The Wonder of How The Menorah Was Kindled

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Go to truthnetwork.com and click on the fan the flames Bibles for Asia. Well, it's good to be back from our adventures. We went to Montana, Tammy and I did, through South Dakota and the Badlands and we got to see Mount Rushmore.

It was quite the adventure and we are back after having a marvelous time with family up there. And today, interestingly, I want to talk about the menorah. Actually, you know, I was asking God where we're going, you know, after we finished up the book of Habakkuk. And actually, I was kind of hoping to go to the New Testament with something, but no, he wants me to go to the book of Hosea.

But before we get there, he had me stop and take a rest on one of my favorite subjects, which is the menorah. And the idea of the seven lamps that we will see in heaven, which I'm so excited to see that is the seven. You know, if you look in Revelations chapter four, you're going to see that there are seven lamps there on the throne of God.

When we finally get to see that and we get to spend time with God, I can't even imagine. But the cool thing is it is in Isaiah 11. They give us a description of these seven spirits that Jesus has anointed with. And they are the spirit of wisdom and understanding and counsel and might and knowledge.

Fear of the Lord and a delight in the fear of the Lord. And so I have enjoyed talking about those throughout the hundred nineteen Psalm and all sorts of things. But today I want to go into Numbers chapter eight, where we see that the Lord is going to speak to Moses about how to kindle the menorah, so to speak, the one that was in the original tabernacle. And he's actually going to tell Moses what he wants Aaron to do.

So it's kind of cool. And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, speak unto Aaron and saying to him, when thou lightest the lamp, the seven lamps shall give light over against the candlestick. And Aaron did so. He lighted the lamps thereof over against the candlelit candlestick as the Lord had commanded Moses. So that's actually verses one, two and three of Numbers chapter eight. And it's a fascinating thing that God had me kind of steady on the way to Hosea.

Not really excited about all that, but I'm excited about this. You know, the idea here is fascinating that that the light of the menorah or the candlestick of the of the seven lamps would actually light up the lamp itself. Which is cool to think about that these seven lights, not wisdom and understanding, et cetera, give illumination to the light itself.

Right. And so it's kind of neat to think that Jesus is the light of the world. And these seven wisdom, understanding, counsel, might, et cetera, all give light and understanding to themselves and to Jesus himself. But when you take those in order and you think about it, there's something very cool that's in the the Talmud and the and then the Jews teach about this, that the way that this menorah was kindled, the way that they would light it in order was very important. And also, you know, they describe the way the menorah was that, you know, there's actually a great argument, which I think is cool between the rabbis, that whether or not the menorah faced east and west or whether it faced north and south based on the way it was described in Exodus. But the idea is that apparently there was very specific direction in the Talmud that the menorah was to be lit, starting with the most eastern side.

In other words, like the light would come from the east and go towards the west. And then the second candle that was or the second lamp that was to be lit was to be the western one, which is interesting. And what the rabbis teach, which I think is very cool, is that there is no way that the priest would come in and light the first lamp and skip over the other, you know, five lamps or six lamps in order to get to the seventh. And so what they teach, which I think is beautiful, is that actually he would have lit the most eastern candle, which is, you know, the one on the far east. And then, since the next candle would be west of it, it would be the western candle.

And so if you take those in the order of the way they're being lit, you know, that in and of itself is of interest to me. Because if it was, in fact, the second one that was burned, then that would be that they begin to kindle wisdom before you kindle understanding, which always does go that way. But if they do it the other way and they went with the furthest west candle, then that would have been the fear of the Lord. Because the one in the middle, see, the way that the seven were was that the one in the middle was the one that all the flames pointed to.

So if you looked at the directions on the way the menorah was made, that all the lamps kind of tilted towards the center lamp. And when you think about what that is in the seventh anointing of Jesus, you know, that is a delight in the fear of the Lord. And so it's interesting that, you know, again, that wisdom, you know, the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord, but also that all these seven in their own way bring light and bring illumination to this idea of the delight in the fear of the Lord, which is what we're really, really looking forward to, or I'm really, really looking forward to in heaven, is this sense that we really have God as our Father at that point in time, right? We have this orphan spirit, we fight all the time that we're here on earth, or I do anyway, I don't know about you, but I fight it. And that idea of I'm all alone and, you know, I need to continue to remind myself of the fear of the Lord and to come back and delight in the fact that my Father has this and I've got nothing to worry about.

In fact, my life is a complete delight because of what God is going to do for me. And so it's really, really cool to me to think about these candles. Again, we don't know. I mean, you know, the Bible speaks very specific about the fact that there are seven and obviously what the seven lamps are, how they were exactly kindled and what direction they go. There's obviously a lot of discussion.

But I personally like the idea. Here's my, after all the reading and thinking and studying and asking God about this, here's my impression of it, OK? I believe that the way that the menorah was placed was so that it would match like the sun, right? That it would be started to be lit in the east and it would move towards the west.

And I believe that he would have liked them like the rabbis taught, like the rabbi taught that at first he would light the most eastern candle and then the western one. In other words, he would light wisdom and then light understanding, because all those give understanding. You know, wisdom and understanding give light to the fear of the Lord in so many different ways. Right.

And so they get. Right. Wisdom, understanding, counsel would all be on the one side of of that. And then you get my knowledge and the fear of the Lord on the other side with the center one being this idea of the delight in the fear of the Lord.

I don't know. That's that's my take on it. And I think it's absolutely beautiful. The way to apply that, I think, in our lives is is like, wow, when the sun comes up.

Right. That the idea of that light is to go aha. But now, in order to show that we get the idea of the aha, we got to apply our understanding and our understanding. You know, is aided with counsel and that counsel obviously means we're turning back to God, which again is going back to the fear of the Lord. And then obviously, once we have that, the Lord is going to give us might in order to begin to plumb into the depths of knowledge, which is a very dangerous place to be, in my opinion, without without wisdom and without understanding.

You go digging around in knowledge and you'll get yourself all proud and you'll be in bad trouble. So it's kind of cool to me that knowledge comes last before the fear of the Lord. And then the last two are the fear of the Lord and a delight in the fear of the Lord. And so at the end of the day, you know where I'm at on this for me is, man, if I could just take that. And all all those things that are in my life, wisdom and understanding and counseling, might knowledge and fear. The Lord have used all that to illuminate the idea of the fear of the Lord, the delight in the fear of Lord, the delight in knowing that Jesus is my savior and I get to spend eternity in a relationship with him, which I so look forward to. And I'm so grateful for a chance to study this with you and that you would listen today and for coming back and being with me after I've been on vacation. Thanks for listening.