Beyond the Veil: The Ark of the Covenant and Mercy Seat
Sermon Transcript
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Ecclesiastes 5:1 says these words. “Guard your steps when you go to the house of God.” That’s pretty good advice. It’s better than advice. It’s actually wisdom from above because it came to a guy named Solomon about 3000 years ago. “Guard your steps when you go to the house of God.” Did you do that this morning? When you got up this morning and you said, “Hey, let’s go to church down there at Atlantic Shores Baptist Church,” did you think about guarding your steps when you went to the house of the Lord? We’ve been in a series of messages where we’ve been looking at the Old Testament Tabernacle, this portable worship facility that God gave to Moses and to the Israelites to use as they wandered around those wilderness wanderings for 40 years. And this Old Testament Tabernacle we’ve learned is not only a pattern for how we approach God and how we worship Him, but it’s also a picture, a foreshadowing, a type we call it in theology, a type of Jesus Christ. God gave the architectural plans to Moses. He did so with great detail. You can tell that from the reading of the scripture that I gave regarding the Ark of the Covenant. Very detailed architectural plans, an indication that God is in involved in and cares about the very details of your life and my life. But he gave these detailed plans. And in these detailed plans there were six pieces of furniture. And in this study we’ve been stopping off at each of these pieces of furniture to understand the pattern of worship that God would have for us, how we guard our steps as we go to the house of God. But also how they picture, in a New Testament sense, the reality of the ministry of Jesus Christ, his words and his works.
0:02:18.2
Today we’ve come to the final step. We’ve come to that place in the Tabernacle known as the Most Holy Place. It’s the place that furthest in the Tabernacle, a place called the Holy of Holies. A place the Lord said he would dwell with his people, that his presence would be manifest in that Holy, Holy Place. But it would be good for us to retrace some of our steps. If we’re to guard our steps as we go to the house of the Lord, we need to retrace our steps and think again about how the Tabernacle teaches us to approach a holy God. Because what we learned at the beginning of our study is that God desires to dwell with his people. He’s desired that from the very beginning of the creation story back in Genesis. And when he created man in his own image, he hung out with Adam in the Garden of Eden. The Bible says he walked with Adam in the cool of the day. And he created Adam with his own free will. And you know the story of Genesis. Adam chose to disobey God. And that caused a breach in the relationship. And Adam and his wife Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden. But God still desired to dwell with his people. The problem is, from Genesis 3 forward, is how does a holy God hang out with unholy people? Well, that’s really the overarching story of the Bible, from Genesis all the way to Revelation, is how God repairs the breach that was created because of our sin and Adam’s sin and us inheriting that sin nature. Part of the answer to that question though was answered in the Old Testament Tabernacle. When the Israelites were taken out of Egypt and released and delivered from their years and years of slavery and bondage there, God wanted to dwell with his people. And he made this portable worship facility as one answer to that question, a foreshadowing of the ministry of Jesus Christ. But for the Israelites, this was how they approached God. This is how they met with God. This is how God met with them.
0:04:24.9
And the Tabernacle was a simple facility. You saw it from the video. If you haven’t been with us in this series, you know, you’ve got to get a picture in your mind of what this is. It has a large outer courtyard area where there are two pieces of furniture. And then the Tabernacle itself has two rooms, a Holy Place and then where we’re going today, a Most Holy Place. But let’s start at the beginning. The Tabernacle has one entrance, one door through which to go to. And it’s a picture of the fact that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life, and no man comes to the Father but by Him. It’s a reality or a picture of the reality that the New Testament Church spoke of often, that there is one mediator between God and man, and it’s the man Christ Jesus. There is one entrance into the Tabernacle. And it brings you into the outer courtyard, where the first thing you see if the brazen altar. If you’re gonna have an audience with the Almighty, if you’re gonna experience intimacy with God and a relationship with Him, the first thing an Old Testament worshiper understood was something or somebody needed to be sacrificed. And it was a solemn moment when you stepped through that one door and stood before the bronze altar and you brought your little lamb or little animal, unblemished for sacrifice that day. And that bronze altar is a picture of the sacrifice that God made for you and for me through his son Jesus Christ on the cross. Remember, these are pictures. They are patterns of worship, and they are pictures of a New Testament reality. The bronze altar, we said, was a picture of the cross of Christ and Jesus, who is called the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
0:06:07.2
Then you go from the bronze altar to the bronze laver. It was a wash basin. And it was the place that in the Old Testament times the priests went from there representing the worshiper. And it was important that they cleanse themselves and purified themselves. Again, they’re on their way to have an audience with an almighty, holy God. It started with a sacrifice, a substitutionary blood atonement on behalf of the worshiper. And then the bronze laver was a picture of how we walk with Christ. And we talked about the power of a pure life in that message.
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Then once you’ve come to the bronze laver, now you’re ready to step into the Holy Place. And inside the Holy Place there are three pieces of furniture. Over here on the left there is a golden lampstand, which was the only light inside an otherwise dark place. And we talked about shining light in a dark place. We talked about the New Testament picture of Jesus who said, “I am the light of the world.” We live in a dark, dark, sin-darkened world. And it’s the light of Jesus Christ that shines light into our dark world. It’s also a reminder that, as a believers in Jesus Christ, we walk in the light as he is in the light. That’s over here on the left side.
0:07:22.0
Over here on the right side as a little table with some bread on it. Again, a picture of a New Testament reality, another statement that Jesus said. He not only said, “I am the light of the world,” he also said, “I am the bread of life.” That all of the satisfaction that we deeply desire down into our soul is satisfied as we feed on the bread of life who is Jesus Christ. And then there was a little table on this end of the Holy Place called the altar of incense, a picture of the power of prayer and the sweet aroma of prayer. And in Old Testament times, in the Old Testament economy, the worshiper would bring their worship, their animal for sacrifice to the bronze altar. And then the priest would represent them from that point forward. It was only the priest who went to the bronze laver and then into the Holy Place. And it was only the high priest who went into the Most Holy Place, and he did that once a year.
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So last time we were together we were still in this Holy Place and we were waiting to go inside the Most Holy Place or the Holy of Holies. A. B. Simpson has done a marvelous job in his book The Christ of the Tabernacle. And he talks about the Holy Place and the Most Holy Place in these terms. He says, “The Holy of Holies has come to represent the highest and deepest communion of the soul with God. The inner chamber is the secret place of the Most High, where we can now enter through the blood of Jesus Christ. Open to all by the Savior’s death, it sheds its light and glory on all of our lives.” And we’ve been through all of this teaching and gone through all of these steps, all of these patterns of worship on how an unholy person approaches a holy God and is cleansed and is purified and walks with Him. And now we’ve come to that place where we step into this Most Holy Place. I want to suggest to you there are three more steps we need to take to get there.
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Three more steps. And the first thing we need to do is to get beyond the veil. What do I mean by that? Well, let’s got to Exodus 26:31. And here is where the Lord gives these instructions to Moses. He says, “And you shall make a veil of blue and purple and scarlet yarns and fine twined linen. It shall be made with cherubim skillfully worked into it.” Now, there were three beautiful curtains or veils inside the Tabernacle. One was at the gate, the entrance into the outer courtyard. One was located there. Another one was at the door into the Holy Place. And then a third was a veil between the Holy Place and the Most Holy Place. And in the description we find in the book of Exodus…again, God never misses a detail here. He says that these veils should be made of yarns colored blue and purpose and scarlet. And we said earlier in the series that these colors picture the deity of Christ in blue, the humanity of Christ in red. And what do you get when you mix red and blue? You get purple, right? And so it is a picture of Jesus Christ who is 100% God and 100% man at the same time. Again, God doesn’t miss a detail in any of the architectural plans, including the curtains here.
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But there are three beautiful curtains, or three veils. And the veil that separates the Holy Place from the Most Holy Place is the one that we think about most often. It was a large veil, about 15 feet wide, 15 feet high, and about as thick as the width of my hand. It was a no small curtain. It was no light curtain. It was a heavy piece of fabric. And it separated the Holy Place from the Most Holy Place. Although the priests would do their work all year long on behalf of the worshipers in the Old Testament, only the high priest could go into the Most Holy Place to get beyond the veil. And he only did that once a year.
0:12:01.1
Now, again, this Old Testament Tabernacle is a picture or a portrait of Jesus Christ. And there is an interesting thing that Mark tells us in his Gospel that happened when Jesus Christ was crucified on the cross. Go in your Bible or on your notes there to Mark 15. And verses 37 and 38 tell us that, “Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last.” Here he is on the cross, and it’s probably the ninth hour of the day as other gospel writers tell us, about 3:00 in the afternoon. And he utters a loud cry. He breathes his last. He dies there upon the cross. And Mark adds this very interesting detail. He says, “And the curtain the Temple was torn in two from top to bottom.” Now, remember, the Tabernacle later became the Temple under Solomon. And the pattern that we have in the portable worship facility, which was the Tabernacle, becomes more permanent in the Temple. Solomon’s Temple was destroyed years later, and then Herod rebuilt the Temple around the time of Jesus’s life and expanded its footprint by several football fields. And it’s that Temple that Mark is referring to here. In the Temple that was there on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem in the 1st century there was the Holy Place and the Most Holy Place. And there was a veil, a curtain that separated the two. And, again, the high priest only went in there once a year to represent the people and to bring the blood of the atonement in for sacrifice and to meet with God there. But the Bible tells us that when Jesus Christ died on the cross, the veil was torn in two. Now, understanding the size of this veil—15 feet by 15 feet and the width of a man’s hand—no human being could do that. And Mark gives us that detail that it was torn from top to bottom as if God Himself reached over the bannister of heaven and tore it Himself. There is something about the death of Jesus Christ that provided us access into the Most Holy Place that in the Old Testament only the Old Testament high priest had access to. And it’s a beautiful, beautiful picture of how we get beyond this veil. It’s only because of the work of Jesus Christ. It’s only because of his blood sacrifice on the cross that access into a holy, holy place where a holy God dwells is available for people like you and me. Beautiful, beautiful picture that Mark gives us here.
0:15:05.8
Now, the writer of Hebrews goes on to interpret this a little bit more. I told you at the beginning of the series we’d spend as much time in Exodus, perhaps, as we do in the book of Hebrews. And the writer of Hebrews in chapter 10 verses 19 and following says, “Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence,” listen to this, “since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain,” now, listen to this, “that is his flesh.” The New Testament writer of Hebrews sees a picture of the flesh of Jesus Christ in the curtain, the veil between the Holy Place and the Most Holy Place. And when Jesus died in the flesh, the curtain was torn in two. It’s a picture here, is it not, of how we are to walk as believers in Jesus Christ. That we have to deal with this thing called the flesh before we get into the Holy Place. We have to deal with that selfish, sinful flesh that still exists even though we are bought by the blood of Jesus Christa and cleansed and forgiven and all that, our three biggest enemies are the world, the flesh, and the devil. Now, again, a veil is something that separates one thing from another. And in one sense, the humanity of Jesus, Jesus in his flesh…his flesh veiled his deity from human eyes. In fact, you may remember a time…and we went there when we were in Israel. We went to Mount Hermon, which is on the north side of Galilee. And we saw from a distance Mount Hermon, where most scholars believe the transfiguration took place, that time when Jesus brought Peter, James, and John up to a high mountain and gave them a glimpse of his glory. All right? Up until that time his flesh veiled his deity from most people’s eyes. Most people were saying, “Is not he just the carpenter’s son? Aren’t his brothers and sisters right here with us? They didn’t see the God-man in Jesus. They just saw his humanity because his flesh was veiling the deity of Jesus. But there was one occasion on the mount of transfiguration where Jesus takes three of his disciples, those in his closest inner circle, and he just pulls back the veil a little bit and gives them a glimpse of his glory.
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Another way to think of this too, again, is how we live this thing called the Christian life. A. B. Simpson speaks of this as “a type of death into which we must enter when we consecrate ourselves to God.” That is, the death of our flesh. He says, “As long as your flesh is indulged and suffered to remain, there is no way for you to enter into the holiest of all.” You can’t see it. The old nature hinders your seeing the glory of God. And just as the flesh of Jesus veiled people from seeing his deity, so our flesh…if we walk in the flesh and not in the spirit, we’re not going to enter into that Most Holy Place. The flesh must die. Jesus said, “If you want to be my disciple,” He says, “deny yourself, take up your cross daily, and follow me.” There’s a death to self that must take place if we’re gonna get beyond the veil, beyond the flesh that holds us back from seeing the (0:19:00.1) glory of God. There needs to be a death to self. The world tells you to indulge yourself, right? That’s what the world is all about. Everything in our culture says indulge yourself. Jesus said no, deny yourself. Say not to the flesh and yes to the Spirit of God. And the veil will come down, and you’ll enter into that Most Holy, Holy Place. Maybe the reason you’ve not experienced an audience with the Almighty, an intimacy with God like you really desire deep down in your heart, is because the flesh…you’re doing battle with the flesh. You’re living more in the flesh than you are the Spirit. And there has to be death, just like Jesus’s death on the cross. And when the death in his flesh took place, the veil was torn in two and access was made to the Most Holy Place. And so it is in our relationship with God.
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So first we’ve got to get beyond the veil. Secondly, let’s reflect on the terms of the covenant. (0:20:00.0) Let’s go back to Exodus 25:22. After a description of the Ark of the Covenant, now we’re inside the Most Holy Place. And there is a little box there known as the Ark of the Covenant. Verse 22 says, “There I will meet with you,” the Lord says, “and from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubim that are on the ark of the testimony, I will speak with you about all that I will give you in commandment for the people of Israel.” The Ark of the Covenant. Yes, I am Indiana Jones. All right? For those of you who don’t know, I’m from Indiana and my name is Jones. And the Ark of the Covenant was made wildly popular, was it not, by the Indiana Jones movie franchise. And it goes back to this particular piece of furniture in the Old Testament and in this Most Holy Place. And the Ark was just a small box. It was about 3½ feet wide by, you know, 2 feet tall, about 2 feet wide, maybe a 1½ foot wide. It had some things inside of it. The Lord told Moses, “Build it of acacia wood.” If you travel to Israel today you’ll learnt that acacia wood is a real common wood. He said to build it of acacia wood, not the expensive poplar wood to the north or other types of wood that are harder to get to, but just common, common wood and overlaid with gold. Again, the detail to which God gives the instructions here, picturing both the humanity and the deity of Christ. The commonness of Jesus in the acacia wood, the deity overlaid with gold was the box. It had a lid on it also known as the mercy seat. And it was pure gold. And there were two angels, cherubim that were carved out of that gold that were facing one another. And it was there on top of the mercy seat and between the two cherubim that the Shekinah glory of God dwelled. Many believed that this was the place from which the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night rise and led the people of Israel those 40 years in their wilderness wanderings. But this is where the Lord said he would dwell. This is where a holy God said he would dwell. Seems strange to us today, but Moses didn’t come up with these plans. You and I didn’t come up with these plans. These were plans that were downloaded from heaven itself. These were God’s plans. And we approach him on his terms, not our terms.
0:22:46.2
Now, inside the Ark of the Covenant the Lord told Moses to put three things- two tablets that had a copy of the Ten Commandments on it, a jar of manna, and Aaron’s rod. Aaron was Moses’s brother who also served as the high priest. Why those three things? Well, Aaron’s rod was a picture of God’s power and of the priestly leadership and authority that he had given to Aaron and also to Moses to lead the people of Israel. The jar of manna was a reminder to the Israelites of how God had provided for them. They came out of Egypt. They went out into this wilderness, and they were longing to go back to Egypt where all the big buffets were and all the great, you know, food supplies. And the Lord said, “Okay, I’ll take care of you.” And he provided them manna, bread from heaven every day. A picture of Jesus who said, “I am the bread of life,” but also just the constant reminder of God’s provision for them. The Lord thought it as important enough to put a jar of manna in there just to remind the Israelites of how he had provided for them. And then the Ten Commandments. God is a covenant-making and a covenant-keeping God. He makes promises and enters into agreements with his people. And he did this in the Old Testament. And that agreement was codified in the Old Testament law, which was summarized in something we know as the Ten Commandments. And the purpose of the covenant was to protect the people of Israel. But there were certain terms that the covenant made on behalf of the people of Israel, certain terms by which they were live. Just think of the Ten Commandments. And part of this was to remind the Israel of how God protected them, but also to remind them of the terms of the covenant. Again, think of the Ten Commandments. Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not bear false witness and so on. Thou shalt not have any other gods before me. And the terms of covenant were such that God said, “I will protect you. I will take care of you if you abide by the covenant.” Well, the history of Israel in the Old Testament is, you know, how over and over again they broke the terms of the covenant. And they fell out of fellowship with the Lord. And they wandered around for 40 years. And they never fulfilled the terms of the covenant.
0:25:16.7
But what’s interesting about this Ark is there is a lid over the top, again, with the two angels, the Shekinah glory in the middle, and a seat that the Lord called the mercy seat. Why is that important? Why was a mercy seat important to lay over the top of this testimony that was contained inside the Ark? Well, for the very simple reason that every time you break the terms of the covenant you need God’s mercy. Amen? And that mercy seat was a reminder of that. I would say it to you this way, and this kind of updates who a lot of people think about a relationship with God today. I won’t ask for a show of hands, but there are a lot of people I run into from time to time who say or think that a relationship with God is somehow based upon them doing the best they can to live a good life. Okay? “Doing the best I can to keep the Ten Commandments.” Well, how you doing with that? How you doing in keeping the terms of the covenant that God made with his people? Have you ever told a lie? I mean a little one? Have you ever, you know, falsely witnessed against your neighbor? That’s what one of the commandments says. Have you ever stolen something? I mean, just a tiny little thing. Maybe stolen some time from your employer. I don’t know. I mean, you think in your own heart and your own mind. Evaluate yourself. Have you ever looked at another woman, guys, or, ladies, at another man or guys at another guy or ladies at another lady, you know, in these days, and imagined the sexual possibilities? The Bible calls that lust. And Jesus in his Sermon on the Mount said lust is equivalent to adultery. What commandment number is that? I mean, we could go on and on and on. I mean, how are you doing keeping the terms of the covenant? Are you ready to admit that you need mercy, God’s mercy? And aren’t you glad there is a mercy seat over top of this covenant? Because the reminder inside the covenant was that there were certain terms by which God’s people would need to live in order to have an audience with the Almighty, to have a relationship with him. But God knew from the very beginning we couldn’t live up to that standard. And this is where a lot of people get confused. Having a right relationship with God is never about keeping the Ten Commandments. A lot of people think, if I just climb the ladder called the Ten Commandments, if I do the best I can do—certainly better than my neighbor on the left or my neighbor on the right—than God will somehow grade on a curve and all will be well. No, the Ten Commandments and the covenant that God made with Israel was simply to show their need for his mercy. And even in the Tabernacle itself and in the Ark of the Covenant you have a mercy seat as a reminder that we are people who break God’s covenant every day. And we have no other hope other than the mercy of God to be laid over top of that.
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I would say it this way. God will judge us by his moral law if we continue to try to save ourselves by living a good life. If you’re here this morning and you’re trusting in your best effort to try to keep the moral law of God, good luck. On the Day of Judgment you’re gonna be judged by that law. But if you're willing to admit here today you’re a sinner who needs the grace and the mercy of God, then this Ark of the Covenant is the picture you need that will catapult you into the New Testament where we need to receive God’s mercy.
0:29:19.7
And that’s the third step we need to take. We’ve got to get beyond the veil. The cross of Jesus Christ helps us do that. We’ve got to reflect on the terms of the covenant. “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God,” the Bible says. And when we understand that, then we need to receive God’s mercy. Hebrews 2:17 says this about Jesus. “Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service to God to make propitiation for the sins of the people.” Now, I just lost some of you with a big 16-cylinder, theological word or Bible word called “propitiation”. Say that with me. Propitiation. Yeah, some of you guys from the South have turned it into a one- or two-syllable word. It’s, like, three or four, all right? Propitiation. What does it mean? Propitiation is a covering that satisfies God’s wrath. So this mercy seat that laid over the Ark of the Covenant was, in a sense, a propitiation seat. The terms of the covenant condemn us, right? Because all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Nobody is able to maintain and keep the terms of the covenant. But God has covered our sins and our indiscretions and our fallenness with a mercy seat, a propitiation seat. And there are three or four times in the New Testament where we bump into this word “propitiation”. And it’s always applied to the work of Jesus Christ on the cross. His blood was a covering that satisfied the wrath of God. You can look at 1 John 2:2, 1 John 4:10, Romans 3:25, certainly Hebrews 2:17 that I just read that speaks of Jesus Christ and his propitiatory work, the fact that on the cross of Christ and through his blood he covered a multitude of sins and satisfied the wrath of God.
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Let me just take you to one more place, and then we’ll wrap up this morning. I want you go with me to Luke 18. Luke 18. And beginning in verse 9 Luke records a story that took place in the midst of Jesus’s ministry about two guys. One was a Pharisee and the other was a Publican. Now, listen to me carefully. I didn’t say Republican. I said a Pharisee and a Publican. A Publican was a tax collector in the 1st century. And Luke18:9 says, “He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt.” Does that describe anybody here? Are you trusting in yourself that you’re righteous, that you're always right, that you know better than everybody else and that you’ve done a better job maintaining the terms of the covenant with God? And if you were to compare yourself to your neighbor or to others, “Yeah, I’m doing a whole lot better than Joe Bob down the street who cheats on his wife all the time.” And you’re trusting, you know, in some comparative kind of way that you’re better and God will grade on a curve and all of that. Well, Jesus told a story for people like that who were all filled up with their own self-righteousness and had contempt on others when they looked at them. He said, “There were two men went up into the temple to pray, one is a Pharisee and the other a tax collector,” or a Publican, one translation says. “The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’” He’s really full of himself, isn’t he? He’s the first to tell you just how righteous he is, just how religious he is, how good he is. Goes on to say in verse 13, “But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’” Jesus says, “I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”
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So here we are standing inside the Most Holy Place. And you’re staring at this Ark. And you’re reflecting on the terms of the covenant. God says, “You want to have a right relationship with me? Here is my standard.” And, by the way, the Bible says if you fail in one of the commandments, you’ve broken all of them. It’s a pass/fail test. So, again, how you doing? You ever told a lie, just a little one? You ever looked at that shiny new car that your neighbor drove home with and had a little bit of jealousy and covetousness in your heart? You ever looked at somebody else and imagined…we can just go on and on. How you doing keeping the terms of the covenant? You’re staring at the contents of the Ark, and then you see this mercy seat over top of it. Me? What do I need mercy for? The question is, are you a Pharisee or are you a Publican this morning? Not a Republican, all right? This isn’t about politics. This is about life. Are you a Pharisee so full of your self-righteousness, even on a comparative level? Or are you like that 1st century tax collector who said, “God, be merciful to me. I’m a sinner. I’ve measured myself against your holy standard, and I have fallen short. I’m not comparing myself to Joe Bob over here or Sally Sue over here.” There is only one standard, and it’s the standard of a holy God who really wants to hang out with us. He desires to have a relationship with us. He desires it so much that he created us in his image, gave us free will. We rebelled against him. And then he went on this most incredible journey. A plan that had from the very beginning sending his own son Jesus to pay the penalty for your sin and for mine. To be that propitiation, that covering, that merciful covering of our sins.
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And then you fast-forward even further to the end of the book that we know as the Bible to the book of Revelation. And I’m even in chapter 21, where it talks about a new heaven and a new earth. You want to know how much God desires to hang out with people like you and me, how much holiness desires to hang out with unholy people? By the time you get to Revelation 21 and the new heaven and the new earth, we’ve come full circle. And it says these amazing words. “And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people and God himself will be with them as their God.’” That’s the story of the Bible is that this God who created us in his image is a relational God, desires to hang out with us, to have a relationship with us. But the only way holiness can hang out with unholiness is to take care of the unholiness problem. And for a lot of people the cross of Jesus Christ and his blood is foolishness. It doesn’t make sense. You know, “Well, what’s all this about?” I don’t know. I didn’t come up with the plan. It wasn’t mine to come up with. It wasn’t Moses’ to come up with. It’s God’s plan. The question we need to ask ourselves is, are we a Pharisee or are we a Publican? And I pray that as we walk out of this place today, we’ll be on the Publican side of things, saying, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner. When I compare myself to your holy standard, I can do nothing but throw myself upon the mercy seat of God.”
0:38:50.3
Maybe you’re here this morning and you’ve never given much thought to this person Jesus. I just spent ten days walking the Holy Land. Sometimes running where Jesus walked. It was a fast trip. And we walked in a place where a real person in real history did some pretty amazing things, made some pretty amazing claims. I remember at one point in our trip I turned to our group and I said, “You know, it’s interesting. You don’t have groups of Mormon people coming to the Holy Land and doing a study around the land, the people, and the Book of Mormon.” Because in the Book of Mormon you won’t find the places and the people because it’s all fantasy. We’re talking about a faith, our Christian faith that is rooted in real history. Rooted in places where archaeology goes and turns the shovel and discovers things that were talked about in the Bible that the archaeologists says, “I don’t know where it is.” But eventually archaeology catches up to what the Bible already knows. And this Jesus—this God-man pictured in the common acacia wood, his humanity, and the pure gold, his deity—came as a propitiatory substitute, covering for your sins and for mine. And our response to that is, oh, so important. I can’t even begin to find the words this morning to say to you how important it is for you to come face to face with Jesus Christ and his story, as told in this book, and decide for yourself. Are you going to spend the rest of your life as a Pharisee, so full of yourself, thinking, I’ll be fine with God? Or are you going to understand that to come and have an audience with the holy God, you come on his terms. You don’t define the terms. I don’t define the terms. He defines the terms. It starts at a bronze altar where a sacrifice was made for you and for me. Where those Old Testament worshipers would bring a little lamb, unblemished lamb, a perfect lamb. And that lamb would be a substitute for them. Fast forward, and you have John the Baptist pointing to this one named Jesus saying, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” And everything in Jewish theology and in sacrifice and practice from the Old Testament was downloaded into the Jewish heart. They understood the connection now. All of this was a picture of a reality that was coming in Jesus Christ. And here we are 2000 years on the other side of that. The reality is just as start. And you have a decision to make today. “Am I gonna be a self-righteous Pharisee thinking I’m all right with God?” Or do you say, “No, God, I have broken the terms of the covenant, and I need your mercy.” That’s all you’ve got to say. “Be merciful to me, O God. I’m a sinner.” And it all happens. The veil comes down. You have access into that Most Holy Place. Let’s pray together.
0:42:23.8
Father, thank You for sustaining us today by your grace. Thank You for showing us your mercy pictured in this Old Testament mercy seat, the Ark of the Covenant, but pictured even more beautifully in the word and works of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I pray, Father, today, as even we go to this most holy remembrance of what Christ did for us on the Christ that you would help us to make the spiritual decisions that we need to make this morning, every one of us in this place. As we consider our own relationship with you, God, we do ask you to be merciful to us. You’ve provided every means by which we can receive the mercy of God. And I pray that today every one and person in this place would respond in faith believing, just like that tax collector did 2000 years ago in Jesus’s story. And say, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” And I pray this in Jesus’s name, amen.
0:43:57.8