The Sanctum Sanctorum Of God’s Presence
Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh.
And having a high priest over the house of God; let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water.
Hebrews 10:19-22
He has found something so utterly satisfying that he loses his former attraction to the world and the things around him.
The sacred Scriptures give us a great illustration of this marvelous truth in the Old Testament tabernacle. The book of Hebrews goes to great lengths to show the New Testament parallel to the Old Testament tabernacle.
Read and Learn More Bible Verses about the Presence of God
The Old Testament tabernacle was divided into several rooms. In the first room, the “sanctuary,” were candlesticks and shewbread.
A veil divided the next room, and behind was called the “holiest of all.” Sometimes it was called the “holy of holies” and sometimes the “sanctum.” The “sanctum sanctorum” —the holiest of all.
The Old Testament priest could come to the outer court and the holy place. However, inside the holiest of all, the holy of holies, they could not come.
Only one man could enter that holy of holies, and only once a year. Then he came with blood, which he sprinkled upon the mercy seat where the fire burned.
Scripture teaches us that the death of Jesus was the rending of His flesh, which was the tearing of that veil that separated the people from the holy of holies. Now all of God’s people can come into God’s presence.
What I most particularly want to emphasize in this holy of holies is the seat. There was a sort of cedar chest affair.
And it was plated outside and inside with pure gold. Then there was a lid on that chest also made of pure gold with a collar around that lid with the four corners sticking up a little to give it artistic beauty.
On that lid were two figures of the cherubim, holy creatures, made of pure gold. They stretched their wings, and their wingtips touched.
Between the wingtips burned and glowed the awesome holy fire, which the sages have called the “Shekinah,” meaning the “presence” or the “face.”
And that was God. That is why the careless crowd could not see it. They could not come in.
That is also why the average rank and file of the priesthood could not come in. Only the high priest could go in there.
And with averted face look on that awesome presence once a year while he held in his hand a basin of blood, saying, “O Presence, I ought to die.
O Shekinah. O God, I ought to die, but I bring this blood as evidence that although I ought to die another has died for me.”
This is the holy presence I want to focus on and why so many Christians are shut away from it.
I read recently and carefully checked again to know that the words of the Old Testament translated as “presence” and “face” are the same word.
The face of God. “In thy presence is fullness of joy,” as David says in Psalm 16:11.
And you find all through the psalms the worshiping man of God celebrating his entrance into the presence and looking forward to the presence of God.
And he talks about the face of God. And that passage for instance: “When thou saidst, Seek ye my face; my heart said unto thee, Thy face, LORD, will I seek” (Ps. 27:8).
That same word is “presence.” “In thy presence is fullness of joy. Thy presence, Lord, will I seek.
When my heart said unto thee, seek my face, my heart responded, thy face, thy presence, Lord, will I seek.” It is the same.
What I am trying to present here is that there is an unseen presence, which is God, that holy one, that one in the midst of us, which theology sets forth in the doctrine of divine eminence.
It says that that holy presence once localized between the wings of the cherubim is now wherever His creation is.
There is a difference between a presence and a manifest presence. It is a fine difference between a man’s presence and his face.
The same word and the same relative meaning, but not quite. If a man comes into the room and keeps his back turned to you, you can say, “He was in my presence for half an hour,” or “I was in his presence for half an hour.”
But you do not have much fellowship with a man who keeps his back turned to you. It is when he turns his face to you that fellowship begins.
There is a difference between God being present and God’s face being manifest to His people.
Israel knew that God was in the midst of them, but the High Priest was able to go in with blood and look upon God’s face only once a year.
And then come back out and pull back a heavy veil. It took some men to push it aside. That veil was there to shut out the unqualified from that holy face.
Then, when Jesus our Lord died when He gave up the ghost, the veil of the temple was torn from top to bottom.
God Himself rents it with His finger from the top to the bottom, not from the bottom to the top, where it might have been done by a priest or an enemy.
And it was forever removed. Poor Israel sewed that veil up and used it again, trying to undo what God had done by the death of His Son.
And so they have wandered all these centuries, shut out from the Presence by sewing a veil up again. God was telling the entire world.
“My Son, My eternal Son, by the rending of His flesh and the tearing of the veil has opened the way for you to enter.
Now there is nothing to keep you out of the Holy of Holies, where only a priest could go before; now, all of God’s people can go.”
The Bible teaches that all of God’s presence is everywhere. The Bible teaches that God’s face —God’s realized, manifest, enjoyed presence—may be the precious treasure of all the people of God.
What And Who Is This?
I must talk about God—God the Father, God the Eternal Son, and God the blessed Holy Ghost. And as God reveals Himself, He reveals Himself in nature.
This is the strong, the mighty One. He reveals Himself in the Scripture by various names:
Elohim, Jehovah, Jehovah-Nissi, Jehovah-Jireh, Jehovah-Rapha —and these various names set forth the various facets of His majesty and His glory. He is the one that captures our adoration and praise.
David said, “One thing have I desired of the LORD, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the LORD, and to inquire in his temple” (Ps. 27:4).
In the book of Hebrews, it is beauty; it is grace. One translation says, “The grace of the Lord.” Anything graceful is beautiful. And the person of God is beautiful.
And this beautiful, awesome presence was dwelling there, and the priest could push in past that veil once a year when nobody else could.
Is it ever possible to overdo the talking about the glory of Christ? About that presence as revealed in Christ?
This Lord Jesus Christ, this wonderful, loving, self-sacrificing Lord Jesus, who is a star and a sun and a light.
And as revealed by the Holy Spirit in human experience, is unutterably holy and unspeakably adorable.
I am afraid our lukewarmness about the person of Christ is great proof that we do not know very much about Him in personal experience.
I tell you, we cannot keep still about that which we love. That which we love supremely and above all else, we are going to talk about it a lot.
I will never get over it; it is still a delight to me; it is still a pleasure I cannot get over. I do not try to get over it. I just enjoy it.
This ability to love is one of the few desirable things left in the world and it is tragic how it has been dragged down.
The world has made romantic love to be a strange thing. But the Church has made its love of Jesus Christ to be its supreme fountain of joy. “For me to live is Christ,” said Paul in Philippians 1:21.
It is the nature of love to be enthusiastic to the point of even being a bit of a nuisance about the thing it loves or the one it loves.
If you never mention the Lord in conversation with each other, is it not proof that you are not very concerned about Him?
If in our conversation we do not have impulsive, warm statements to make about our relation to the Lord, can we not properly conclude, with charity, that it is because we do not know very much about Him?
You could not talk to David long until the Lord was in his mouth. You could not read anything David wrote for one minute one-half minute or one-quarter minute until you ran into the Lord his God. It was the same with the apostle Paul.
When the Pharisees saw the man that Jesus healed standing among them, they could say nothing. It is hard to refute flesh and-blood evidence.
Certainly, there is always someone to answer any theology that might be presented. Somebody can rationally explain what has just happened.
Somebody has a believable answer. But there is never an answer to your growing faith. There is never any argument that is valid against the glowing, throbbing heart of a man.
I can prove to the young father that his litde baby is only one more baby among millions, but I cannot stand up against the glowing face of the happy, young father.
If a mother looks down upon that baby, it is not going to help her or me or the world to say, ‘You’re looking down in joy on the face of your baby, but don’t you know that 25 years ago?
Your mother looked down on you like that?” Or even back to Eve, when she looked down on Cain and Abel, smiled, and held them in her arms? That does not mean anything to somebody who does not rapturously love someone.
A lot of theology can be brought up to prove that there is something wrong with a man like me who insists on coming into the presence of God and enjoying Him. I know it.
But, before the glowing faces of men and women who have been in the presence, there is a great deal of understanding. As one unknown author has stated:
Show me Thy face—one transient gleam Of loveliness Divine,
And I shall never think or dream
Of other love than Thine.
Why do some stay outside so much?
Why do some people not enjoy the presence of God?
I think it is because of the veil in the way.
“But,” someone might say, “the veil was taken away.”
What Still Hides His Presence
Yes, but we have to deal with two veils. God took one of them away when Christ died on the cross.
There was one veil God put up to keep us out, but He took that away and said, “Come, enter boldly now.” He has taken His veil away.
But there is another veil —a veil that He did not make. It is the closely woven veil of the carnal self.
The sun shines in its brilliance all day, yet a cloud can shut out a city from its rays; just so the veil of self can shut out the face of God. It hides the face of God from the worshiping heart.
I do not hesitate to say that Christians spend their lifetime outside the veil. Though the veil has been rent away and is not there anymore (God has taken away that veil).
We have sewed the veil up with our own busy little hands. We have put up a veil worthy of self-love, self-pity, self-trust, self-admiration, self-content, and these other self-sins.
Within every ransomed breast burns that flame that came from the fire that was before the wings of the cherubim. Our God is a consuming fire.
And that little flame burning in the breast of every redeemed man longs to be reunited with that eternal flame: the fire of His presence. But that little flame of ours is hidden behind the veil of self.
The rank and file do not want to enter beyond the veil of self. It demands a life of holiness to enter.
If I might express it like this: I do not think the members of the Commonwealth all around the world would very much enjoy spending all their time in the presence of the Queen.
Would you? I think everybody would want to bow and go through all the protocols and would be very happy and would talk about it for the rest of their lives.
But I do not think very many would want to live every day in the palace. Then they would have to be on alert all the time.
They would have to be dressed properly, watch their English, and know all the etiquette and procedures of the court.
And it would just be a little too much for the average easygoing citizen to want to do.
You do not always want to stay dressed up; you want to relax and fall apart and put on an old pair of slippers with a tear in the side and be comfortable.
In a similar vein, I think you are not spiritual enough to want to live in His presence because you always have to be at your best.
To be at your best, you have to have the robe of righteousness. You cannot wear the old dungarees or the old, sloppy shirt.
To enter that awesome presence and life means that morally and spiritually, you have to be right. You have to be clean.
That is why the average Christian is perfectly willing to wait for heaven to have the experience of always being in the presence of God.
I think that if the average Christian would tell the truth from the depths of his heart, he would have to admit that being in the presence of God all the time would be a bore.
He would not be able to take it. He wants to relax and go to the world and the flesh, like Adam, and go back to the fleshpots of Egypt.
It’s just a little too much to demand of us, that we gird ourselves, go into the land, and stay there. Yet that is what the Holy Ghost is pleading that we do.
Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace (Heb. 4:16).
Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way.
Which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh; and having a high priest over the house of God.
Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water (Heb. 10:19-22).
The ordinary Christian is satisfied to live just a little removed from the presence of God.
God has always had His David, His Paul, His Stephen, and those who would die to taste what one man calls the piercing sweetness of the love of God.
Getting Beyond The Veil Of Self
So, what can we do now? Briefly, first hold faith in love. This makes a man dear to God. Second, come in full confidence.
Then, third, turn your back on yourself. These three things will go a long way in tearing down that second veil and exposing the soul to the presence of God.
Francois Fenelon (1651—1715) wrote, “Cut and tear and burn and destroy and spare nothing of the old flesh, of the old veil.”
Take away that veil from before your face. God is taking away the one He had up to shut you out.
Now you take the one you had up to shut Him out. Tear, rend, cut, and burn until there is nothing left of the old veil that shuts us out from His presence.
Unfortunately, many Christians settle for less than God’s conscious, manifest presence in their daily walk.
There is a strain of loneliness infecting many Christians, which only the presence of God can cure.
Why do so many Christians shy away from the holy presence of God? God’s face (His realized, manifested, and enjoyed presence) may be the treasure of all God’s people.
The struggle to come and stay in the manifest presence of God is well worth the effort.
The one who breaks through the self-imposed veil will discover a waiting presence that will grace and bless his or her life with the pleasing aroma of adoration and praise for the rest of their earthly days.
Within the Holy Place by Gerhard Tersteegen (1697-1769)
His priest am I, before Him day and night,
Within His Holy Place;
And death, and life, and all things dark and bright,
I spread before His Face.
Rejoicing with His joy, yet ever still,
For silence is my song;
My work to bend beneath
His blessed will, All day, and all night long—
Forever holding with Him converse sweet,
Yet speechless, for my gladness is complete.