Now even the first covenant had regulations of divine worship and the earthly sanctuary. For there was a tabernacle prepared, the outer one, in which were the lampstand and the table and the sacred bread; this is called the holy place. And behind the second veil, there was a tabernacle which is called the Holy of Holies, having a golden altar of incense and the ark of the covenant covered on all sides with gold, in which was a golden jar holding the manna, and Aaron’s rod which budded, and the tables of the covenant. Hebrews 9:1–4.
The Old Testament tabernacle in the wilderness was a picture of what was to unfold through the generations.
First the outer court, representing a time when people struggle to get through to God;
Then the holy place, into which they could enter and where there were some blessings for them: the table of showbread, a golden lampstand, and the altar of incense.
Beyond the veil was the Holy of Holies, in which was the Ark of the Covenant, containing a jar of manna, Aaron’s rod which had budded, and the tables of covenant. The Ark of the Covenant was symbolical of the presence of the Lord and above it were the cherubim of glory, overshadowing the mercy seat.
The Ark of the Covenant, with the angels or the cherubim above it, symbolized the presence of the Lord and the glory of the spiritual realm. It pictured the presence of the Lord and our relationship to it. God always wants a covenant relationship with His people.
He commits Himself to us, but he also wants us to commit ourselves to Him. He agrees to do certain things, but He wants us to agree to do certain things, too. He wants to be something special to us, and He wants us to be something special to Him. And in the Ark of the Covenant were the symbols of this relationship.
It was significant that the tables containing the covenant which God had entered into with His people were in the ark. There was a golden pot of manna.
If you read about the manna in the Old Testament, you will realize that for this manna to be preserved hundreds of years was probably the most ridiculous thing that any one could believe for.
When the Israelites tried to keep the manna in the wilderness, even overnight, it bred worms and stank.
But when they placed a pot of manna inside the Ark of the Covenant, it remained fresh, symbolizing the sustaining of life and strength that the Lord brings to us.
Inside the ark was also the rod that God had used to show who His high priest was. There were a number of candidates and they all threw their rods down, but Aaron’s rod developed leaves, branches, blossoms, and almonds overnight. There was no root, just a little rod. This was to show that God wants to be the miracle source of everything that we produce in our life. All of this was symbolized in the Holy of Holies.
It appears that the writer of Hebrews knew very little about the book of Exodus because he depicted the altar of incense on the wrong side of the curtain.
No, he wasn’t confused; he was speaking by revelation. The Lord had rent that veil from top to bottom and the altar of incense had been moved through the veil to stand inside the Holy of Holies.
We take one step in beyond the forbidden area, to stand in the presence of the Lord. What men could not have done under the old covenant, we now can do. We offer up the incense of worship and praise in the very presence of His glory.
The Holy of Holies was to be frequented only by the high priest. But into the second only the high priest enters, once a year, not without taking blood, which he offers for himself and for the sins of the people committed in ignorance. Hebrews 9:7. Once a year, on the Day of Atonement, the high priest could go beyond the veil and enter into the Holy of Holies.
Do you see the significance of what Christ did when He rent the veil? He opened a new and living way through the veil, that is to say, through His flesh (Hebrews 10:20).
As His flesh was torn in sacrifice for us, it literally opened the door that was reserved for only the high priest to pass through.
It tore the curtain open and made it possible for us to enter in just as the high priest entered in. How fantastic!
Seeing that we have such a great high priest, let us therefore enter in too, and come boldly to the throne of grace, there to stand in the presence of the Lord and find grace to help in the time of our need (Hebrews 4:14–16).
This is the next phase of worship—the worship that is really revelation worship, where we stand before the Lord, in His very presence, and worship.
Once we were afar off, but now we are made nigh by the blood of Jesus Christ. Once we were no people; now we are the people of the Lord. Once we were strangers and aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, having no God, no hope, no covenant, nothing (Ephesians 2:12–13). Just think what Christ has done in opening up the way for us to participate in the privilege of the high priest.
For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. And the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us; for after saying, “This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the Lord: I will put My laws upon their heart, and upon their mind I will write them,” He then says, “And their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.” Hebrews 10:14–17.
What was that covenant to mean? It was to get away from the tables of stone upon which the covenant had been written. It was to get away even from the Scriptures being simply a Book containing the family’s birth records and collecting dust on the shelf, and it was to see the Word of God written upon the tablets of the heart.
It was not to be something that you reverenced as a nice old Book, but its words were to leap off the cold page and into your heart.
His Word is to be written on the tablets of your heart, and you are to become a true worshiper of the Lord, standing in His very presence, alive to His will and doing His will with everything that is within you.
Since therefore, brethren, we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus (he is not speaking of the outer area, usually called the holy place; he is talking about entering into the Holy of Holies with Christ), by a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through the veil, that is His flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our body washed with pure water. Hebrews 10:19–22.
Does that mean we have to take a bath before we go to church? No, he is talking about the provision of cleansing that the high priest had to go through before he entered the Holy of Holies.
Now that the veil is rent, we have the privilege of entering in, but we still must make the preparation of our heart or we are not going to stand there.
We can talk from now until the millennium is over about your being able to worship in the presence of the Lord, but without holiness shall no man see the Lord.
If we’re going to come before Him, it will be with a pure heart. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God (Matthew 5:8). Those who have the hope of His appearing purify themselves, even as He is pure (I John 3:3).
Why is God ordering the cleansing in our lives? Because it is the prelude to entering into the very Holy of Holies, there to worship on a level we’ve never known before.
You may ask, “Why couldn’t we break into it before?” Remember that the high priest would drop dead if he had not prepared his heart to enter into such a holy state. There were small golden bells and pomegranates all around the hem of his robe when he went in (Exodus 28:33–35). The people waiting on the outside listened for the bells. If the bells stopped ringing, it meant that he had not cleansed his heart from sin and they had to look for another high priest—this one was dead.
God has dealt with us and brought us to a place of real heart-searching. And you take it very seriously, because in your spirit you know that you will have to be thoroughly cleansed.
Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. II Corinthians 7:1.
What is the promise? God says, “I will dwell in them and will walk in them; I will make them my Holy of Holies” (II Corinthians 6:16).
The way the high priest had to prepare himself becomes our preparation. The washing before presentation to the Lord is very important. That’s why Ephesians 5 talks about the Bride of Christ, how Christ gave Himself for her, and wants her to go through the washing of water by the Word so that she will be without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but she should be holy, without blemish, without blame when she presents herself to Him.
Revelation 19:7, 8 says, “Oh, rejoice, for the marriage of the Lamb has come and His wife hath made herself ready. And to her was granted to be clothed with fine linen clean and white. And the fine linen is the righteousness of the saints.” They are clean. They come into the purity.
This is a different motivation than just the rules of a church. We are in the day when people are going to break into that level of worship and the preparation is very great.
Isn’t it amazing that the grace of God opened the door for this, and as we go along the Lord is constantly demanding purity in our spirit—a right and a pure spirit.
Leviticus 16:2–6: And the Lord said to Moses, “Tell your brother Aaron that he shall not enter at any time into the holy place inside the veil, before the mercy seat which is on the ark, lest he die; for I will appear in the cloud over the mercy seat. Aaron shall enter the holy place with this: with a bull for a sin offering and a ram for a burnt offering. He shall put on the holy linen tunic, and the linen undergarments shall be next to his body, and he shall be girded with the linen sash, and attired with the lined turban (these are holy garments). Then he shall bathe his body in water and put them on.” We are getting ready to go into the presence of the Lord, and it’s time for that spiritual cleansing to take place.
“And he shall take from the congregation of the sons of Israel two male goats for a sin offering and one ram for a burnt offering. Then Aaron shall offer the bull for the sin offering which is for himself, that he may make atonement for himself and for his household.”
Verse 11, 17: “Then Aaron shall offer the bull of the sin offering which is for himself, and make atonement for himself and for his household, and he shall slaughter the bull of the sin offering which is for himself. And he shall take a firepan full of coals of fire from upon the altar before the Lord, and two handfuls of finely ground sweet incense, and bring it inside the veil. And he shall put the incense on the fire before the Lord, that the cloud of incense may cover the mercy seat that is on the ark of testimony, lest he die.”
He is coming in to offer his worship. The golden altar of incense has been moved through the rent veil and is right there by the ark. Now he is coming with the coals and the incense, making a cloud of praise so that God will ignore his unworthiness. Give God what He wants and He will take care of your need.
“Moreover he shall take some of the blood of the bull and sprinkle it with his finger on the mercy seat on the east side; also in front of the mercy seat he shall sprinkle some of the blood with his finger seven times. Then he shall slaughter the goat of the sin offering which is for the people, and bring its blood inside the veil, and do with its blood as he did with the blood of the bull, and sprinkle it on the mercy seat and in front of the mercy seat.
“And he shall make atonement for the holy place, because of the impurities of the sons of Israel, and because of their transgressions, in regard to all their sins; and thus he shall do for the tent of meeting which abides with them in the midst of their impurities. When he goes in to make atonement in the holy place, no one shall be in the tent of meeting until he comes out, that he may make atonement for himself and for his household and for all the assembly of Israel.”
Verses 23, 24. “Then Aaron shall come into the tent of meeting, and take off the linen garments which he put on when he went into the holy place, and shall leave them there. And he shall bathe his body with water in the holy place and put on his clothes, and come forth and offer his burnt offering and the burnt offering of the people, and make atonement for himself and for the people.”
We’re going to understand what the Day of Atonement was really to mean. We have seen measures of its truth, but now we’re beginning to understand that the Day of Atonement experience is our entering in with our great High Priest to stand in the presence of the Lord, after the preparation and cleansing has been made.
On the Day of Atonement God takes away the sin of His people and He opens up the pure and undefiled worship in His presence.
This opens the door for the Feast of Tabernacles, God tabernacling and dwelling with man, breaking through upon us that we might serve Him. The Day of Atonement was to bring that cleansing, that drawing nigh unto the Lord.
We are facing a new level of worship. I know that it is revolutionary and it does not readily appeal to anyone. That is why the book of Leviticus has been such a dry book to most people. They have not understood the basic thing that God was doing in trying to draw people into His presence, to stand there with a worthiness that they did not deserve, but a worthiness that He had wrought in them because they had submitted to His righteousness. They had believed for it and prepared their hearts the way He said, as much as they possibly could.
God is wooing a people into His presence, into a fellowship that we cannot understand. It is far beyond what Adam and Eve had in the Garden, I believe. God walked and talked with them, but they had no sense of His glory and of His presence. They had no sense of their own sin. They had no restraint upon them out of their love for Him; in fact, they disobeyed Him quite easily, I think.
But now God is finding those people who are going to abhor evil and cleave to the Lord, desiring above everything else to serve Him with all of their heart. Oh, what a day is just before us!
We could talk about all the sins of the flesh. You may say, “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how I’m going to be clean before the Lord.” It’s just a matter of the Lord cleansing you.
I John 1:9 tells us: If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
What we need to do is to stand before the Lord—not making sacrifices, for they have already been made, but entering into the worthiness of Christ’s sacrifice for us through the depths of our own repentance.
His provision was perfect, but our appropriation is often shallow. The repentance does not go deep enough to open the door for the fullness of Christ’s sacrifice to be made real to us.
If our repentance were deep enough, we could come to the Communion table one time, and there, by faith, find a cleansing that would reach the depth. But often we are only partially repenting, only partially seeking the deliverance. Consequently, we are only receiving a measure of what He would give us.
We’re going to come to love righteousness because this hope within us is going to lead us to purify ourselves. It will not be a matter of what you have to give up of the world. That isn’t going to bother you dear saints.
You’re going to walk with the Lord with a deep hunger and a yearning after Him, such a desire to come into His presence in this worship that is coming, this awesome level that God is going to open up to us.
Are we all going to enter in? I’d like to believe we are. We’re a remnant and every time such a truth as this comes, it begins to separate the people.
The hungry move on and the others struggle on the level where they are quite content. I pray that none of you will be content. We have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and have submission to His Lordship, but also a discontent of the spiritual level we have attained.
Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled. God is discontenting us for only one reason: as we begin to seek His face and cry out to Him, He is going to meet us. And we’re going to stand at that golden altar of incense like Aaron of old, with the coals of fire and our praises literally coming up as a sacrificial offering from the sacrificial fires of the Lord.
What will it be like? The Word tells of a number of men who have had that awesome experience of standing before the Lord in vision or revelation. More and more of us will have it.
It happened a few times during the days of the Scripture, but it’s going to become a frequent occurrence here.
Do you believe that you’re going to have such a meeting with the Lord? Do you find that God has already been dealing with you through the past weeks and months until you’re disturbed, you’re crying and yearning after the Lord? Is it there? It’s with me, too. I’m going to seek the Lord.
It isn’t wasted time to stand before the Lord and worship Him. If you break through to that real worship, you will find that while you have entered into that oneness with the Lord, the circumstances round about you have been brought into conformity to His will.