In Revelation 1:13-16 we see that Christ is the High Priest dressing the lamps (cf. Exo. 30:7). Christ today is in the midst of the churches (Rev. 1:13). On the one hand, He is the High Priest in the heavens interceding for the churches (Heb. 9:24; 7:25-26; Rom. 8:34). On the other hand, He is the High Priest among the churches taking care of them.
The fact that Christ is “clothed with a garment reaching to the feet” proves that He is a Priest, for this garment is a priestly robe (Exo. 28:33-35). Today Christ is exercising a priestly care for the churches. Furthermore, He is “girded about at the breasts with a golden girdle.” It is interesting to note that He is not girded about the loins but about the breast. This indicates that His work has been accomplished and that now He is exercising a loving care for His beloved churches, even rebuking and chastising them in love. He is the loving High Priest walking among His churches and caring for them.
In the Old Testament the priests did four main things. They offered the sacrifices, arranged the show bread, dressed the lamps, and burned the incense. To dress the lamps included two matters: filling the lamps with oil and snuffing the wick. To snuff the wick means to cut off the burned part of the wick. Because the sacrificial work of Christ was accomplished on the cross, now He is not at the altar but among the lampstands, that is, in the sanctuary. He no longer needs to offer the sacrifices, but He does need to dress the lampstands by filling them with oil and snuffing the burned wick. He still has a heart of concern to care for all the shining lampstands. He is the Priest to supply the oil and to snuff the waste. He is doing this today among the churches. While He is praying for us, He is trimming us. He knows how much trimming the churches need.
Christ is the Holder of the messengers of the churches. Revelation 1:16 says, “He had in His right hand seven stars,” and, as verse 20 makes clear, “the seven stars are messengers of the seven churches.” These messengers are the spiritual ones in the churches bearing the responsibility of the testimony of Jesus. Like stars, they should be of the heavenly nature and in a heavenly position. In the Acts and the Epistles the elders were the leading ones in the operation of the local churches (Acts 14:23; 20:17; Titus 1:5). The eldership is somewhat official. Furthermore, at the time the book of Revelation was written, the offices in the churches had deteriorated in the degradation of the church. Therefore, in this book the Lord calls our attention back to spiritual reality. For this reason Revelation emphasizes the messengers of the churches rather than the elders. The office of the elders is easily perceived, but the believers need to see the importance of the spiritual and heavenly reality of the messengers for the proper church life to bear the testimony of Jesus in the darkness of the church’s degradation.
Both the lampstands and the stars are for shining at night. A lampstand representing a local church is a collective unit, whereas a star representing a messenger of a local church is an individual entity. In the dark night of the church’s degradation there is the need of the shining both of the collective churches and of the individual messengers. As Christ walks among the churches, He holds the leading ones in His right hand. The leading ones should be comforted by the fact that they are in His hand and that He is holding them. Because the leading ones are in the Lord’s hands, there is no need for them to shrink back. Christ truly takes the responsibility for His testimony.
Both the church and the leading ones in the churches must shine. All the leading ones should be stars shining in this dark and evil age. If we would be shining stars in the church, we need to realize that in ourselves we have no light. Christ is our light. We need to look unto Him with an unveiled face so that we may reflect His glory (2 Cor. 3:18). This causes us to become the stars, the messengers, held by the Lord Jesus.
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