Behind the Veil

Inexpressible beauty lay hidden behind the veil. How could we ever hope to see it?

If you’d rather listen to this episode, click below.

Let’s go back in time today and take a peek at the Tabernacle Moses. Picture, if you will, a giant rectangular courtyard surrounded by a linen fence.

Inside the gate, a large bronze altar is burning sacrifices day and night. Behind the altar is a two-room tent. The front room is called the holy place. From the doorway, we see a large gold lamp stand to our left, and a gold table loaded with bread to our right. Between them, right in front of and blocking the entrance to the next room, is a small gold altar with burning incense on top.

This golden room sounds pretty nice, doesn’t it? But if we had lived during Moses’ time, we’d never have seen any of it. Only Levitical priests came into the holy place and only when it was their turn to serve.

But this wasn’t even the most exclusive room in this tent. Behind the incense altar hung a curtain called “the veil,” marking the entrance to the Holy of Holies.

Here rested the glorious arc of the covenant. Not even priests could come into this room. Well, unless they were the one and only high priest, but even he could only peek in once a year.

So What?

So what does any of this mean for us today? We are not Levitical priests, much less high priests. What does the tabernacle have to do with mere mortals who lack the qualifications to go inside?

A better question might be, “If God only expected to share this space with a few special people, why did he spend so much biblical ink on describing it?” Exodus 25–40 presents the tabernacle in detail after meticulous detail, making it so tempting to just skip over giant swaths of scripture when we read.

But what if these details are included, not to bore us, but to stimulate our desire to imagine that place so clearly we begin to drool over it? To yearn, to linger in a place that only includes he and we, him and us.

I think this was the “one thing” Mary desired in Luke 10:42 when her sister Martha wanted her to leave Jesus’ side for kitchen duty. It was the “one thing” David sought in Psalm 27:4—to dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of his life and to behold his beauty.

Remarkably, Hebrews 10:19–20 says we now have access to this place we could only dream of before. The blood of Jesus purchased a new and living way into these.

So next time we come across these passages, let’s resist the urge to skip over them and take the time to see what’s here. The Holy Spirit just might take the opportunity to lure us even deeper and show us even more of his beauty.

Want to learn more about the tabernacle? Be sure to check out my devotional, A Place for Me in God’s Tent.

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