I’m Miles. It is preaching time. For our youth in the room, this is a great time for you to stand up and go grab an outline up the back and a pen so you can follow along. There’s no youth church for the next few weeks, and this is a simple way for us to help them follow along with our sermon.
About 600 years before Jesus lived, a storyteller called Aesop shared his wisdom through some fables. Many of them are well known today. You would have heard of the tortoise and the hare: slow and steady wins the race. Perhaps you’ve heard of the boy that cried wolf, a lesson in the importance of telling the truth. There’s the lion and the mouse, the fox and the grapes, and the goose that laid the golden eggs. Perhaps less known is the fox and the lion. Let me tell you this fable.
A very young fox who had never before seen a lion happened to meet one in a forest. A single look was enough to send this fox off at top speed for the nearest hiding place. The second time the fox saw the lion, he stopped behind a tree to look at him a moment before slinking away. But the third time, the fox went boldly up to the lion without turning a hair and said, “Hello there, old top.”
It’s certainly not Aesop’s most famous fable, but the moral, the lesson, is well known. The lesson is: familiarity breeds contempt. That is, as you spend more time with someone, you become more comfortable with them. You’ll notice their flaws and their weaknesses a bit more, and they’ll start to seem a bit more boring. Any fascination or appreciation you felt initially might start to fade away, and the mistakes that used to wash over you will start to linger. What was fun and exciting has become a bit mundane. The more that the fox became familiar with the lion, the less impressive the lion seemed. So much so that at the end, the fox has the audacity to say to the lion, call him “old top,” which means like old-timer, geezer, that vibe. Familiarity breeds contempt.
I think sometimes we all can be tempted to let that attitude sneak in when it comes to the Easter story. Because as we look at this part of the Bible, some of us might be thinking, “I know this part of the story already. There’s nothing new here for me to learn. There’s nothing extra to understand.” Or others of us might be thinking, “I know already about church and Christians. I’m just here to keep the peace with someone who invited me.” Or some of us might be here physically, but in your head it’s like, “Jesus, cross, love, got it. How am I going to get to Easter lunch?” Or even others of us might be a bit skeptical. “I’ll listen to this, but I already know what I’ll hear.”
Can I please encourage all of us this morning to resist that temptation and to come to this part of the true story of Jesus with fresh eyes, ready to hear and respond to the real and lasting hope that only Jesus can give us.
The real and the lasting hope that is worth discovering and clinging on to. With that in mind, let’s dive into this part of the Bible together. Today, we’re just going to zoom in on one detail from this story. We’re going to zoom in on the curtain in verse 38. You’ve got your Bibles there, take a look. I’ll start from verse 37. “Then Jesus uttered another loud cry and breathed his last. And the curtain in the sanctuary of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.”
Sometimes in life, a single detail can really help to explain everything. A key piece of evidence can help to expose the truth. A couple of years ago, I came across an article about diagnosing ADHD in adults. I read it, and it struck me that perhaps some of the things the article mentioned seemed quite familiar. Maybe even the fact that it took me a few goes to read the article without getting distracted was a bit of a giveaway. For my whole life, I had assumed that the way my brain worked and all the challenges that I faced, all the social challenges that I faced, were normal and typical, and I should just get good and grow up and get some self-control. But reading that article a few years ago, for the first time ever, those assumptions were challenged. I went and saw a psychiatrist and I got diagnosed with ADHD and I have some medication. My goodness, the difference it has made to my life is monumental. Morgan can tell with a conversation whether I’ve forgotten my medication or not. That one detail reframed everything, brought clarity into my life.
In Mark 15, the torn curtain is that kind of detail. It brings clarity to Jesus’s death. It explains what Jesus’s death achieves. We’re going to zoom in on the curtain. There’s some background and some context that we need to understand before we get to the curtain in Mark chapter 15. Here’s the plan for how we’re going to get there. First, we’re going to look backwards at the burning curtain and the nostalgic curtain, and then we’ll see the destroyed curtain in Mark 15.
The Burning Curtain
Right back in the beginning of the Bible, in Genesis, we read about God creating the whole world and creating people. He creates Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve have unrestricted access to God. They’re living alongside God in the Garden of Eden. They’re in God’s presence. Within that relationship, Adam and Eve have a choice to make. Option A, they can trust God and live how he wants. Or option B, they can reject God and instead live how they want. The consequences for option B, and they know this, is death and separation from God, going outside of God’s life-giving presence. Adam and Eve choose option B. They reject God. In God’s kindness and his justice, he sends them outside the Garden of Eden, outside of God’s presence. They no longer have unrestricted access to God.
This is another part of the Bible that might seem familiar to some of us, but there’s a part of this story that we often skip over or pause before we get to. Here it is from Genesis 3:
So the Lord God banished them from the Garden of Eden, and he sent Adam out to cultivate the ground from which he had been made. After sending them out, the Lord God stationed mighty cherubim to the east of the Garden of Eden, and he placed a flaming sword that flashed back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life. Genesis 3:23-24
Do you remember that bit? God stations some cherubim, some angels, as guards, and he places this flaming sword that’s flashing back and forth. If you’re anything like me and you’ve played your fair share of video games throughout your life, imagining some angels and some flashing swords actually probably isn’t that hard to imagine. But even if you can’t, the implication is obvious. If someone tries to get back into the garden, tries to get back into God’s presence, the flashing flaming sword will put a stop to that.
At the gates of the Garden of Eden, there is a living curtain of fire, a self-inflicted barrier that’s blocking people from being with God in his presence.
At the gates of Eden, there is a burning curtain between God and humanity. This burning curtain shows that the way to God’s presence is closed. We can’t force our way through.
The Nostalgic Curtain
I wonder what makes you feel the most nostalgic at the moment. What takes you back? Reminds you of a moment or a season in better days gone past? Maybe it’s some food. Maybe it’s a song. Maybe it’s a smell or a person or a hobby. I wonder what fills you with those nostalgic feelings.
A few years ago, one of my friends had a birthday party at the all-you-can-eat Pizza Hut in Windsor. There’s not many of those left anymore. Stepping into there is just like stepping into a time machine. The food is seriously overpriced. But you’re not there for the food. You’re there for the experience. You’re there for the feelings. The texture of those plastic cups, you know what I’m talking about, and the warmth of the tongs under the heaters, and the eclectic tiles, and the sticky seats, and the abandoned salad bar, and the ice cream machine, and the jelly cubes. It’s so nostalgic. It just draws me back into driving to Penrith Pizza Hut with my family back in the 90s. I wonder what makes you feel that nostalgia.
As the Bible story progresses from the start at Genesis, we come to this true story where God rescues his people from Egypt. Because he loves his people, God wants to set up a way to be present with his people again in a limited way. It can’t be like how it was in the Garden of Eden. He wants to give his people just a glimpse of his presence. God tells his people to build a tabernacle, like a portable temple, and then later on a temple building. God is going to share a glimpse of his presence right in the center of the temple in the most holy place. Imagine a Wi-Fi hotspot. It’s like that, a God hotspot right in the middle of the temple where he’s most present. Then, just once a year, the high priest is allowed to go in and be with God. That is God’s kind and generous plan.
But God didn’t just say, “Go to Bunnings, go to IKEA, you get to pick out the color scheme, you get to pick out the designs however you want.” He tells his people all the nitty-gritty specific details about how to build the tabernacle and the temple because he wants them to be nostalgic. He wants the tabernacle and the temple to remind people of the Garden of Eden. All the furniture and all the tools and all the walls and all the curtains were decorated with plants and with trees and with cherubim, those angel guards. Let me show you an example. This is from 1 Kings chapter 6. This one’s about the temple building.
Solomon decorated all the walls of the inner sanctuary and the main room with carvings of cherubim, palm trees, and open flowers. Then he made four-sided doorposts of wild olive wood for the entrance to the temple. These doors were decorated with carvings of cherubim, palm trees, and open flowers—all overlaid evenly with gold. 1 Kings 6:29, 33, 35
Can you see? This is designed to look like, it’s designed to feel like a garden, the garden where God and his people used to live together. Of course, it’s similar for the curtain that blocks the way to the most holy place. Here it is from Exodus chapter 26.
For the inside of the tabernacle, make a special curtain of finely woven linen, decorated with blue, purple, and scarlet thread and with skillfully embroidered cherubim. Hang this curtain on gold hooks attached to four posts of acacia wood. Overlay the posts with gold and set them in four silver bases. This curtain will separate the Holy Place from the Most Holy Place. Exodus 26:31-33
Can you see what’s happening here? The curtain that blocks the way to the most holy place has these cherubim, these angel guards on it, just like the angel guards that block the way to Eden.
It was designed this way by God to be nostalgic, to remind his people of that glorious time where humanity could live alongside God in his presence, and to remind his people of that terrible moment where humanity turned our backs on God.
In the center of the temple, there is a nostalgic curtain between God and humanity. The nostalgic curtain shows the way that God’s presence is still closed. And it wasn’t always like that.
The Destroyed Curtain
Now with that in mind, we can fast forward to Mark chapter 15 where a nostalgic curtain is hanging in the temple building as Jesus is crucified nearby. There’s a curtain there that’s still blocking the way to God’s presence. It’s a curtain designed to constantly remind God’s people of the joy and the disaster of Eden. It’s a curtain that entirely symbolizes the self-inflicted separation between humanity and our God. What is the first thing that happens after Jesus breathes his last? The curtain is destroyed. The barrier is destroyed.
Notice from verse 38, the curtain destruction seems to defy physics. It’s ripped in half from top to bottom. Before I was a minister, I was a solar energy engineer. I went to New South Wales Uni, studied engineering. In first year, I didn’t have to do Physics 1A or 1B. I had to do Higher Physics 1A and 1B. It was by far the hardest subject in my whole degree. In the final exam for Higher Physics 1B, I got 24%. The exam was so hard, I think half the cohort failed with me. The exam was so hard that the lecturers apologized and let us all do another one. That’s how hard that final exam was. I reset it. I barely scraped by. P’s make degrees.
It’s been a while since I’ve been immersed in the science and engineering world, but I think I can confidently say that it doesn’t make sense for a super tall, super thick, embroidered curtain hanging in a highly restricted part of the temple to be ripped from top to bottom by someone at the exact moment that Jesus dies. That doesn’t make sense. My physics lecturer wouldn’t like that. He would say that that doesn’t make sense at all. It doesn’t sit nicely in the realm of science. That’s because this is clearly a God moment. God is the one that rips the curtain in half. It’s from top to bottom, from God to us. It’s God’s effort, not our own.
The barrier to God’s presence has been removed because of Jesus’s death. The self inflicted distance in our relationship between us and God has been closed because of Jesus’s death.
Here’s how. Adam and Eve’s rejection of God in the Garden of Eden wasn’t unique. The Bible’s very clear that every person is guilty of rejecting God. Every person is guilty of not living up to his standards. Every person has self-inflicted relational distance with God. Every person is a dirty sinner. Yet God created us and God loves us and God says that we’re precious to him. He wants our relationship to him to be restored. But he can’t just let us off the hook. Just like, “Ah, forget about it. It’s fine.” Because he is good and he is just. He wouldn’t be a God worth following if he just let everyone off. His solution is to send his son Jesus to live the perfect life that we could never live and to suffer and die in our place so that my sin and yours can be dealt with and forgiven.
One of the songs that I love to sing to my daughter at bedtime is a song called “How Deep the Father’s Love.” There’s a line in that song that really captures this truth. Here it is: “It was my sin that held him there until it was accomplished.” Jesus went to the cross for me. Jesus endured all the slander and all the abuse for my sake. On the cross, Jesus was thinking of me. Jesus took God’s wrath, wrath that brought darkness over the whole land so that I don’t have to take it. Jesus died so that I might live.
Jesus died so that the temple curtain could be destroyed. Jesus died so that now and forever my relationship with God can be restored. Jesus died so that I can have real and lasting hope in a world so desperately looking for it. It’s true for me. If you follow Jesus, it’s true for you. If you don’t yet follow Jesus, it can be true for you. Anyone can come to Jesus. Anyone can put their trust in him and receive this gift of forgiveness. I wonder if you noticed as Monica was reading out the strange way that this part of the story ends in verse 39. The first person to believe that Jesus really is the son of God, he really is the savior, is a Roman officer, an enemy of God’s people. Anyone can come to Jesus, even you. The destroyed curtain shows that the way to God’s presence is now open through Jesus’s death for us.
What This Means For You
This Easter weekend, can I encourage you to remember the brutality and the beauty of the cross? Let it wash over you and refresh you and fill your heart with thankfulness. Jesus died for you because he loves you and you’re precious to him. He thinks you’re infinitely valuable. Let that truth fill your tank, overflow you with joy and thankfulness.
Jesus died so that the temple curtain could be destroyed. Jesus died so that now and forever my relationship with God can be restored.
This Easter weekend, remember that the destruction of the temple curtain was for you. You were far from God. You were distant and separated. But now you have been drawn near. You’ve been brought home. You’ve been accepted and adopted into the family. If you don’t yet follow Jesus, then this Easter weekend, make sure you sign up for Alpha. Be here. It really is the best place to explore faith and meaning. Of course, I’m keen to see some of you tonight at Good Friday. Keen to see the rest of you on Sunday to hear what happens next in the story.
Let’s pray together.
Heavenly Father, it was my sin that held him there until it was accomplished. Thank you for the Lord Jesus. Thank you for his love for us. Thank you for his perfect life, his sacrificial death. Thank you that the temple curtain was destroyed and that anyone can come straight to you. Please, Father, this weekend, would you refresh us? Would you fill up our tanks? Would you overflow us with joy and thankfulness? This Easter weekend, would you help us to remember and understand more and more deeply what the temple curtain’s destruction means for us and what it teaches us about the cross. We pray all of this in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.