“Behind the Veil”

We are continuing with the series that will bring us to the Easter season entitled: “Jesus- the Passover Lamb.” What is the “Passover” anyway? The Passover is a Jewish feast that God told the people to celebrate every year to commemorate “the exodus.” And Jesus attended 2 Passovers during His earthly ministry- one at the beginning of His ministry and the other just before He was crucified. These 2 visits have a commonality, on both occasions He cleanses the temple. The temple was the religious center for the Jewish people…. and on feast days like Passover, people from all over the known world would attend. And your lamb would be brought to the temple for sacrifice.

So, Jesus visits the temple on both occasions…. He does so with great grief, sadness and in righteous anger - why? Because the place that was supposed to be the House of Prayer was a marketplace. It was a place of making money off of livestock, it was the place of foreign currency exchange and making interest. It was not the place where man meets with God and God meets with man, but a place of profiteering and gouging in the name of the Lord. So, Christ drives the money-changers out of the temple. And the Pharisees are incensed and ask Him what gave Him the right to do that.

John 2:18 So the Jews answered and said to Him, “What sign do You show to us, since You do these things?” 19 Jesus answered and said to them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” 20 Then the Jews said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will You raise it up in three days?” 21 But He was speaking of the temple of His body.

Jesus says something that totally confuses them. He says that the temple will be destroyed and that it will be raised up in 3 days, but He was speaking about the temple of His Body. Jesus is the fulfillment of the O.T. temple - God would raise Him up - to be a new temple in His Body.

A shift is taking place - from the O.T. temple worship that had existed for hundreds of years, where the worshipper would bring a sacrifice to the high priest and he would kill it and bring the blood into the Holy of Holies…but now Jesus is about to be proclaimed as our High Priest - He would figuratively bring His own blood behind the veil - into Holy of Holies and intercede for us…He has become our temple.

When Jesus died on the cross, the veil in the temple was torn from top to bottom, it's significant to us because it signals that we are now a kingdom of priests, we have access to the Shekinah Glory behind the veil, that is, the Holy Spirit now dwells within us as we are the temple of God. All of us have the potential of gaining access to the presence of God through the “veil” of Christ’s body.

Join us in person on Sunday at 10:00 a.m. or via livestream by going to https://www.firstbaptistsudbury.com and clicking on livestream for “Behind the Veil.”    

Blessings,

Kevin