“You are to command the Israelites to bring you pure oil from crushed olives for the light, in order to keep the lamp burning regularly. In the tent of meeting outside the curtain that is in front of the testimony, Aaron and his sons are to tend the lamp from evening until morning before the Lord. This is to be a permanent statute for the Israelites throughout their generations.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Candles have long played an important role in religious ceremonies and non-religious ones alike. The symbolism of light is easy and obvious to make. With nearly all of the main structures of the tabernacle now described and laid out for Moses to share with the Israelites, God turns His attention to some of the finer details. He starts with what will be the main source of light for the tabernacle. Let’s talk about oil, light, and seeing what’s really there.

Light is really amazing stuff. We talked the other day about the fact that while there are a few creaturely exceptions, as far as human life goes, we can’t live without light. We can’t see without light. Our eyes are specially designed to be able to receive photons of light bouncing off of the objects around us which our brains then convert into images.

There’s more still than that. Light allows us to see beauty. Yes, a black and white picture can be really beautiful, but if the whole world was nothing but black and white, so much of the beauty we enjoy around us would be lost. Without light there would be no color in the world. When photons of light from some source bounce off of an object, those photons carry with them energy. The molecules of that object aren’t merely passive bystanders when those energetic photons bump into them. They absorb some of that energy.

The result is that when the photons leave that object and fly somewhere else (namely, our eyes) they are now vibrating at a different wavelength than they were before. This new wavelength corresponds to a particular color in terms of how our brains process them once they strike the photoreceptors in the back of our eyes. In other words, the color of the objects around us doesn’t exist until they interact with light. No light, no colors. What an amazing world our God has designed!

The oil itself here was to be pure olive oil. This picks up and carries the symbolism of purity and holiness that we have seen through the rest of the tabernacle description. The people needed constant reminders of God’s holiness. He was (and is) different from all the other gods around them. He is the source of all moral purity. The purity of the lamp stand oil was just another reminder of this fact. None of these little pointers by themselves were enough to keep the Israelites’ hearts and minds focused in the right direction, but the sum total of them began to create a pretty powerful picture.

Running on this symbolism of light for just a minute, Jesus proclaimed Himself to be the light of the world. He is the means by which we can see and understand the world as it truly is. Jesus called us as His followers to be light in the world. We are to live in such a way that brings clarity and beauty to the world around us. Far too often we have fallen far short of that as a people, yet in the many more times when we have and still do get it right, we do just that. We bring the light of the Gospel with us everywhere we go.

One of the real merits of the Christian worldview is that it allows us to understand and explain why the world is the way it is in a way that is better, truer, and more compelling than any other worldview attempt to do so. That is, the Christian worldview allows us to see the world for what it really is and make sense out of it in a way no other worldview does as well. To once again borrow that quote from C.S. Lewis, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”

That’s not only the gift that Christianity gives to the world as a worldview, it is to be the gift that our lives as followers of Jesus bring to the world as we live in it. By your life, the people around you should not only be able to better see and understand how the world works, but also to see and experience the real beauty it can contain. As you love your friends and neighbors and even the strangers who come across your path with the generous, compassionate, sacrificial love of Jesus, you will help them know the world as it was always meant to be. You can be the light that points people to God. Don’t drop the ball on that.