August 28, Morning

C. H. Spurgeon · Modern retelling

"Oil for the light." — Exodus 25:6 · KJV

My soul, how much you need this, for your lamp will not keep burning long without it. Your wick will smoke and become an offense if the light is gone — and gone it will be if the oil is absent. You have no oil well springing up in your human nature, and so you must go to those who sell and buy for yourself; otherwise, like the foolish virgins, you will have to cry, "My lamp is going out." Even the consecrated lamps could give no light without oil; though they shone in the tabernacle, they had to be fed; though no rough winds blew on them, they had to be trimmed; and your need is just as great. Under the happiest circumstances you cannot give light for another hour unless fresh oil of grace is given you. Not every oil could be used in the Lord's service — not the petroleum that oozes so plentifully from the earth, nor oil from fish, nor oil pressed from nuts; one oil only was chosen, and that the best olive oil. Pretended grace from natural goodness, imagined grace from priestly hands, or fancied grace from outward ceremonies will never serve the true saint of God; he knows the Lord would not be pleased with rivers of such oil. He goes to the olive press of Gethsemane and draws his supply from Him who was crushed there. The oil of gospel grace is pure, free of lees and dregs, and so the light it feeds is clear and bright. Our churches are the Savior's golden lampstands, and if they are to be lights in this dark world, they must have much holy oil. Let us pray for ourselves, our ministers, and our churches, that they may never lack oil for the light. Truth, holiness, joy, knowledge, love — these are all beams of the sacred light, but we cannot give them out unless in private we receive oil from God the Holy Spirit.