The veil between Holy God and sinful man was known as a fact of this relationship by the Hebrews from Mount Sinai forward, and very much as a reality by the priestly line of Aharon (Aaron) who were daily fulfilling the obligations of the tabernacle to thus continuously see the veil that blocked even the Holy Place from the Most Holy Place (or Holy of Holies), shrouding from even their own eyes the Ark of the Covenant.  However, the veil, in Jesus’ day, only seen by the priests, was made very evident as a reality to all of mankind, from high noon on, the day Jesus was nailed to the cross (Mat. 27:45).

    Jesus was not, in having been crucified, bearing the sins of mankind as the Son of God but as the Son of Man.  This is not at all a statement denying His deity.  Rather it brings to light the very fact that Father God had sent His Son “in the likeness of sinful flesh”  (Rom. 8:3) – Jesus, referring in different ways of His forth coming suffering, would say of Himself, “The Son of Man” is being betrayed, being lifted up, etc. (i.e. Mk. 9:31 et al );  He had been sent as a Man – the last Adam – though He was the Son of God, yet having emptied such previous Divinity in order to take back for mankind what the first Adam gave up for mankind (Phil. 2:6-8; I Cor. 15:21).  On the cross, Jesus, the Man, had the sin of the line of the first Adam imputed to Him; that is, the “missing-the-mark-of-the-Glory-of-God” deeds, which had occurred from the first Adam onward, and all the way to the last person yet to be born, were set to the account and consequently into the very body of this one Single Man nailed to wood there atop Golgatha’s hill.  The judgment then from Heaven’s throne made the reality of exactly what “missing the mark of the Glory of God” meant, going all the way back to the action of the very instant the first Adam chomped into the forbidden fruit.  “Sin” had, from that moment back in Eden, brought about the reality of cutoff/once-open relationship between the created and the Most Holy Creator … for the moment the Glory of Sinlessness walked into the garden to have communion with this newly formed and breathed into Man, all Adam did was to hear the distinct sound of his Creator, and, not even waiting for His Face to face presence encounter to even take place, he fled and hid himself.  Almighty God had not come to point a finger, but to have fellowship.  However, by that action of eating from of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, “Sin” had entered as a reality into the bloodline of the first Adam, and consequently so did “Death” into the relationship between Him who is Eternity and him who suddenly was transferred into finiteness and the kingdom of darkness.

   God did not distinguish one sin from another, as though big bad sins are more dark than little sin … for dark is just that … dark …  And death is death.  Period.  The “sin” that brought about the destruction we so often see on our television screen within the nations of the world and within our very own towns and cities all has its root in … … “eating” of a forbidden fruit … not in murder, not robbery, not slander … just “eating” from a fruit of a tree from which he was not supposed to eat.

   However, Holy God did not cut Himself off from communion with man, though death was still in the bloodline of man.  The “veil” was, in essence, not yet set to distance a man who would give an ear to Holy God.  The very life of Abraham bears witness to this holy fact (See Gen. 18:1ff ).  The veil that separated Holy God from sinful man, that veil of darkness, to which for three hours the world outside Jerusalem’s gold-gilded temple bore witness, from high noon on, two thousand years ago, was actually set at Mount Sinai.   I had not seen this before until several months ago as I was researching the incident of Moses’ face being made to shine from a glory encounter upon Mount Sinai.

   The veil of darkness comes to be at the very beginning of the giving of the Law.  Look at Exodus 19 (v. 16ff).  Moses would refer to this very incident years later to the generation about to cross the Jordan.  In Deuteronomy 5 he recounts the very first giving of the Law, then restates the ten commandments, then says, “These words the LORD spoke to all your assembly at the mountain of the fire, of the cloud, and of the thick gloom, with a great voice, and He added no more.  And He wrote them on two tablets of stone and gave them to me.  And it came about when you heard the voice from the midst of the darkness, that you came near to me, all the heads of your tribes and your elders.  And you said, “Behold, the LORD our God has shown us His glory …””  (vs. 22-24a).

   “The LORD our God has shown us His glory?“

   The people did not see the LORD’s glory, Beloved.  They thought they did because what was going on from the LORD before their eyes and their ears at that moment was exceedingly terrifying.  However, God’s glory always reveals His grace, always (John 1:14), and they were, by no means, beholding grace.  When Moses got to behold the LORD upon Mount Sinai (Ex. 34) it was not darkness he looked at, but a glory intensity of light which accordingly caused his own face to glow.  The people were, in reality, seeing the veil set up which had not been there from Egypt to this point in time.  That veil, Dear One, was the Law, the ten commandments.  The people did not want to be led by the daily living word of God, that is, by His grace, but by rote commandments.  They set their trust in their own ability to obey (see Ex. 19:8; 24:3 & Deut. 5:27). The arrogance of such fleshly trust comes out in the middle reference given, the elders saying, from the Hebrew text, “All which YHVH has spoken, we will do and we will hear (hearken).”  They were committing themselves to do what they had not heard, as if they were going to be able to do His Holy Commandments in action as sinners, confidently trusting that the command YHVH was going to give them, they would indeed be able to “obey”.  They were literally setting themselves up for judgment, for God would go on to tell them that they would be cursed for not doing according to ALL that was written in the Law (Deut. 27:26; Gal. 3:10).  The LORD, from this point forward, in Exodus 19, could no longer impute, or, account, righteousness to the ungodly for simply believing Him, as He had been doing since Abraham, their forefather (Gen. 15:5-6; Rom. 4:5), that is, to those who solely trusted their own ability to keep the Law.  (No accounting of one single person from this generation, from Exodus 19 through to the end of Deuteronomy, is recorded in the faith hall of fame chapter in Hebrews 11).  The people trusted in their ability, their works, to try to attain a standard of holiness they could not keep … and it set a veil between Holy God and sinful man.   Even thinking about coming into His presence with the Law on your mind meant ongoing sin-consciousness and thus inhibition to standing as a friend to Friend.

   Ongoing “Sin Consciousness” was the reality of the covenant of Law.  Hence, the veil signified distance, implied fear – of judgment, of condemnation – and denoted that the blood of the Law’s required sacrifices sitting upon the Mercy was still insufficient for open, non-condemnation relationship with Holy God, that “death” still lingered as judicial real threat to anyone even attempting access to the Ark of the covenant (Ref. 1 Sam 6;19 &; II Sam. 6:6-7).  Look again at this incident from Exodus 19.   Boundaries were set around the mountain.  Access to the top of the mountain was utterly from this time forward forbidden… with the threat of, “whoever touches the mountain shall surely be put to death. … he shall surely be stoned or shot through.” (vs. 12-13).  It was from this point in time of the veil’s set up that grace no more ruled as a kindness to draw the people to repentance, but the threat of judgment for not keeping the Law.  No one had died from Egypt to Sinai in all their griping and murmuring, yet God graciously supernaturally supplied what they cried for … without judgment!  Yet after the giving of the Law, the very things for which they had complained before now cost them their lives.  (Compare the stories of Ex. 16 to Num. 11:31-35).

   That veil, Beloved, drove hard the need for mankind to have a Savior.

   What was ripped at Jesus’ last breath on the cross inside the temple’s building, between the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies, was likewise ripped in the sky outside, in the heavens above … in the eyes of all, of Jews and Romans and every other nation on earth.  At the end of these last three hours of the Son of man bearing the full brunt of Divine judgment because of the deed of the first Adam, the surely loud tearing of the thick veil must have jolted the numerous priests inside the temple’s grounds (who had been required to be here for this massive nationwide “obligated-to-be-in-Jerusalem” feast), and equally those outside around the entire city in the simultaneous earthquake, which was also rending hell’s gates, all in conjunction with the tearing open of the darkness above to let the full light of the sun shout that this sacrifice eternally sufficed for ALL of mankind.  God the Father was letting heaven and earth unabashedly hear and see, both Israel – His own people – and the non-God-fearing heathen of the planet, that He, Holy God, was no more having a veil set between His creation and Himself, since the Law’s requirements were now, in complete totality, met through to the end in His own offering sacrifice of His only begotten Son, this Son of man’s death.  Holy God was demonstrating blatantly His overwhelming love to redeem mankind.  … hell would find out the extent of their defeat at the pierced hands of this Son of man three mornings later.  The Holy of Holies was no longer ever going to be a forbidden place because of fear of judgment, of death.  The ripped apart body of the Son of Man hanging on the cross was, in truth, the very actual veil – the real – not the likeness which had just been torn asunder inside the Temple building (see Heb. 10:19-20).  The veil of darkness set up on one mountain was torn forever apart upon another.

   The real revelation of God’s glory was made manifest on Golgatha, Beloved, not Sinai, in the sun’s glowing rays rending apart the three hours of unexplained darkness, even the darkness that came at the Law’s inception.  The now exposed Mercy Seat forever keeps covered … the Law … and consequently, the demand of flesh – works – to try to attain unattainable, freely gifted, Divine righteousness.  The Mercy Seat is just that, a Seat, a place of rest, of a finished work … for all to see such.

   The Ark of the New Covenant was made visible to everyone of every tribe of the Israel, not just the single line of the family of Aaron from the tribe Levi.  Yet also the ark of the New Covenant was made visible to Godless non-Jews.  Father God would never again veil from sight the Most Holy Place’s Holiest object – the Ark of the Covenant, the NEW Covenant, yes, the very box upon which rests the Mercy Seat, upon which sits forever the blood of the Lamb at which the real Cherubim continually gaze, seeing, not what the Lid of the Ark covers, but the ever living, ever speaking blood of sinful man’s redemption.  Their “Holy, Holy, Holy” is ongoing revelation of what that blood, onto which they do not stopping gazing, keeps revealing … for mankind.  Their “Holy, Holy, Holy” is not a revelation of what sinful man cannot look upon, cannot enter to see because of sin, rather is a revelation of what grace and lovingkindness/cheerful-unmerited, undeserved favor and mercy means as a living reality for every day people, for the cities of this planet.  It is not a view of judgment to come, but of judgment having taken place on behalf of sinful man … when mankind didn’t even give a hoot.

   “So then,” so many of you are asking, “what in the world does this have to do with “Nuggets from the book of Joshua?”   So glad you asked.

   You remember from the previous Kairos that the children of Israel about to cross the Jordan to take possession of the land of Canaan were told to keep the ark of the covenant before them, in view, because they were going to be led to where they had never gone before (Josh. 3:3-4).  We saw how that what they were to go after was actually veiled (Num. 4:5-6), covered by the very veil that separated the Holy of Holies from sinful man.  They were going after the very article which represented Holy God’s grace and mercy towards them, yet without actually getting to lay their eyes on it by reason of the covering veil.  Think about this a moment, Beloved.  They were not allowed to even lay eyes on the reason they had mercy and grace to be God’s people without being cut off by reason of the year long sufficiency of the blood upon this covered Mercy Seat, to be a people to whom God was about to over-abound them with land and houses and vineyards, etc., possessions they did not build or dig or plant that were going to become theirs in their promised inheritance of rest from centuries of slavery.

   So what is the big deal if they are going to get all these possessions that they can’t look upon the Mercy Seat?

   This question is so huge.  I will not endeavor to answer all that could be said.  But as I was meditating on the last newsletter, about having an unveiled ark of a New Covenant upon which we are allowed to gaze, that we have, this side of the cross, access to ceaseless, uninterrupted habitation in the Holy of Holies with Abba Father, who is Holy Almighty God to each one of us who have believed, that this abiding, forever ripped open, unveiled access to … GOD … that HE, GOD, regards each one of us as His own son, His own daughter (meditate on Rev. 21:7b for a while, you will know why I wrote the way I wrote this last sentence), as I kept thinking through this issue of an unveiled ark, that the New Covenant priesthood is to uphold what all the revelation of this unveiled ark means before and to people, the Holy Spirit, it seems, began to show me something I had not seen before in the book of Joshua, right when Jericho is about to be taken, something that I believe is going to take hold of the church in upcoming days as we cross into Destiny to which we have for so long held fast as a promise, but into which we have not previously traversed.