Good Morning, My Dear Friends,
A few weeks ago, someone asked me if I could explain this passage from Mark 15:37-38, “With a loud cry, Jesus breathed his last. The curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.”
The temple curtain that it’s referring to was the curtain that hung between the outer court of the temple and the innermost Holy of Holies of the temple. The Holy of Holies was a small room that the High Priest went into once a year on Yom Kippur, which means “the day of pardon.” Once a year, the High Priest would go behind this curtain, and they would tie a rope to his leg in case he passed out or tripped, or in case God killed him, because you couldn’t go in there to get him.
The curtain was thirty feet high, and two-to-four inches thick. History tells us it took up to 300 people to hang this curtain because it was so heavy. Inside there, in the original temple, was the Ark of the Covenant (we don’t know if it was there during Jesus’ day or not). But the curtain represented the separation between holy God and sinful man. So, once a year, the holiest man in the whole country would go in there, offer the sacrifice of a goat to God (this is where the idea of a scapegoat came from), hoping that God would put the guilt of the nation on this animal, and pardon the people of their sin.
It was a huge curtain, and this is amazing, but when Jesus breathed his last breath, God tore open the curtain to say that the barrier between God and man had been done away with. The Bible says that when Jesus died, there were earthquakes throughout that region. It’s very likely that the lintel above the doorway cracked, and when it did, it tore the curtain from the top, all the way to the bottom.
In the moment when Jesus was put to death for things he never did, God said, “In spite of what you deserve, in spite of how wrong you are, in spite of how you have treated my son, I am opening the door of relationship with you. And that door will never, ever be closed again.” It happened in the moment when the Son of God was treated in the worst possible fashion.
If there is a victory to be won, when you’re the one being judged, it’s by forgiveness. If there is a way to keep them from having power over you, it’s by forgiveness.
Forgiveness is the way out,
Bruce Jones, Pastor
Imagine Church
