Week 32 What Does Your Lampstand Look Like?
“Look at how a single candle can both defy and define darkness.”
Anne Frank
Passage
21And He was saying to them, “A lamp is not brought to be put under a basket, is it, or under a bed? Is it not brought to be put on the lampstand?
22“For nothing is hidden, except to be revealed; nor has anything been secret, but that it would come to light.
23“If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.”
Mark 4:21–23 (NASB95)
"Restored Le Dynasty Ceramic Lampstand" by Gary Lee Todd, Ph.D. is marked with CC0 1.0.
Background
Quote- Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank; 12 June 1929 – c. February or March 1945) was a German-Dutch diarist of Jewish heritage. One of the most-discussed Jewish victims of the Holocaust, she gained fame posthumously with the 1947 publication of The Diary of a Young Girl (originally Het Achterhuis in Dutch, lit. 'the back house'; English: The Secret Annex), in which she documents her life in hiding from 1942 to 1944, during the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II.
As persecutions of the Jewish population increased in July 1942, they went into hiding in concealed rooms behind a bookcase in the building where Anne's father, Otto Frank, worked. Until the family's arrest by the Gestapo on 4 August 1944, Anne kept a diary she had received as a birthday present and wrote in it regularly.
On 1 November 1944, Anne and her sister, Margot, were transferred from Auschwitz to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where they died (probably of typhus) a few months later.
Otto, the only survivor of the Frank family, returned to Amsterdam after the war to find that Anne's diary had been saved by his secretary, Miep Gies. He decided to fulfill Anne's greatest wish to become a writer and publish her diary in 1947 and has since been translated into over 70 languages.
Passage-First The book of Mark is a Gospel that contains Narrative History, Sermons, Parables, and some Prophetic Oracles. The key word in Mark is "Immediately" which is used 34 times. Mark is the shortest of the synoptic gospels and was written about 64 A.D.
It was written by John Mark who was one of the missionaries who accompanied Paul and Barnabas on their mission trips. The purpose of the Gospel of Mark is to show that the Lord Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God who was sent to suffer and to serve in order to rescue and restore mankind.
Lesson Notes
Opening Statement
The sources of darkness in Anne Frank’s day were different than the sources of darkness in our time. In her day, the darkness wore uniforms and came from a single country. In our day, the adversary has become more subtle, but he is still the same adversary that beset Anne Frank. We need to make sure our light defines that adversary in sharp, unmistakable detail.
Ask: How does the candle define darkness?
Point: It pushes it back, establishes edges where the eye can see what is around the body.
Ask: How does the candle defy darkness?
Point: For as long as the light shines, it does not let the darkness cover, obscure, or hide what is there.
See the Definition for Defy
Re-read verse 21 from today’s passage
Ask: Who is the lamp in verse 21?
Point: We are the lamp.
Ask: What is the lampstand?
Point: our lives are the lampstand. The past of our lives is the lampstand. Our experiences shape the lampstand.
Ask: Who brought the lamp into the house?
Point: Jesus.
Ask: What is the light coming from the lamp?
Point: The light is the how we express in word and deed what our experiences in life taught us.
Re-read verse 21 from today’s passage
Ask: What is the basket that hides the light?
Point: The things of the world; the world’s ways, the world’s definition of right and wrong, and the people of the world who tell us God the Father, God the Holy Spirit, and God the Son Jesus Christ are not the way.
Ask: Who holds the basket?
Point: Satan.
First Reading 2 Corinthians 4:2–6 (NASB95)
Ask: What do we do about Satan trying to cover our light and hide it from the lost in the World (pay close attention to verse 2)?
Point: Second Reading Ephesians 2:1–7 (NASB95)
Ask: What do you see in the Second Reading that answers the question “What do we do about Satan trying to cover our light?”
Point: “…formerly walked…” and “…sons of disobedience…”
Re-read verse 22 from today’s passage
Ask: What does “formerly” and “sons of disobedience” have to do with verse 22 of today’s passage?
Point: See the closing statement.
Closing Statement
God knows everything about our life; the things we thought no one knows, He knows. The things we thought no one saw, He saw. We’ve never told anyone about them because we are ashamed of them. That shame comes from the idea that no one understands everything about the situation, but He does. God understands it all, and He still forgives us for it all. All of it. We are to be “formerly” of the world which means we are no longer of the world, but we are of the Kingdom of Heaven, we are of God’s children. That means we are no longer “sons of disobedience” but rather obedient children. That means we hear His voice, hear His words, and follow His ways not the ways of the world, the ways of the adversary Satan. What does your lampstand look like? You know that because it is your life how you lived it, the way you lived it. Nothing can change that. What can change is whether or not your light is hidden under a basket, or does it defy the darkness?
Questions for the Week
Question 1 Make time in your schedule this week to pray every morning to ask God to help you define and defy Satan.
Question 2 Write in your journal “What your lampstand looks like?”
Question 3 Write in your journal what your basket looks like?
Question 4 Write in your journal what you intend to do about the basket that is either threatening your light, partially covering your light, or completely covering your light?
Scripture
First Reading
2but we have renounced the things hidden because of shame, not walking in craftiness or adulterating the word of God, but by the manifestation of truth commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.
3And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing,
4in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
5For we do not preach ourselves but Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as your bond-servants for Jesus’ sake.
6For God, who said, “Light shall shine out of darkness,” is the One who has shone in our hearts to give the Light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.
2 Corinthians 4:2–6 (NASB95)
Second Reading
1And you were dead in your trespasses and sins,
2in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.
3Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.
4But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us,
5even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved),
6and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,
7so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
Ephesians 2:1–7 (NASB95)
Definitions
defy
dih-fahy
verb
To challenge the power of; resist boldly or openly: To defy parental authority.
To offer effective resistance to: A fort that defies attack.
To challenge (a person) to do something deemed impossible: They defied him to dive off the bridge.
Archaic. To challenge to a combat or contest.
Noun
plural de·fies.
a challenge; a defiance.