“. . . Oil for the lamps . . .” Exodus 25:6
My soul, how much you need this, for your lamp will not long continue to burn without it. Your snuff will smoke and become an offence if light be gone, and gone it will be if oil be absent. You have no oil well springing up in your human nature, and therefore you must go to them that sell and buy for yourself, or like the foolish virgins, you will have to cry, “My lamp is gone out.” Even the consecrated lamps could not give light without oil; though they shone in the tabernacle they needed to be fed, though no rough winds blew upon them they required to be trimmed, and your need is equally as great. Under the most happy circumstances you cannot give light for another hour unless fresh oil of grace be given to you.
It was not every oil that might be used in the Lord’s service; neither the petroleum which exudes so plentifully from the earth, nor the produce of fishes, nor that extracted from nuts would be accepted; one oil only was selected, and that the best olive oil. Pretended grace from natural goodness, fancied grace from priestly hands, or imaginary grace from outward ceremonies will never serve the true saint of God; he knows that the Lord would not be pleased with rivers of such oil. He goes to the olive-press of Gethsemane, and draws his supplies from him who was crushed therein.
The oil of gospel grace is pure and free from lees and dregs, and hence the light which is fed thereon is clear and bright. Our churches are the Savior’s golden candelabra, and if they are to be lights in this dark world, they must have much holy oil. Let us pray for ourselves, our ministers, and our churches, that they may never lack oil for the light. Truth, holiness, joy, knowledge, love—these are all beams of the sacred light, but we cannot give them forth unless in private we receive oil from God the Holy Ghost.
Adapted from Morning and Evening.
