Telling the Truth for Women

Jill Briscoe: Today we're going to be talking about oil. I don't know if any of you had time to do a little concordance study. If you don't know how to study with a concordance, just buy one from the bookstore—you can get them quite cheap. Find the word "oil" and it'll give you every single time oil is mentioned in the Bible. Look it all up and you'll discover a whole lot of things that I haven't had time to discover because I haven't looked up all those references myself, but I have looked up a few of them.

In the ancient Near East, people or objects were anointed with oil. It was a quite widespread practice and it was for different reasons: for medicinal reasons, for preservative reasons, for cosmetic reasons. All these reasons. And also for religious reasons, giving the object a religious significance. But even the presence of oil symbolized to the Eastern people, not just the Jewish people, joy.

Oil was a symbol of joy and gladness. In Isaiah 61:3, we talk about God giving the oil of joy for our spirit of heaviness. And there you have symbolism. God will pour out, when we are mourning, the oil of joy. And so oil symbolizes gladness and joy, and the absence of it symbolizes sorrow and humiliation, as in Joel 1:10. So it has an image of comfort, of spiritual nourishment, of prosperity.

If you can find Job in a hurry, Job 29:6. Actually, we can read just a few verses because it's an interesting passage and tempting to get off into, although I won't. Job is longing for the good old days before all these troubles and traumas hit him for six and laid him flat. And he starts off in verse 2: "How I long for the months gone by, for the days when God watched over me, when His lamp shone upon my head, by His light I walked through darkness. Oh, for the days when I was in my prime, when God's intimate friendship blessed my house, when the Almighty was still with me, my children were around me, when my path was drenched with cream and the rock poured out for me streams of olive oil."

Very wonderful poetic language. The Book of Job is such a wonderful book to memorize particularly. But there's a passage: somebody really longing for the good old days and using as a symbol and a picture the presence of oil signifying great gladness and great joy. You can look up other verses like Deuteronomy 33:24, Psalm 45:7, to find the same symbol.

So there was a common symbolism that had nothing to do with religious significance. It's invested with significance when God uses it so. And I think never more than in the story in 1 Kings 17:12-16. The little story that's hidden there has to do with a prophet of God, Elijah. And Elijah had a little school of the prophets. They were very poor; they were like most Bible school students that I know. They don't have too much money and they come out of school with debts so over their head it takes a lifetime on their salary ever to pay them off, if they ever do. Well, it was apparently just the same in Old Testament times; things haven't changed much.

And so this poor little lady who was in the school because she was married to a prophet, a young prophet, had a terrible tragedy come into her life: her husband died. We're not told how, we're not told why, but he died. She had two small children. And so she began to try and survive. And for a woman, and especially a prophet's wife in those days, that was tough going. And apparently there was not too much money around; I'm sure everybody shared what they could. And she began selling off all the things that she had just to put bread on the table, until she had sold the last stick of furniture. There was nothing in the house.

So she went to the prophet and she said, "I'm in such trouble. The creditors are coming and I've no more furniture to sell, nothing more to give them. I've nothing. And so they're going to take my sons," which was a common practice in those days, to be slaves. "And they'll give me some money for them and at least the children will be all right, even if they're slaves, because they'll be fed." And Elijah said, "What have you got in the house?" and she said, "I've nothing. Nothing. I'm bankrupt. In the house... Oh," she said, "save a little pot of oil."

There's your little symbol. The Holy Spirit buried within our lives. Trouble comes. And oh, how we forget the little pot of oil when trouble comes, don't we? And it takes perhaps a prophet, a friend, a sermon, something on the radio, a verse of Scripture to alert us to the fact that deep within us, if we are believers, we have the little pot of oil. We have the resources to somehow cope when coping seems to be impossible.

And so, of course, you remember what happened. Elijah said, "Well, just go and collect all the basins and bowls and everything that'll hold oil from your neighbors and start and pour it out. And according to your faith, be it unto you." It's a wonderful picture. And you can spiritualize it quite legitimately, for oil is a symbol of the Holy Spirit in the Scriptures, so the Scriptures say. And as she collected the vessels and poured out the oil, remember, it just didn't stop. According to our faith, so it will be. As we pour out of our poverty, then we will find the vessels even of all our neighbors filled. And I like that little touch. And so we can collect the empty vessels from our neighbors and be the means of filling them up as well.

So even in its common use in cooking, in food, then it is a symbol or invested with significance because of the symbol that's used in the Bible for oil. And the other common use that we're going to touch on before we get onto the significant of the religious use was for skin care. For skin care. "Oil makes man's face to shine," the Psalms tell us. "Oil makes man's face to shine." And of course in the Near East, the drying out of the atmosphere and the huge heat of the sun without any air conditioning, any fans, anything like that at all meant that their skin just shriveled up.

Do you remember when Esther was chosen to be queen? She spent a whole year with beauty potions getting ready. What they would be doing would be soaking her in oil. They literally took baths of oil. Herod was put in a bath of oil to try and help a skin disease he had at one point. And you can imagine: olive oil is very, very good. And they would anoint the hair with oil too. And of course, we have our modern compositions rather similar to that, don't we?

So the common use of skin care is there. Let's invest it with the significance the Bible gives us where oil is concerned and think about the Holy Spirit making man's face to shine. Isn't that so? Moses coming down from being with God with the Ten Commandments in his hands. Something about his presence. In fact, the New Testament tells us that when he had been speaking with God, he had to put a veil on his face. Why? Because his face shone so much, reflecting the glory that he had been observing. They couldn't look on him. They couldn't even look at his face.

What an incredible thing. Remember when Jesus was transfigured before them? His face shone as the sun. And of course, the Bible tells us that we, beholding God's face, reflect His glory. Heard a wonderful story just this last week about a true story about a missionary child who is now a missionary man himself, a very well-known missionary man. But he had a wonderful mother who was a missionary, and she served in Asia among a tribal people. She was a very beautiful woman, very good-looking, a handsome woman, we would say in England. And she had a stroke later on in life and it twisted her face in the most grotesque fashion. It was really embarrassing to look at her.

She stayed after her retirement among her hill people in Asia and saw out her life there, and they buried her there among the people that she'd served all her life. Now, son went to visit her when he was quite a young man. And as he sat in this little church, this thatched church with no sides to it, he watched his mother with her twisted, contorted face teaching the Bible. And then he turned around and looked at the faces that were watching her, and he said it was incredible: their faces were radiant, absolutely radiant—faces of the people listening to his mother. And he said to one of them afterwards, "Your faces were shining." And they said, "Your mother is so beautiful. Her face shines when she talks of Jesus." And there all these people were reflecting the glory that she was reflecting.

So here again, there is a beauty, and who has not seen that in a plain, ugly, ordinary person? When Christ is within, there is a beauty. So even oil that makes the face to shine can tell us that the presence of the Spirit in our life can light us up from within. I always remember working among the street kids and we were dealing with a very difficult gang once, and nothing we did got through to this gang. They were a motorbike gang and we had some adventures, which I won't get off into now, but it was precarious trying to talk to them about Christ and they were quite violent.

However, the thing that eventually got through to one of the leaders of this gang was the way that our kids looked—not outwardly or how they dressed, but their faces, actually their eyes. And this guy kept saying, "Are you all on something or something? Are you all taking drugs?" And we said, "No, we're not." They said, "Yeah, yeah, you must be, because all your eyes look the same. They're sort of bright. They're sort of clear. And they sort of shine." And he was so fascinated with this that you could see him every time he'd meet a new Christian looking at them. And yes, sure enough, they were lit up from the inside. The oil of God makes the face of man to shine, that's for sure.

Now then, let's look at the nature of the oil that was to be the anointing oil, the holy oil. That was the common use, but what about the spiritual, religious use of oil? God gave a recipe to Moses. It was a very special recipe. It was a recipe that had to be taken by the perfumers or the apothecary and made up into a substance which alone was to be used in the temple—first, of course, in the Tabernacle and later in the temple. And the constituency of the holy anointing oil is interesting. It had four specific spices that had to be used: Myrrh, Cinnamon, Cassia, and Calamus.

Myrrh had a significance too. Remember when the wise men came to Jesus, they brought Myrrh? One of the things they brought was a spice called Myrrh. It was a gift of kings to kings. It was very, very costly, and that was significant. If God was going to anoint people and things for specific use, for His own use, to set them apart, to make them other like Himself, to sanctify them using this ritual of the holy anointing oil, then the oil itself was loaded, was laden with significance. Myrrh: a costly, costly thing, rare to find, very hard to find this spice.

Cinnamon: fragrant. Whenever you said cinnamon, the people of the East knew that there was fragrance involved. An honored guest would be anointed with a fragrant oil which was mixed with the spice of cinnamon. It isn't the same cinnamon that you and I use to put on the top of our rice puddings—if you and I make rice puddings. Maybe I'm the only one that makes rice puddings being English, but I always load it with cinnamon. It was a very, very fragrant smell that you could not miss. Spikenard involved the same sort of fragrance. And remember, it was Mary of Bethany that anointed the feet of Jesus and the aroma of the ointment filled the house. Again, that's a significant symbol. When we give Jesus the uncalculated gift of our love, the aroma of that gift, of that service, fills the house. And people are aware there is a fragrance about our lives and it puts them on, hopefully, alert. And they might say, like the young man said on the streets of Europe, "What is it about your face?" or "What is it about your life? I sense something coming from you." Well, it is the fragrance of the Holy Spirit.

So Cinnamon speaks of fragrance. They would put this ointment on the head, this cinnamon ointment for an honored guest, and the heat of the body and the heat of the atmosphere would melt it and it would run down onto the clothes, giving a nice aroma, especially when they didn't have much water and they couldn't bathe more than once a month sometimes. So you can imagine you've got a bottle of cinnamon whenever you could.

Myrrh, Cinnamon, Cassia. This was taken from the bark of a tree. And the tree that it was taken from, the Cassia tree, was known to be good for everything. They wouldn't leave one little bit of the tree. Now, some trees they couldn't use. Some trees they couldn't use, for example, for fire; it wouldn't burn, so that would have to be cast away. But the leaf was used, the branches were used, even the bark of the Cassia tree was used. And therefore the Cassia tree was known to be good. It was a good tree. Some trees were talked about as bad trees, and some trees talked about as nothing trees, and some trees were talked about as good trees. Good. And there again was the symbol that God wanted to use. Myrrh for the cost, Cinnamon for the fragrance, Cassia: the transparency, the goodness, everything was good. Good, good, good, good about Cassia.

And Calamus was taken from the reeds by the river. In fact, there was a reed called the Calamus reed. And the only way you could get this spice or this stuff out of it was to crush it, to absolutely mash it to pieces. Crushed. And maybe the significance of that could be that Pentecost only comes after Passover. And even as God was anointing His Son to do His work, the idea of being crushed that the Spirit might be given is there.

These four spices were mixed with a hin of olive oil. That's a measure, a hin: H-I-N. And of course the olive oil itself was obtained by crushing. Did you know that the Garden of Gethsemane—the name Gethsemane means oil press? Oil press. It drew its name from the oil presses that were in the garden. It was a garden where oil, olive oil, was pressed. How significant that Jesus knelt there the night before He began His journey to the cross and to our redemption and to our hearts. Crushed.

So even the spices of the anointing oil, which also had significance, are meaningful for us. Now there was something about this oil once God had given the recipe to Moses. And it was very intricate. Do you ever wonder why God did these intricate things and said you've got to use Cassia and you've got to use Myrrh and you've got to use Calamus and you've got to use Cinnamon? Because there is significance in them. That's why Bible study is so exciting, really.

And He also gave them some rules. He said, first of all, this is to be unique. It's to be a unique blend. You can't imitate it. You mustn't try. And He had some pretty harsh words for those that would try. Why did God say that? Because He wanted people to smell that specific smell that was like no other and know it had to do with His things. And of course, we cannot imitate the work of the Holy Spirit. We might try, but you can't do it.

For example, if you're giving a talk. Now you might be a good teacher in the classroom. You might technically have the gifts you're using, or you might have a very strong personality or a very exciting conversion story. But you cannot imitate the power and the work of the Holy Spirit with the power of your personality, with your teaching ability. It has to be a unique blend, this anointing, this setting apart, this investing with the power of His Spirit. We are to be distinctive. We are to be other. There has to be something about that man's talk or that woman's talk that is other, that is not duplicated anywhere else. And in a land that duplicates everything, aren't you glad that the work of the Holy Spirit is distinctive? And a Christian woman can be distinctive. She can be herself in a true way, not selfishly, but because the Spirit will help her be the person that God wants her to be and will fill her life so she is something else. That's what the word "other" means: something else.

What's more, says God, you cannot buy it. You mustn't make it on the side. You mustn't have a still, He said to the priests, where you do the bit for God upstairs and you go downstairs and do the bit for you, put it in little bottles and sell it. Holy Spirit perfume—that is not allowed. And of course, maybe He was thinking of all of us that have a little bit of commercialism in us, because it's very tempting to turn the thing to our own use. And God forbade that. He said to the priests, "You are not to make a little bit of extra perfume on the side and take it home for your wife or sell it under the counter in the marketplace on the black market. It is not to be sold."

And incidentally, it is to be for Aaron and the priests. It's for the family, family, family only, He said. And that's, I suppose, why Christianity is unique. The people who believe in Christ are filled with Christ Himself, His Spirit. And there isn't another religion in the world that claims that. The distinctive of Christianity is that we are indwelt by our Lord, by the one we worship. We are possessed by Him. Now that's unique. That's other. That's something else.

So the nature of oil. All of that in the nature of oil. Secondly, the use of oil. How did God tell Moses to use this holy anointing oil that was to be made up of these spices and this olive oil, and all had deep significance? How was it to be used? Who and what was to be anointed? This was a fascinating study, but I have taken some specific important things and people that were anointed to look at. First of all, anointing oil was used: equipping for service. Ceremonially, at the consecration of the priests, the anointing oil would be used. And this was qualifying them for the service of the Lord in the Tabernacle and then later in the temple.

Now this can be lifted right out of the Scriptures and applied to you and I. For Revelation 1:4-6 tells us that we are now a priesthood. There is a doctrine in the New Testament of the priesthood of all believers. In the Old Testament, Aaron and the Levites, Aaron's sons, were the priests. They were designated, set apart by God. But after Pentecost, God directs some of the writers of the New Testament to talk about this doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. And John in Revelation 1 talks about it. He says we are a kingdom of priests. Now when he says "we," who is he talking about? Is he talking about himself, the apostles, the disciples? No. He is writing, he says, to all the churches in Asia. All the people that belong to all the churches in Asia. He doesn't even address his remarks in his letter to what we would say now the priests or the leaders. He says to all of you little nobodies who are somebody because God dwells in you, all of you are a kingdom of priests.

Now this concept has to get into our Christianity or we will never do anything except sit in a church pew and wonder when we will be old enough and great enough and gifted enough and clever enough to do something for God. As soon as you're born of God's Spirit, as soon as you become a believer, a true believer, then you are part of the kingdom of priests. And everything a priest does, you're supposed to do.

What, you say, you mean marry and bury and hatching, matching and dispatching? That's what priests do. That's what leaders do. That's what pastors do. That's one thing some pastors do. No, basically the priest stood between God and man. He spoke to God about man and he spoke to man about God. And those are the two things, basically, a priest did as well as all the other things that some of the priests did. And those are the two things you and I do, hopefully. We learn to pray and we learn to preach. And when I use the word "preach," I'm using it as the Bible uses it: to tell forth plainly the gospel. To tell forth plainly the good news. Every single person here is called of God to be a priest in that sense.

So we learn to pray and we learn to preach. Even if we are women. For wasn't it Joel that said your men and your women will prophesy? And so in this sense, whatever the gifting that God has given us, we share Christ, every single person—one of us—for we are a kingdom of priest. Now how and who is sufficient for these things? How and who is sufficient for these things? Well, of course, without the equipping for service, none of us are. But faithful is He who calls you, who also will do it. And that's why the Holy Spirit came: that He might equip us to pray and that He might equip us to preach.

Now we'll talk about prayer and the Holy Spirit in another study, but let me remind you that it is the Spirit who helps us to know what to pray when we don't know what to pray for. And He will equip us to pray prayers that will get answered, prayers that will be effective, prayers that will hold the devil and his workers back. God will equip us through the work of the Holy Spirit. And God will equip us to witness and to preach in the sense of telling forth plainly—another definition of preaching is telling the truth through personality, through different personalities. Truth through personality. That's preaching.

What a wonderful thing it is, because every single one of us has a different personality. And shining, our faces shining, our eyes shining, equipped by the Spirit in all sorts of ways. Remember He's our teacher, we talked about that the very first lesson. He has come inside to teach us. He's the one that brings things to our remembrance. He has equipped us. There is no tool that any of us need that we do not have within our grasp because we have the Holy Spirit. We are equipped for service. And if I didn't believe that, I wouldn't be running around the world doing what I'm doing. If I didn't believe that, I wouldn't pick up a pen every day of my life to write a page for a book. If I didn't believe that, I don't know what I'd be doing, but I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing. The Holy Spirit equips me because I am part of this kingdom of priests that the Bible talks about.

Secondly, healing of wounds. Do you remember when the Good Samaritan came along, saw the man in the ditch? He had these awful wounds. And what did he do? He got down off his donkey, got in the ditch, and he poured in oil and wine. Wine was used in those days for a cleansing agent. It stung. It wasn't very pleasant, but it cleaned up the mess. It was the anesthetic in a sense after it had stung for a little bit, but it also acted as the antibody part of the medication that they didn't have like we have in these days. And then oil—he poured in oil. What was oil for? To soothe. To bring the soothing. To bring and help the healing, actually. So oil was used for medicinal purposes in the East for victims it was used.

And I read of something I don't think I've ever remembered reading before in 2 Chronicles 28. It's a little story of Ahaz, who was king of Judah and he was a bad lot. So he was doing all sorts of things he shouldn't have been doing. He did not walk in the ways his father David walked in. Therefore the Lord his God handed him over to the king of Aram, and they defeated him and took many of his people. He was also given into the hands of the king of Israel, who was sort of in touch with God at that time—not too much—who inflicted heavy casualties on him. In one day, he killed 120,000 men. And then they took 200,000 women and children. Think of that. It's a big number for those days in those groups of people. 200,000 women and children of Judah, of their brethren. Not of the Amalekites and the Anallakites and all the Alakites around, but their own people. 200,000 women and children. And they killed all these men.

In fact, the Bible says—God speaking—"You have slaughtered them in a rage that reaches to heaven. What you have done to them is unbelievable." And so He sends a prophet to them, and the prophet tells them off for doing this. And he says, "Send back your fellow countrymen you've taken as prisoners, for the Lord's fierce anger rests on you." And some of the leaders said, "Yes, we'd better do this." Verse 14: "So the soldiers gave up the prisoners and plunder in the presence of the officials and all the assembly. The men designated by name took the prisoners from the plunder. They clothed all who were naked." They'd been having a ball. They took their clothes off them, they made fun of them, and worse. "They provided them with clothes and sandals."

Remember, only sons wore sandals. Slaves didn't, and prisoners certainly didn't. "Food and drink and anointing oil." They anointed them. "Healing balm," it says in the NIV. Here is a good example of how to treat your enemy, if you like, according to the Scriptures. But the anointing of the prisoners would be both symbolic, setting them apart, reminding the prisoner and themselves that they were indeed God's people. And also medicinal, because it would be a healing for their wounds. Do you know that Palestinian shepherds, I discovered when I was studying this, even rub on oil on a bruised face of a sheep? And I love that. Even little sheep that get their faces mashed for one reason or another, they take... the kind shepherd, the good shepherd, takes oil and rubs it on their little face.

What a picture. When you and I are wounded, when you and I, like little sheep following our Shepherd, get our faces bruised or our lives bruised, then the Holy Spirit's work is to bring comfort and healing to those wounds. Talk to a woman just two weeks ago who needs a lot of healing in her life. And I just said to her, "Get away regularly every day and allow the Holy Spirit to pour in oil because that's His job. I can't do it for you. The church can't do it for you. Even your group can't do it for you. They can give you support, they can give you advice, I can pray with you. But I cannot do the work of the Spirit for you, nor can anyone else. So you need to get away and pray: 'Holy Spirit, heal me. Pour in the oil,' using it as a picture."

So for equipping for service, for healing of the wounds, for cleansing for our sin. In Leviticus 14:10-14, we see that some lepers got well. And sometimes the word leprosy in the Bible is not always used for leprosy; it is used for skin diseases of different sorts and kinds. But if somebody with an infectious skin disease was cleansed, the priest had to go outside the camp where they had to be and they had to live until it was better—that was part of the priest's duty—and if it was, proclaim them clean. They would have to come to the temple, bring a lamb, the blood had to be shed, and then they would be anointed with oil, with the holy anointing oil. And this was symbolic that God had cleansed them. God had healed them. The oil had done its healing work. God had in His grace and mercy, without medicine then for the leper, cleansed the leper.

And I did find in a very old book an interesting little thing that the priests would say as they cleansed the lepers. They would put the oil on their ear first and they would say, "Lord, I will hear for thee. Say it after me." And the leper would say, "Lord, I will hear for thee. My ear is anointed to hear." And then they'd hold out their hands and he would put the oil on the hands and they would say, "Lord, I will act for thee." Hands set apart, anointed to help. Then the feet: "Lord, I will walk up and down for thee." And then he would pour it all over their head and it would fall all over their body. The priest would say, "Thou art his that saves thee."

I just think that is just beautiful. "Lord, I will hear for thee. Lord, I will act for thee. Lord, I will walk up and down for thee. And Lord, thou art mine that saves me." So here is a picture of a leper, yes, but a leper with a life lived for God, a leper indeed. And you know, however far away we are from our conversion, we must never forget where we came from. And we must never forget that really all we are is a cleansed leper. Cleansed, but remember this: equipped, healed, cleansed, and set apart for what? To hear for Him, to act for Him, to walk up and down for Him, and to be by our very presence a testimony to the one who saves us.

And then the next thing: light for our worship. In Exodus 27:20, pure beaten oil had to be used. Only pure, only beaten. There were other ways of getting the oil out of the olives, but the crushed oil—there's the significance again. God wanted them to know that the thing that gave us light for worship, understanding, enlightenment in spiritual things was the work of the Holy Spirit. In the Holy of Holies before the table of testimony where the Ten Commandments were put, there was light for worship. How was the light? There were two lampstands, and on the lampstands were two lamps. And they had to be fed continually with pure beaten oil. That lamp must never, ever go out. And that's a beautiful, significant picture. That if we are going to have light in our worship, understanding, then the continual light of the Holy Spirit is going to be necessary. We cannot worship without His help. We cannot understand without His help, and we've talked about this.

The daily sacrifice also was an anointed occupation. The daily sacrifice simply meant the lamb had to be slaughtered in the evening and at sunset. Two lambs every day. The daily sacrifice offered by the priest. And remember we are a kingdom of priest; we must offer a daily sacrifice. What does that involve? Remembering the Lamb of God who gave His life for us and it involves service: hands, feet, ears, etc.

If you were going out to fight, then the priests would anoint the army. But they wouldn't anoint the men—can you imagine trying to anoint all those men? They would anoint the shields, the shields of the men. The shields that would face the army were anointed with the same holy anointing oil that had been used on Aaron and his sons. This was significant. And it meant something to the soldiers holding it. They knew that their priests had in the name of God anointed their shields. Somehow the protection of God would be theirs as they went out to fight the battles of the Lord. And as we go out to fight the battles of the Lord, so our shield of faith has been anointed. Anointed by the Holy Spirit so that we can quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one.

But it is in Matthew's gospel, 25, that the most significant use of the Holy Spirit, the importance of the oil, is seen. We've seen the nature of the oil, we've seen the use of the oil, but what is the importance of the oil? And that's the chapter that contains this wonderful little passage of Scripture of the ten virgins, and they were all waiting for the Bridegroom. The virgins went in front and danced their dance, and there was supposed to be an element of surprise. The Bridegroom was supposed to keep it a secret what time of the day and night he should come, and you know, he could come from one day to fourteen. So they had to be alert. Now it didn't mean they had to keep awake for fourteen; it was all right to sleep. Don't get that from the story, that it's not all right to sleep. But they just had to carry around their little finger a string on which was attached extra oil.

And five of them had been so careful in case the Bridegroom came and caught them napping—caught them unexpectedly needing oil in their lamps. And of course, you know what happened. The five that had been careless and didn't have oil in their lamps went to buy some more. And while they were gone to buy it, he came. He shut the door and they couldn't get in. And they even heard his voice saying, "Who are you? I don't even know you."

Now the importance of this parable is obvious. The immediate significance was to the Jews of Jesus' day, but the universal warning was to the foolish virgins. You cannot wait till the last minute to become a Christian. You cannot borrow the Holy Spirit from someone else's life. A man can't borrow a relationship with God; he has to possess it for himself. And you're wise if you do, and you're very foolish if you don't. So the conclusion of all that is make sure you've got oil in your lamp. And if you have, make sure you keep your wick trimmed, the oil clean, because at any time of the day or night, He whom our soul loves might come. And He'll do the rest. He's the fire for the lamp, He's the oil in the lamp, because He is the Holy Spirit.

Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, thank You that the Bible is full of symbolism and these symbols give us pictures. These pictures reveal Your nature, who You are and what You're like. And they give us answers to how we should be and what we should do. Lord, thank You for the gift of the Holy Spirit. Thank You that He comes like the mysterious wind and changes our lives, never to be the same again. And thank You that You can fill our lives so that our faces shine, so that we are equipped for service, so that our wounds are healed, so that our sin is cleansed. And even though we are cleansed lepers, we can go out into this world knowing that we have been set apart to do a work that cannot be duplicated, that cannot be imitated because it is Your work.

Lord, above all, I pray that everybody here may make sure they have oil, the person of the Holy Spirit, in their lives. Maybe in this quiet moment, if you're not sure, you might want to say something like, "Lord, I don't fully understand, but by Your Spirit, come into my heart. Be my Savior. Forgive my sin. Make me Yours. Light me up and keep me burning. For Christ's sake. Amen."