Morning, August 28, edited from Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening

“Oil for the light.” — Exodus 25:6

My soul, how much you need this, for your lamp will not continue to burn long without it. Your wick will smoke and become offensive if the flame is gone, and gone it will be if the oil is absent. You don’t have any oil well springing up in your human nature, and therefore you must go to those that sell, and buy for yourself, or like the foolish virgins, you will have to cry, “My lamp is gone out.” Even the sacred lamps could not give light without oil; though they shone in the tabernacle they needed to be fueled, and though no strong winds blew upon them they were required to be trimmed, and your need is equally as great. Under the most favorable circumstances you can’t give light for another hour unless the fresh oil of grace be given you.

It was not just any oil that might be used in the Lord’s service; neither the petroleum which exudes so plentifully from the earth, nor the produce of fishes, nor that extracted from nuts would be accepted; one oil only was selected, and that was the best olive oil. Imitated grace from natural goodness, assumed grace from priestly hands, or imaginary grace from outward ceremonies will never serve the true saint of God; he knows that the Lord would not be pleased with rivers of such oil. He goes to the olive-press of Gethsemane, and draws his supplies from him who was crushed there. The oil of the gospel’s grace is pure and free from any contamination or impurity, and so the light which results is clear and bright. Our churches are the Savior’s golden candelabra, 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 public rays of the sacred light, but we cannot give them forth unless in private we receive oil from God the Holy Spirit.