40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Episode 95 (Exodus 26:31-27:8)

Episode Date: September 6, 2017

This episode spends most of the 40 minutes talking about the veil. What was it's duel purpose? Why was it torn from top to bottom at Christ's death? What was being fulfilled? What to baptism and the Lord's Supper have to do with it? Chad and Daniel bounce around Exodus to the gospels to Hebrews to get the answers. Have a listen!

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. I'm Daniel Henry Price, joined by Chad Bird. Chad, what's going on, man? Hey, Dan. Not a lot. Not a lot. Let's see. This is the day after Labor Day. So I'm, when we're recording anyway, so I'm recovering from a 3D weekend. Those always seem to be harder than two-day weekends for some reason. They're like great until you have to go back to work. And then it's like, oh, man, it's even harder. But it's been a good long weekend. Got a little rest, a little fun. So back at it. Podcasting and then off to the day job. yeah when you uh when you get that three-day weekend yeah i find that you don't feel more rested yeah yeah i i think this i think that's true too it's almost like a psychological trip you trick you playing yourself you think oh three days man i'm gonna be i'll be ready to go after three days and it's it doesn't work that way it's the opposite that's because no one like really

rests on labor day they're like you just go do you just go do a bunch of stuff and uh stay up late like super late the night before because you have you know they have monday off and yep yeah labor labor day ends up being actually a day of uh usually laborious fun we were on our feet all day yesterday went to the gym my son he worked he worked every machine up there and uh so i was exhausted after that so yeah i gotta go back to work to rest up exactly exactly look at that routine at least you only have four days of it yeah that's true that's the It's going to be a nice short week. That's the one thing that is good.

You only have four instead of five. Well, where are we at in the book of Exodus? We are talking about the veil. We talked about that a little bit last time. I think we sort of ended with halfway completing that. So that's Exodus 26. So we'll pick it up with that today, and then we'll jump into a discussion of the altar,

which is the beginning of 27 and they kind of wrap up 27 there's not a whole lot after after the altar is discussed and depending how much time we have hopefully we'll introduce the priesthood and get to talk a little bit about it and its connection to uh the to the priesthood of christ so that's our that's our goal for today we'll see how much we get to we wrapped up last I'm talking about some of the fabrics that make up the tabernacle, which doesn't sound very exciting, of course, at first anyway, until you begin to look at the makeup of the tabernacle, especially the veil within the tabernacle as it relates to the bigger story of the scriptures. And, you know, this is this is quite common in the Bible. I mean, especially in the Old Testament, sometimes you'll come across things. Maybe it's an event. Maybe it's a person. Maybe it's a place.

Maybe just a small story that only takes up a chapter or even just a few verses. And you think, oh, OK, well, you know, that's interesting or maybe that's not even interesting, but it's there. So what greater purpose does it serve? And sometimes you only find out when you look at it within the broader context of the entire scriptures. And oftentimes, in fact, it amazes me how frequently this happens. Some small, isolated story or detail in the Old Testament ends up having this amazing grand significance in the broader story of salvation. So sometimes you'll get to the New Testament and something which didn't seem that important in the Old Testament ends up being infused with great importance. And I think the veil is one of those illustrations.

Because when you look at the veil we're talking about, there's two veils. There's the veil that basically is the covering of the outside entrance of the tabernacle. So it'd be like your, I guess, if you go camping, you got a tent flap, right? That's how you go into the tent. Well, that's kind of what this was. This was the entrance into the tent. That's not the one we're talking about here, though. We're talking about another veil that hangs between the holy place, the first place you go into the tabernacle, and then the most holy place, which is where, which is God's inner sanctuary.

So that veil is of great significance. We talked about this last time, that it's embroidered with cherubim. It's made out of very beautiful materials. So just the look of it itself is quite captivating. And it serves sort of a dual purpose. On the one hand, it is a barrier. That is, it does set up a wall, a veil, between these two spheres of holiness, one being more sacred than the other. But it's not only just a barrier, as it were, it's also a bridge in the sense that when certain sacrifices are offered, certain sin offerings are placed upon the altar outside the sanctuary,

that blood from the sacrifice is carried into the holy place and sprinkled on this veil which hangs between the most holy place and the holy place and the purpose of that is it's almost like a stand-in for the ark of the covenant because blood was placed on the ark of the covenant in the holy of holies only once a year on yom kippur on the day of atonement But these other sin offerings, the blood is sprinkled in the direction of the Ark of the Covenant, but it doesn't get all the way there because it lands on this veil, which hangs between these two sacred spaces. So you can kind of think of the veil as serving them as twofold purpose. It's almost a stand in for the Ark of the Covenant for a lot of other sacrifices. But it's also a barrier between between these two.

So barrier and bridge. Now, the reason this is is of such fantastic Christological significance is what we discover when we get to the New Testament. Because, as probably most of you know, all three of the Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, tell us that when Christ died, that the veil of the temple was torn into from top to bottom. And Matthew adds that there was an earthquake and rocks split, and people who had long been dead were resurrected and were coming out of their tombs. So this was the occurrence of the splitting of the veil was also accompanied by all these other miraculous, wonderful, once in a history of the world kind of things like the people coming out of their tombs. So anyway, if you look at that particular story and then another one we'll look at in a second from Hebrews, you get a much bigger picture and a much broader, richer understanding of what this veil was all about. I want to get to the Hebrews one in just a second, but let's start with this one from the synoptics. The splitting of the veil at the sacrificial death of the Son of God was the opening up. Well, it was two things.

First of all, it was a destruction of the old barrier. So it was destroying this barrier that had hung between the most holy place and the rest of the world. it was destroyed. But more than that, it was thus an opening up, a way of entering into the most holy place. So this was the splitting of the veil inside the tabernacle, inside the temple in Jerusalem. Dramatic way of God basically saying everything about the Old Testament sacrificial system everything about the old testament temple everything about all of this stuff that comprises this whole sacrificial temple institution the old testament has now come to its fulfillment so the death of the son of god his sacrifice on the cross and to the altar in the temple

and to the temple itself and to the veil and to the old testament priesthood and to all of that stuff that was a foreshadowing and a preparation for what was going to happen on on good friday so that's at an end and what we have now is a is a complete new beginning based upon the fulfillment that christ has brought about with his with his death and so the way has been open for us into the father's presence yeah i noticed you didn't mention the uh significance of the solar eclipse no i was gonna save that for another podcast yeah if you're talking about the most recent solar eclipse with that yes people christians are making a big deal out of that uh since you know they go dark when all this is one of one

of the other things that accompanied all this right yeah and they were uh it was weird because they were acting as though like it was the first solar eclipse since then which of course it's not yeah right right well you know anything to garner attention anything to uh to attract attention to uh certain eschatological schemes that they uh that those folks like to uh like to put out there in public yeah yeah but but there is an eschatological uh it's significant what goes on i mean at the crucifixion with with the veil um i mean this i mean this is one of the the this is like the one of the primary ways that i mean when jesus talks about um the temple being destroyed uh which is something that's used against him in his trial right that he that

he basically threatened to destroy the temple um well well of course the temple is literally destroyed later um what he and he and he certainly is speaking to that uh it's not it's not just that it's not it's not just oh this this physical building uh it will no longer be here but he's speaking about everything that's going on there that the temple as the as the access point to god is going to be eliminated that that's going to be destroyed and that um in his death and resurrection the temple that is his his body this is what this is what hebrews is going to say right that he makes a a new way through his flesh right um and so the veil it'd been one thing you know like if if like during the crucifixion there was like this earthquake which there was and the

temple was reduced to rubble you'd be like oh well that's interesting because he said that was going to happen and that's sort of like the elimination of the temple uh but i don't think it packs the same punch is that not happening until later where the temple will be destroyed but instead what happens is the veil which has sort of guarded the way to God and only the most righteous

can go in there select few it's much more significant that that veil gets torn from top to bottom essentially saying that all people have free access to God because

of what God has done through his son that's that's more powerful than just sort of the the temple being scraped off the side of the hill i i fully agree uh the impact god was very specific in other words in the particular destruction that took place that day so the altar didn't collapse uh the whole temple of course didn't collapse this barrier was was ripped into from top to bottom so this was like uh another way of accenting the divine nature of this of this ripping apart so this was the opening up which was uh which was what all of creation had been waiting for was the opening up of the way to to

god for all people as you say no longer just for the high priest once a year uh and always with blood of a of a sacrificial victim but now the way has been opened up for not just all the priests or not just all the israelites or not just all the men but for all people jews and greeks slave and free men and women uh circumcised uncircumcised there there is there is no more distinction here So the way has been opened up for all humanity because all humanity are in Christ. His incarnation has made him one of us so that he is the representative human who goes into the Holy of Holies with his own blood and thereby opens up the way for all of us. And you mentioned that this is the second part of that in Hebrews. And you mentioned it when you were talking, Dan, about the new and living way.

This is from Hebrews chapter 10. I'll read you a couple of verses. This is Hebrews 10, 19 and following. This is after a very long, like several chapters long discussion of sacrifice and priesthood and tabernacle and all of this stuff. And this is kind of his crowning summation of everything he's been saying. since therefore brethren we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of jesus by a new and living way which he inaugurated for us through the veil that is his flesh and since we have a hot 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 bodies washed with pure water so here he identifies the uh there's a different way of entering now into the presence of god it's no longer by virtue of a high priest on the day of atonement entering into the holy place behind the veil this is we have we have a new priest christ we have a new new sacrifice we have new blood the blood of christ and now there is a new and a living way that is open for us to go into the holy place and that's through the flesh of christ which is the veil now this is this is one of those verses where i guarantee you that jewish jaws dropped when they heard this because i can't imagine anyone before this point ever thinking of

the veil the old testament veil as as as a type or an image of the humanity the flesh of the messiah right i don't know of any jewish tradition i don't know of any certain not any old testament language which even hints at that but the author of hebrews throws it out there in a in a fantastic sort of way like oh you know that veil that's the flesh of christ only now it doesn't block it's it's a new and a living way yeah the uh it's all all of this stuff there's a there's a couple of things and i don't know maybe some of this is stretched but whatever um you can you can take it you can leave it whatever you want to do but whenever i whenever i hear the language you know of like the the veil being like being torn um and then i hear that we are able to enter uh

through the blood of christ and that we're able to enter because we've been washed clean like i my mind goes like obviously to baptism anytime i hear about being washed clean and that sort of thing so i think there is certainly a reference to that uh but also that in in christ's death you know like when they when they pierce him when they pierce his side and blood and water flow which are the two things that he gives for the life of the world, his blood, his body, his blood, his baptism, and these things that are gifts from him actually give us entrance. That's the reason that you can walk through the veil that has been torn

and walk into the presence of God with full assurance and confidence It's because you have been given the blood of Christ and you've been washed by Christ. And so you can walk in there. And you're not just merely walking into the holiness of God. So you are walking into the most holy place. But you've got to remember that in that most holy place is the mercy seat. I mean, you're able to access not just the holiness of God, like, oh, I'm in the presence of the holy God. But you're not even actually there to do that.

You're actually there to access the mercy of God. And you're able to do that confidently because of what Christ has gifted you in his own work, in his own body and blood, which is the living way, in his own washing of you. All this stuff ties in. If he is the veil and he is pierced or torn, and then the the two elements that the author of hebrews says give us confidence to to enter and access the mercy of god this is the blood of christ and the washing of water and this is what pours out of christ the living veil it's hard for me to believe that this isn't like all all woven

up real nicely uh into one thing uh this is like the point of all this happening yeah that's one the reasons i love the book of hebrews is because it takes all of this old testament material and it finally brings it around to its to its fulfillment in christ and then it links that with our our fulfillment in christ where we are completed and perfected in him by virtue i don't think what you were saying is a stretch at all by virtue of our being washed we're baptized we're washed clean by the water that comes from the side of Christ, who is our temple. Our hearts are sprinkled clean. And that Greek verb that's used there for sprinkled is the same word that's used in the Greek translation of the Old Testament,

the Septuagint, to describe the sprinkling that takes place in various spots in the Old Testament where blood is sprinkled on objects to cleanse them. So it's like our hearts are sprinkled clean. well how do you get blood inside you so that your heart is sprinkled with it well you you you consume it that's what happens in the lord's supper so you really have you have the baptism you have the lord's supper brought in here you have the uh the fulfillment in christ and then our perfection in him uh by virtue of his body and his blood all of this is brought together in in a very short succinct way by the author of hebrews but in a way that you really it's unfathomable in its depth and in its in its continual implications for us because this is this

is the life of the christian church this is what uh what christ has not just done but continues to do continues to do for us notice that the author doesn't say you know we have confidence one of these days at the end of time to enter into the most holy place this is a this is something that is an ongoing reality for us we enter into the holy place now when we are joined to christ when we are baptized by him when we receive his body and his blood when we hear his word all of this is entering into into the holy place with not with not with a doubt or with fear that god is going to strike us down but with confidence because we're we're covered by and protected by the blood of christ yeah yeah i mean yeah it would it might be a stretch if i said it but the

uh i'm just telling you what the author of hebrews says yeah yeah there were probably people who thought i don't know it sounded like this this guy's pushing it uh but uh but he wasn't all he was doing was was reading the same stuff that we're reading from exodus in light of its fulfillment in christ and when you do that you you see that all of this is intended to have a messianic significance and and fulfillment yeah and and when you talk about like approaching god in confident full assurance and confidence uh this with a clear conscience and this is this is all about the conscience right like that you can your conscience need not uh be concerned peter does the same thing where he ties this stuff uh certainly and certainly baptism into into the clear conscience

And by saying – and again, language of – all throughout the church, like the church has said through church history, the church has talked about – we probably talked about this, I'm sure. I can't remember. I'm sure we did when we talked about the ark. But the door of the ark being placed in the side of the ark, which is the entrance, and Christ being pierced in the side and blood and water flowing out. Peter is saying that this ark that you have to enter into, you enter into through baptism. And all of this is, yes, you say baptism now saves you. It is for your salvation, but it's not just for your salvation. It's also what he says is for a clear conscience, that your assurance.

So if you're to enter the holy place, if you're to approach the mercy seat with full assurance, that assurance is tied to at least peter thinks so and i think the author of hebrews thinks so and certainly paul thinks so uh and just about every epistle he writes that that assurance and that clear conscience is tied to the fact that you have been washed or sprinkled clean like this is all connected uh so the way that i know that i can approach god uh and acquire mercy from him is that he's washed me and he's washed me uh by christ like christ has the christ has done this uh this isn't even like an isolated thing like all like all of you pull on this thread and then like everything starts starts coming out and so you have access to the mercy of god through the

living way which is his flesh which you have been placed into uh by god in baptism and you have your conscience need not bother to you uh you can you don't have to walk in there wondering if you've been holy enough or good enough or if you are wearing the right garments or you know none of the stuff that they had to worry about you know that none of that is it is it the right day uh you know none of that none of that you get to walk in with full confidence full assurance with a clean conscience because you're washed it's pretty rad yeah yeah it is it is i mean it just goes to show that uh the entire life of christian is baptismal in nature so it's not it's not like yeah baptism was a was a significant moment in in my life as a christian that kind of you know

was an entrance point it got me going and it was it was really really nice and important back back then but it really doesn't have any you know any kind of ongoing daily significance for me The exact opposite is true. The identity of a Christian is wrapped up in his or her baptism because that is not just the beginning point, but the ongoing way in which we are connected to Christ. That is our way of being crucified and resurrected with him. It's our way of having our conscience cleaned. It's our way of entering into him. So that defines who we are as a Christian.

Christians are the baptized, those who are united intimately and everlastingly to the body of Christ by virtue of this washing. Yeah, and I think that maybe I'm using all this language and someone's thinking like, well, are you just – when you say you can approach the altar of God or you can approach the mercies of God boldly with a clear conscience, It's like, is that just, are you just saying that sort of, is that just metaphorically? Like I can just like go and approach God or, and I would say like, yes, it's, yes, you can just approach God, but it's not just that. There is an actual time and place in which you approach a different altar where Christ is in that living way, which he says is his flesh. like there is a instance where you get to do this and this is when the lord's supper takes place i i think that uh in that moment that you should well there's nothing wrong with doing this reverently um of course but you as the baptized knowing that the veil has been torn approach

a different altar where the body and blood of christ are and you should approach that thing boldly knowing that that is like that christ is not lying when he says that that is meant for you that you don't have there's you don't have to wonder you don't have to worry are you are you a sinner are you are you drawing breath then this is for you and if you've been washed you there's there's nothing to fear there there's there's there's just mercy and forgiveness there and you can approach it boldly and go in and receive the gift that god has waiting for you there so i i don't think this is just sort of oh existentially i can you know approach god and i can approach mercy like that's true that you that you have you we do have permanent access to god that we can

just speak to him as far we don't we our mediator is no longer just some guy but that we have a mediator who is christ and we can speak to god in his name whenever whenever we want but there is actually a time and a place that hopefully happens every week where this there's actually this is where he boots on the ground approaching the altar of god that he hasn't done away with that actual act that's still happening in the church yeah absolutely yeah this is the this is the life of a christian as a christian this is the life of the church as a church too both are both are both are described here. So it's a, like you say, it's a 24-7 reality for us, but it's also what happens when the church comes together with angels and archangels, with all the believers united in the

body of Christ in which we approach his altar. And yeah, we approach it with confidence because it's the table of our father and not the table of a tyrant. So we don't have to worry about being struck down but we're we're welcomed there by the god who is not just partly pleased with us or not just tolerates us uh we're not just going to you know watch our every move uh to make sure we do everything right but we approach the table of of our of our of our father of the god who actually loves us and who desires nothing more than to show mercy to us and it's it's the knowledge that we are loved by the lord of the table that we are uh the objects not of his wrath but of his mercy that invites and encourages us to to approach that table knowing that everything is

everything is good because god is good with us because we are in christ and so we have that confidence to dine at his table not trembling with fear but instead overflowing with confidence that the god at the head of the table is the god who has nothing but luck for us yeah i don't approach the lord's table uh wondering if i'm doing it right i'd walk up there because i can't do it right yeah exactly because christ has done it right for us right yeah am i doing this right no man you you can't you haven't done anything right that's why you're that's why i'm here yeah very good very good uh i guess uh i guess we need to move on we're we've already uh spent 30 minutes uh discussing some good stuff we got a little bit a little bit more a little bit more

to go here well it's it's an established fact on this podcast chad that once once uh sacramental stuff gets involved it's we just don't get very far yeah we we uh we dive deep when that happens Well, you mentioned that we have altars still in churches today, so that's a transition point here if we're talking about another altar. There's actually two altars at the Old Testament tabernacle, as there were at the temple, but we really only hear so much about one of them. We're going to hear about the second one later on. It's actually inside the holy place. It's the altar of incense. but there are no sacrifices offered on that one instead you have incense burned and prayers

offered we'll we'll talk about that for some reason it doesn't this is a little bit confusing for me i don't know why moses saves that for later uh why he doesn't discuss it when he talks about the uh the menorah and the table of showbread but he doesn't so we'll just kind of follow that order too. So we'll get to that altar later. The altar that we're talking about here at the beginning of the next chapter, which is Exodus 27, is known by various names. Sometimes it's called the altar of burnt offering. Sometimes it's called the bronze altar because of, well, that's what it was made out of. And sometimes it's called the outer altar to distinguish it from the the inner altar which would be the the altar of incense which i mentioned before so this

one thing that i don't think uh everyone realizes or even maybe most people realize about this this altar is that uh it's hollow you know when we think when i think of an altar i immediately think of a of a solid structure that uh you know is uh is is is has a has some sort of maybe plate over the top of it or grating over the top of it or i mean it's a solid kind of structure well this is not this is actually the the altar for burnt offering is hollow So it's a framework that's made out of wood overlaid with bronze. And inside of this framework, you have probably stones and earth piled in there that comprise the altar itself. So even though it's called an altar, it's actually the altar itself is an earthen altar that probably has some rocks in there as well.

what we think of as the altar is actually the structure around it so it's about uh 90 inches by by 90 inches and so it's square in shape it's about uh four and a half feet high something like that and it was here at this altar which is outside of the tabernacle it's here where all the uh all the sacrifices were offered um you've got uh uh well we'll get to those later on all the various various kinds of sacrifices you got homeward offerings sin offerings peace offerings guilt offerings and so forth but this was the place where a couple of things happened first of all part of the part of the animal either either all or part of the animal was burn on this altar that's where you have the sacrificing part but you also had blood from

the sacrifice that was placed at various points on the altar this altar also had what are called horns you may have heard about horns at an altar or you may not have but many altars uh not only in the bible but in the the ancient near east had these these horn-like uh projections on the four corners uh we don't know actually we don't know what they look like uh they must have been some shape like a horn but they were on all four corners and they they came upward and it was on these that many of the the sacrifices the blood of many of the sacrifices was placed so this is where you put the blood and the body itself was put inside on top of the uh the fire that was put on the rocks and the earth inside the inside the altar so that's kind of functionally that's

the way these work later just kind of a uh interesting detail later when the temple was built like at the time of in the first century at the time of christ uh the altar was huge and the horns that were on the four quarters of this altar were hollow this is going to kind of engineering masterpiece here. The horns were hollow and they were attached to these pipe-like structures. And so blood and wine and oil were actually poured into these horns and it filtered down through various kinds of crevices and whatnot to the Kidron Valley. So this was set up in an amazing sort of way at uh at the the second temple at uh at the time of christ but at this point the smallest structure you have the hordes the blood is placed upon them so that's how it worked

what about its theological significance well i have mentioned this before but it's worth saying again that you can have an altar without a tabernacle we've seen plenty of those in the past but you can never have a tabernacle without an altar so the altar is that part of this whole structure that you must have you cannot have a tabernacle without an altar because the altar is really the ongoing meeting place between god and his people it's because of the altar it's because of the sacrifices and the blood that's placed there that the people are able to approach god and then god is able to give his gifts to to the people so these the the uh the altar is indispensable because it is the place where the victims who bear the iniquities who bear the sins

of the israelites are sacrificed and their blood is placed upon the horns of this altar to provide atonement for the people and are the means by which then god gives peace and purification and and holiness to to the people so every sacrifice was offered on this altar every day morning and night year after year for generation after generation every single one of these in a small way was pointing toward two things first of all it was pointing toward the inadequacy of these sacrifices i mean if they're offered again and again and again and again evidently something isn't right and then it also pointed toward the necessary completion that all these sacrifices would finally where they would finally be brought to an end

so the author is sure that dual function the inadequacy that they themselves represent and the need for an adequate sacrifice that is coming in the future and that's really again what the author of Hebrews tells us in his long argument that all of these sacrifices finally pointed toward the sacrifice of the Son of God when the priest becomes the sacrifice, when the Lamb of God takes away the sins of the world on a different kind of altar, on the altar of the cross, which is outside Jerusalem. It's there that every single one of these millions of sacrifices that were offered in their inadequacy were finally brought to fulfillment and the sacrifice to end all sacrifices was was offered that is good stuff right there chad is that is that 40 minutes that's

40 minutes but that's a good way you know what we've ended we ended this one better than we've ended the last couple yeah we didn't leave people hanging did we no that was that's good that is good you know what else is good not as good as that not nearly but pretty good is a conference in san diego in october it's coming up soon it's coming up soon guys it's coming up in like six weeks if you uh if you have not registered you can still do so uh there is still some room left so if you want to come hang out with me and chad see us uh do this live and uh listen to a bunch of great speakers eat a bunch of great food and uh just hang out for a couple days uh you should go over to here we still stand.org uh you can see the whole lineup you can register there uh it's

going to be an absolute blast it's october 19th through 21 uh we would love to hang out with you chad i will hang out with you next week at the same time all right man we'll see you then all right Thank you.