God with us

Thankfully God is not some impersonal power far away.
His name is not merely The Universe, although this name does reflect well that there is something higher and greater than us.
This something is a Person though.
The bible tells us that God exists of three persons, and yet He is one.
These are The Father, the Son which is Jesus Christ, and The Holy Spirit.
Maybe they can be best described as the three faces of God.
Like a cube has different sides and yet it’s one object.
And yet it’s not the same because these three Persons interact with each other and seem to have different roles.
Yet their nature is the same. They love the same. They are holy the same.
There is one God. Yet they are three Persons.

In the biblebook Exodus God meets with Moses and tells him to make a tabernacle so He could dwell among them.
God always wanted to dwell with people and He still does.
In him we live and move and have our being says the book of Acts in the New Testament.
Yet there seem to be different levels in which we can encounter and experience God.
To a degree we all experience him no matter if we believe in him because we exist through him and in him.
In Genesis it says that the breath of God is in all living beings.
So when we are alive we experience God. Just through living. Just through being.
It’s not even possible to be away from his presence.
He is always with us.

That does not mean we are always aware of him.
Neither does it automatically mean that we have a personal relationship with him where we share our lives with him and surrender to him, to his lordship.
Yet He is good and never leaves us.
It seems to be the Holy Spirit who always works on drawing us to God.
Who gives us an awareness of “something more”, like when we marvel at the beauty of nature.
Or when we look into the face of a newborn child.
He won’t stop doing that as long as we live.
He won’t stop blessing us with the gift of live itself.
Until…yes until we die.
And then we might experience even more of his glory, of his goodness.
Depending on wether we accepted him or not.
His love never changes.
We choose our own destination though. He doesn’t do that for us.
He doesn’t violate our will.

See also “Bride of Christ”.

So we can come closer.
We can have a relationship with God and experience his love and guiding in our lives.
His wisdom for decisions.
His nearness so we never feel alone.
His healing for our body and soul.

It starts with entering the outer court.
This is the place of washing and were sacrifices were made.
The sacrifices were a picture, a foreshadowing, of the sacrife Jesus would make for us with his own life.

See “Justice and forgiveness” for why Jesus had to die.

Once we accept the sacrifice of Jesus we are made clean.
The dirt of our sin is erased, we have been given a new heart (see also “Free Gift”)
And now we can approach God boldly without cringing in shame and fear.

So we enter the holy place.
(don’t stay in the outer court, we have access to come close!)
That’s were relationship starts.
Relationship with Jesus and the Holy Spirit.
There are a table with bread which is a picture of Jesus who is called the bread of life.
It’s his body that is the bread which sustains us when we eat it.
This is symbolical language and it simply means that we accepted Jesus sacrifice of his body for us.
Like with any gift, you have to accept it in order to receive it.
In the holy place we meditate on the meaning of the cross.
We partake of every benefit it can give us by consciously receiving it again daily.
It’s called communion. Through it we experience his presence and nearness.
Through spending time with him we receive more and more healing and we become more like him.

Read also “Beloved”.

There’s also a candlestand with seven arms which speaks of the Holy Spirit that stands before the throne of God and consists of seven spirits.
Jesus is called the Light of the World because the Spirit of God is on and in him.

“The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him,
the Spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the Spirit of counsel and might,
the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord.”

Isaiah 11:2

We get to partake of all these aspects of his Spirit when we draw near.
Keith Miller wrote an amazing book about this called “The Seven-Fold Spirit of God”.
You can find it on amazon.

But that is not all.
Between the holy place and the most holy place was a most sacret veil.
It separated the two places and only the high priest was allowed to enter past it once a year.
The high priest in the old testament of the bible is a picture of Jesus.
He is now our high priest.
Only through him we can enter.
However we don’t just have access once a year.
When Jesus died on the cross the veil in the tempel was torn from top to bottom.
It was very thick and would have been impossible to tear with the strenght of human hands.
But God himself tore it in pieces.
Saying: you now have access, the barrier is gone.
You see Jesus was that veil.
His body was torn on the cross so we could have access to God the Father.
To a degree God had been showing himself on the earth through his Spirit and through human appearances, probably of Jesus.
(eg read the encounters of Abraham in Genesis and Moses in Exodus to whom God appeared in human form or in the form of a “messenger” which is usually translated with “angel” but was probably Jesus because he accepted worship and angels don’t do that)
And in the spirit-realm prophets had encounters with God on the throne.
But now access is granted to all people.
All who go through the door which is Jesus.
Our sin was a barrier because God is holy and good and can’t look upon evil.
And since we all have evil inside of us we needed a Saviour. A mediator.