Transcription
You already know this moment. It is the moment Jesus dies on the cross. He cries out. He gives up his spirit. And at that exact instant, something happens a mile away inside the temple that most people treat as a strange side effect. The gospels tell us that the great veil of the temple was torn in two. The massive curtain that hung inside the temple ripped down the middle. You have heard it before and almost every time it is read it gets rushed past on the way to the resurrection. A dramatic little detail, a special effect at the death of Jesus. The curtain tore, okay? And we move on.
But here is what I want you to see tonight via because that torn curtain is not a footnote. It is not a special effect. It is God himself making the single most important announcement in the history of the world in the language of the temple. Because the gospel writers do not just tell you the veil was torn. They tell you how it was torn. And that one small detail changes everything. Listen to the words. The veil of the temple was torn in two. From top to bottom. From the top to the bottom. Now stop and think about that. This was not a small curtain. This was a colossal towering barrier. By ancient tradition, as tall as a four-story building, and so thick that it is said teams of men were needed just to move it. No human being could tear that curtain. And even if a person somehow could, they would tear it from the bottom where their hands could reach, ripping upward. But this veil tore from the top down, from a height no human hand could reach, which means only one person could have done it. This was not torn by man from below. This was torn by God from above. And it happened at the precise moment Jesus breathed his last. Not before, not after. At the very instant the son of God died, God reached down from heaven and tore the curtain of his own temple from top to bottom. Why? What was he announcing? Because that veil was not just decoration. That veil was the single most important barrier in the ancient world. It was the curtain that separated sinful humanity from the holy presence of God. The wall that said, "For 1500 years, you cannot come in." And at the death of Jesus, God tore it open with his own hands from top to bottom and declared to the whole universe, "The way in is now open." Do you see it? This is not a special effect. It is the whole gospel dramatized in a single torn curtain. The barrier between you and God, the barrier of your sin, the wall that kept humanity out of God's presence for centuries, was ripped from top to bottom by the hand of God the moment his son died in your place. The way to God is open, not through a priest, not through a ritual, not once a year with fear and blood, open to you right now because of the cross.
So tonight we are going to do what most people never do with this detail. We are going to stop at the torn veil. We will look at what that curtain actually was and why it mattered so much. We will look at the staggering meaning of top to bottom. We will look at the timing at what the book of Hebrews says the veil really represented and at the door that is now standing wide open for you. And by the end, I promise you, you will never read past that torn curtain again. Because hidden in a ripped piece of temple fabric is the greatest news a human being can hear. The way to God is open. And it was opened for you. Let me show you. Let's set the scene because the moment this happened is drenched in meaning. It is the darkest afternoon in human history. Jesus has been hanging on the cross for hours. And the gospels tell us that from noon until 3:00 in the afternoon, a supernatural darkness fell over the whole land. And as if creation itself was recoiling, as if the sun could not bear to look. In that darkness, Jesus bears the full weight of the sin of the world. And then near the end, he cries out with a loud voice. John tells us the words, "It is finished." Not I am finished, but it is finished. The work is done. The debt is paid. The rescue is complete. And then Luke tells us Jesus said, "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit." And he breathed his last. The son of God died. And in that exact moment, Matthew is careful to place it precisely there. The earth shook, the rocks split, and the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. Picture it. Over at Golgtha, outside the city walls, the son of God gives up his spirit. And at that same instant, a mile away, inside the temple, in the holiest building in the world, the enormous curtain that guarded the presence of God suddenly rips down its entire length from the top all the way to the floor with no human hand anywhere near it.
Now imagine the scene inside that temple. It is late afternoon near the time of the evening sacrifice. There would have been priests on duty in the holy place going about their service. And suddenly, without warning, without a hand touching it, the great veil in front of them tears itself in two from top to bottom, exposing the one place no ordinary person was ever ever allowed to see, the most holy place, the very dwelling of God. You can only imagine the terror and the awe the priests would have understood. In a way, we have to work to grasp that something absolutely earthshattering had just happened. The barrier was down. The holiest, most forbidden, most guarded space in their entire religion had just been thrown open by an unseen hand. They may not have known in that moment what it meant. But we do because the tearing of that veil was God's own commentary on the death that had just happened outside the walls. It was heaven's headline. It was God saying in the only language the temple could speak, "What my son just did has changed everything. The wall is gone. Come in."
So, let's go and stand in front of that curtain and understand what was really torn that afternoon. To feel the weight of the torn veil, you have to understand what that curtain actually was. because to a Jewish person it was one of the most significant most terrifying objects uh in the world. Go back to the design of the temple which followed the pattern of the tabernacle God gave Moses in the wilderness. The temple was divided into sacred spaces each one holier than the last. There was the outer court then the holy place where the priests served daily. And then at the very heart of it, behind a massive curtain, was the most holy place, the Holy of Holies. And that innermost room was unlike any other place on earth. Because that was where the presence of God dwelt. The very glory of God, the shikina, rested there, above the ark of the covenant over the mercy seat. It was the meeting place between heaven and earth. The one spot on the planet where the holiness of God touched the world. And the veil was the barrier that guarded it. It hung between the holy place and the most holy place, sealing off the presence of God from human eyes. And it was enormous. According to Jewish tradition, this curtain was around 60 ft tall, the height of a four-story building, and a handbreth thick woven of heavy layered fabric, so massive and heavy that it reportedly took hundreds of men to handle it. This was not a light drape you could brush aside. It was a towering, weighty wall of fabric, deliberately imposing, designed to say one thing with all its size and weight, then stop. You may not pass. God is holy and you are not. And this curtain stands between.
And here is the part that presses the barrier home. Behind that veil into the presence of God, only one man was allowed to go, the high priest. And he could only go in one day a year on the day of atonement, the holiest day of the calendar. And even then, he could not just stroll in. He had to go in carefully with blood, the blood of a sacrifice to make atonement for the sins of the people. If he went in the wrong way or without the blood, he would die in the presence of God. There is a Jewish tradition that they would tie a rope around the high priest's ankle before he entered so that if he was struck dead inside, they could pull his body out without anyone else having to risk entering that holy space. Do you feel the weight of that? The presence of God was open to one man one day a year with blood at the risk of death. For everyone else, every ordinary Israelite, every woman, every child, every Gentile, all of humanity, the message of that veil was absolute and unchanging. You cannot come in. There is a barrier between you and God. And it is real and it is closed. That curtain was the visible sign of the oldest and deepest problem in the human story. That our sin has separated us from a holy God. And we cannot fix it and we cannot cross it and we cannot come in. That is the veil.
Now watch what God does to it. And before we see what God does to that barrier, if this is already opening up for you, do me one quick favor. Hit subscribe and drop a comment. Even just one word. It genuinely helps this study reach the next person who needs to hear that the way to God is open. Okay. Now, the detail most people miss, how the veil was torn. Now, look at when it happened because the timing is not an accident either. It is the second half of the message. Matthew is deliberate about this. He does not say the veil tore during the crucifixion at some vague point in the afternoon. He anchors it to the precise instant. Jesus cried out. He yielded up his spirit landf. And at that moment, the veil was torn in two. The tearing of the curtain was welded to the death of the son of God. One happened and the other happened in the same breath. The moment the heart of Jesus stopped, the barrier between God and humanity came down. Why does that timing matter so much? Because it tells you what opened the way. It was not Jesus's teaching that tore the veil. As beautiful as his teaching was. It was not his miracles or his perfect life or his example. It was his death. The veil tore the instant he died because it was his death, his blood, his life given in our place that actually dealt with the sin that the veil represented, the curtain stood there for 15 centuries because of one problem. Sin separates us from God. And the moment that problem was paid for in full, the moment Jesus cried, "It is finished," and gave up his spirit, the barrier had no more reason to stand. So God tore it down.
Think about the connection between his words and the curtain. It is finished. He said in the original, it is a single word, a word used in the ancient world when a debt was paid, stamped across a bill, paid in full. And at the sound of that word, at the completion of that payment, the veil that stood for the unpaid debt of human sin was ripped in two. The debt is paid. The barrier falls. The account is settled. The door swings open. His death did what 1500 years of sacrifices could never do. Every one of those Day of Atonement sacrifices year after year was only ever a shadow, a promise, an I owe you pointing forward. They covered sin temporarily, but never removed it. which is why the priest had to go back in again and again every single year. But when Jesus died, the reality that all those sacrifices pointed to finally arrived. The true and final sacrifice was made and a sacrifice that actually takes sin away does not need to be repeated. So the veil tore, the system was finished, the shadow gave way to the substance. And here is what that means for you. The reason you can come to God today is not that you have finally become good enough or religious enough or that you have finally torn enough of the veil from your side. You cannot tear any of it. The reason you can come is that Jesus died and his death was enough. And at the moment it was enough God tore the barrier down. Your access to God does not rest on your performance. It rests on his finished work. The veil did not tear when you got your life together. It tore 2,000 years ago when he gave up his spirit and it has been open ever since.
Now we come to the deepest layer of all. And it is breathtaking because the New Testament tells us exactly what that veil represented. And it is not what you might expect. The book of Hebrews takes the torn veil and explains its meaning. And it says something astonishing. It says that we now have confidence to enter the most holy place, the very presence of God, by a new and living way that he opened for us through the veil, that is through his flesh. Read that again. The veil, Hebrews says, was his flesh. His body. The curtain that had to be torn to open the way into God's presence was a picture all along of the body of Jesus which had to be broken to open the way for us. Sit with that connection because it is stunning. The veil was torn and Jesus body was torn. The curtain was rent from top to bottom and his flesh was rent by nails and thorns and a spear. When the veil ripped open in the temple, it was showing in fabric what was happening to the son of God on the cross. His body was the true veil. And just as the old curtain had to be torn to expose the presence of God behind it, his body had to be broken to open the presence of God to us. The barrier between us and God was in the end removed by the tearing of his own flesh. Do you see how the two scenes are one? Outside the walls on the cross, the body of Jesus is being torn open in death. Inside the temple, at that same instant, the veil is being torn open from top to bottom. They are the same event told twice. Once in flesh, once in fabric. The torn veil is God's visual explanation of the torn body. This is what my son's death has done. His broken body is the open door. Through his torn flesh, the way to me is now wide open. And that transforms how you see the whole thing. The veil was never really about a curtain. It was about a body, his body given for you. Every time that high priest passed through the old veil into the presence of God, he was walking through a shadow of the day when the son of God would pass through death itself, torn open to lead us into the presence of the father. Hebrews calls it a new and living way. New bath because it had never existed before the cross. Living one because the one who is the way is alive. He died and rose and he himself is the open door standing before you. You do not come to God through a dead ritual. You come through a living person whose torn body became the way in. So the torn veil points you straight to the torn body of Jesus. That is the door. That is the way. That is how you get in.
And right here at the heart of it, let me ask you to do one thing. Share this video with one person, someone you know may feel shut out from God. Like there is a barrier they can never cross. And this is the news that tells them the way is already open. Send it to them then come right back because now I want to show you the door that is standing wide open for you. So the veil is torn. The barrier is down. Now let's stand in front of that open space and feel what it actually means. Because it is almost too good to take in. For 1500 years that curtain said one word, stop. Keep out. You cannot come in. And now in a single motion from the hand of God, that word is gone. The veil that said no has been ripped in two. And where there used to be a barrier, there is now an opening. The most holy place, the presence of God that was sealed off from all but one man one day a year is standing open and the invitation has completely reversed. The message is no longer keep out. The message is now come in.
Listen to how the New Testament says it because the boldness of it is staggering. Hebrews says, "Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, let us draw near. Draw near. Come close. Come into the very place that used to mean instant death for the unauthorized, and not creeping in terrified with a rope around your ankle, but with confidence, with boldness." Another passage says we can with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, the throne, the seat of the God of the universe. And we are told to approach it boldly. That word would have been unthinkable before the cross. You did not approach the presence of God boldly. You approached it, if at all, trembling once a year through a mediator with blood, hoping to survive. And now the door is open and the king himself says, "Come close. Come boldly. Come as often as you like." And think about what that torn veil ended. It ended the whole system of separation. No more curtain. No more once a year. No more only the high priest. No more human gobetween standing at the door deciding who may approach. The tearing of that veil declared the old system of distance over. You do not need a priest to reach God for you anymore because the great high priest has opened the way and invites you in directly. You can come yourself right now through the torn body of Jesus into the presence of the living God. The distance is abolished. The separation is finished. The nearness that only one man tasted one day a year is now the everyday inheritance of everyone who comes through the cross. Let that reshape your whole idea of prayer. When you pray, you are not shouting at a god who is far away behind a curtain. You are walking through an open door made open by the torn body of your savior into the presence of a father who has been waiting for you to come near. There is nothing standing between you and him anymore. The veil is torn. The way is open. Draw near.
And now do not miss who this open door is for. Because the torn veil did not just change how we come to God. It changed who can come. Remember the old temple. It was a series of barriers and not just the one veil. There was a court beyond which Gentiles could not pass on pain of death. There was a section women could not enter. There were courts only priests could enter. And then the veil beyond which only the high priest could go one day a year. The whole structure was a system of distance and exclusion. a series of walls sorting people by how close they were allowed to get and most of humanity was kept far off. But when God tore that veil from top to bottom, he was tearing down the entire architecture of exclusion because the way into God's presence is now not through a room that only certain people can enter. It is through the torn body of Jesus and that door is open to anyone who will come through it. The New Testament makes this explicit and thunderous. In Christ, the dividing wall of hostility has been broken down. Those who were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. There is now no Jew or Gentile, no insider or outsider, no first class or secondass access. There is one open door and it is open to all. So hear this. Wherever you have been standing, if you have ever felt like you were the wrong kind of person to come to God, too far off, too foreign, too sinful, too broken, not religious enough, not clean enough, standing in the outer court with no way in. The torn veil is God's answer to you. The barriers that kept you at a distance have been ripped down from top to bottom by his own hand. The door is not open to the elite few. It is open to you. The high priest went in alone once a year. Now the least, the last, and the lost are all invited into the same holy presence freely through the same open door any day, any hour, just as they are. That is the scandalous width of the torn veil. It did not open the presence of God a little to a few more people. It threw it wide to everyone who will come through Jesus. The barrier is not lowered. It is gone. And the invitation is not narrow. It is whosoever. You are not looking at a door that might let you in. You are looking at a door that was torn open specifically so that you could come home.
So step back now and look at the whole thing because every thread of this torn curtain has been pointing at him. The veil was the barrier and Jesus removed it. The veil was torn from top to bottom. And that was God reaching down to us in him because we could never reach up. The veil tore at the exact moment he died because it was his death, his finished work that opened the way. And the veil, Hebrews tells us, was his flesh, his own body broken, becoming the door. Look at who Jesus is in this story. He is the true veil torn open so we could come in. He is the great high priest who does not just enter the holy place on our behalf but who opens it and brings us in with him. He is the new and living way. New because it never existed before the cross. Living because he rose and stands before you now. Himself the door. He is the end of the barrier and the beginning of the welcome. Everything the temple was straining to say for 15 centuries, the holiness of God, the problem of sin, the longing for access, all of it finds its answer in a torn body on a cross and a torn curtain in a temple at the same moment by the same act of love. And here is the wonder at the very center of it. God did not tear the veil in anger, ripping it down to shut us out further. He tore it in love to open the way in. The same God whose holiness that curtain protected is the God who tore it open so that sinful people could finally come home to him. He wanted you near so badly that he gave his own son's body to become the door. The barrier that your sin built, he removed at the cost of his own flesh. That is not a distant God guarding his presence behind a curtain. That is a father who tore the curtain from top to bottom with his own hands so that nothing would ever stand between you and him again. That is the savior hidden in the torn veil. Not a dramatic special effect at a tragic death, but the son of God whose torn body became the open door so that you exactly as you are could walk straight into the presence of God and never be shut out again.
If this is the kind of study that opens the Bible up for you near or where one detail you have read past your whole life suddenly holds the whole gospel, the best thing you can do is subscribe and share it. That is genuinely how this work reaches more people. Now, let me give you the simple picture I want you to carry out of here. Here is a picture I want you to hold on to. Imagine a great house and inside it the most beautiful room you could dream of. Warm, full of light, a table set, a fire burning, everything you have ever longed for waiting inside. And imagine you are standing outside that room and across the doorway hangs a heavy locked impenetrable curtain. You can sense the warmth on the other side. You know that is where you are meant to be but you cannot get in. You push against the curtain. It will not move. You look for a gap. There is none. You try to climb it. It is too high. And a sign hangs on it that says simply no entry. You are on the wrong side of the door and there is nothing you can do about it. That is humanity. Standing outside the presence of God, separated by a barrier of sin we cannot move. Now imagine that while you are standing there helpless, a hand you cannot see reaches down from the very top of that curtain from a height you could never climb to and tears it open from top to bottom in one motion. The barrier falls away. The doorway stands open. The warmth and the light of that room pour out over you. And a voice from inside says, "Not prove yourself worthy. Not climb your way in, but simply come in." That is the torn veil. You were never going to get into the presence of God by pushing on the curtain from your side. You could push and climb and strive your whole life and never move it an inch. But you do not have to because a hand reached down from the top, the hand of God at the cross and tore the barrier open for you. The door is not locked anymore. The sign does not say no entry anymore. The way is open and the only thing left for you to do is the one thing the helpless person outside could finally do. Stop pushing and walk in. So the question this story leaves you with is not how do I get in? The way is already open. The question is simply will you come? The curtain has been torn. The room is warm. The father is inside and the door is standing open for you.
So let me leave you with three things to carry with you tonight. First, stop trying to tear the veil from your side. So many of us are exhausted, striving, trying to climb our way to God, trying to be good enough, religious enough, clean enough to finally earn access to his presence. And the torn veil is God's word to every tired climber. Stop. You were never going to tear that curtain from the bottom. It is too high and too thick for human hands. But you do not have to because God already tore it from the top. Your access to God is not a wage you earn. It is a gift he gave from his side at the cross. So lay down the exhausting project of trying to make yourself acceptable enough to come near. The way is already open. Come through the door he tore, not the one you were trying to climb.
Second, draw near and draw near boldly. The tragedy would be to stand in front of an open door and still act as though it were closed. So many believers live as if the veil were still hanging there, approaching God, timid, uncertain, feeling like they have to earn their way back into the room every time. But the veil is torn. You are invited to come to the throne of grace with confidence. So come near tonight in prayer, in worship, in honesty, not creeping, not trembling, but boldly as a beloved child walking through a door that your Savior's own body tore open for you. Do not treat as closed what Christ died to open. Draw near.
And third, the one that matters most. Remember what it cost to open that door. The veil did not tear on its own. It tore because a body was torn. The way into God's presence is open tonight because the flesh of the son of God was broken on a cross in your place. So do not walk through that open door casually as if it cost nothing. Walk through it with wonder and with worship and with a love that answers the love that tore the curtain. The next time you pray, remember you are walking into the holiest presence in the universe through a door that was opened by the torn body of your savior. A door that will never ever be closed to you again. That is how much he wanted you near.
So here is the whole thing hidden in a torn curtain. The veil of the temple, the great barrier between sinful humanity and a holy God, was ripped in two from top to bottom by the hand of God at the exact moment his son died because his torn body had become the new and living way in. It was never a special effect. It was the greatest announcement ever made. The way to God is open and it was opened for you. So stop climbing, draw near, and never forget what it cost to tear the curtain. This is one more word in a much bigger story. And tonight, it was hidden in a torn curtain. The veil of the temple ripped in two. Every detail we traced, the barrier it was, the top tobottom tear, the exact moment the torn body it pointed to, it all kept leading back to the same place, to the same person, the risen Christ whose broken body became the open door so that you exactly as you are could walk straight into the presence of God and never be shut out again. So, if you want to keep pulling on the thread with me, subscribe and we'll keep going deeper. God bless.