Latest / The Pursuit of God Daily / Removing the Veil, part 3 of 10: The veil rent from top to bottom
Transcript
- 0:00Host: Good morning. This is The Pursuit of God Daily for Wednesday, October twenty-eighth. We are in chapter three of The Pursuit of God, Removing the Veil, and today Tozer brings us to the last veil, the one that once hid the Holy of Holies, and to what its rending means for us.
- 0:16Reader: Matthew twenty-seven, verses fifty and fifty-one. Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost. And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent;
- 0:34Reader: From A. W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God, chapter three, Removing the Veil. Though the worshipper had enjoyed so much, still he had not yet entered the Presence of God. Another veil separated from the Holy of Holies where above the mercy seat dwelt the very God Himself in awful and glorious manifestation. While the tabernacle stood, only the high priest could enter there, and that but once a year, with blood which he offered for his sins and the sins of the people.
- 1:04Reader: It was this last veil which was rent when our Lord gave up the ghost on Calvary, and the sacred writer explains that this rending of the veil opened the way for every worshipper in the world to come by the new and living way straight into the divine Presence.
- 1:21Reader: Everything in the New Testament accords with this Old Testament picture. Ransomed men need no longer pause in fear to enter the Holy of Holies. God wills that we should push on into His Presence and live our whole life there. This is to be known to us in conscious experience. It is more than a doctrine to be held, it is a life to be enjoyed every moment of every day.
- 1:47Reader: This Flame of the Presence was the beating heart of the Levitical order. Without it all the appointments of the tabernacle were characters of some unknown language; they had no meaning for Israel or for us. The greatest fact of the tabernacle was that Jehovah was there; a Presence was waiting within the veil. Similarly the Presence of God is the central fact of Christianity. At the heart of the Christian message is God Himself waiting for His redeemed children to push in to conscious awareness of His Presence.
- 2:21Reader: That type of Christianity which happens now to be the vogue knows this Presence only in theory. It fails to stress the Christian’s privilege of present realization. According to its teachings we are in the Presence of God positionally, and nothing is said about the need to experience that Presence actually. The fiery urge that drove men like McCheyne is wholly missing. And the present generation of Christians measures itself by this imperfect rule. Ignoble contentment takes the place of burning zeal.
- 2:55Reader: We are satisfied to rest in our judicial possessions and for the most part we bother ourselves very little about the absence of personal experience.
- 3:06Host: Notice two things in what we just heard. First, the veil was torn from the top to the bottom. No human hand reached up and pulled it down. The way into the Presence was opened from God's side, at the very moment Jesus yielded up the ghost. The letter to the Hebrews tells us what that old arrangement was saying all along. Of the Holy of Holies it says, into the second went the high priest alone once every year, not without blood. And then, the Holy Ghost this signifying, that the way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest. For centuries the tabernacle preached a closed door. At Calvary, God Himself opened it.
- 4:58Host: Father, thank You for tearing the veil through the death of Your Son. Forgive us for being content to know about Your Presence while seldom seeking it. Give us holy boldness, through Jesus Christ, to come in and live our whole day before Your face. Amen.
- 5:13Host: Let us come boldly unto the throne of grace. Hebrews four, verse sixteen. Go with God.