As the High Priest enters behind the veil, he undertakes a work that points us to the Great Work of Redemption in Christ Jesus… He steps into mystery that for millennia was hidden from the children of men in the veil of God's mercy. In Christ Jesus that mercy is fulfilled and revealed for us to see… from this side of Calvary, the veil is rent, it is removed and God invites a lost world to come and see. But before He does this, He finishes the work, having completed all in the secrecy of the cloud, He puts it all on display.

We have considered carefully, the furniture of the holy place. We have thought about how each item points us to Jesus… We have filled our minds and our sanctified imaginations with the connections that honor our Lord in the physical space which God the Father commanded Moses to build… Today we will begin to put them together as we consider the work that Jesus came to do, the labor He fulfilled so absolutely as to entirely render obsolete a system which had stood as the only path to God for millennia… The services He renders still as our High Priest echo back to illuminate that older service, even as it resonates forward to help shape our understanding of His great and enduring passion.

In the OT the priesthood kept the people away from God. Being born into the line of Aaron, they served in place of the people and went before God on behalf of the people who could not do so. While the idea of a Christian priest serving in this manner is anathema to the whole plan of salvation… the lure of power and gain is hard to deny. And thus a false priesthood has been created by the Catholic church and imitated by others. Thus with the establishment of a "clergy class" who has the power and the duty to serve as gatekeepers for access to heaven, they have inserted themselves into the salvation promised by Jesus and in so doing nullified His word for all who listen to them. The scripture shows us a promise that God has opened the door and allowed us all access to Him through the blood of Jesus. Further the role of Pastor or Elder is not an elevated privilege which grants power, but rather a servant who labors in love to care for the flock of God as under-shepherds to the great Shepherd, our Christ.

The plans and purposes of God are always laid perfectly for His intention. They are always structurally where and when they need to be, functionally how they need to be, and of course always perfectly aligned for His ultimate intention… The worship of God must always proceed along the lines of what God has ordained, and planned. We must always proceed according to these plans and purposes and NOT according to our own forms, ideas or imagination.

"We cannot now speak in detail"… This is NOT an indication of Gnosticism in the early church, NOT an indicator that the writer of Hebrews is hiding something from the church. This is about prudence and discernment of the things that NEED to be said at the moment. This displays for us a shepherds heart to feed that which is most necessary at the time with an eye to what may come later. It shows concern, knowledge, understanding and willingness to commit to the long labor of systematic instruction. Rather than dump everything he knows, he stays on task and keeps his focus. It is a sign of a thorough and effective teacher.

The glory of God casts its splendor over the mercy seat… this is the highest, truest and most central truth of all that has been entrusted to us. It is the simple yet unimaginable truth that God has, by His grace and according to His own love, has saved a people that He chose before the foundations of all eternity. It is the truth that God will do everything needful to show His heart, His justice, His perfect love and His willingness to forgive - in a word, to display His infinite heart of mercy.

At the heart of all Hebrew worship stood the ark of the Testimony. So too was the mercy seat the heart of the ark itself. It was the place where God met with His people. A place of mercy obtained by sacrifice. A place of meeting through the mediation of blood. It was the place where sin was taken away… it is the place of Jesus.

Wherever God is, glory is manifest… His glory is transcendent, His presence incomprehensibly beautiful. Our ability to clearly comprehend this fact is hidden by our sin. We cannot approach God, we cannot comprehend Him, we cannot satisfy the demands of His perfect law… and the priest who entered once a year on the day of atonement could not even SEE the law he was supposed to be atoning for breaking, it was inside the ark, and the ark itself was under the cover of the wings of glory…