Exodus 26 Devotional

The Way Through the Veil

“And hang the veil from the clasps and place the ark of the Testimony behind the veil. So the veil will separate the Holy Place from the Most Holy Place.”Exodus 26:33 (BSB)

Exodus 26 reads like a builder's plan: ten linen curtains with cherubim worked into them, fifty loops and fifty gold clasps joining them into one, layers of goat hair and skins above, and upright frames standing on silver bases (26:1-25). Every part is to be set up exactly according to the pattern God showed Moses on the mountain (26:30).

Then comes the veil. Hung on four posts, it divides the Holy Place from the Most Holy Place, where the ark and its mercy seat will rest (26:31-34). God is truly among his people, yet a barrier stands between them and his nearest presence. The veil says both things at once: he is here, and he is holy. When Jesus died, the veil of the temple was torn from the top down (Matthew 27:51), and Hebrews says believers can now come boldly into God's own presence because of Jesus' blood, by a way his body opened through the curtain (Hebrews 10:19-20). You do not have to stand outside.

To think about: What keeps you standing at a distance from God, when Christ has opened the way in?