It's so frustrating to click on a link and then see the message "You do not have permission to view this page."
Or to forget a password and then have to go through several steps to finally get into your account.
Or to be told you're not dressed right or you don't have the proper credentials to enter a venue.
Or to race to a business only to find it closed.
Or to call the doctor's office at 4 p.m. Friday and hear a recording that their phone lines are closed for the week.
I think in America, especially, we're so used to our freedoms that our blood boils when we're denied access to something we think we have a right to.
But the fact remains that we don't have access to everything. We need the right permissions, passwords, attire, level of security, or timing to get where we need to go.
If you read the first few books of the Old Testament in the Bible, you see that not everyone had access to every part of the temple. Oh, people could pray wherever they were. But God prescribed a detailed sacrificial system. Only certain animals in perfect condition could be brought as sacrifices. The different kinds of sacrifice had different procedures. Only the priests could perform certain functions. Only the high priest could go into the inner part of the temple, the most holy place, or the Holy of Holies, and then only once a year. There was a thick curtain between the Holy Place and Most Holy Place.
Some loved God and wanted to be as close to Him as possible. David, the man after God's own heart, longed for the courts of the Lord and said he'd rather be a doorkeeper in God's house than to dwell in tents of wickedness (Psalm 84).
Many people followed the rules and brought whatever sacrifices were required because that was just how things were. Some performed the outer rituals, but lived whatever way they pleased away from the temple.
One king, Uzziah, who presumed to go into the temple to burn incense was struck with leprosy.
The message was loud and clear: You do not have access!
That's why it was so remarkable that when Jesus died, the thick curtain blocking the way in the Holy of Holies was "torn in two, from top to bottom" (Matthew 27:51).
That would have been utterly shocking to the Jewish people at the time.
What many people missed was that the whole sacrificial system pointed to Christ. He was the perfect sacrifice, the perfect high priest. The book of Hebrews wonderfully shows how everything in the sacrificial system pointed to Christ.
Because He lived a righteous life in our place, because we couldn't, and He took our sin on Himself, He is the access to being right before God.
The writer of Hebrews says:
Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful (Hebrews 10:19-23).
Jesus did not create a way to God only for the Jews, but for everyone else as well:
Remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God (Ephesians 2:12-19).
That's why Jesus could say, "I am the door of the sheep. . . . If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture" (John 10:7,9) and "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6).
Have you gone through that Door? Do you have access to God through Christ? If not, you can today. For more information, read here. Then you can "draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith."
(I often link up with some of these bloggers.)
