Revelation, we're told similarly, but not identically, that there's no need of the sun, there's no need of the moon, for the Lamb is the light thereof. And we're told that the nations of those who are saved shall walk in that light. They shall walk in the light of the glory of the Lamb. And as I said to you some time ago in another context, it's the light of Christ's presence that illuminates everything in heaven. In other words, all our knowledge and understanding, whether of God or of each other. it comes to us through what comes from Christ himself. That's what the psalmist means, what he meant long ago, in that purest light of thine, we clearly light shall see. In that knowledge that emanates from you, we know and we understand. We understand you, who gives us that light, and we understand each other. That's one of the And I mean one of the wonderful things about glory. Glory is so full of wonderful things. It is glorious by name and by definition, but it means that we understand each other properly, which is so essential for fellowship. I mean, you'll notice yourselves, those of you who lived perhaps in a brighter day will know that when real fellowship is present between the Lord's people, it means that the guard and the reserve is down. You're able to open yourself out to your brother and sister, and your brother and sister is able to open themselves out to you, because you know each other, you love each other, and there's a deep understanding and communion between one and another. Now when the Spirit of the Lord is withdrawn, because he is grieved, and he's not withdrawn unless he's grieved. So when the Spirit of the Lord is withdrawn or grieved, the fellowship ceases, and the guards go up, and the reserve is there instead. You're not able to take and to give. I'm not able to take and to give. And that's because of misunderstanding, nine times out of ten, lack of distrust, and so often. No, all that's gone in glory. And it is undoubtedly a wonderful aspect of glory that you'll understand me and I'll understand you as we never understood each other before. Because in that purest light of thine we clearly light shall see. And our love will be deepened. Our fellowship will be deepened as our love deepens. And that's because in that purest light of thine we clearly light shall see. We shall know him even as we are known. Paul said that. He said, now, he says, we see through a glass darkly. But then he says, face to face. Now, face to face is more than person to person. Face to face is, it's character to character. We shall know each other. You'll know the Lord face to face. You'll really know him because the face is the character and he'll really know you. And you'll know each other just like that. So the lamb is the light thereof. And that's true. The glory of Christ illuminates the whole of heaven. But can I say that that is not the truth actually being taught here? It is the truth. But it's not really the truth being taught here. After all, this is not a holistic picture of heaven by any means. You've just got three pieces of furniture inside it. You've got a table and a lamp stand and an altar. This is a very specific point of view. This is a very focused Portrayal of heaven as seen here on the earth because what it's focusing on is not what heaven will be like That's not the idea in the tabernacle the idea on the tabernacle is what heaven is like in Connection with us here on the earth In other words, it has that narrow focus of what Christ is doing for us in this world. He's our lamp He is providing our table, and He is our altar of incense and intercession. So, that's what I mean by saying that He shines light on Himself. He's teaching us here on the earth who and what He is, as a lampstand, as a table, and as an altar. And this idea of shining light on himself introduces us to what Christ himself taught so plainly to the disciples. Now, when he shut the door on his public ministry and said he was withdrawing the light, interestingly enough, he went into the upper room and he shed more light on himself for the disciples' sake. And one of the things he taught them was that the Holy Spirit would be the medium. of bearing his light in the world once he went home to glory. When I go home, he says, you'll have greater light, not less. And I will ensure that the sevenfold Spirit will cast my light into your lives because you need it. Now let me say, first of all, that this is a picture of the Holy Spirit's ministry in general anyway. I mean, sometimes people wonder What is it exactly that the Holy Spirit does? What is his role in the work or the economy, as people call it, of salvation? What is it that he does? What was he assigned in the covenant of grace or in the covenant of redemption? What was he assigned Well, one of the earliest illustrations I got of this is, I still think, one of the best. Certainly it works for me anyway. And it has to do with the way that light is now used to shine light on classical buildings. and having been resident in Glasgow for a long time, that's where I'm most familiar with it. If you pass, say, the University of Glasgow at night time, or the Mitchell Library, or the art galleries, you'll see light that is strategically placed, and sometimes it's really strategically placed, just to show you the glory of the building. And it does. It seems to glorify the building in a remarkable way. Now, the light, like I said, is well placed, it's intelligently placed, but ultimately it's drawing attention to the building. So there is something undoubtedly admirable in the light itself. But at the end of the day, the light is there in order to perceive the building. Now that is the Spirit's ministry. In essence, really. In essence, that's the Spirit's ministry. The Holy Spirit, as a person, says, look at Christ, behold his glory. He is the way and the truth and the life, and no one can come to the Father but by him. In that respect, the Holy Spirit's ministry is what you could call self-effacing. He's not drawing attention to himself, although Christ draws attention to him. but he draws attention to the Lord Jesus Christ. When I say it's self-effacing, that communicates the idea of humility and that belongs to the Holy Spirit. And let me say that that is definitely part of his ministry. There's no denying that. We can't speak of it as a humiliation for the Holy Spirit to have this ministry because That conveys too many ideas that are not helpful. Christ had humiliation in his life, but we can speak of the Holy Spirit as condescending, coming down, and humbling himself in so doing. As the psalm tells us, 113, that the Lord humbled himself to look upon things in heaven and earth. Now, looking upon them is in advance of helping them. And he condescended to look, to look, and to help. And condescension is in the heart of God. So, in other words, it is in the character of God. It belongs to who he is to stoop. And that, friends, is a wonderful thought. If it didn't belong to God's character to stoop, Christ could not possibly have stooped to come into the world, could he? He didn't stoop once he became a man, he stooped to become a man. There's no doubt that he stooped lower still when he became a man, no doubt about that at all. But did he not stoop to become a man? Most certainly he did stoop to become a man. And that tells us that humility is in the heart of the Son. It belongs to his character, to his person. It is in the heart of the Father. It is in the heart of the Holy Spirit. After all, the third person has consented in the covenant of redemption to condescend and to take his place in a fallen sinful heart. and to reside there to draw attention to the Lord Jesus Christ. It's only when you go to glory that the full glory of the Holy Spirit and His part in the work of redemption will be complained to us. Only when we go to glory. But that humility is in the heart of God. Now this light that he shines on Christ is, of course, reaching down to us on earth. He is the one who is revealing Christ to us. And when we are linked to the Savior there, we see the light from the lamp onto the golden lampstand. There the Holy Spirit is giving us everything that we need to know He said to the disciples that the Holy Spirit will bring to your remembrance everything I've said. Now, we know ourselves what it's like sometimes to listen to the Word of God and not to take it in. One of the foolish things, we think, is that the apostles took in and understood everything that they were being told during Christ's ministry. In fact, if you read the Scriptures spiritually and intelligently, you realize that they took in very little at the time. They took in very little at the time, and there were times when their own spiritual condition meant that they were not taking it in in the way that they should. I drew your attention to that just a few weeks ago in connection with the miracle of the loaves and the fishes. We're told that they did not understand it because their hearts were hard. Now, it seems to us difficult to understand how anyone's heart could be hard while a miracle was being performed, but that was the truth. And as they sat there in the upper room, the Lord tells them and assures them that the Holy Spirit will bring back to your remembrance everything that I said to you. And was that just for their own benefit? No. It's for yours and mine. What did they do with it? They wrote it down. For whose benefit? For yours and for mine. What we need to know regarding the person and work of Christ is revealed to us in the Scriptures. That's where the light has shone. We have it under the new covenant, not as a lampstand as such, but we recognize that the light is coming down of the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ revealed to us in the word of God. And not only does he bring it before us, he brought it to their remembrance, but he brings it before us and he enables us to understand it. He has His own means for doing so, but by the grace of God, He gives us this life-changing Word, and a life-changing Word it is. As we thought recently, the more the Word is in contact with you, the more it changes you into the image of the Son Himself. And, of course, Christ also said to the disciples that when the Holy Spirit comes, He says, He will convict the world. Now that word translated, convict, means to shine light on something and to secure a conviction. When a conviction is secured in a court of law, it means that sufficient light has shone to establish the truth and you proceed accordingly. So the Holy Spirit does. He convicts the world. He shines light on certain realities, and He secures a conviction in your heart. He shines light on sin, what it is, on righteousness, what it really is, the righteousness of Christ, and judgment, what it really is, especially on the cross. He shines light on all these things. and secures a conviction. What conviction? Confession of sin and an embrace of the Lord Jesus Christ. I am convicted. I am won. I am won over. I see and I understand because of that purest light of thine that has shone in the Scriptures and has shone in my heart. I have the knowledge of God through the Lord Jesus Christ. So, he brings that light. And it's a continued light that shines, and it shines more and more. That's why we pray in a certain way. I'm conscious that we sing the psalm, send thy light forth and thy truth. Let them be guides to me. Show me thy ways, O Lord, thy paths, O teach thou me." You've got to pray that. I've got to pray it too, because we want to walk in the light and live in the light. We want to be conformed to the light. We want life. We want holiness. We want knowledge and understanding. We pray that way, and we also live in a certain way. If the Spirit is the one who brings the knowledge and the holiness of Christ into your life, respect him. He may not reveal an awful lot about himself, but he is the one who reveals everything that you need to know regarding your Savior to you. And the last thing you want is for him to withhold Christ's countenance from you. You don't want that. Don't grieve the Spirit, the apostle says. Don't grieve him. He's a person. He's a person. What grieves him? Careless living grieves him. Unconfessed sin grieves him. Things like that mean a return of darkness and an absence of light. And when that happens, you need to come back to the light. And you need to confess your sins and to restore that fellowship of light and life with God. Respect the Spirit. Respect the presence of the Holy Spirit. He's forged that union between you and the Savior, and he gives you growth in knowledge and growth in holiness. Respect him and know that careless living and unconfessed sin grieves his presence away. He also shows you, this Spirit, that the lampstand itself is golden. There was a talent of gold in it, which comes to about 100 pounds weight, or in the modern world, in the modern British world, 45 kilograms of pure, solid gold. Pure, solid gold. We're told it's of one piece, and that it's a hammered work. Now, it's sometimes tempting to see a hammered work as a reference to the sufferings of the Savior, but there's a difficulty with that. The cherubim, for example, on the Ark of the Covenant are also a hammered work. And if a hammered work is a reference to sufferings, then you've got to be consistent in the typology of the tabernacle, and the cherubims never suffered, never will suffer. So you've got to dismiss that idea from the hammered work. The hammered work is simply a reference to the fact that this piece is one that it's not cast in a mould, and neither is it joined one part to another. It is one piece. It is emphasising the unity. The unity of what? Well, it's the unity, essentially, of Christ and his own people. because they are the fruit that appears on the lampstand. The buds and the blossoms and the ripe fruit are images of his own people who are united to him in glory. And, you know, sometimes you have the Lord's people prominently before us like that in the Bible, in their birth, in their growth, in their maturity. You have them as little children, as young men, and as fathers. The Aaron's rod that budded, I think I referred to that last week. His rod in the priesthood budded almonds again, buds, blossoms, and fruit. This is the Christian life that the Savior is producing Himself in union with Him, so much that they are one with Him, and they are glorified with Him. He is fruitful, And His fruitfulness is seen in their fruitfulness as He works in us. Now that's opening another door, but I'm just going to leave it there for the moment and we'll return, I hope once more, to look at the lampstand next Lord's Day. Let us pray. O Lord, our God, we pray that you would send your light forth and your truth and let them be our guides to take us to the holy hill. We don't read the word just to know, we read it to grow. And we pray, O Lord, that it would leave its own stamp and impress upon us. Teach us to value the One who teaches us to value the Lord, to respect the Holy Spirit who has condescended to dwell in this heart of ours, a fallen and impure heart, a heart which has sin in it. and nonetheless the Holy Spirit himself indwells. O Lord, how low our Saviour came in order to find us and to lift us up. Bless our meditation upon the truth, which is so full and so full of Christ. In his name and for his sake we pray. Amen. We'll sing God's praise in Psalm 18 and at verse 28. Psalm 18 at verse 28. The Lord will light my candle so that it shall shine full bright. The Lord my God will also make my darkness to be light. By thee, through troops of men, I break. You'll notice this is what the light gives us when it comes into our lives. It strengthens us. By my God assisting me, I overleap a wall. As for God, perfect is his way. The Lord, his word is tried. He is a buckler to those who in him confide. Who but the Lord is God, but he who is a rock and stay. It is God that girdeth me with strength and perfect makes my way. May you experience, and me too, more of the Lord being all these things for us as he lights our candle. Verses 28 to 32, we stand and sing. ♪ The Lord will light my candle so ♪ ♪ That it shall shine full bright ♪ ♪ The Lord my God will also be ♪ my darkness to be light. I'll eat the fruits of them I bring, and then discount them all, and find my God assisting me. God in over me behold. As for God, perfect is his way. The Lord, his word is right. He is a partner to the Lord, to live in him from time. For when the Lord is gone, but he Who makes the wrong can see, The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.