Transcription
[Music] So as I pondered those words from the mouth of our Lord hanging on a cross in agony, the Bible says He gave up His Spirit and cried, "It is finished." It is finished.
And I guess to a nominal churchgoer who is familiar with that, they would think that "it is finished" means I'm about to die. Well, He was and He did, but "it is finished" encompassed a whole lot more than that. When He said it is finished, He actually meant a new dispensation was about to begin. An old covenant was about to be obsolete and fulfilled in Him. Old agreements, Old Testaments, Old Laws, Old requirements, Old Obligations, over. And a new covenant would begin at the cross of Jesus Christ. It is finished.
In Matthew 27:51, Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up His Spirit. Then behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom, and the earth quaked. That means the rocks were torn. And the rocks were split, and the graves were opened. That means they were split open, torn open. And many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised. And coming out of the graves after the resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many. What a scene!
Jesus gives up the ghost. A Roman soldier walks up with a spear and pierces his side, and blood and water gush out. And at the same time, holy God reached down into the temple and tore the veil two. That veil, according to Jewish historians, was 60 feet (18 meters) tall. It was about 22 feet (7 meters) wide. But here's the one that gets me. It was four inches (10 cm) thick. It was that thick. Did you get that? The historian said two yoke of oxen could not have torn that veil. Other historians said it took 300 priests to maintain and manage the veil, to keep it clean, to put it up and take it down. 300! What two yoke of oxen could not do, two fingers of God did. 60 feet (18m) tall all the way up and all the way down. Open.
Let me tell you something else. That veil consisted of three colors, blue, red, and purple. There's a reason for that. God is the one that gave Moses instructions, and everything had to be precise. And he had to follow every instruction from heaven, because everything about the temple and everything about the tabernacle was about Jesus. Everything in it that went on, all the furniture, all the tapestries, all the construction, it's all about Jesus. That's the whole point of a tabernacle and a temple to start with. God was teaching his people that there must be someone higher than they, someone able to do what they cannot do. And so this particular piece of the furniture of the tabernacle, the veil, consisted of three colors, blue, red, and purple.
Blue. Throughout scripture, blue represents heaven. God, the heavenlies, son of God.
Red. You know something, this fascinates me. In Hebrew, the word red or Adam, the word Adam means red. Go ahead and write it down. You'll check it later. Adam in Hebrew is red. Isn't that amazing? Blue, son of God, holy, righteous, powerful, almighty, son of man, sinful, weak, wicked, lowly. And he became both because the third color, you know how you get purple, don't you? You mix red with blue and you get purple. The son of God, the son of man came in the body of Jesus. The incarnation of the holy one was a perfect union of man and God. And for that reason, he became worthy to take your sins and my sins and hear your prayers and my prayers.
And I think it's interesting that when Caiaphas delivered Jesus over to the Romans and they began to torture him and beat him, the Bible says they put a crown of thorns on his head. They put a stick in his hand to represent his kingship. They mocked him and made fun of him and then they threw a purple robe on his back. Isn't that amazing? The son of almighty God who could have called 10,000 angels and wiped that miserable bunch off the planet. But he sat there and he stood there and he knelt there and he fell there and he bled there and he prayed there. The son of God who took on Adam's sins, he let them mock him. He allowed it because the scripture said this has to be done. And God spoke and said just to show you that I mean business about redeeming mankind. He let some Roman soldier throw a purple cloak over his back. There you have the payment for the sins of the world.
Let me tell you something else about this veil. It represented Jesus Christ. How so? The veil kept men away from God. The veil was a barrier. It was a limit. You could not go behind that veil and meet God. No human being could ever do that because of their sinfulness, their unworthiness. And yet there was Jesus who stood between us and the Father and the Father looked at Jesus and said, "My son, my holy righteous sinless son", "and nobody can get in here unless you're just like him." Oh, what a dilemma. What a judgment. Nobody can come to heaven unless you're just like Jesus.
I tell people a lot when I'm trying to witness to them, you can't go to heaven unless you're perfect. And they say, "Well then how can anybody go?" Thank you for asking me that question. We can go because he has opened the door. We can go because the veil, his flesh, was rent from the top to the bottom. The Father didn't remove the veil. He split the veil. Jesus said, "You can come through me." The Father looks right through Jesus and sees you, the one Jesus loves and says, "You are welcome to come into my presence. You are privileged to call me Father."
Oh church, I don't know if we will ever grasp this. I don't know that some of you are grasping it right now. You couldn't get to heaven in the condition you were in. The best day of your life, you were damned for hell. Every good deed you've ever done or will ever do will not get you one millimeter closer to God. But there is a veil that has been rent. There is a Savior that has been crucified. There is one who said, "You can go in my righteousness. You can have my holiness. You can go to my Father." And anybody who calls on Jesus and trusts in what he did can walk boldly right into the holy of holies and touch God at any time for anything.
Can you imagine the great high priest after all the preparation he's been through? They had to go through cleansing and rituals. And that great high priest shook and trembled before he went behind that veil. Because if he had one sinful thing in his life, God would kill him on the spot. There is a tradition that says they used to tie little bells around the ankles of the great high priest and a rope. And as long as the little bells were tinkling, they knew he was still alive and God was accepting the sacrifice. But when they stopped, they said, "God's killed him," and they drag him right out of there. What a fearful way to live. Can you imagine a great high priest in those days walking out from behind the curtain saying, "Hey, anybody else want to come in? Come on! Hey, come on, everybody! It doesn't matter. Just come on in!" No, it was fearful, shaking, sacred, holy stuff going on.
You know, if a non-Jew had walked by that temple and came to the gatekeeper and he could look in and say, "Can I go in? I understand there's worship in there. May I go in?" That gatekeeper would say, "Nope, this is for special people. This is for Israelites. The Jews, they're God's people. This is their worship. He's their God."
"You mean I can't go in and worship?"
"Oh, no. This is just for Israelites."
He said, "Well, I'm just peeping in here, and I see."
"What is that I see there?"
He said, "Well, what you see is a brazen laver full of water, and that water represents the washing away of our sins by God's Word." And he said, "I see another thing."
"What's that?"
He said, "That's an altar. That's where sacrifices are made and blood is spilled so that the sins of the people for one more year could be washed away."
He said, "But I'm looking farther, and I see a room in there, a room, and what's in there?"
He said, "Well, there's another altar in there, because before you get any closer to God, you've always got to kneel at the altar, and there's a table with some fresh bread on it representing the God who feeds his people from heaven, and there's a lampstand which represents the God of light who lights up the whole world with his wisdom."
"You mean I can't go in there? Something in my heart just draws me. You mean I am not worthy to go in there?"
"Nope. Just for special people."
He said, "What's behind that big, thick curtain there?"
He said, "You don't want to talk about that."
He said, "I can tell you what's back there." He said, "It's really quiet, and there's no candle. There's no bread. There's just the glory of God. It's like Shekinah. It just lights up the place. Right there in the middle of the room behind the veil is a golden box, and in that box are three things. Aaron's rod that budded, the commandments that God gave Moses, and some manna that stays fresh right in that box."
"Oh really? Wow, that's interesting."
He said, "No, the interesting thing is on top of that box are two golden seraphim, angelic holy heavenly creatures, and their wings are extended to each other, and they almost touch, but they don't. And in the middle of that space is where the presence of God dwells."
"Are you kidding me? I want God. Why can't I have God?"
"Because you're not a special person. You've not been called. You're not a Jew. You're not an Israelite."
Oh, but brothers and sisters, Jesus tore the veil. And Jesus, Jesus makes nobody sit outside. Jesus says nobody is unworthy. I'm telling somebody here today, whatever you've done in your life, don't you ever think again you've got to stand outside and peep in because you're not special and you're not called. Oh, let me tell you how to be special. Let me tell you how to be called. You call on the name of the Lord, you call on the name of Jesus. You ask him to apply that precious blood to your life and wash away your sins. And suddenly all doors open and everything lights up and whosoever can walk it, not just into the first room, not just to an altar, but can boldly walk into the holy of holies where God Almighty, God the Father, sits there and he says, "Welcome my son. Welcome my daughter. You can call me Father for the rest of your life." Praise God.
Let me tell you what Hebrews ch.10 says about that. When Jesus offered up himself, therefore brethren, having boldness, boldness. You know when we pray, we're supposed to pray with boldness. Nobody ever backed in to the holy place, Nobody ever crawled in. They walked in with boldness to enter the holiest by the blood of Jesus. It is finished. All that's old, all that's dead. We now live in a new living walk with the Lord Jesus Christ in a new and living way, which he consecrated for us through the veil. That is, look at it, his flesh, his flesh, his body became the torn veil that allows us access into the holy of holies and having a high priest over the house of God. Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance. Boldness, you walk in with boldness. You come in with a true heart in full assurance of faith. You don't come in saying, "I hope I'm saved." "I hope I did all the right stuff." "I hope the Lord's forgiven me." No, if you've asked Jesus to forgive you, if you've confessed your sins, the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses you from all unrighteousness. So I say it again, you don't walk in apologetically. You don't back in. You walk in with boldness and full assurance of faith because the blood of Jesus has cleansed you from everything that has separated you from almighty God. Having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. What a gift.
Just 37 years after that happened, the Romans came into Jerusalem and tore down the entire city. The temple was gone. "It is finished." The Last Supper, the priest garments were torn. The veil was torn. The temple is destroyed. Judaism is a dead, obsolete religion of works. Just like any other religion that does not believe in the full pardon of sin through the grace of God.
And here we sit. You just have to bear with me for a moment. Here we sit. We don't even realize how privileged we are. We didn't have to get up and kill an animal this morning. We're not having to check the calendar. Which day is it? What worship day is it? What am I dressed in? What am I supposed to eat today? Where can I go today? Where can I not go today? No. We just got up and said this is the day the Lord has made. Hallelujah. This is the first day of the week. This is Sunday. This is the day the Lord rose from the dead. And I get to get up and get dressed and go to the house of God without fear, without shame, without condemnation, without guilt. I've been set free by the blood of Jesus. I can shout hallelujah. I'm not afraid. God is not angry. I am a child of the most high God. Praise the Lord.