
Exodus 27:20-21 - You shall command the people of Israel that they bring to you pure beaten olive oil for the light, that a lamp may regularly be set up to burn.
As I read this, two things stopped me – “pure beaten olive oil” and “a lamp may regularly be set up to burn”. Pure beaten olive oil was the most expensive of the olive oils because the olives are not pressed as you would get in regular olive oil. They were cut up by hand, put into a mortar, and using a pestle, the oil was pounded or beaten out of the olives in this difficult, tedious labor of love. This was the oil that was given by the people to Aaron and his sons to keep the lamp with the Holy Place lit.
As I meditated on this passage, I saw some connections that relate to me today. The temple had three parts, the outer court, the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies. Now we are the temple with a body like the outer courts, soul like the Holy Place, and spirit like the Holy of Holies. 1 Corinthians 3:16 says, “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?”
Holy Spirit who dwells in me, desires to renew my mind, my will, and my emotions into His likeness. It is obedience that reflects worship to the Lord as Romans 12:2 reminds us. He desires to break down my walls of flesh, my pursuit of worldly things that can never satisfy – if I will let Him. His loving persistence slowly but surely cuts up and beats down my old ways of thinking, reacting and coping, and produces transformation into the holy one He has called me to be. Pure beaten oil for the Lord.
Now the lamp is the Lord shining through me. And this is a daily activity between the Lord and me – surrendering my plans, ideas and goals for the day and picking up His. Letting His lamp burn brightly with this pure beaten oil. It is a beautiful and sometimes painful daily process, a humbling process that the Lord orchestrates to keep the beaten oil filling my lamp.
Comentarios