Exodus 25 and verse 31. Remember the table of showbread
last time. And thou shalt make a candlestick
of pure gold. Of beaten work shall the candlestick
be made. His shaft, and his branches,
his bowls, and his snops, and his flowers shall be of the same,
all of gold, pure gold. Six branches will come out of
the sides of it. Three branches of the candlestick
are out of the one side and three branches of the candlestick are
out of the other side. three bowls made like unto almonds,
with a knob and a flower in each branch. And three bowls made
like unto almonds in the other branch, with a knob and a flower.
So in the six branches that come out of the candle, they come
out of the candlestick. And in the candlestick shall
be four bowls made like unto almonds, with their knobs and
their flowers. There shall be a knob under two branches of
the same, and a knob under two branches of the same, and a knob
under two branches of the same. according to the six branches
that proceed out of the candlestick. Their knobs and their branches
shall be of the same, all shall be one beaten work of pure gold. And thou shalt make the seven
lamps thereof, and they shall light the lamps thereof, that
they may give light over against it. And the tongs thereof and
the snuff dishes thereof shall be of pure gold. Of a talent
of pure gold shall he make it with all these vessels. And look
that thou make them after their pattern which was showed thee
in the mount. The lampstand, golden lampstand. First thing it says, you're going
to make it out of pure gold. Pure gold. Now we went into the
holy place and I'll have to get a picture and show you what it's
like. There's the outer court. The outer court. And then there's
a tabernacle. It's got a veil in front of it. You go behind that veil. There
was a 15 by 30 place there. And in that, when you went in,
over on your right as you faced it was the table of showbread. Over on the left as you walked
in was the candlestick. And right in front of you was
the altar of incense. That's what it was. There's three
things in the holy place. And the priestly family was the
only ones allowed in there. And that was the place for communion.
God said, there's where I'll communion with you. There's where
I'll meet you. There was that table. Remember the table was
made out of incorruptible wood or wood that wouldn't rot and
decay as our Lord Jesus Christ's humanity was a sinless humanity. And then it was overlaid with
gold, with a crown of gold around it. That's how your Lord's deity
in his exaltation with his crown. And that means that that bread
that was on that, that our Lord Jesus Christ is our bread. He's our substance. He's by whom
we live by. It's on whom we feed. He is that
true bread which came down from heaven. And then there's the
lampstand, what we're talking about tonight. And that lampstand
is to give out light. And that light is what gave light
to that tabernacle on the inside for the Lord's people inside
there. And that light gave them power to see and the ability
to see inside there. And that light has given us light,
our Lord Jesus has given us light necessary, necessary to us to
fellowship with Him and commune with Him. And that altar of incense,
that prefigured our Lord Jesus Christ as He sits on the right
hand of God, interceding for us and maintaining our fellowship
with Him by that intercession. You know, so everything in that
tabernacle tells us about our Lord Jesus Christ. And I do know
this, that if we miss Him, we miss everything. If you miss
Him, you miss everything that God has. He read that tonight.
And the Father, whatever the Father does, that's what I do.
Whatever the Father tells me to say, that's what I say. He
said, everything that God has for you is for me. And all the
works that I do, my Father gave them to do. And I come here to
glorify Him. And beloved, everything in this
blessed tabernacle, and we're just getting, you know, He deals
with the furniture first. And as we go through here, we'll
see this. But as our Lord Jesus Christ
gives us light, and He is our light. He is our light. He's not the light of the world.
He's our light. And that incense, that incense that was beaten
and made out of these fine fragrances and put in there and lit and
went up as the intercession of our Lord Jesus Christ. Our Lord
Jesus Christ, He intercedes for us and He's a sweet smelling
savor unto His Father. And our Lord Jesus Christ, the
thing that keeps you and me going day by day by day is His intercession
for us. And I'm thankful that our Lord
Jesus prays for us. You know when he prayed in John
17, he said, I pray not for the world. I pray not for the world. You know who I'm praying for?
Praying for them that thou gavest me out of the world. That's who
I pray for. I'm not praying for the world.
The world don't know me. The world don't want to know
me. The world don't care to know me. But there's a people that
know me. And there's a people you gave
them to me. And I'm gonna pray for them people that you gave
to me. And I'm gonna do what's necessary to save those people
you gave to me. And I'm gonna keep on praying
for them until they one day enter into glory. And all that you
gave me, I didn't lose a one of them. Didn't lose a one of
them. And that's what he was doing
in John 17, praying for his people. If he prayed for them on earth,
imagine what he does in glory after he has shed his blood.
Imagine what he'd done there. And this lampstand stood within
the holy place. This is in the holy place, that
place where only the high priests were going in. Three pieces of
furniture is always in there. And this shows us there that
Christ is not the light of the world. It is the light just for
His people, for His elect. And you know our Lord told them
in John 9, He said, as long as I'm in the world, I'm the light
of the world. And yet a little while is the
light with you. Now light has two great purposes. The light has two great purposes.
The first is to drive out darkness. You know you go into a dark room
and you ain't used to being in there and the first thing you
want to look for is the light switch. When you turn on the
light, the darkness goes away. And that's what the light is. Our Lord Jesus Christ is light
for those who sit in darkness. We were in darkness. And then
the light, not only to dispel the darkness, but to direct you
where you go. You know, to light our way, thy
word is a lamp unto my feet, a lamp unto my path. And you
know, a light is to light your way. I remember when I was a
boy, I went coon hunting lots and lots of times. And back in
them days, you didn't have flashlights and lanterns and stuff, you used
an old cobalt Lantern and you'd carried a cobalt lantern you
had on your hair you carried it. That's that. No they started
But you couldn't find your way around if you didn't couldn't
see And so I'll tell you what we could not see our way if Christ
did give us light if he wasn't the one who should shine the
light on our path and bless his name that he is the light by
which we follow and He is the light that gives us light. He
gives us the light that we need to see the scriptures. He gives
us the light to dispel the darkness from our minds. He gives us the
light, beloved, to direct the steps when we're going through
this world, when we don't know which way to go, just stand still
and the light will shine eventually on which way you're supposed
to go. And then you'll go that way and you'll be all right.
And you know men love darkness rather than light. This is one
of the most mysterious. And to show you that men is darkness.
He said the light shined in darkness. And the darkness, the men with
their darkness of their mind, the darkness of their heart,
the darkness of their understanding. The world rejected that light. The darkness did not comprehend
it, did not get it. And since our Lord's death by
wicked hands, the world has never again, never again seen the light. He is now hidden from their eyes.
You know who he sends light to? His people. Just like these folks
here, right there. And then our Lord rose again.
He ascended up on high. He is in the holiest of holies,
in God's presence. That's where the light now dwells.
That's where the light comes from. That's where the light
comes from, from God in heaven itself. And bless the Lord, we
have now access to Him by the Spirit. Now I want to show you
two or three things here about this lamp. This golden lamp. First of all, thou shalt make
a candlestick of pure gold. Pure gold. There in verse 31. Pure gold. Solid gold. Who has more gold in his purity. Gold in its purity, it's rare
to find pure gold. But our Lord Jesus Christ, is
there anyone more pure? more holy, more worthy, more
indulged in great values set upon gold. People go to great
extremes to get gold. But our Lord Jesus Christ is
pure gold. He's the most valuable. He's
the most precious. He's the purest of the pure of
everything that's in this universe. He's the purest of all. Pure
gold. Pure gold. And it says down here
in verse 39, a talent of pure gold. Pure gold. You know what
a talent of gold is? They weigh gold out in troy ounces. There was 229 troy ounces. Now, I don't know how many pounds
that is, but that's a lot. But that's not the way we weigh.
We don't weigh our Lord Jesus Christ. No, no. He's pure gold. You know, when you start describing
Him, and then you find Him in Revelation 1, He's wearing a
golden girdle. Everything about our Lord is
gold. It's pure. It's solid. It's got great value
to us who are his blessed people. And then look what it says here. And thou shalt make it a beaten
work. Beaten work. That means that
somebody is going to take that gold and that lump that you see,
that thing just started out as gold. Just a great big lump of
gold. Now you imagine the wisdom and
the power that went into taking that pure gold and beating it
and beating it and beating it and beating it until it took
shape to give light. Now our Lord Jesus Christ how
he was beaten. I've got a message back there. I started to get it out and look
at it tonight and tell you some things about it. But when you
look at the wounds of our Lord Jesus Christ, how he was beaten
of men. Oh, nobody. You know, lots of
men have been beaten. They've even been beaten to death.
But it's who it was that they beat when they beat the Lord
Jesus Christ. If I get beat, you ain't done
nothing but beat a man. When a man beat on the Lord Jesus
Christ, they were beating on God. They were showing their
enmity toward God. They were showing the hatred
they had for Christ. They were showing the rejection
they had for Christ. And all of us did. And they took
our Lord Jesus Christ. And he had puncture wounds when
they drove nails into his hands. He had contusions where they
would slap him. and his face would get bruised. They took a crown of thorns and
put it on his head and blood, not little trickles of blood,
blood run down his face. And they lined him up and people
spit in his face, cleared their throat and spit in his face.
Men would slap him kick him and beat him while he's going through
the crowd. Don't tell them what all things
they did to him. But they hung him up. And they
took a cat of nine tails and they put glass and nails and
rocks on the end of those leather thongs. And they beat our Lord
Jesus Christ till our Lord himself says, my bones, my bones. Shut up. And then when they beat
him like that and he gets so thirsty and his tongue started
swelling up like it was a pot shirt and they wouldn't give
him any water. And this says here is beaten
gold. Our Lord Jesus Christ was beaten
and beaten and beaten and mocked and mimicked in every one of
his offices. In his office as a man, as a
human being, they mutilated his body. All my bones, he said,
are showing. You can see the bones in his
back. The ribs were his beaten up. And I tell you what, they punctured
him and slapped him and pulled his hair, pulled his beard. And
they done all of those things against our Lord Jesus Christ.
And then they attacked his priesthood. They attacked his priesthood,
they put a robe on him. And said, oh listen, you know
you think you're somebody, you think you're a king, you think
you're something, well let's put a robe on you. Then they
mocked his priesthood. You saved others, yourself you
cannot save. They mocked him as a king. They
mocked him as a man. They mocked him as God. They
beat him and beat him and beat him. And you know what? That
beating that our Lord Jesus Christ, he was beaten with many stripes.
That beating that he took. That beating that molded him
into the Son of God, the one who saved us, who went to the
grave. Went to the cross and then went
to the grave. And when he came out of that
grave, bless his holy name, he come out of there just like he
went in. Pure gold! And I tell you, it didn't purify
him. He was pure when He was on this
earth. He was pure when He was on that
cross. He was pure when He went into
the grave. He was pure when He came out.
Even though He was beaten. And bless His holy name. He is
only beaten for one reason. To keep God from beating us. He said, you know, He said, you'll
be beaten with many stripes. We, listen, we've already been
beaten. We've already been mutilated.
We've already been to the grave. We've already been to the cross.
We've already been raised from the dead. We've already been
seated with the Lord Jesus Christ at the right hand of God, right
now. Every stripe He took was for
us. Everything that happened to him
was not for him. It was for us. And the worst beating that our
Lord Jesus Christ took, the worst beating He took was when His
Father turned His back on Him. He could take what men could
do to Him. He said, for this cause came
I into the world. Now listen, that was awful. But when his father could not
look upon him because sin was on him, judgment was on him,
wrath was on him, sin was on him, judgment was on him. And
the father said, I can't look, I can't save you. And that, that
was the worst beating that he had. My God, my God, why? Everybody else has, but why did
you? Why did you? He was forsaken of his father
that we could be accepted in the beloved. Bless his holy name. And every stripe He took, He
took it for me. Oh, listen. Beaten. Pure gold and
beaten. Gold when He's beaten. Gold when
they got through beating Him. Gold, gold, gold, and oh my. See, but it's in the right hand
of God. Oh, bless His name. And I tell you, our Lord Jesus
Christ, You know, that golden calf that they made while Moses
was up on the mountain, that was made from a mold. You know,
when man makes a God for himself, it's quick and it's easy. But
when Christ was made an offering for us. What God does, nothing's
easy. He had to do things His way,
by His wisdom, by His power, in order to save. He had to stage
us in order to save sinful men like ourselves. And look what it goes on to say
there. And this lamp, this light stand,
it says down there in verse 37, and thou shalt make these seven
lamps, there's three on each side and one right in the middle. And they shall light the lamps
thereof that may give light over against the other. And our Lord Jesus Christ, let
me show you something about this light. Now cook over with me
in Exodus 27, 20. Exodus 27, 20. Talking about this light. And our Lord said, told the children
of Israel, Thou shalt command the children of Israel that they
bring the pure olive oil beaten for the light to cause the lamp
to burn always. Christ is always a light for
his people. Now I told you that only the
high priest and his family is the one allowed to go into that
holy place, that place where the lamp is. Now I want you to
show you about it. They were priests. Now look,
I'm going to read this to you. You don't have to look at it
yourself, but I'll read this to you, 1 Peter 2, 5. You also
as lively stones are built up a spiritual house. Now listen
to this, and holy priest, holy priesthood. So you know
what? We get to enter the holy place
too. We get to go where the light's at. We get to go in there where
the light's at. We get to go where the light
shines. And it says that the lamp shall be lit continually. And I tell you, bless His holy
name. And listen to this, holy priesthood
to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ. Our Lord Jesus, bless His name. He came into this world, and
He'd come into this world made of a woman, beaten with many
stripes, and our left stand in glory our Lord Jesus Christ glorified
by his suffering and as the light and as the light who gives us
light our Lord Jesus Christ is the brightness of God's glory
and the express image of his person and you know This is the
thing that I love about, one of the many, many things that
I love about our Lord Jesus Christ. It's His purity, His sinlessness,
His value. And that's why I said, unto you
therefore that believe, you know what it says about Him? He is
precious. He is precious. He is precious. Is anybody more precious than
the Lord Jesus Christ? And our left stand, made out
of beaten gold, stands in that holy place. And we're allowed
access into that place. And we go in there with a lights
hat. And I tell you what, You know, like I said, the light
has two reasons. And who needs light? Only people
that sit in darkness. He gives us that light. And then
He gives us light to guide our way, to direct our steps. Thy
word is as a... I think as Solomon said, He said,
Thy lamp, thy lamp giveth light. And it shines more and more under
the perfect day. Under the perfect day. And I
tell you what, when we get to glory, we won't need light anymore. You know why? Because the Lamb. What does it say? The Lamb is
the light of that place. There don't even need sun there. There'll be no sun there. You
know why? The Lord's the light of that
place. And here's something else, I'll
say this about the Lord Jesus Christ, and then I'm going to
quit. Our Lord, He's the gold. But when you have pure gold,
and you can look at it, and it shines, or it just shines so
much. And our faith is considered as
gold. Tell you something about our
faith. Our faith is considered as gold. He said, though if need
be you are in heaviness, that your faith being much more precious
than gold, though it be tried with fire, might be found under
honor and praise at the appearing of the Lord Jesus Christ. But
as gold it will reflect And the only thing we can do is reflect. We have no light of our own.
We have no glory of our own. We have no worth of our own.
Those priests that went in that tabernacle, those priests that
went into that holy place, they had no worth. They weren't worth
more than anybody else. It was just the office that God
gave them. And we have no worth. So the only worth we have is
what our Lord Jesus Christ made us to be. And the only wealth
we have is in Him. You know, I've said this time
and again, I can spend what little money I've got just that quick. It wouldn't take me less than
I'm glad I got my funeral paid for so somebody won't have to
buy my funeral for me. I'm glad I got it paid for. But
I'll tell you this, I'll tell you this, I could spend what
I've got real, real quick. And I'm sure you could too. But
there's one thing that's more valuable than anything you and
I've got in this world. And that's the relationship we
have with the Lord Jesus Christ. We can have nothing if we have
a relationship with Him. We can lose everything we've
got, but we can't lose a relationship with Him. And I tell you what, He's worth
more than 10,000 worlds like this one, and 10,000 more besides. And if I had 10,000 souls, I
could trust Him with every single one of them. The only worth I
have is what Christ. He's the only worth I've got
is Him. The only wealth I've got is found
in Him. The only riches is in Him. And bless His holy name. Pure gold, beaten gold, and then
gives us the light before He was beaten and after He was beaten.
He's the light. He's the lamp. Oh, blessed, blessed Master,
our precious Savior. Lord, we can't speak of you the
way you're worthy to be spoken of. We can't value you as you're
worthy to be valued. We don't love you like you're
worthy to be loved. But Lord, we do, we do, do see
you to be everything to us. We do see you to be our light. To be the only value we have
is our relationship with you. You give worth to us. We bring
no worth to you. We add nothing to you. But everything
we got, you gave to us. And we praise you and bless you
and thank you for it in our Lord Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Amen. Turn your eyes upon Jesus Oh, ain't that so? Ain't that
so? I'll see you Wednesday, guys.