“And Jesus cried again with a loud voice and yielded up His spirit. He died. The Author of Life came to us, and we killed Him. You probably know or have seen in movies how it is a custom among Jews that when a Jewish father’s son chooses to do something that is completely contrary to Jewish Faith and brings shame on the family, the father will tear his shirt or whatever garment he has on, he will tear it from top to bottom, basically saying, you are dead to me. So, in the next verse we read, “And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom; …” Now, there is no question that was an act of God the Father. Let me explain

 

As you may remember, the Temple had two distinct areas, the Holy Place and the Most Holy Place, or the Holy of Holies, that no one could enter because the presence of God dwelt there, except the High Priest once a year to offer sacrifice for the sins of the people, and there was a veil or curtain covering the Most Holy Place, covering the presence of God. Now, when we hear curtain, we tend to picture a curtain like we might use over a window in our house. No, no, no. The veil covering the Holy of Holies was about 6” thick, 32 feet wide, and 65 feet high, and it took 300 priests, to carry it to its place and hang it. Can you even begin to fathom the size of that? It was massive, and that immense and enormous veil was ripped in two, from top to bottom, when Christ died. Do you think someone or something other than God could have done that? No, this was a deliberate act of God the Father. But why? What was He communicating through such an act?

 

Well, there are many possible answers to that question, but I only want to focus on one tonight. One of the answers that has been given is that the Father tearing the veil was a display of incredible grief and a declaration of rejection by the Father over the sin and death that His Son had become covered in, our sins, and also declaring His judgement on us who were responsible for that death, so He ripped the curtain of the temple, ripped the garment covering His presence, from top to bottom, with what must have made a deafening and earsplitting and horrifying sound that had a sense of finality to it. 

 

God sent His eternal Son into the world to gather us back to Himself and we did the absolute worst thing we could have done; we killed Him, and the Son in the process became sullied with our sin and death. The Father, by tearing His garment, was declaring in that briefest of moments, He had rejected what we had become and what His Son had become because of us.

 

And yet, And yet, at the same time, in a paradox that only God could pull off, while He was declaring we were dead to Him, He was also making a way for us to live again. While declaring His judgement on us, He was providing for our acceptance. 

 

God was announcing the end of the shadow and the beginning of the reality, the end of the band-aid and the beginning of true and lasting healing, the end of animal sacrifices that could never really take away sins, and the beginning of lasting pardon for all of mankind, not counting our trespasses against us, but forgiving us as His Son had asked Him to do when He was hanging from the cross. The Father was declaring the death of one thing and the beginning of something entirely new.

 

The Old Covenant that was dependent upon our faithfulness and our obedience had come up short in restoring us to communion and intimacy with God; in fact, it was never intended to. But God had a different plan that He was inaugurating. The same ugly death that manifested and put an exclamation mark on our sins and caused God to rend His garment, also opened the way for us to experience His presence again, both to kill us and to make us new, both to judge our sins and yet to forgive us and make us blameless. We who were guilty of such unspeakable darkness and rebellion, worthy only of being rejected and annihilated, were, by the very rending of the veil at the sacrifice and death of Christ, reconciled to the presence of God. The very death and outpouring of blood that caused the Son of God for that brief moment to feel the weight of our separation from God, was accepted by the Father as a perfect offering of love for our sins, to bring us back to the Father. Only God can pull off such a paradox, such an incredible act of judgment and mercy at the same time. 

 

Many see the tearing of the veil over the Holy of Holies as signifying us being let in to have access to God, which is, of course, true. But I wonder if the torn veil isn’t also about letting God out of the Holy of Holies, to have access to us? God is available to every one of us, but in our sinfulness, we cannot bear His presence, so there is a veil covering it. The question is, will we let Him tear the veil? Will we let Him rend it, both as a statement of finality and judgement on our sins, but also to open the way for His presence to flood our lives and forgive us and heal us and wrap us in His arms? Jesus’ death made that possible.

 

Now what remains is for each of us to ask Him to make that tearing personal, to tear open the veil between Him and our hearts and to flood our lives with the light of His presence, because now that the Son of God has joined divinity and humanity together in Himself, in Him we can not only bear His presence but embrace it. It will kill us, but it will also make us new. The veil is torn as we confess our sins and call out to the Father, believing that Jesus Christ, His eternal Son, became man and took our sins and death upon himself, and asking the Father to forgive us and to restore us to Himself. If you have never done that, I hope you will tonight. Or if you have, but over time you kind of confined Him again to His Holy of Holies and sewed the veil back together, I hope tonight you’ll let Him rip it open again and flood your life with His presence. If, however, you are already open to Him, maybe tonight you simply ask Him to take the veil away all together. Christ is dying for that to happen.