Palm Springs Drive Church of Christ

Palm Springs Drive Church of Christ

By Palm Springs Drive church of Christ Altamonte Springs FloridaReligion & Spirituality
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Palm Springs Drive Church of Christ episodes

  • Invitation

    Series: N/A

    Service: Wednesday Night

    Type: Invitation

    Speaker: Joe Rimmer

    5 min
  • When the Veil Tore and the Earth Shook

    Series: N/A

    Service: Lord’s Supper Service

    Type: Lord's Supper Talk

    Speaker: Dwayne Gandy

    When the Veil Was Torn and the Earth Shook

    The three hours of darkness have ended. Jesus has made His final four statements in just a few minutes. The last two were “It is finished” and “Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit.” Jesus is now dead. And what happens next is as if God is putting an exclamation point on everything that just took place, making sure no one can miss the significance of this moment.

    Matthew 27:51–54 records: “Then, behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth quaked, and the rocks were split, and the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised; and coming out of the graves after His resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many. So when the centurion and those with him, who were guarding Jesus, saw the earthquake and the things that had happened, they feared greatly, saying, ‘Truly this was the Son of God!’”

    There is a lot happening in those verses, but the tearing of the veil deserves our focused attention. To understand its significance, we have to go back to the beginning and ask: Why was there a veil to begin with?

    When Adam and Eve sinned in the garden, it changed their relationship with God. Before that, they walked with Him, talked with Him, and enjoyed an incredible fellowship. When they sinned, God removed them from the garden and placed cherubim with flaming swords at the entrance to make sure they could not return. Sin separates us from God, and God wanted that reality to be unmistakable — not just spiritually, but with a physical, visible reminder.

    When God’s people came out of Egypt, one of the first things God wanted to do was reestablish a dwelling with His people. In Exodus 25:8 He said, “Let them make Me a sanctuary, that I may dwell among them.” The tabernacle was placed in the center of the camp with the tribes surrounding it, communicating that God wants to be in the middle of His people. Inside the tabernacle, God told Moses to build the ark of the covenant and place the mercy seat on top of it. “There I will meet with you,” He said, “and I will speak with you from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubim” (Exodus 25:22). The ark represented God’s presence. It was where He would meet with His people and speak to them.

    But then came the veil. Exodus 26:33 says, “The veil shall be a divider for you between the holy place and the Most Holy Place.” The veil was set up as a visible, physical reminder that God was holy, that His people’s sin made them not holy, and that there was still a separation between them and God. It was a barrier, and it was there for a reason.

    After Nadab and Abihu offered profane fire before the Lord in Leviticus 10, God made the restrictions even more explicit. In Leviticus 16:1–2, after their deaths, God told Moses: “Tell Aaron your brother not to come at just any time into the Holy Place inside the veil, before the mercy seat which is on the ark, lest he die.” Whether God was establishing a new restriction or formalizing and tightening an existing one, the message was clear: you cannot approach God in a presumptuous way. You cannot draw close to Him on your own terms. From that point forward, only the high priest could enter the Most Holy Place, and only once a year on the Day of Atonement, and only after first offering sacrifices for his own sins before he could offer on behalf of the people.

    Now consider the veil itself. In Solomon’s temple, it was thirty feet wide and thirty feet tall. In Herod’s temple — the one standing when Jesus died — it was still thirty feet wide but sixty feet high, twice the height. The Old Testament does not tell us the thickness, but Jewish sources record that in Herod’s temple the veil was about the width of a man’s hand — roughly four inches thick. Picture that: thirty feet wide, sixty feet tall, four inches thick. This was a massive, imposing barrier between God and His people.

    Now consider the timing. John makes special mention that the day Jesus died was the day of preparation — the day the Jews in Jerusalem were keeping the Passover (John 18:28; 19:14). The darkness lasted from noon until three o’clock. That timing is deeply significant, because Josephus tells us that in Jesus’ day the Passover sacrifices began at three o’clock and ran until five o’clock. The Old Testament said the sacrifices were to be made at twilight, and the Jews of that era defined that window as three to five in the afternoon.

    Picture the scene. Some estimates put millions of people in Jerusalem for the Passover. Hundreds of thousands of lambs may have needed to be offered in that two-hour window. For the three hours leading up to three o’clock, it had been pitch black. People were preparing their lambs in total darkness. When the sun returned at three, the work could finally begin. Priests lined up around the temple grounds in organized lines. Each person was responsible for offering their own sacrifice. The priests caught the blood in basins and passed them down the line, priest to priest, until the final priest placed the blood on the altar, and the empty basins were cycled back to start the process again. It was an orchestrated, massive operation.

    At that very hour — three o’clock — one priest would have been inside the temple, placing incense on the incense altar, which stood right beside the great veil separating the Holy Place from the Most Holy Place. He could not go beyond the veil, but the altar was right there. And at that moment — the moment Jesus gave up His spirit — the earth began to shake, and that enormous veil ripped from top to bottom. Not from bottom to top, as a man might tear it. From top to bottom, as only God could.

    Imagine the sound. Imagine being that one priest inside the temple when it happened. Imagine him running out to the other priests on the vestibule, telling them the veil was gone — it had torn in half and collapsed. The noise alone would have been heard by many of the priests and people in the area. Calvary was only about five or six hundred yards away. It would not have taken long for the news to reach the crowd surrounding the cross: the veil of the temple has just been torn in two.

    Now picture both scenes at once. At the temple, hundreds of thousands of people were busy offering their own sacrifices, doing exactly what God had required, and not a single drop of that blood could forgive a single sin. The only blood that could forgive sins was the blood just shed at the cross on Calvary, and they were oblivious to the fact that the final sacrifice had already been made.

    There is one more detail worth considering. When the Romans destroyed the temple in AD 70, it is recorded that one of the items taken back to Rome was the veil of the temple. That means someone put it back up. After God tore it down, men decided to restore it. And that reveals something about human nature and religious authority: there will always be those who want to communicate that they are the only ones who can stand in God’s presence, that you have to go through them to get to God, that only they can explain the Scriptures to you. But that is not what Jesus died for. He died to remove the barrier. There is one way to the Father, and it is through Jesus and through His blood. Nothing else. No one else.

    As we partake of the bread and the cup, read Hebrews 9 and Hebrews 10 in light of what we have discussed. Think about that veil — what it represented, how long it stood, and the moment it came down. Think about the priest who was standing right there when it happened. Think about the sacrifices being offered at that very hour that could never take away sin. And then think about the one sacrifice that did — the one whose blood tore that barrier from top to bottom and opened the way to God for every person who comes to Him through Jesus Christ.

    19 min
  • Elders Review

    Series: N/A

    Service: Praise and Preaching Service

    Type: Sermon

    Speaker: Elders

    40 min
  • Q&A

    Series: Questions & Answers

    Service: Adult Class

    Type: Bible Class

    Speaker: Brian Messerli

    46 min

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