If you will open your Bibles
again, please, to the book of Matthew, chapter 27. I want to repeat for a text just
a few of the verses which Brother Payne read, beginning with verse
50 of Matthew 27, verse 50. Jesus, when he had cried again
with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost. And behold, the veil
of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom. And
the earth did quake, and the rocks rent, and the graves were
opened, and many bodies of the saints which slept arose and
came out of the graves. after his resurrection and went
into the holy city and appeared unto many. Now when the centurion
and they that were with him, watching Jesus, saw the earthquake
and those things that were done, they feared greatly, saying,
Truly this was the Son of God. Now the death of our Lord on
the cross of Calvary was surrounded by many miracles. unusual happenings. The fact that Jesus Christ, who
is life, should die is in itself a great miracle and a great wonder
and a great marvel, that Christ, who is life, should die. A hymn
writer has put it this way, around that bloody tree, angels pressed
with strong desire that amazing sight to see the Lord of life
expire, God die, but the body in which he dwelt surely died. Christ did not swoon or faint
or go into a coma. He died on the trail. The wages
of sin is death and Christ bearing our sins actually literally died
and his body was buried. And that in itself is the number
one miracle of Golgotha. And then secondly that Christ
should die for sinners is a great marvel. Christ died not for the
righteous but for the ungodly. The scripture says, scarcely
for a righteous man will one dare to die, but God commended
his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died
for us. The great marvel of his death.
But the great marvel is this, why he died. He died for sinners.
He died for the guilty. He died for his enemies. He died
for aliens. He died for those who despised
him. And then the third miracle, I think, in this order. The first
is that Christ should die. You know, we stand back and read
this scripture about the rocks renting and the earth quaking
and the sun not shining, and we say, oh, those miracles. But
now wait a minute. The very fact that the Son of
God should die on a cross is the greatest miracle of all.
That's the most unusual thing about Golgotha. Don't get taken
up with the things and forget the person. The fact that he
should die and the fact that he should die for sinners. And
the fact that he should die for sinners in such a cursed and
awful and terrible way. Wonder of wonders. Christ, did
you get those words Charlie read? My God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me? You're seeing something that's
indescribable, that's unexplainable. That God the Father should forsake
God the Son. I can't explain that. I just
know it happened on Calvary's cross. I can't explain a whole
lot of things about God, but then if I understood God, He
wouldn't be God. Only God can comprehend God.
This is one of our problems in this day in religion, is we're
trying to bring God down to an understandable position. God said, you thought I was altogether
such a one as yourself. You hear people say, well, my
God wouldn't do that. Yes, your God wouldn't, but the
God of the Bible would. And you can't make yourself a
God that does what you think he ought to do. My thoughts are
not God's thoughts and my ways are not God's ways. God is infinitely
above me as heaven is above the earth. And his thoughts above
my thoughts and his ways above my ways. I don't understand how
God cannot remember sin, but he said, I'll remember them no
more. I don't understand that at all. How can God forget anything?
But the blood of Christ is so effectual and so sufficient that
it causes sin to be no more. It puts me in a position, the
blood of Christ so cleanses me and so blots out my transgressions
that in the sight of God, Cecil, it is as if I had never seen.
I don't understand that. It is not so. How can that which
happened be regarded as having never happened? But that's what
God says. Your sin, here's another one. God says, I'll cast your
sin behind my back. Where is God's back? God sees
all things. He's omnipresent, He's omniscient,
He's omnipotent. But that's what He's showing
us, how the blood of Christ, the death of His Son, is so effectual
and so sufficient in its merits and in its power as to put sin
away so that that sin in the eyes of God and in the mind of
God and in the thoughts of God never was. Never was. And that Christ should die such
a terrible and cursed and awful death, so as to cry, my God,
why hast thou forsaken me? And yet that's what happened.
Hell, and I know there are a lot of preachers who spend a lot
of time trying to prove that there's fire in hell. That's
one of the most insignificant things about hell. Hell is separation
from God. Hell is to bear the darkness
and agony and torment of my guilt, of my memory, of realizing truth
too late. There's so many things about
hell that are even greater than physical torment. Christ, His
soul was made an offering for sin. That's the agony of hell.
It's the soul agony. It's the mind agony. And this
our Lord was, He made His soul an offering for sin. And when
the old, when the old Whatever that apostolic creed is that
they read in some of the churches, which is pretty good. Talking
about Christ going to hell. Well, he never actually went
to Gehenna or the Lake of Fire, but he did go to hell. Hell is
separation from God. And Christ bore our hell. And
then another miracle, the conversion of the thief. The thief, his
entire life had been one of utter evil, indifference, darkness,
rebellion, and yet here in the 11th hour, God was pleased to
save him. And God was pleased to pass by
so many religious people to redeem that thief. As far as we know,
there was only one person converted at this scene, and that was that
thief. And yet there were people from
religious, moral, law-abiding walks of life who saw nothing
in the Redeemer, but the thief did. And then from noon until
three o'clock, there was darkness over all the land. The sun, the
face of the sun was hidden. And there was an earthquake.
And all of these things took place. But amid all these wonders
and miracles, as far as you're concerned and I'm concerned,
One of the most significant miracles that occurred when Christ died
is here in verse 51 of Matthew 27. And behold, the veil of the
temple, the veil of the temple was torn in two from the top
to the bottom. Now that's recorded here in God's
Word And it's recorded again in the book of Luke, chapter
23, verse 45. It's very significant here in
just 20 verses, 21 verses, that Matthew chose to describe the
death of our Lord and the agony of our Lord and the suffering
of our Lord and the cross of our Lord. He spends one of those
verses talking about the renting of that base. And it was not
an accident, and it wasn't just because the rocks shifted or
the earthquake. It was torn into from top to
bottom. It wasn't folded up and laid
aside. It wasn't a tear in the corner of it. It was ripped into
from top to bottom. And oh, how it preaches. Now,
let me read you a little bit about this veil. And I got this
tabernacle up here with me that I use to teach young people in
Bible school. So I brought it out here tonight.
And I want you to turn to Hebrews 9, and there's so many people
who have so little understanding of the tabernacle and the temple.
Now, I know the temple probably wasn't an exact replica of the
tabernacle, but it was close. In Hebrews chapter 9, if you
just take your Bible and hold it there in your lap a minute,
I'm going to take just five or six minutes and talk about this
tabernacle. Out there in the wilderness when
Israel left Egypt, God gave Moses, in the book of Exodus and Leviticus
and Numbers, he gave him the dimensions and the design of
a tabernacle to be built, to be constructed in the wilderness.
And that tabernacle was a portable tabernacle. In other words, wherever
Israel went, that tabernacle went. And that tabernacle was
always in the middle of the encampment. There were, I don't know how
many Israelites there were, some people say 2 or 3 million, but
all those 40 years that they traveled in the wilderness, that
tabernacle went before them. And as soon as they made encampment,
the different tribes around the tabernacle, it was in the middle.
Now the tabernacle was not It was not from the outside of their
beautiful structure. In fact, it looked very much
like an ordinary tent. The whole lot of the tabernacle
on which the building sat, the entire lot was only 150 feet
long by 75 feet wide. That's about the size of one
of these parking lots out here. That's as big as the lot. containing
this whole tabernacle here, covered an area about the size of this
parking lot right out here, 75 feet by 100 feet. And it had
a fence around it, all the way around it. They put a fence around
it and it had one gate. It faced the east, the rising
of the sun. It's called the Eastern Gate.
That's the only entrance into that into that field, that tabernacle
there at all. Now sitting on that field, 150
feet by 75 feet with the high fence around it, and this fence
represents something, everything does, the righteousness of Christ.
No one was allowed in here but the priest. The people were all
outside. Our sins had separated us from
God. This was where God met man, where
man met God. This is where the ceremonies
were carried on. The ordinances and the rituals
and the sacrifices and all of this went on the tabernacle.
Now that tabernacle was covered with four coverings. The building
sitting on that lot was only 45 feet long and 15 feet what? And 15 feet high. I'll tell you
how big that was. That wall to that wall is 50
feet. So that whole building, that whole tabernacle sitting
out there in the wilderness was five feet shorter than this auditorium
is what? This ceiling is exactly 15 feet
high. So that tabernacle was 45 feet
by 15 by 15 feet high. That's all the size of it. And
it was covered, first of all, it was covered with a badger
skin, just rough badger skin. The people of Israel made this
Covering that covered it came from the ground to the ground
from the ground back here all the way Had an opening in front
there, but it was badger skin just rough brown badger skin
and it covered that tabernacle and it looked just like any other
tent and that badger skin represents the flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ
when they looked at him they said now this this whole tabernacle
represents Christ and Christ is our tabernacle, he tabernacled
among us, and he was made in the likeness of sinful flesh.
When they looked at him, he was a man like everybody else, every
other man. And they looked at him, and they
said, well this is just the carpenter, this is just Joseph's son, this
is a fella from Nazareth, there's nothing special about him, even
his brothers didn't believe on him. He was raised in their home.
I know all the folks trying to make Jesus Christ look like he
was two or three heads taller than everybody, and two or three
shades more beautiful than everybody, and all these different things,
but they saw no beauty about him at all that they should desire
him. He was despised and rejected of men. He was a man. And that's
what this badger skin is saying, that Christ in appearance just
like that old rough tabernacle. From the outside, it looked like
all the other tents, but it's different on the inside. And
then the next covering was a ram skin, dyed scarlet, bright red. It was made out of ram skin.
You know what that represents? His blood. when Abraham was going
to sacrifice Isaac in the wilderness and God said, stay thy hand,
lay not thy hand on the lad, do him no harm and he looked
behind there was a ram caught in the thicket and he took that
ram and shed its blood on the altar in the stead of Isaac and
Christ shed his blood for our sins that ram skin covering dyed
scarlet bright red represented our Lord's blood and then the
next covering was goat skin when the high priest used to take
a lamb or two goats, one of them was called the scapegoat, and
one of them was sacrificed as the atonement. And the goat was
slain and its blood was put on the altar, but the other goat,
called the scapegoat, they confessed the sins of Israel on the head
of that goat and turned it out in the wilderness to wander away,
never to be seen again. And this represents Christ our
scapegoat. And then the next covering was
a covering of pure white linen. And it had all the colors. It
had purple royalty. It had red, which represents
the blood, Christ the King, Christ the sacrifice. It had all of
these different figures on it. And it represents the pure, holy
righteousness of our Lord Jesus Christ. See, if you get down,
you start with His outward flesh. the Lord Jesus in the likeness
of sinful flesh. You come to his blood, you come
to his bearing our sins away, and then you come to his perfect
spotless righteousness. Now, outside of this tabernacle,
the first thing you'd run up on if you came through that eastern
gate, or just in front of it, you'd come upon an altar. a pretty
good-sized altar. It had horns on the altar, and
it had a fire built in it, and they would slay the lamb, and
they'd burn its body, burn the body of the lamb on top of this
altar, shed its blood, they'd catch the blood in a basin, and
burn the body of the lamb, or the ram, or the goat, or whatever
the sacrifice was, right here, just as he'd come through the
door, just as he'd come through the gate, the first thing the
priest did, was to shed the blood of that animal and burn its body.
That represents Christ dying for our sin. And then the next
piece of furniture that you'd run up on just outside of this
tabernacle would be the laver, the wash basin. And there the
priest, having gotten his hands stained with blood and gone about
slaying the animal, burning its body, would stop in front of
that laver, right in front of the tabernacle itself, and wash
his hands. and wash his feet before he dared
come into the presence of God. Two things, always. Before any
man, the presence of God was in the tabernacle. And before
any priest would come into the tabernacle to do the service
of God or sacrifices or go about the ceremonies and meet God for
the people as a mediator, he was sprinkled with blood and
washed with pure, clean water. Now, look at Hebrews 9 verse
2. Now he describes this tabernacle. He said, there was a tabernacle
made. The first, or the first part of the tabernacle, wherein
was the candlestick and the table and the showbread. Now let me
show you that. That's this part right here.
Had a veil right here, and right in this part here, there was
a candlestick Seven candles, and it always, you see the priest
came into this part of the tabernacle, this was called the holy place,
and he came in there every day. Several priests did. There were
a lot of men, a lot of priests, who went about the sacrifices.
This lamp was kept burning all the time. Seven candles. It was burning all the time.
Christ, the light of the world. Christ, our light. This is the
only source of light inside that place. You can imagine how dark
it was in there with all of that four coverings over it. But this
was the only light. Christ is the only light. And
that light never was extinguished. It burned all the time. Also
in there was a table of showbread. And on that table were these
loaves of bread that represents Christ, the bread of life. And
then just before you come to this veil here, there was an
altar of incense, and it burned all the time. That sweet-smelling
incense was before the veil. That's the prayers of Christ,
the intercession of Christ. Now, this compartment was 30
feet long by 15 feet wide. Now, watch this. That's the three
pieces of furniture in that holy place. There was the first, the
candlestick, Christ, the light of the world, the table, the
showbread, but there was also the incense, which is not mentioned
there, but it may be referred to as the table, but it's the
incense. Now, after the second veil, you
say, where's the first one? Right here, at the entrance.
Now this right here is another veil. This was a heavy veil. This veil was a heavy veil that
separated that holy place from the holy of holies. This was
the veil of the temple. This is the one Matthew is talking
about. This second veil right here,
this heavy veil that had the purple and the red and was out
of linen and was thick. And there was not an opening
in it. When the high priest went into the Holy of Holies, he lifted
that veil and crawled under it. But there was no opening in that
veil. And that veil, look here, after the second veil, the tabernacle,
which is called the holiest of all, which had the golden censer
and the Ark of the Covenant overlaid round about with gold, wherein
was the golden pot that had manna, Avon's rod that budded, and the
table of the Covenant. And over it the cherubims of
glory, shattering the mercy seat of which we cannot speak particularly."
Now let me simplify that in our language if I can. There was
actually one piece of furniture in here which had two parts. There was the art of the covenant,
the sacred art. And over the top of that art
was the gold mercy seat, and over that mercy seat were the
cherubims. It wasn't a large piece of furniture,
it wasn't even as big as this table right here. And in that
art was the broken law. That actually the tables of stone
that Moses brought down from Sinai was in that art, the broken
law. And in that ark was Alan's rod
that budded, and in that ark was a pot of manna, which the
children of Israel ate out yonder in the wilderness. And on that
ark of the covenant was a mercy seat and the cherubim. Now, let's read on. Now, when these things were thus
ordained, The priest went always into the
first tabernacle, accomplishing the services of God. What's he
saying? He's saying this right here, that those priests, throughout
the day, they would sacrifice the animal, wash, they'd come
into this part here, they'd keep the light burning, the candlestick,
they'd change the bread, they'd burn the incense, they came into
this part, always accomplishing the services of God. day by day,
morning, evening, noon, 365 days a year, they were about the business
of sacrifices and all of these things. But, now look at verse
7, but into the second, into the holiest of all, into the
second went the high priest alone, once every year, and not without
blood, which he offered for himself and for the errors or sins of
the people. The Holy Ghost, this signifying
that the way into the holiest of all, into the presence of
God, was not yet made manifest while this tabernacle was standing. It was a figure for the time
then present in which were offered both gifts and sacrifices which
could not make him that did the service perfect as pertaining
to the conscience. It stood in meats and drinks
and washings and carnal ordinances imposed on them under the time
of Reformation. But Christ being come, a high
priest of good things to come by a greater and more perfect
tabernacle not made with hands, that is to say, not this building,
neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood
he entered once into the holy place," you know where that was?
The presence of God, "...having obtained eternal redemption for
us." Now, when he died on that cross, and when he had shed his
blood, of which all of these sacrifices were tithes. When
he shed his blood, when he went into the holiest of all, into
the presence of God, with one sacrifice perfecting forever
his people, this old veil in that tabernacle, Matthew said,
was torn in two from the top to the bottom. As if God himself
reached down and just ripped it in two. Just ripped it in
two. All right? The veil was In other
words, you see the picture there? God had arranged this tabernacle. God had one high priest, one
mediator, once a year on the day of atonement would come into
the presence of the Lord. One fellow came in here one time
and they drug him out by his heel, dead. Nobody dared come
in here. Nobody. That was the presence
of the Lord, the presence of God. And when our Lord died,
it was rent in two. All right, what does this mean?
Let's go back to Matthew chapter 27. What does this mean? The veil in the temple was rent
in two from the top to the bottom. I'll tell you the first thing
it means is this. It means this whole tabernacle
system of ceremonies, of sacrifices, of feast days, of shadows is
finished. It's all finished. They've served
their purpose. They are of no more value. Christ
is the fulfillment of every bit of it. Now you examine religion
today, and we've got a little bit of this left over in a whole
lot of places. There's the sprinkling of the
water. You see the fellow standing there? The sprinkling of blood,
they don't do that, but the sprinkling of water, signifying washing
in pure water, sprinkling of the water. The priest was sprinkled
with blood and with water. They have the candles. Where
have you been? Seen the candles burning? They
have actually, they have priests who go into a holy place back
here and bring wine and wafers representing his body and blood.
The mass is sacrificed every Sunday in a lot of Catholic churches,
same thing right here. It's a reincarnation of this
very thing. but that we none of the absolutely
none of it days and feast and ceremonies and sacrifices and
sprinkling of blood or water or anything else he's taken away
the first that he may establish the second turn to Hebrews 10
Hebrews chapter 10 verse 9 and 10 Hebrews 10 verse 9 this said
he lo I come to do thy will oh God he taketh away the first
that he may establish the second by the which will we are sanctified
through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. Oh, and I'll tell you another
thing it meant when that veil was rent in two. It not only
meant that all of this tabernacle system was fulfilled, done away
with, but secondly it meant the ordinance of an earthly priesthood
was abolished. Now there was a time when God
ordained certain men to represent the people about the tabernacle
and God ordained a certain man called the high priest who would
come into the Holy of Holies and represent the people to God
to offer sacrifices to pray for them to make an atonement but
no more, no more. Let me show you that Hebrews
10 verse 11 And every priest standeth daily, ministering,
offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, which can never take
away sin. But this man, the Lord Jesus
Christ, after he had offered one sacrifice for sin forever,
sat down on the right hand of God, from henceforth expecting
till his enemies be made his footstool, for by one offering
he hath perfected forever them that are sanctified. Now, do
you know who the priests are? There is a priesthood. There's
one great high priest, look down at verse 21, and having a high
priest over the house of God, that's Christ. But every believer
is a priest. That's exactly right. Every believer
is a priest. He hath made us kings and priests
under God. Well, you say, we come before
God, but what sacrifices do we bring? We bring the sacrifices,
according to Paul, of worship, of praise, and of love. And with
such sacrifices, God is well pleased. What else happened when
that veiled? What does it mean? It means that
system of the tabernacle and that type of worship is fulfilled
and abolished. It means that the earthly priesthood,
and let me tell you something, and I know we're not supposed
to get too personal, but this is a church of which I'm the
pastor, and I'm responsible for what's preached here and responsible
for the teaching of the people. But I was driving my car Sunday
night somewhere, coming back from Charleston, and I heard
Billy Graham speaking. And Billy Graham said that the
Pope was perhaps the greatest moral and spiritual leader of
this century. That's what he said. Let me tell
you something. The Pope is a deceiver. The Pope
is a deceiver and an idolater, and he is no spiritual leader
at all. He's an imposter. He claims to
be a priest. He claims to receive confession
of sins. He claims to represent people
to God. They actually depend for their
salvation on His holiness. Jesus Christ is our High Priest. And if you have any mediator
between you and God, I don't care if it's Mary, And that's
another thing he preaches is Maryolatry, that's idolatry,
the idolatrous worship of Mary. That's heathenism. There's one
mediator between God and me and the man Christ Jesus. This priesthood
of which he's a part, this cardinalhood and bishophood and all of this
stuff where men wear these long linen gowns and go about this
type of sacrifice right here, whether they use wine or the
blood of animals, is done away. It's fulfilled. It is no more. Anybody who tries to reconstruct
it and reestablish it is an enemy of Jesus Christ. Now that's so. You get taken into that horrible,
horrible deception. I warn you. I warn you about
your pictures of Christ hanging on the wall. I warn you about
your crosses. We don't have crosses around
here. We don't worship a cross, we worship a person. I warn you
about your idolatrous practices. I warn you about the burning
of candles and all of these things. That is abolished. And you better
not reinstate it. It's dishonoring to Christ. He's
our great high priest. And every believer is a priest,
and his worship is simple worship. His worship is from the hearts
of his people. That's right, I'm telling you
the truth. In Hebrews chapter 10, verse 18, that special enclosure
is no more. The presence of God is open to
every believer. Look at Hebrews 10 verse 18,
now, where the remission of sins, there's no more offering for
sins, having therefore brethren, brethren, every believer, boldness
to enter into the holiest. Oh, you think about that. From
the tribe of Gad or Reuben or Judah, you couldn't have drug
one of them into that place. Nobody but a priest. And into
this place, nobody but the high priest once a year. You know something? Me, the least
of all, you, guilty sinners redeemed by the blood of Christ, we have
the right and privilege of coming right into the holiest of all,
into the presence of God, by the blood of Christ. God told
us that when he moved that veil. He said she's open. The presence
of God is open. Open. Read on. By the blood of
Jesus, verse 20, by a new, newly revealed. It's not a new way.
This is the old way. Christ is a new way, but Christ
was before this because this represented Christ. He was a
lamb slain from the foundation of the world, but until he came,
God told Adam that Christ, the seed of woman, would come. Back
yonder when Abel offered that first sacrifice outside the Garden
of Eden, he was saying Christ would die. But until he came,
God set up these types, these pictures, these symbols, these
sacrifices to tell about Christ. You see, all of this is, Christ
is in all of this. the altar, he's the lamb slain,
the washbasin, he cleansed us, sanctifies us, the light of the
world, the bread of the world, the bread of life, the intercessory
prayers which the incense offered up, and it says Christ is our
mercy seat. He's the propitiation for our
sins, that's mercy seat. He is blood. All right, we come
by new, watch this, in a living way. This all says death, death. There was death all over this
place, Joe. This animal was always dying, dying, dying. There was
death every morning, death every noon, death every night, showing
man's sin and what man's sins deserve. Death, death. Brother, this new way by which
we come into the holiest of all in the presence of God is not
only the newly revealed way, it's the living way. Christ lives.
The animals died and stayed dead. Christ died and he lives. He's
a living way which he had consecrated for us through that veil, that
is to say, his flesh and now. We don't come to God without
a high priest. These Catholics and people say,
well, you folks, you presume, you rush into the presence of
God himself, and you're sinners and guilty and covered with your
flesh and your lust and all of these things, and you come into
God's presence without a holy man to go before you? Oh, we've
got a holy man. His name is Jesus Christ. The
Scripture says the man, Christ Jesus, is at the right hand of
God, and he's our high priest. And he does intercede for us,
and we do confess our sins through Christ. We do pray in the name
of Christ. We come to God through the blood
of Christ. We approach God because of the
merits of Christ. But I don't want any common,
ordinary old fellow down here on the earth acting like a mediator
for me. Some old crooked imposter who
deceives people, who claims to be holy when he's dug out of
the same pit I'm dug out of, got the same problems I got. He's no holy man. Christ is the
only holy one. Christ the Lord. What has this
veil, the renting of the veil, the renting of the veil, what's
it given to us? Well, let's look here. It says,
first of all, in verse 19, we have boldness to enter. It takes
a lot of boldness to even talk about the presence of God or
to look into the presence of God. You think about entering
the presence of God. And in that holiest of all, we
find mercy and grace to help in time of need. We find fellowship
with the Father. But look here, turn to Leviticus
chapter 9. Hold that Hebrews 10 a minute
and turn to Leviticus chapter 9. And I want to show you something
here. We go into the presence of God.
We can pray. We can say, Our Father which
art in heaven. We can walk with God. We can fellowship with God.
We can confess our sins to God. And Moses and Aaron, verse 23
of Leviticus 9. Got it? Leviticus 9, 23. Moses
and Aaron went into the tabernacle of the congregation, and they
came out and blessed the people. And the glory of the Lord appeared
unto the people. You know what? When we go into
the presence of God and find there fellowship and make sacrifices
of praise and worship and love, we can come out and be a blessing
to other people. Come out and be a blessing. Moses
and Abraham went in there and they came out, not the holy of
holies, but in the holy place, and they came out and they were
a blessing. Let me show you something else
in Leviticus 16. Leviticus 16. Leviticus 16 and
and this is interesting here Leviticus 16 verse 2 And the
Lord said unto Moses now Moses Aaron was the priest Moses was
the prophet Moses laden Aaron was the priest Aaron's the one
that went in here and God said Moses speak to Aaron your brother
that he come not at all times into the holy place within the
veil before the mercy seat which is upon the art that he die not
for I will appear in the cloud upon the mercy seat." In other
words, you tell Abram, don't come in there but once a year.
But now when God tore that veil, he's signifying that you and
I can come into his presence anytime, all the time. We can come when our faith is
dim, we can come when our heart is troubled, we can come when
our minds are in doubt, because Christ is the same. We can come
when our trials are heavy, we can come at all times into the
presence of our Lord. The old priest would come to
the tabernacle and he'd stop out there and he'd sacrifice
that animal and shed its blood and burn its body right through
that one door, that one gate saying that Christ, the Lamb
of God, would be sacrificed someday and shed his blood. You see,
turn to Hebrews chapter 10 again, verse 4, right back here at verse
4. And verse 1, though, says this, that the law is a shadow
of good things to come, and not the image of those things. Can
never were these sacrifices which are offered year by year continue
to make the comers thereunto perfect? For then would they
have ceased to be offered. because that the worshippers
once purged would have no more conscious of sin, but these sacrifices
bear a remembrance again made of sins every year. Now watch
verse four. It's not possible that the blood of bulls and goats
should take away sin. This is all pictures. This is
all type. These people were saved not by
trusting the blood of those animals, but by in faith believing God's
Word and bringing the blood to show their faith in the sacrifice
that Christ would make, in the Lamb that would come. And so
that priest, then he'd wash his hands. That represents sanctification. Then he would come into the presence
of the Lord, into the holy place, and see there the candlestick
burning, Christ's the light of the world, and the bread. And
then he would come there to that veil, and once a year, and that
altar of incense sitting in front of that veil, and the smoke would
go up, he'd get some off of it and go in here with the blood.
And there, once a year, in the very presence, the awesome, holy
presence of God, he would put that blood on the mercy seat,
cover that broken law with blood. Guilty sinners. And God would
receive that atonement. And he'd back out. But when Christ
died, when Christ who fulfilled every bit of this, died on that
cross, God tore that veil in two, literally from top to bottom,
just ripped her in two. Because all that's fulfilled,
Christ our priest, Christ our sacrifice, Christ our atonement,
Christ our sanctification, Christ our justification, Christ our
redemption, it's all in Him. You see that? It's all in Him. Let the water and the blood from
thy riven side which flowed be of sin the double cure. Cleanse
me from its guilt and power. Justified and sanctified by Christ. And Christ didn't go in here,
down in Jerusalem. He went to the Holy of Holies,
into the presence of God, and offered His blood, not the blood
of another, but His blood, and finished, finished, and sat down. expecting till his enemies become
his footstool. Now the Father says, come unto
me, come unto me, come into the Holy of Holies, come into the
presence of God. Your sins are blotted out, your
sins are remembered no more. Come as priest of God to offer
sacrifices of worship and love and praise. Don't go through
this ritualism, don't reinstate this ritualism. Don't fall into
it. I know it's so much easier to
go about things that appeal to the senses, something to smell,
and to see, and to hear, and to touch. But Christ is the fulfillment
of all that. And we come through him. We don't
need aids to worship. Yes, we do. Here's our aid to
worship. And the Holy Spirit. We don't
need water and All this other stuff, we just need the Word
of God and the Holy Spirit to enable us to come to Him. Our
Father bless the Word. How thankful we are for Thy blessed
Word. We'd never know these things
if we didn't have this book. We don't understand all we want
to understand and all we expect to understand because we know
in part and we prophesy in part and we see through a glass so
dimly But oh, when that which is perfect is come. These people,
these people back in the times of the sacrifices and the veil
over in the temple and the mercy seat and the ark, they knew less
than we know. They saw Christ only in type
and picture. But we have the picture and the
fulfillment. We have Christ. And our Father,
we have no excuse for ceremonialism and ritualism and legalism or
falling back into these things. Deliver us from them. Bring our
hearts to rest in Christ and our souls to abide in him. Cease
from our labors and enter into his rest and trust him and believe
him until he comes again and reveals unto us all these other
things that we long to know. And we expect to see His glory
revealed in person.