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Scripture Reading: Exo. 25:31a, 37a; Zech. 4:2; Rev. 1:12b, 20b; Prov. 20:27; Rev. 4:5b
The main revelation of the Bible is the relationship between God and man. What this relationship should be also occupies very much of human thought. When man thinks of God, he thinks in terms of worshipping, fearing, and perhaps loving Him. God, in man’s concept, is far off in the heavens, dwelling in unapproachable majesty; the best mere man can do is to offer Him worship and try to please Him.
This natural concept is that man’s relationship with God is objective. Religion also promotes such a concept, whether that religion is Judaism, Christianity, or Islam. Verses from the Bible can be used to support this idea of a God to be worshipped and revered from afar.
If we penetrate the heart of the Bible, however, we will see that man’s relationship with God is to be a subjective one. God wants to come into us and become our life and nature. Then He wants us to become His living. Colossians 3:4 says, “Christ our life.” Galatians 2:20 says, “It is Christ who lives in me.” Philippians 1:21 says, “To me, to live is Christ.” Since Christ is God, Paul was saying that for him, to live was God.
God is our life. We are the living of God. God lives within us. To us to live is God. These four sentences are the center of the New Testament. If they are not our daily experience, we are not up to the standard.
When we speak of the subjective experience of God, we are touching something hard to grasp. How can it possibly be that God becomes our life, that we become His living, that He lives within us, and that for us, to live is God?
To help our understanding, the Bible uses pictures. Words alone are not so clear. It is hard to visualize a person’s looks, for example, by reading a description of him; a photograph, on the other hand, shows what the person looks like, even if no words are used.
What Old Testament picture prefigures how the Lord Jesus shed His blood for us so that God might pass over us in His judgment and might become our life and be taken into us as food? As you probably all know, it is the passover lamb in Exodus 12. What Old Testament type shows us that to be in the Lord Jesus is to be saved through the waters of God’s judgment? Even those in the children’s meeting know that the answer is Noah’s ark.
Can you think of a picture that shows us that God is our life, that we are the living of God, that He lives within us, and that for us to live is God? There is such a picture. For over fifty years, however, I did not realize that such was the meaning of this picture.
There is the illustration in John 15, where the Lord Jesus told us that He is the vine and we are the branches. We are to abide in Him, and He will abide in us. To some extent this picture shows us that He lives in us and that for us to live is Christ. However, this picture is more like a sketch than a photograph.
A most comprehensive picture is the golden lampstand, which is first mentioned in Exodus 25. There, it stood in the tabernacle as a testimony for God. Zechariah 4 is the second mention. There the lampstand represented the true Israelites, who were also God’s testimony. The final mention, in Revelation 1, portrays the church as the golden lampstand and as the testimony of God.
You may have too shallow an understanding of what God’s testimony is. Do not think that standing up to speak for God makes you His testimony; that your good works, done to glorify Him, make you His testimony; that honoring your parents or not arguing with others means that you have a testimony of Him. These outward things are far beneath what His testimony is.
God’s testimony is a golden lampstand. It means that God comes into us to be our life and to cause us to become His living. He lives within us, and we live Him out.
The design of the lampstand is most meaningful. Though the lampstand is but one, there are six branches with seven lamps. In all man’s history, this design has never been improved. In the thirty-five hundred years since Moses described this pattern, no one has been able to produce a better design. The Jews often make use of drawings of this lampstand; they make minor variations in the style of it, but no one has been able to improve it. Architects vary the designs they make of buildings. Clothing fashions go back and forth from one style to another. This lampstand, however, was designed by God. What He fashions cannot be improved. Who can alter the pattern of man’s face or improve the form of his body?
The lampstand signifies the Triune God. In typology gold represents the divine nature. Like gold, God’s nature does not change or decay. That this lampstand was made of gold tells us that it represents God’s nature.
This gold was not in a formless lump. It was structured into a form that bespoke its function. The shape of the gold, a lampstand, symbolizes the image of God. Who is God’s image? Christ is called “the image of God” in 2 Corinthians 4:4. As the Son of God’s love, He is “the image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15). Therefore, the image, or form, of the lampstand signifies Christ. “No one has ever seen God; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him” (John 1:18).
What are the seven lamps? About this we cannot be clear until we come to Revelation. There we are plainly told that the seven lamps are the seven Spirits of God (4:5). The seven Spirits are simply the Holy Spirit of God. These lamps are the expression, or manifestation, of God.
The Father is signified by the gold, the element of which the lamp was made. The Son is signified by the form of the lampstand. The Spirit is the expression, as indicated by the seven lamps. Now do you agree that the golden lampstand is a picture of the Triune God?
By the time we come to Revelation, the church has become the lampstand. This means that the church is the expression of the Triune God. Each local church is a golden lampstand. What first signified the Triune God now depicts the church.
By nature, however, we are not made of gold. God formed man from the dust of the ground (Gen. 2:7). When our physical body is chemically analyzed, it is found to have the same constituents as the soil. At death, man returns to the dust from which he was taken (3:19).
How can we, who are men of dust or clay, become a golden lampstand? When we were regenerated, we were born of God. Not only were our sins washed away by the precious blood; there was also within us the element of the Father, just as a new baby has the life and nature of his father. Now there is gold, the element of God, in us.
Nonetheless, this gold needs to be formed. Paul travailed for the Galatians “until Christ is formed in you” (Gal. 4:19). It was not enough for Christ to be revealed in them (1:16) or even to be living in them (2:20). The gold had to take shape.
Before the gold within us takes shape, can we say that we are the church? According to locality, we are surely the church. How else could we describe ourselves? Yet according to what we are, we may not look like the church.
Even this morning you may have been quarreling at home. When you recall that, you find it hard to declare that you are the church. Nevertheless, in the midst of this quarreling by the man of clay, there was still gold within you.
We are truly the church. In spite of our appearance of clay outside, inside is the element of gold.
Our need now is transformation. “We all with unveiled face, beholding and reflecting like a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:18). To be transformed into the Lord’s image is from the Lord Spirit. The final expression of the golden lampstand is the seven lamps, which are the seven Spirits of God.
Our own spirit is also the lamp of God (Prov. 20:27). These two spirits, ours and God’s, have been mingled. Within our little lamp there is now also another lamp of greater intensity.
The function of a lamp is to shine. According to J. N. Darby’s footnote, Proverbs 20:27 can be rendered, “Man’s spirit is the lamp of Jehovah, searching all the chambers of the soul.” Before we were saved, our spirit was dead; the light of the lamp was extinguished. All our movements were under the direction of the soul. Our thinking and our doing were according to our whims. One day, however, the light of the gospel shined into us, and the lamp of greater intensity was placed in us. The spirit’s function revived. We repented and confessed our sins, enlightened by the conscience within our spirit. With our spirit enlivened and the lamp of God’s Spirit added to our spirit, it became very bright within.
The light now searches all the inward parts of the soul. Under its twofold shining, we can see that the thoughts we were so sure of are wrong; that we loved what we should hate, and hated what we should love; that our joys and sorrows were for the wrong things; and that our intentions and decisions were wrong. Under the intensity of this light, we confess and repent to the Lord.
Usually, however, there are some areas within us that resist the penetration of the light. When the Lord shines on some aspect of our emotions, the sisters may weep before Him, but they will not open this door to His searching gaze. When the Lord shines on the brothers’ dislike for a certain brother, they may argue and protest, but they stubbornly shut the door of their will to the Lord’s reproach. We may admit to the Lord our shortcomings, but we tell Him that He must forgive us, that our weakness is to blame, that such is the way He made us, or that others are at fault. Why does He not change the others? Why does He always pick on us?
When you close the door to the Lord in this way, you cannot be transformed. Year after year you read the Bible, pray, and go to the meetings, but you refuse to change your old ways. You will not allow the Lord to touch your feelings, your thoughts, or your possessions. You may pray, but what matters is what you say, not what God says. You may shed tears before the Lord, but you will not open the door of your emotions to Him.
If you allow this blockage to continue, the enlightenment will cease. You may still faithfully read your Bible. You may find it easy to pray. You may keep attending the meetings regularly. The tendency to cry may be gone. Outwardly, you seem to be at peace. Inwardly, however, your growth has been arrested. God’s way of transforming is through enlightening. Wherever the light shines, life is supplied to that place. By rejecting the light, you are rejecting the supply of life.
Who experiences the greatest amount of transformation? It is the one who is absolutely open to the Lord.
“Lord, I am fully open to You. I want to keep opening to You. My whole being is open — my heart, my mind, my will, and my emotions. Keep shining. Search me thoroughly. Enlighten and enliven me. I will accept it fully.” In this way, the light will penetrate into every area, and life simultaneously will be supplied to you. The man of clay will be transformed into the image of Christ. As the gold is thus formed in you, there will be the seven Spirits shining forth and manifesting God.
Such is the church in reality. The golden lampstand is not only the Triune God; it also is the church, His manifestation. That the church may express the Triune God is what He is working to accomplish on earth.
May we all be open to Him to receive His enlightening and to let His life supply us. Then we will be transformed and bear the image of Christ. As we are enlightened by the lamps within us, we will become the golden lampstand in reality in our locality, manifesting the Triune God. Then He will have His testimony.
