Dear Pilgrim, dare you walk by a new and living Way?

Dear Pilgrim, I see you are still here in the courtyard of the tabernacle. Like the lame man who was begging at the Beautiful Gate, I see you also have come into the courtyard and you are walking and jumping and praising God for His healing touch upon your life, and just as the crowds were filled with wonder and amazement at what happened to the lame man, so too they respond to what the Lord has done in you in the same way. May His Name be praised! What a wonderful Saviour is Jesus! To have our sins forgiven through the pouring out of His blood, to be washed clean in the water of His word….what more could we want? How many people have spent so much time rejoicing and exulting in the truth that they now have peace with God, that they have remained forever in the courtyard?

Oh, dear precious Pilgrim…look up again! The tabernacle…we have not even entered into it yet!

“I will put my dwelling-place among you, and I will not abhor you. I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be my people. I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt so that you would no longer be slaves to the Egyptians; I broke the bars of your yoke and enabled you to walk with heads held high” 

The Lord walked with His people in the Garden of Eden in the cool of the day – but the only time we read of this is when the heads of Adam and Eve were already held down in shame as a result of their sin and they hid from the Lord. Yet His desire is to walk among His people, His people walking with their heads held high, their fellowship with Him restored. And for those who enter through the narrow Gate of the tabernacle, who accept the sacrifice made once and for all at the bronze altar, who have their feet washed at the bronze laver, fellowship is made possible once again.

But Pilgrim, do not hold back, for here in the courtyard it is not possible to experience this intimacy of relationship. Walk with me into the tabernacle – to the place of gold! The gold table of the bread of the Presence, the gold lampstand, the gold altar of incense. And then notice the curtain torn in two from top to bottom at the far end of this room, and dare to walk into the Most Holy Place, by a new and living way. See the golden ark of the covenant, where the Spirit of the living God will write upon the tablet of your heart, provide you daily with all you need, and remind you that you have been chosen of God, and appointed to go and bear fruit that will last. See the golden cherubim with their wings outstretched above the mercy seat of Christ, sprinkled with the precious blood of Christ, the place where God met with Moses and spoke with him. Notice that the only light in this Most Holy Place is the shekinah glory of God Himself. And as you kneel here and meet with God, gazing into the glory of God in the face of Christ, you will be amazed at how despite your head being bowed low before Him, He tenderly lifts it to enable you to walk with your head held high.

“Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into His image with ever-increasing glory,which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit”.