On the way home from church this afternoon I was listening to my Kutless CD (Strong Tower) when one of my favorite songs came on -- Take Me In. This song says it all for the Christian. We no longer have to stand on the outside looking in, going through a man to reach God. Instead, we have the awesome freedom to go directly to the Lord Jesus Who is always ready and willing to hear us.
God made a way for the ancients to come to Him, to have their sins covered, by going to the temple and offering sacrifices through the priests. The priests would then sprinkle the blood on the altar, the mercy seat (the place where sins were atoned), in the holy of holies. No one other than the appointed priest was allowed to go directly into the presence of God in the holy of holies (Hebrews 9:6-7).
When Jesus came to earth in the form of a man, He willingly gave His life on the cross. When He died, the veil that separated the holy of holies from the rest of the temple (separation from direct contact with God) was torn from the TOP to the bottom (Matthew 27:50-53). Listen to what the writer of Hebrews says:
When the Anointed One arrived as the High Priest of the good things that are to come, He entered through a greater and more perfect sanctuary that was not part of the earthly creation or made by human hands. He entered once for all time into the most holy place -- entering, not with the blood of goats or calves or some other prescribed animal, but offering His own blood and thus obtaining redemption for us for all time. Think about it: if the blood of bulls or of goats, or the sprinkling of ashes from a heifer, restores the defiled to bodily cleanliness and wholeness; then how much more powerful is the blood of the Anointed One, Who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself as a spotless sacrifice to God, purifying your conscience from the dead things of the world to the service of the living God? ... Since what was given in the old covenant was the earthly sketch of the heavenly reality, this was sufficient to cleanse the earthly sanctuary; but in heaven, a more perfect sacrifice was needed. The Anointed One did not enter into handcrafted sacred spaces -- imperfect copies of heavenly originals -- but into heaven itself, where He stands in the presence of God on our behalf. There He does not offer Himself over and over as a sacrifice (as the high priest on earth does when he enters the most holy place each year with blood other than his own) because that would require His repeated suffering since the beginning of the world. No, He has appeared once now, at the end of the age, to put away sin forever by offering Himself as a sacrifice. Hebrews 9:11-14, 23-26 (read the notes on these verses!)
This means that, as the writer of Take Me In states, I no longer need a high priest to sacrifice for my sins. Jesus did that for me. And as such, I can go directly to Him (there is nothing separating me from Him) if I have accepted Him and am covered in His blood. He took my sins (and yours) upon Himself when He died on the cross, and took them directly to God in heaven, covered by His blood.
Take me into the holy of holies by the blood of the Lamb, because I want to see Your face, Lord.
~ Reese
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