And so, Lord, we thank You as Your word tells us to, to praise You and rejoice in the tribulations and the trials that we go through, because we know that those produce perseverance, and perseverance, uh, hope. And we know that that hope does not disappoint, because it is based on the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and nothing will ever take that hope away from us. We thank You for Your word that gives to us so many promises that we can cling to in this life.
First and foremost, the salvation that You've won for us on the cross, that if we come to You in repentance of our sin, and taking You as Savior from that sin and King over the rest of our lives, we will have that one hundred percent assurance that we will spend eternity with You. We thank You for Your indwelling Holy Spirit who is transforming us each day more and more into the likeness of Your Son. We pray that we will glorify You with our lives.
In Jesus' name, Amen. Here are a couple of the most secured and secret locations in the world, taken from a BBC article almost ten years ago: Area 51 is famous for its connection with the so-called 1947 Roswell UFO crash. It's one of, if not the most secretive and secured locations in all of the United States.
It's so secretive that no one really knows what goes on there. The name of the location was first mentioned in a CIA document during the Vietnam War years, but the CIA has never given details as to what experiments they do there. This, of course, has led to all kinds of conspiracy theories, like experiments on so-called extraterrestrial life forms and vehicles, or where the moon landing was filmed, or laser experiments, or other aircraft tests.
We'll never know for sure, since everything that happens at Area 51 is labeled top secret, and access to the general public is strictly prohibited. If you like spy movies, then the Royal Air Force Menwith Hill base in England could be right up your alley. Built during the Cold War in 1954, the purpose of the base was originally to intercept and monitor all electronic communications directly connected to the Soviet Union by the UK and the US.
However, even though the Cold War has ended, the base continues to be highly functioning today. Since no one really knows what goes on there, it's speculated that it's still being used by both nations to keep track of terrorist, drug, and satellite activity around the world. It's also believed that it's connected to what has been deemed Echelon, or Five Eyes— the spy network of the five nations: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK, and the US.
The only ones allowed access to this James Bond-like facility are members of Echelon or Five Eyes, or the NSA. Today, as secured and off-limits as those places are, there wasn't even a more astronomically secured and off-limits place before Jesus's death. In fact, it was impossible to access whatsoever before Jesus's death.
But with Jesus's death came the opening of the most impossible locked door to access, and it's one of the greatest treasures Jesus's death gives to us as His followers. That will be one thing we'll be taking a look at today. Again, as I mentioned last week, the scripture passage directly connected to our Gospel of John series remains John 19:30b, the second half of verse 30, for one more week today, as we look at the other phenomena related to the moment of Jesus's death from the other gospels, and one more deep theological truth related to the moment of Jesus's death, all based on findings from various biblical scholars.
So with that, if you brought your Bible with you today, we're going to look at that half a verse again. Turn in your Bible to John chapter 19, verse 30. If you didn't bring a Bible with you, that's okay; there should be one located in the pew in front of you.
Please also turn there, and I know it's just half a verse, but I want us all to see this together, or you can look this up on your favorite Bible app on your smartphone. This is what we read: the second half of verse 30, "And He bowed His head and gave up His spirit. " Turning back to Matthew's record of the moment of Jesus's death, we read— and this was our scripture reading a couple of minutes ago— "And behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom, and the earth shook, and the rocks were split.
Also, the tombs were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised; and coming out of the tombs after His resurrection, they entered the holy city and appeared to many. " We're going to tackle the first phenomenon Matthew mentions, along with the deep theological truth connected to it. Does this work?
This—okay, it works! This week, we're going to tackle this one along with the deep theological truth connected to it last. So let's first start with the earth shaking and the rocks splitting.
Firstly, like this supernatural darkness that covered the area and lasted from noon to 3:00 p. m. , which we talked about a few weeks ago, one of the truths this earthquake symbolized was the judgment of God towards sin.
The sinless deliverer had just been made sin to be put to death to satisfy the penalty for sin—death—as the all-time sacrifice, and we talked about that more last week. Thus, the very creation that had been condemned to the curse of that sin recoiled at that moment of judgment. There will be a day when creation will be fully made new, and Paul writes.
. . Eagerly awaiting, creation waits for the revealing of the Sons and Daughters of God.
For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. You don't need to tell anybody from North Carolina or Missouri right now that the creation is groaning and suffering the pains of childbirth together until now.
The Earth quite literally groaned and shuddered as the ultimate pangs of childbirth with the death of the Messiah. This earthquake was so strong that what we read caused rocks to split open. I don't know if we've really stopped and thought about that.
We know that there are earthquakes; we know that there are earthquakes that happened, but this earthquake was so strong that it caused whole rocks to split open. That will have a direct impact on what we discuss next, but for now, this is quite the violent earthquake on the Richter Scale. And why shouldn't it have been?
The human creation had just put to death their Creator, so why wouldn't the repercussions of that reverberate throughout the foundation of the whole Earth? We can't rule out that roofs caved in, buildings fell on people, and walls crumbled at the moment of Jesus's death. All of these things very well could have happened in the city of Jerusalem.
Take that: roofs caving in, buildings falling on people, walls crumbling. Combine that now with the darkness—remember that that had been lasting for three hours at this point in the middle of the day? That would have sent people screaming and running in sheer terror.
Think about that for a second. Talk about a weapon of mass destruction; out of nowhere, everyone must have thought the world was ending. And in some ways, the world as they knew it had ended.
This extremely violent earthquake represented something else important. When God came down on Mount Sinai to give Moses the law, what happened? Now Mount Sinai was all in smoke because the Lord descended upon it in fire, and its smoke ascended like the smoke of a furnace, and the entire mountain quaked violently when the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder.
Moses spoke, and God answered him with thunder. Just as the mountain of God shook violently with an earthquake when His presence descended upon it, the hill upon which the Son of God hung dead on a Roman cross, including the whole area around it, radiated with destructive trembling, displaying that God's presence was also on that hill. The greater of which was the mountain on which Jerusalem itself was built.
Like we mentioned, that earthquake literally split rocks open. Not only were these rocks throughout the city and countryside surrounding it, but these were the foundational rocks of the city too that were split open. Not only were these foundational rocks throughout the city and countryside surrounding it, but what foundational rocks would also be impacted say, immediately outside of the city?
The foundational rocks in the cemeteries immediately outside of the city. Like we read in Matthew, next, also the tombs were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised. Now that's a crazy occurrence, isn't it?
That sounds like one of those spooky stories we as kids would have told around the campfire to scare the pants off each other right before we were supposed to go to bed, right? What in the world was going on here? Firstly, this is not the same understanding, and it talks about the saints here.
This is not the same kind of understanding of canonized saints or some kind of super spiritual people you can pray to in addition to, or even in place of, Jesus himself. The term "saints" in Scripture refers to those who are saved from our sins by God's grace through their faith. Today, this refers to those of us who have been saved from our sins by God's grace through our faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus to pay for our sins.
Before Jesus's death, this would have referred to all those in the Old Testament and the 400 years in between the close of the Old Testament and the death of Jesus, all of those who looked forward in faith to the Messiah's arrival to pay for their sins, like we talked about last week. Now, there are differing views on this, but what lines up with what is described in Scripture most likely was this: when Jesus died and the earthquake split open the rocks around the greater city region, it also split open the foundations of the tombs in that greater city region. Since the Sabbath was starting in only a few hours, people were aghast and couldn't believe what they were seeing as they looked at all the cherished tombs of their loved ones just laying wide open.
But they couldn't do anything about them because of the Sabbath starting in a few hours, so those tombs also remained destroyed and gaping wide through that whole following day until the wee hours of the morning of the first day of the week, or Sunday. On that Sunday, only after Jesus, as the first fruits of—again, that like we talked about last week—not only the death, but more notably, the resurrection of believers in Him, again like we talked about last week, something unbelievable happened. Some, not all—we read "many," so it's not all the bodies—many, some of them, not all of them, of the bodies of these saints who had died before Jesus died started walking out of those tombs that had been laying in ruins.
All this time, that just blows your mind, doesn't it? If we're talking about anyone who had died in the faith of looking forward to the eventual arrival of the Messianic deliverer being up for grabs, this could have been anyone who had been buried in the vicinity of Jerusalem. Now, I'm tempted to think that this could have included prophets like Haggai and Zechariah, Malachi, King Hezekiah, and even the great King David, who were all buried in or just outside of Jerusalem.
How cool would that have been? These prophets and even King David walking into Jerusalem to declare, "Hey, all those prophecies that were about the Messiah and His death? Those were just fulfilled when you crucified Jesus.
" Sorry to spill cold water on that, though. However, the fact that Matthew doesn't record these specific men of biblical notoriety—when he did record that Elijah and Moses specifically showed up at Jesus's Transfiguration—seems to imply that these Great Men of the faith were not included, and those that walked out of the tombs were common people who had faith in the coming Messiah. Some may have been buried a few days before Jesus's death; some may have been buried hundreds of years before Jesus's death.
We're not told. What we are told is that these were among the very first witnesses of Jesus's resurrection. But that's just wild, isn't it?
These people walk into Jerusalem, reveal themselves to others, and tell them, "Hey, I've been dead for hundreds of years, but the Messiah has just been raised from the dead! " So, I have come to tell you that this isn't my original thought, but some of these may have been loved ones of still-living Jerusalem inhabitants. Place yourself in their shoes—who would have been absolutely shell-shocked at seeing their loved ones they had just buried mere days before walking around as if nothing had happened?
Most conservative biblical scholars believe that just like Lazarus, Jairus's daughter, the widow of Nain's son in the Gospels, and Tabitha and Eutychus in the Book of Acts were all raised back to life but then died an earthly death again, it was the same with these saints. They did not rise again with glorified bodies, but the evidence points to the fact that they were raised with natural bodies again and then died at some point. Now, what is the point of all of this?
Again, to be the first witnesses to Jesus as the first fruits of the bodily resurrection on the Day of First Fruits, the Jewish festival. They were intended to be undoubted and crystal clear physical proofs of, in addition to, Jesus's physical resurrection in His glorified body. Moreover, these resurrections, along with Jesus's resurrection, were meant to be the literal beginning of the fulfillment of Ezekiel's vision of the valley of dry bones.
In that vision, God breathes new life into the dead and dried-out bones that represented His people and explains, "Then you will know that I am the Lord when I have opened your graves and caused you to come up out of your graves, my people. I will put my Spirit within you, and you will come to life, and I will place you on your own land. Then you will know that I, the Lord, have spoken and done it," declares the Lord.
The only one that could have done any of that was the Lord. That's why He says, "Then you will know that I, the Lord, have spoken, and I'm the one who did it. " But what do we read here?
"When I have opened your graves and caused you to come up out of your graves. " That sounds exactly like what we read in Matthew 27:52, a physical, literal fulfillment of it, doesn't it? Okay, thank you, Ron from the back; I'll let you speak for everybody else here.
In the ultimate fulfillment of this prophecy, Jesus's death and resurrection is the very beginning of new life, the enactment of the New Covenant, and the basis for the permanent indwelling of the Holy Spirit. That's what we read there too: "Then I will put my Spirit within you," the basis for the permanent indwelling of the Holy Spirit of new life resulting in eternal life. Again, as Paul writes about in Romans 8, both the creation and the pinnacle of that creation—human beings—give evidence of Jesus being God in both His death and resurrection with the earthquake at His death and that being the rest of creation, and the earthly resurrections giving, uh, the pinnacle human evidence of creation at His resurrection.
Now, let's get to the most famous of all these phenomena, and the one most powerful to our salvation. Matthew describes in Matthew 27 the first part of verse 51, "And behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. " And what's going on here?
This veil is the one that goes all the way back to the special curtain prescribed by God for the construction of His Tabernacle, all the way back to the Book of Exodus. We read there, "You shall also make a veil or a curtain of violet, purple, and scarlet material, and fine twisted linen. It shall be made with cherubim, the work of a skilled embroiderer.
Then you shall hang it on four pillars of acacia overlaid with gold, their hooks also of gold, on four bases of silver. You shall hang up the veil under the clasps and bring in the ark of testimony, or the Ark of the Covenant, there within the veil. And the veil shall serve as a partition, a separator for you, between the holy place—that was where the rest of the things were: the table of showbread and the menorah and all that—and the most holy place where.
. . " The Ark of the Covenant was, "You shall put the atoning cover on the Ark of the testimony in the most holy place.
" Now, if you weren't able to really picture that in your mind, here's something that might be helpful for that: here's a cutaway image of the Tabernacle. You can see the whole tent here, the articles in the main part of the Tabernacle. I talk about the Table of Showbread, the Menorah, and all that in the main part of the Tabernacle.
Here, this is the front door, by the way. Then you see this; I know it's only halfway there, but that's (because it's a cutaway image). Here, think about this extending all the way across the whole width of the Tabernacle.
This is what we just read described in Exodus: this is what separated the Holy of Holies, or the most holy place where the Ark of the Covenant was and the Mercy Seat, from the rest of the Tabernacle and really, the rest of the world. Here, in the Holy of Holies where the Ark of the Covenant is, you can see above the Ark of the Covenant these two cherubim. Here, this is what was called the Mercy Seat, and that is where God's presence resided in the Tabernacle, which is why it was the holiest section of the Tabernacle.
What separated this section from the Tabernacle, from the rest of it, and really the whole rest of the world, was this veil—like we talked about, this partition, this curtain—also made out of violet, purple, and scarlet material, but this one had cherubim designed into it. The purpose of the veil was to cut off the presence of God as holy from the rest of sinful Israel, and again, really the rest of sinful humanity. We talked about this a couple of weeks ago when we went over all the theological and doctrinal significances of what Jesus’s death accomplished for us, but no one was allowed behind this curtain.
No one was allowed behind this curtain due to the holy presence of God, except for one person, one time a year—one person, one day a year on the prescribed Day of Atonement. We talked about that a few weeks ago as we read in Leviticus 16. Only the high priest, after he had been sanctified, was allowed behind this veil armed only with the blood of the atonement sacrifice of both the bull for himself and the goat for the rest of Israel to sprinkle that blood on the Mercy Seat on top of the Ark of the Covenant, so that God would forgive the sins of Israel for that year.
If the high priest himself was not sanctified, if anybody went back there that wasn't the high priest on the Day of Atonement, they were instantly killed. So, when the high priest would go back there, he would actually have a string with a bell on the string, so that if for whatever reason God was not pleased with that high priest and struck him dead while he was still behind the curtain, he could be dragged out; his dead body could be dragged out from that curtain, and nobody else would have to risk their lives going back behind that veil. This is why we are talking about this.
This is why this was so important. This is why it was so powerful: the design and construction of the Tabernacle. This whole thing here was then what Solomon's breathtaking Temple was based on.
I've been talking about that at men's Bible study. Around 975 BC, when Solomon's Temple was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BC, it was rebuilt following the Babylonian exile, but to a much less and much more depressing degree by Zerubbabel and completed in 516 BC. When Herod the Great, of Christmas fame, came to power—a puppet king of the Romans—he started his own expansion of the second temple around 20 BC, and we find out from John 2:20 that in the early ministry of Jesus, around 28 AD, construction on it had continued for 46 years by that point.
The expansion of Herod's Temple, even though he had been dead for decades, wasn't completed until 63 AD, over 30 years after Jesus's death and resurrection. My point is this: it was Herod's Temple, or this expansion of Zerubbabel's Temple, to make it much more magnificent and glorious. You can see how magnificent and glorious that is; this is a model of it at the Jerusalem Museum or Israel Museum.
This is the temple that Jesus was dedicated at by his parents when he was an infant, the temple that Jesus taught at and was confronted by the Pharisees multiple times. It was the version of the temple that housed the veil that Matthew, Mark, and Luke describe was torn in two. I also went through all of that to show that it agrees with what has been noted about the description of the specific veil that hung in this temple at the time of Jesus’s death.
According to the Mishnah, which is the oral tradition of the Jewish people finally written down, this is what we read about this curtain: "The curtain has the thickness of a handbreadth, and with regard to the dimensions of the curtain, its length was 40 cubits as the height of the ceiling of the sanctuary, and its width was 20 cubits to match the width of the entrance. " You all know what a cubit is, right? I'm just messing with you.
Okay, translating this to our modern American system of measurement, the approximations of all that are as follows: the veil was 60 feet high, 30 feet wide, and at least. . .
At least 4 inches thick! Hold up your hand. I want everybody to take your hand and look at it.
Imagine over 4 inches in comparison to your hand. That's what I was talking about—the hand breadth. That's how thick this veil was.
Is everybody still with me? Okay, the Mishna also describes the curtain as so heavy that they needed 300 priests to carry it when they would immerse it. They would immerse it to consecrate it.
300 priests were needed; 300 full-grown men were needed to carry it, and at least 300 full-grown men were needed to hang it up. Now, you probably have gathered why I went through all of this. This veil was physically impossible to be torn by human hands.
I don't think anybody here has tried to rip a phone book in half, right? And I'm not talking about the Warren County one. I'm talking about this veil—it was physically impossible to be torn completely in half.
Moreover, even if—let's just throw this out there—even if someone tried to tear this veil or several persons tried to tear this veil, how would they have done it? Standing on the ground, they would have tried tearing it from bottom to top. The only one who could have torn this veil was God Himself, and He tore it from top to bottom in order to prove a point.
What was the point of God Himself tearing this veil in half? Remember, who is the one who gave the original Law? He originally prescribed for the worship of Him.
Firstly, the veil was torn in two to signify that God's presence had left the Holy of Holies, never to return again. So anyone who brought sacrifices to the temple on the day after Jesus was crucified found that there was nobody there; God's presence was not there anymore. Indeed, God had shown His people, with that act of tearing the veil from top to bottom, that He was through—with worship of Him only occurring at the temple.
In fact, that temple would be completely destroyed 40 years later, in 70 A. D. , by the Romans.
What this also signified is that the old Covenant, which was entirely tied to that temple, was also over. If God was done with the temple—signified by the veil being torn in two, and therefore His presence leaving that temple—and if the old Covenant was through, what was enacted at the same exact moment? The New Covenant was enacted at the exact same moment, based on the sacrificial blood of the sanctified high priest, the Son of God, Messianic Deliverer, Eternal King, Jesus Christ.
When Jesus declared, "It is finished! " on the cross, this also meant His complete fulfillment of everything having to do with the old Covenant and its temple sacrificial system. With His last breath, Jesus paid the ultimate penalty for sin, which the temple sacrificial system was only ever supposed to shadow, and enacted the New Covenant, of which no central temple was needed or required.
It was the fulfillment of Jesus's words to the Samaritan woman at the well when He said, "Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain in Samaria nor in Jerusalem," where they were supposed to worship God. "But a time is coming, and even now has arrived, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshippers. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.
" Because God's presence left and was no longer restricted to the temple, Jesus's sacrifice fulfilled the very purpose of that veil itself and therefore granted access to the place that no human had ever before accessed, and that is the very presence of God. The author of Hebrews explains this: "But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things having come, He entered through the greater and more perfect tabernacle—not made by hands, that is, not of this creation— and not through the blood of goats and calves, but through His own blood He entered the holy place once for all time, having obtained eternal redemption. For this reason, He is the mediator of a New Covenant, so that since a death has taken place for the redemption of the violations that were committed under the first covenant, those who have been called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance.
" As we talked about a couple of weeks ago in much more detail, Jesus's blood paid the ultimate penalty for sin as the atonement sacrifice, and with that blood, as the high priest, He entered the holiest place that was once behind the veil to pay for the redemption of those called to be under the New Covenant for all eternity. And because of that, as His body was torn in sacrificial death, the veil separating God's presence from the rest of the world was torn in two, bringing His presence into the hearts of those who surrender their lives to Him in repentance of sin, by way of the indwelling Holy Spirit, and bringing us into God's presence every time we pray. Therefore, brothers and sisters, since 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, through His flesh, the author of Hebrews is saying that Jesus's flesh—the torn-apart flesh of Jesus—was the fulfillment of the torn-apart veil.
He is now the way to access the Father. The veil used to be the way that only the high. .
. Priest could access the presence of the Father, and now through Jesus, anyone can have access to the Father. Since we have a great priest over the house of God, let's approach God 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.
We’ve been given this immeasurable treasure of being able to access the presence of God in prayer. We must not approach God flippantly or disrespectfully, or by purposely disobeying Him. But we’ve been given the gift of approaching the throne of grace with confidence—not because of anything we have to be confident about ourselves, but only because of the confidence based on the high priest’s atoning blood and mediation of the New Covenant for us.
Before Jesus's death, no common person could come anywhere near God's presence, or they’d be instantly killed. When Jesus died and the veil was torn in two, all who would believe in and surrender to Him were granted access to the impossible: the throne room of the very presence of God. In bringing our confessed sins, our cares, our fears, our worries, our sources of depression, our loneliness, our heartache, our spiritual battles, our betrayals, our weaknesses, our sufferings, and our most powerful struggles, we can bring all of those to His grace, His mercy, His love, His answered prayer, His sovereignty, His plan, and His promises.
Not only that, but we were granted access to God as our heavenly Father through the indwelling Holy Spirit, relating to Him as our good and perfect Father. This was also opened up to us through Jesus's death. Again, Romans 8 tells us, "You have received a spirit of adoption as sons and daughters, by which we cry out, ‘Abba, Father!
’" This is the most intimate way a child can refer to his or her father. The Spirit Himself, the Holy Spirit, testifies with our spirit that we are children of God. Now, in the same way, the Spirit also helps our weakness, for we do not know what to pray for as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.
He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. The Holy Spirit living within us also means that we are now the temples of God. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?
Hate to break it to everybody here: you are not your own. You are a temple of the Holy Spirit, for you have been bought with a price—a painfully suffering price. Therefore, glorify God in your body.
Thank you, Lord, for the temple only being a shadow of what we now enjoy: unimpeded access to Your presence through our high priest, whose blood is the only basis for that access, and whose blood is the only basis for our access to God's presence and for our eternal life. Thank you that we can come with confidence to Your throne of grace. Thank you for giving us Your Holy Spirit to remind us that You are our good Heavenly Father, interceding for us Himself and sanctifying us as temples of Him.
Thank you that the blood of Christ bought and paid for our salvation, which the Holy Spirit seals us for, to look forward to dwelling in Your presence for all of eternity in Your new heavens and new earth. Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, we thank You that all that Your death has won for us has accomplished for us, including this.
We thank You that the veil was torn in two. We thank You that there is therefore now no more separation between us and You, and that we can always come to You through Jesus as the fulfillment of the veil, as the high priest, as the mediator of the New Covenant. With anything that we are struggling with, anything that we are suffering with, there is nothing too little that You don’t care about, or too big that You can’t handle.
We can bring all of it to lay at Your feet and leave it there so that the peace of God, which can only come from You, that can only come through Your Holy Spirit, as it is a fruit of the Holy Spirit, can come and guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Lord, we thank You for all of the inheritance, all of the treasure that You’ve opened up to and given to us as followers of Jesus, repenting in repentance of our sins, and as Your adopted children. We look forward to the day You return for us, giving us our resurrected and glorified bodies to be with You for all of eternity.
We pray all these things in Jesus' name, the Risen One. Amen.
