Reading:
Exodus 37:17-24.
"And
he made the lamps thereof, seven, and the snuffers
thereof, and the snuff-dishes thereof, of pure
gold."
We have
here the great vessel of light and testimony in the
candlestick, which quite clearly is Christ in corporate
expression, but Christ pre-eminently; and we have the oil
for the light, which is the Holy Spirit: the two Members
of the Godhead in co-operation for bringing the light of
God into this world amongst men. But when we have said
all that we can say about Christ Himself and about the
Holy Spirit, there is something else necessary to God for
the carrying out of the Divine intention in the coming of
Christ and the coming of the Holy Spirit, and that
something else is represented by the wicks of the lamp.
These wicks are never prescribed; nothing is said about
them, no provision is made. We do not read anywhere that
the Lord said, 'Make wicks: this is how the wicks should
be made'. There is nothing like that at all. They are
simply there by indication. The fact that there are
snuffers indicates that there must have been wicks, or it
can be taken for granted that the oil would not burn by
itself without a medium, and although there is so little
notice of the wicks themselves, they are indispensable to
the Lord Himself, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, for Their
purpose in this world.
And the
wicks, of course, are the children of God - 'Frail
children of dust, and feeble as frail'. The Lord needs
wicks, and cannot fulfil His purpose without them. You
and I are in the capacity of the wicks of the great Lamp
of testimony, the Lord Jesus; the great power of
testimony, the Holy Spirit. There are one or two very
simple thoughts then in connection with wicks that I will
pass on to you.
THE LORD'S DESIRE FOR FRESHNESS
The
first is that the provision of snuffers for the wicks
implies and carries with it the Divine desire and thought
to keep things fresh in the matter of His testimony.
These lamps, these wicks, were to be trimmed regularly
morning and evening; and, although it may seem strange,
yet the fact remains, and we know it all too well, that
the human element does creep in even where there is the
presence of the Holy Spirit. It might be thought that if
you are in living touch with Christ and if the Holy
Spirit, like the oil, is really flowing through you, the
human element would be eliminated and there would be
nothing of that which speaks of staleness coming in at
all. There would be no need for snuffers, surely. But the
fact remains that the snuffers are still necessary. The
human element does persist and the Lord has taken account
of it.
And the
Lord has constantly to take steps with us in order to
keep things fresh, to keep things alive. We are the
element that would arrest the full fresh blaze of the
testimony. We often cause an obscuring of the light. It
is not due to the Lord; it is not due to the Holy Spirit.
It is this human element coming in all the time. It comes
in in many ways, and the fact that the Lord has said that
morning and evening continually the snuffers must come
into operation, the wick must be trimmed, indicates that
even as to our experience of Himself, even as to our
union with the Lord, even as to the Holy Spirit flowing
through us, it must not be something of yesterday or of
last week or of ten years ago, twenty, thirty, forty
years ago. It must be something fresh today. It is so
easy to live in a past experience and to be always
talking about something that the Lord did long ago. The
Lord's thought is that there must be a freshness and
livingness for today. Our life in the Lord, our
experience of the Lord, our testimony to the Lord, has
got to be renewed day by day. So, as a safeguard against
living upon something of the past, snuffers need to be
brought into operation. The Lord says, 'No; living in a
past spiritual experience can be like charred wick. It
was quite true - yes, it was the Holy Spirit - but it
belongs to the past'. We have to bring things up to date;
things have to be kept alive and fresh today. So we get
rid of mere past history, "forgetting the things
which are behind". Even though they were of the
Lord, things must be renewed.
There is
another way, of course, in which the human element can
come in. It is in connection with those words of Paul -
"Though our outward man is decaying, yet our inward
man is renewed day by day" (2 Cor. 4:16). Now, if we
live on the outward man, we shall be like a charred wick
and it will be a smoky testimony, the light will be dim.
There is to be a renewing day by day of the inward man.
Well, we know the day by day principle of the Lord for
daily bread from above, for inward renewal from above. We
have got to get rid of everything that, although once
good, has now become something of the past and lost its
freshness. The snuffers speak of the Lord's thought for
keeping everything up to date, up to the hour; and if
that is the Lord's thought, then it surely must be
possible, surely it is His intention that we shall never
exhaust things, never exhaust the freshness of our life
with Him; that there shall always be something more - and
there is.
But
something has to be done in order to preserve that
freshness, and that is by constant trimming - the work of
the snuffers. The Lord has many ways of trimming, and I
expect some of us know quite well that the Lord does do
this - how He causes the greatest and best things of the
past to seem as though they never had been, to lose their
strength and their grip upon us. Great experiences they
were in our history, but unless the Lord does a new thing
now, they are as nothing. They were tremendous things in
our spiritual history, and we thought that nothing could
ever be greater - yet now they are as nothing, because we
have been brought to a position where the Lord must
exceed all that has been. The snuffers are at work. They
are cutting off the past, cutting off that which is not
right up to date, and seeking to trim us for something
fresh today.
In many
other matters which we could mention, the Lord operates
in this way. But whether we enumerate the ways in which
the Lord uses the snuffers or not, let us look at the
fact that the Lord prunes or trims, cuts off, deals with,
the human element; makes necessary by various ways and
means the freshness of His life, the new experience, a
new leaping up of life. We come into the way and the Lord
has to deal with us in the way; this human element, this
charred wick, has to be got out of the way - and how
prone we are to be charred, how easy it is for us to be
charred. We all know that. We are every day troubled with
this tendency of ours to be like a charred wick. We get
so stale and so earthy. The Lord is always out for the
maintenance of life up to date in freshness, and in order
to do that, He has to do a lot of trimming.
I think
Paul in Asia fits into that so well. He had known many
resurrections. He could say, "God... who
delivered", and he knew many deliverances. He had at
length to say: "We despaired... of life... we... had
the sentence of death within ourselves, that we should
not trust in ourselves, but in God who raiseth the
dead" (2 Cor. 1:8,9). A new resurrection was
necessary, something beyond anything that had ever been:
and the Lord trimmed him for that. So He would trim us
continually for new experiences of His life, fresh
manifestations of Himself, right up to date.
PRIESTLY MINISTRY
Then
another thing is that trimming is priestly ministry. It
was given to the priests to do this and no one else dared
to do it. It is priestly ministry to trim. Of course, we
have spoken almost entirely of the Lord doing this
trimming, and it must be the Lord who does it in the
first place; but the Lord has priests. There are priests
with the High Priest, and to them is given this secret
ministry of working together with Him in using the golden
snuffers. Galatians 6:1 is just the using of the golden
snuffers. "Brethren, even if a man be overtaken in
any trespass, ye who are spiritual, restore such a one in
a spirit of gentleness; looking to thyself, lest thou
also be tempted!" "Ye who are spiritual":
that surely answers to priesthood, surely that is what
priesthood is amongst believers. Priesthood and priestly
ministry are bound up with spiritual men and women. I
will not go back to show from the Old Testament how
priesthood was based upon spirituality, or to point out
all that is there represented of spirituality in
the matter of priesthood. I think we can take it for
granted that spiritual men and women are His priests, and
priestliness now is a matter of spirituality. "If a
man be overtaken in a fault" - there is the wick
charred and the testimony a bit blurred and dim and
smoky; then the golden snuffers come into play, and
"ye which are spiritual" are to use them, to
restore such a one. It is priestly ministry in restoring.
SNUFFERS OF PURE GOLD
But
remember that these snuffers are of pure gold. That is
the Divine nature by which this ministry is to function.
"Restore such a one in a spirit of meekness" or
"gentleness". Is that not Divine nature? They
are GOLDEN snuffers, pure gold. "A spirit of
meekness" - that is Christ. "Considering
thyself lest thou also be tempted" - that is
humility, meekness. Oh, it is so easy to use the snuffers
in such a way that you snuff people out, snuff out their
life. It is said of Him, "A bruised reed will he not
break, and a dimly burning wick will he not quench"
(Isa. 42:3). No, the Lord's idea, even with a smoky wick,
is not to quench the testimony, by coming down upon the
poor vessel; but the true spirit of priesthood will seek
to deal with that which is wrong, the fault, the
trespass, the evil, with the positive object of reviving,
refreshing, restoring.
It is so
easy to discuss and criticize and speak of the fault and
wrong - and do nothing. 'Look at So-and-so. Their
testimony is not very bright. Look at this and that and
the other thing about them.' Yes, the dimly smoking wick
to be talked about, the faults indicated and pointed out
and taken note of. That is not good enough for
priestliness. The priestly ministry of spiritual men and
women is, while recognizing the need, to help to meet the
need in a true spirit of service, to get rid of the
difficulty.
Well,
that is all very simple, but it has a deep meaning. We
are wicks; we may have the Holy Spirit, we may be joined
to Christ, we may be bound up with the great testimony of
God, to be for Him vessels of light on this earth; but
with all that, given union with Christ, given Divine
purpose, given the Holy Spirit, something is needed in us
continually. We have to be kept in a condition day by day
which makes it possible for the Lord to be seen, and the
Lord is just continually renewing His testimony in us by
keeping away things that seek to come in - sin and self
and the world and other things that char the wick. The
Lord wants His testimony kept fresh and living
continually, right up to date, and then He wants us to
help Him in this - but in a spirit of meekness. Oh, it is
no use our trying to take the mote out of our brother's
eye if we have a beam in our own.
The Lord
give us much grace and much wisdom in fulfilling this
ministry. It is an important one, to help the Lord's
people to maintain freshness and fullness. And if the
Lord uses the snuffers, let us remember that He is
seeking not to lessen but to increase, not to quench but
to make greater His light through us. It may be cutting
off, it may seem to be sometimes reduction, but the Lord
intends enlargement and purification by His using of
these instruments, which seem often to be destructive but
are intended by Him to be just the opposite. So much,
then, for the golden snuffers. The Lord make us those who
can be used as snuffers: not to limit, crush, quench, but
to help, restore, revive, increase.
First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" Magazine May-Jun 1953, Vol 31-3. This version from "The Work
of the Ministry" Volume 1.