And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook and the rocks split. The tombs broke open and the bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of their tombs, and after Jesus' resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many people. [Matt. 27.50-53]
There are times when it is hard to grasp the implications of Scripture. Look at what happened at the moment of Jesus' death: earthquakes and holy people raised from the dead. Creation took note of the battle that was waged between the Son of God and the Enemy of Souls. But it was the holy who received life, not the wicked. Nor did they return to the grave, but walked about following Jesus' own resurrection and appeared to many people. The last words of Jesus were not, "My God, why have you abandoned me?", but were a final act of submission: "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit" [Luke 23.46] and "It is finished" [John 19.30].
God deals in details; he always arranges things to the smallest point. When Jesus died, we are told, the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. There is significance in everything recorded in Scripture, and it is worth looking into this curtain that is torn open at the death of Jesus. It all goes back to Adam and Eve, of course. When mankind fell away from God, their redemption was already planned and decided upon. Even before dealing with Adam and Eve, the Lord faced Satan and cursed him. At the moment of the fall, God promised that mankind would not always be under Satan's control:
And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel. [Gen. 3.15]
A descendant of Eve would crush Satan, but would be stricken in the process. Note once again, how God deals in the details. The one to come, who would defeat the Enemy, would be of Eve, born of the Woman. Adam is not mentioned here, for the Messiah would not have an earthly father. God announced the coming redemption, and then he cast our Parents out of Eden. And to ensure they could never return, he placed cherubim before the gates, with a flaming sword passing across the entrance, guarding the way to the Tree of Life.[Genesis 3.24] The Garden of Eden was so much more to Adam and Eve than merely a place to live and work. It contained the Trees of Life and of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and it was where God walked in the cool of the evening: a place of life and fellowship with God. Now that fellowship was lost, that life was over. Mankind were lost in sin, their spirits dead to the life of God.
But redemption was promised, and God began to reveal himself again to the people of Abraham. As he led the Israelites out of bondage in Egypt, his glory came down and remained among them, dwelling in the Holy of Holies, or the Most Holy Place. This was the innermost part of the Tabernacle, where the Glory of God rested, according to his promise:
Then have them make a sanctuary for me, and I will dwell among them. Make this tabernacle and all its furnishings exactly like the pattern I will show you. [Ex. 25.8-9]
It was so important that the Tabernacle be exactly as God designed it, because every detail of its design had significance. For us, the most interesting part was the Most Holy Place where the Glory dwelt. Cutting it off from the rest of the Tabernacle was a curtain. As with everything else, God laid down the design:
Make a curtain of blue, purple and scarlet and finely twisted linen, with cherubim worked into by a skilled craftsman. [Ex. 27.31]
There they are again: the cherubim who stand on guard to prevent mankind from finding their way back to the presence of God's glory. When the Tabernacle was ready, God fulfilled his promise to Moses:
And so Moses finished the work. Then the cloud covered the Tent of Meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. Moses could not enter the Tent of Meeting because the cloud had settled on it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. In all the travels of the Israelites, whenever the cloud lifted from above the tabernacle, they would set out; but if the cloud did not lift, they did not set out - until the day it lifted. [Ex. 40.33-37]
The presence of the Lord was essential to the Israelites; it gave them the assurance that they were being guided in the way by the Spirit of God dwelling among them.
Long afterwards, when the Israelites had taken possession of the Promised Land, they erected a permanent Tabernacle, the great Temple of Solomon was built to the same divine design, containing the Most Holy Place. The image of the cherubim in the Most Holy Place was even more pronounced than it had been in the Tabernacle:
The entire room was covered in gold, to denote its importance and glory. Statues were made of two cherubim, covered with gold, each one standing with its wings outstretched, forbidding entrance. The total wingspan of each of these cherubim was about fifteen feet. They stood behind the curtain, made in the same way as the one in the Tabernacle:
He made the curtain of blue, purple and crimson yarn and fine linen, with cherubim worked into it. [2 Chr. 3.14]
Behind the curtain, behind the cherubim, dwelt the Lord of Hosts. Nor was this merely a symbolic presence: entry into the Most Holy Place meant immediate death, with one exception. Each year, on the Day of Atonement, the High Priest was allowed enter to offer sacrifice for the sins of the nation. This man had to be in perfect health, without blemish, and carrying with him the blood of sacrifice. The animals which were sacrificed, and whose blood was taken into the Most Holy Place in atonement, were to be brought outside the camp and burned up. This was the pattern established by God and followed every year that the Temple stood, the most important ceremony of the Israelites, and a constant reminder of the loss of Eden and of the cherubim God set as guards to prevent mankind returning to fellowship and life.
One can only imagine the experience of the High Priest as he entered behind that forbidding curtain, to be confronted with the awesome golden cherubim shining in the flickering light he carried. This was the Most Holy Place, the name itself tells of its atmosphere, a place where mankind simply had no right to be. When Solomon's Temple was destroyed, the golden cherubim were lost, but the Second Temple, rebuilt after the Babylonian Captivity by Nehemiah and Zerubbabel, kept to the design given to Moses. The Most Holy Place was once again protected by a curtain, the one torn from top to bottom at the moment of Jesus' death.
From top to bottom: God is in the details, and he wanted us to know exactly who had torn the curtain and opened the way into the Most Holy Place. The significance of that tearing leads us back before the Temple, before the Tabernacle, with their images and statues of guardian cherubim. It leads us back to Eden, and speaks of a restoration of fellowship, of renewed access to the Trees of the Garden and into fellowship with God Almighty. It is no wonder that this subject is at the centre of the Letter to the Hebrews: the Hebrews were the ones who would understand immediately the enormous symbolism of the torn curtain into the Most Holy Place. From the beginning of the letter, it is emphasised that Jesus is a greater High Priest than ever came from Aaron or Levi. He is the Son:
The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven. [Heb. 1.3]
"Sitting at the right hand" means sharing equally in sovereignty. Who has the right to do this, only God the Son. As Hebrews quotes Psalm 45 to prove:
But about the Son he says,Your throne O God, will last for ever and ever, and righteousness will be the sceptre of your kingdom. You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness; therefore God, your God, has set you above your companions by anointing you with the oil of joy. [Heb. 1.8-9]
How could God set God above his companions? - by the Father giving to the Son the glory he had with him before. The Letter to the Hebrews shows that God had to be made man in order to offer himself as the perfect sacrifice of atonement. Jesus was that sacrifice, offered up outside the camp. [Heb. 13.12]
Hebrews says some very profound things about the Temple and ritual sacrifices offered there. These were only a "shadow" of something real in the heavenly realms. The entire Temple system was meant to represent to the Israelites, and to us, the fact of the wide gulf which separated mankind from God, a gulf caused by sin. This sin required blood sacrifice for atonement. Just as the High Priest entered into the Most Holy Place year after year with the blood of atonement, so Christ is the true High Priest:
It was necessary, then, for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these sacrifices, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ did not enter a man-made sanctuary that was only a copy of the true one; he entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God's presence. [Heb. 9.23-24]
The High Priest had to enter the Most Holy Place every year, because the blood of animals and the temporary holiness of the High priest himself, were not enough to atone for the Fall. They were simply "an annual reminder" [Hebrews 10.3]. But the sacrifice of Jesus has complete and everlasting power:
And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all...And where [sins] have been forgiven, there is no longer any sacrifice for sin. [Heb. 10.10,18]
This is quite clear: the sacrifice of a man, no matter how good and righteous, was not enough to atone for the sins of mankind. It took Jesus to do so, the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin. [1 John 1.7] This Atonement was initiated by God, planned by God, and brought to pass by God, and in tearing the curtain of the Most Holy Place from top to bottom, the Father was saying that the sacrifice of Jesus had atoned for the Fall, and that the way was now reopened for man to have fellowship with his God. As Abraham prophesied: God himself provided the lamb for the sacrifice.
Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water. [Heb. 10.19- 22]
There is so much more to be seen in this matter of the Most Holy Place. Every detail of the curtain: the colours and materials that were used, the size and design of the Tabernacle, everything that was given by God in such minute detail, has meaning in heavenly places. All these things are merely shadows of what is true in God. But there is enough in what we have seen to show that what Jesus did in his life and death has opened the way into the Most Holy Place for his people. Not only do we have the right to enter, we have confidence to draw near to God with sincere and clean hearts. We are seeing, and living in, the fulfilment of the prophesies given to Isaiah and Jeremiah, and all those to whom the Spirit revealed the heart of God:
"This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time", declares the Lord. "I will put my law in their minds and write it in their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will a man teach his neighbour, or a man his brother, saying 'Know the Lord', because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest", declares the Lord. "For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more". [Jeremiah 31.33-34]
We are in a new dispensation. Now we can all know the Lord, with nothing to prevent us from entering into the Most Holy Place, should we choose to do so. For there is nothing inevitable about it. The Letter to the Hebrews warns us to "make every effort to enter", and not to fall into the same error as the people of Israel. For our salvation has come because the Israelites refused to enter God's rest.
God led his people out of bondage in Egypt, brought them through the Red
Sea, fed them with manna in the wilderness, guided them day and night with
the pillar of his presence, and led them safely to the borders of the Promised
Land. But even so, faced with such a wonderful record of the love and power of
their God, the Israelites refused to cross into the Promise. They listened to their
fears instead of trusting God, and so were left to wander in the wilderness until
they all died. Note: they were not returned to Egypt, they remained free of that
bondage, God continued to feed them and to care for them as before, but he had
sworn an oath that they would never enter his rest because of their refusal to
trust him. Now, the Word of God says that we are the new Israel, faced with a
similar choice: to enter into the promise through trust, or to wander in the
wilderness, free, but failing to live up to what God in Christ has provided for us.
As always, the Lord has provided for us a wealth of Scripture to teach us and
warn us ahead of time. Some of the most direct statements in Scripture
concerning the Church as the new Israel, are found in the prophecies concerning
the Vineyard of the Lord.
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