To Encourage You

Hebrews 6:19-20 “We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, the inner place behind the curtain, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.”

Without the Bible, there are so many things that we would never hear about or know about.  Take the simple word “forever” in the verse above.  We live in such a temporary world.  Everything we possess eventually wears out. Our cars rust, our homes seem to fall down around us if we don’t keep after them, and our clothes wear out.  Then there’s the issue of our own bodies.  How quickly they change. How brief life is.  We are so tied to the temporal that to even think of a word like forever, really think about it, taxes our minds like little else can.  Can you even imagine something that never ends, where a thousand years from now is like a beginning? Yet that’s the word that is used to speak of the life of Christ.  It speaks of how He has gone to “the inner place behind the curtain.” It’s an analogy to the temple in Jerusalem. The “inner place” is another name for the “Holy of Holies,” where the high priest would enter but once each year on the day of atonement.  It was symbolic of the dwelling place of God among the people. And it was a shadow of God’s eternal dwelling place, which is heaven.  So, the picture in Hebrews 6 is of how Jesus ascended back to heaven, and to do so He had to pass by way of “the curtain.” 

The curtain, like everything else in the temple, pointed to Christ. Specifically, we are told that the curtain represents Jesus’ flesh in Hebrews 10:20.  Matthew 27:50-51 tells us that at the very moment that “Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit. . . behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.”  Thus, the tearing of the curtain is a shadow of the body of Jesus being torn on the cross.  It’s a sobering picture, but at the same time a very wonderful one, for it is by the fact that the curtain was torn that we have now been given access to the very throne of God. Rather than the high priest being the only one who could ever enter the Holy of Holies, Jesus, as our great high priest, has made a way for us all to enter in by way of His death. 

In Hebrews 4:14-16 we are told that “Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. . . Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”  In other words, Jesus has made a way for us to go before the very throne room of God at this very moment. We do this every time we pray.  But more than that, Jesus has made a way for us, as our forerunner, to go into the very presence of God in heaven when we die, and to be there forever.  And there, unlike anything we know in this temporal world, everything is forever.  Jesus said as much when He told us, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:19-21).

So where is your heart today? Is it tied to the temporal, to the here and now, to things that are so quickly passing away? Or is your mind and hearted lifted up to the place that is forever?  Have you entered into the dwelling place of God?