The Light of the World

NUMBERS 8

The relationship between form and function has been a classic debate in architecture for most of the last century.1 Which is more important—the shape of a building or the function that it has to serve? Is architecture “art for art’s sake”? Or is architecture constructing the best possible structure to achieve a given purpose? In fact, choosing either extreme ends up in architectural disaster. If architecture is simply “art for art’s sake,” you end up with architecturally striking buildings that are incredibly impractical. Woody Allen once parodied this kind of approach by imagining what would happen if your dentist were to take a similar view of reality: you would end up not with the orthodontic work you needed but with the shape of teeth that he thought best expressed his art!2 On the other extreme, though, if architecture is simply about function, you end up with boxlike, soulless structures of the kind that characterize the worst modern housing developments. It turns out that in architecture you cannot simply choose either form or function to the detriment of the other: both need to be taken into account.


FORM AND FUNCTION IN THE TABERNACLE

The same is true of God’s perfectly designed building, the tabernacle. Everything in the tabernacle had a practical reason for existence; everything had a function. At the same time, however, every piece of furniture also contributed in some distinct way to the larger message that the tabernacle was intended to convey; it had a particular form. If you focus entirely on the function of the furniture, you may miss the significance of its form and the message it was intended to convey. On one level, for example, the table in the Outer Sanctuary was simply a table: it functioned as somewhere to put the twelve loaves that were set before the Lord each day. It was never just a table though. The twelve loaves it held in front of the Lord also represented the daily offerings of each of the tribes of Israel. Equally though, if you focus entirely on the form of the furniture, it is possible to read too much into every little detail of the tabernacle’s construction and furnishing. To see an example of this, listen to what one ancient commentator said about the table of showbread in the Outer Sanctuary:

The table made from acacia wood is the Holy Scripture composed out of the bold words and deeds of the holy fathers. In showing us what the joys of eternal blessedness might be and how they might be attained, it surely supplies us with the food of salvation and life. This [table] has length, because it suggests to us perseverance in religious undertakings; width, because it suggests the amplitude of charity; height, because it suggests the hope of everlasting reward.

Actually, it seems to me, the table has length and breadth and height in order to serve its function as a table, somewhere to put the bread. Yet at the same time, the table has its own place within the symbolism of the tabernacle. It is not simply a practical accessory. It has both form and function.


FORM AND FUNCTION IN THE LAMPSTAND

In the same way, the lampstand of the tabernacle, which is the focus of this passage, had both form and function. It had a practical purpose: to give light in the Outer Sanctuary. There were no windows in the Outer Sanctuary, and there were thick, heavy curtains all around it. The priests who ministered day by day at the altar of incense and the table of the showbread needed to have some light to work by, and the lampstand provided that light. Yet the lampstand was never just a utilitarian light: they couldn’t simply have replaced it with a bank of fluorescent tubes. It had a form that conveyed a message of its own, a message that comes to expression in the opening verses of Numbers 8.

Numbers 7 ended with Moses meeting with the Lord in the tabernacle. God conversed with Moses from his invisible throne above the cherubim on the ark of the covenant, and Moses responded (v. 89). God was dwelling in the midst of his people, and the tabernacle had been inaugurated, and its operation was beginning exactly as God had commanded. As part of that inaugural instruction, God commanded Aaron to set up the seven lamps on the lampstand in such a way that they faced forward and threw their light in front of the lampstand. The design for the lampstand had been given to Moses back in Exodus 25. However, now that it was time for the lampstand to be put into action, God was insistent that the lamps should face forward and shed their light forward. Why is that small detail important enough to require its own passage? To understand that, we have to understand what the lampstand symbolized and what stood in front of it and was to receive its light.

What did the lampstand symbolize? It symbolized God himself. That is why this piece of furniture was made out of pure gold, hammered into shape (8:4), unlike all the other objects in the Outer Sanctuary, which were made of wood and merely plated with gold. It had seven lamps on it, symbolizing the completeness and perfection of God’s presence. This symbolism is confirmed by the description of the function of the lampstand. It was to “give light,” exactly the same Hebrew word that the priestly blessing used of God’s face shining upon his people (6:25). The light of the lampstand thus represented God’s favor or blessing shining out into the darkness.

Where, though, does this light shine in Numbers 8? It is to shine forward, on the area “in front of the lampstand,” upon the place where the table of the showbread stood. Again, this table had on it twelve loaves representing the offerings of the twelve tribes of Israel. That is surely why this note about the lampstand follows Numbers 7, where all twelve of the tribes presented their offerings to the Lord, and the Lord accepted them. What we see in Numbers 8:1–4 is a visual metaphor. What the priests declared in the words of their benediction, the lampstand of the tabernacle proclaimed as a daily reality: the light of the Lord’s blessing rested upon all of the tribes of his people, making their offerings acceptable in his sight. God’s love and acceptance of those who were his was depicted at the very heart of the tabernacle.


THE LIGHT OF GOD’S BLESSING

So what though? It is all very well to say that the Lord’s blessing rested on all of his people in the days of Moses, but all these years later we don’t have either a tabernacle or a lampstand. What are the implications of this passage for us as New Testament believers? The answer is that we have the reality toward which the tabernacle lampstand pointed. Jesus Christ is himself the one in whom the light of God’s blessing shines upon all. He embodies in himself the visual depiction of God’s favor resting upon his people. That’s the point that John makes in the opening words of his Gospel: “In him [Jesus] was life, and the life was the light of men” (John 1:4). That’s why the angels told the shepherds at his birth, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!” (Luke 2:14). Or as Jesus himself says later on in John’s Gospel, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (John 8:12). Jesus is the light of God’s favor shining in the world.

Right away we need to notice two things about the fulfillment of the Old Testament image in Jesus. On the one hand, the fulfillment is more extensive than the image. In the Old Testament image, the light only shone on the twelve loaves of bread, representing the twelve tribes of Israel. God’s favor and blessing was limited in the Old Testament era, primarily directed to the children of Abraham, just as he promised Abraham in Genesis 12. Others could come and join them and be incorporated into Abraham’s family, even in the Old Testament era, but these were relatively few and far between. With the coming of Christ in the New Testament, however, the boundaries upon which the light shines have expanded. Jesus is not simply the light of his own people, but the light of the world! In Christ, the blessing of God extends more broadly than ever before, including those who in the past were not part of God’s people. This too was anticipated in the Old Testament. The Lord said through the prophet Isaiah, “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel; I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth” (Isaiah 49:6). In Christ, that “light for the nations” has appeared.

Yet at the same time as the fulfillment in Christ is wider than the Old Testament image, it is also narrower. In Christ, blessing comes to the nations; yet at the same time many of his own people rejected him and missed the blessing. As John put it, “He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him” (John 1:11). Nor was it only his own people who rejected him. Jesus tells us, “And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil” (John 3:19). God’s blessing is not automatic: it has not only to be given, it also has to be received.


THE DIVISIVENESS OF THE LIGHT

What that means is that the coming of Christ into the world is necessarily a divisive thing. Light has a way of revealing the truth in all of its beauty or ugliness. For the weary traveler lost in a blizzard, a light up ahead is a welcome sign of hope that draws him toward it and the life it represents. For the cockroach, however, light is an unwelcome reality. Cockroaches much prefer darkness to light because of the nature of their nefarious activities.

So which are you—weary traveler or cockroach? Your true nature is exposed by your response to the light, to Jesus. If Jesus draws you irresistibly and if you find in him life and hope and peace, then you are shown by that response to be a weary traveler. But if you will have nothing to do with Jesus, if you regard him as an irrelevance at best and a positive danger at worst, then your cockroach nature is on full display. Don’t be surprised by that reality. The truth is that each one of us is by nature a cockroach at heart! We all once loved darkness rather than light. Only the transforming power of the Holy Spirit moves us to faith in Christ and gives us a new heart that delights in the light. The glory of the gospel is that God has taken us out of our natural darkness into light. As 1 Peter 2:9 says, “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” It is God’s transforming grace alone that enables you to delight in the light by dealing with the sin that makes you want to hide. Cockroaches are rightly afraid of being stepped on, and until their nature is changed they will always be afraid of the light. God’s transforming grace calls you to come out of your dark corner into God’s wonderful light. Lay down your inner darkness and the sinful actions and thoughts and attitudes that have marked your life, and come into his wonderful light. Abandon your efforts to please God in your own strength, and receive the free gift of life that God offers you in Christ. Those who are indeed God’s people come into his light.


THE TRANSFORMING POWER OF THE LIGHT

Yet God is not done with us when he brings us out of darkness. He also wants to transform our darkness into light and set us on fire with his glory, making us lights to the world around us. In the book of Revelation, Jesus Christ stands in all his burning glory in the midst of the seven churches of Asia Minor, which themselves are represented by lampstands. Do you see how amazing that image is? The lampstand was the representation of the glory of God shining out in blessing on his people. In the Old Testament it became an image for the temple, the place from which God’s glorious blessing flowed out to his people (see, for example, Zechariah 4). Yet now in this New Testament era, the places from which God’s glory flows out to the world are the very real, very flawed churches. We are the lampstands. Christ stands in the midst of the churches, and so they shine out his glory to the watching world. Our task as the church is thus to be the images of Jesus, showing forth his glory to the community around us.

That is why in addition to saying, “I am the light of the world,” Jesus also said, “You are the light of the world” (Matthew 5:14). To whom was he talking when he said that in the Sermon on the Mount? We tend to read his words individualistically, as if I personally am to be the light of the world. So the old children’s song runs: “Jesus bids us shine with a pure clear light / like a little candle burning in the night. / In this world of darkness, Jesus bids us shine / you in your small corner and I in mine.” That is not what Jesus is saying though. What he actually said was, “You [plural] are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.” I can no more individually be the light of the world than I can individually be a city on a hill. Both images are corporate: it is as the church that we are the light of the world, shining out God’s glory together. As Jesus comes into our midst as his people and inhabits our church, his glory shines out from us to those around us.


LIVING LAMPSTANDS

So how does the church, as a living lampstand, shine God’s light to the world around us? The first aspect of being a lampstand for our world is being a channel of God’s blessing to those around us. That is the point of Jesus’ analogy: as the light of the world, or the city on the hill, we are to let our light shine before men so that they may see our good deeds and praise our Father in Heaven. Are we that kind of channel of blessing to the community around us? Do people see our good deeds and praise God? Or do we instead have our light hidden away under a bucket where no one can see us? Are we a lampstand whose light shines forward and out, communicating God’s blessing toward where people are? If God were to remove our church from the community, would anyone notice? If our churches no longer existed, would anyone mourn our disappearance? If not, then we have to ask ourselves to what extent we are shining out the light of God’s blessing to our community.

Second, though, the church as a lampstand is to challenge our community. Light and darkness can never peacefully coexist. They are always in competition, always seeking to drive one another out. You cannot have light and darkness comfortably side by side. So if we are faithfully to be a lampstand in a dark world, we are going to be an annoyance to some people. Do we as the church bother anyone because our light gets in their way? Would anyone in the community actually celebrate our disappearance because it gives them more room for their darkness?

These are pretty challenging questions, aren’t they? In many cases the church has very little impact on the community, either for blessing or as a challenge. For the most part the community is pretty well able to ignore us and pretend that we don’t exist. They drive past church signs on Sundays, but those are rather easy to overlook. For the rest of the week, perhaps nothing that we do catches their attention. Could our churches really be called the lights of our community, lampstands that impact the wider area?


Perhaps we can’t yet be called “the light of our city,” but nonetheless that is what Jesus is calling us to become. Perhaps we are numerically weak, short on resources, with little in ourselves to offer our community. That doesn’t excuse evading our calling, however. In fact, it’s not a bad thing to recognize how weak we are, provided at the same time that we recognize God’s power to take weak people like us and set them on fire for the gospel. It is not a bad thing to recognize that we have nothing to bring to this task of reaching our community if at the same time we also recognize that God has all of the necessary power. His glory is always made perfect in weakness; his richness is made clear in the midst of our evident poverty.


THE SOURCE OF OUR LIGHT

It is thus good to look around you and see that God does not have much to work with here, so long as we remember the power of this God who is at work in and through us. As Paul reminded the Corinthians, the God whom we serve is the same one who first called the light to shine out of the darkness at the beginning of creation (2 Corinthians 4). If God can make a world like this without any raw material, he can surely build a church out of miscellaneous sinners that his grace has called together to impact our community. He can take our corporate chaos and turn it into light and life. It is not just creation that evidences this truth either. His vast power has also been made clear in our own spiritual journey as he called us personally out of the darkness into “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6). If God is able to create a universe out of nothing and to rescue and regenerate dead sinners, he can surely work through nothing people like us to accomplish his purposes of impacting the world around us.

God promises to supply the power for us to be what he calls us to be as we wait upon him in prayer and supplication. The more we are aware of our own weakness and neediness, therefore, the more we will be inclined to throw ourselves down and beg for his strength. The people were commanded to bring the loaves to place on the table. Aaron was called to set up the lamps just as God had commanded him. However, the reality to which those lamps and loaves pointed—the blessing of God shining upon his people—was not in Aaron’s power to kindle. Only God could do that. So as you and I look outward at the vastness of the task that faces us if we are to be God’s lampstands in our communities, we are not to be overwhelmed by its size. We are not called to be God: God himself will do that. However, we are called to do what he has commanded us to: taking out the light of God’s blessing to our friends and neighbors, sharing the love of Christ with them, and pointing them repeatedly to the grace of God.

We are therefore to be communities where God’s grace is most evident and welcoming, inviting strangers to God to become his friends. We are to be communities that are impossible to ignore, where an inexplicable light beams out, constantly confronting people with changed lives through the gospel. As we do what God has commanded, we can be confident that we will see him do what he has promised—opening up closed hearts, breaking down stubborn defenses, and enabling dead sinners to emerge from the darkness and become part of his people. Some will celebrate the light of blessing that we bring; others will reject us and the One who sent us. If we are faithful, however, no one will be able to say on the last day that they knew nothing of God’s light. The light of Christ will shine forward into the darkness, and the darkness will not overcome it.

Duguid, I. M., & Hughes, R. K. (2006). Numbers: God’s presence in the wilderness (pp. 107–113). Crossway Books.