A New Season
Baseball season is here. Sure it might be the cooler part of the season, but soon we can look forward to the signs of summer. Longer sun and warmer days! Some years that’s better than others. Baseball starting is a big deal. It signals a new season, a new beginning. I find it fitting that it usually coincides around the Easter season. After all Easter is the biggest of opening days! Just look:
The Tomb is opened – And behold, there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. Matthew 28:2
The path to heaven is opened – We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.
Romans 6:4
What a comforting thought. We are no longer closed off from God, shut in the grave and locked away from heaven and our father. We are not left for dead. We are not left behind. One of the most interesting a part of the Holy Week accounts to me is the shredding of the curtain in the temple. It is recorded in Matthew 27 – And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit. And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. This was not your normal window curtain. This was a 60 foot high, 30 foot long, and four inch thick curtain. It was meant to be a moveable wall. It blocked the Holy of Holies, the place in the Temple that God claimed as His own, from where the people were. No one but the High Priest was allowed back there and he could only go once a year. So what does it mean when this tore in two? The same thing the open tomb means. It is opening day. We can now enter the Holy of Holies through Jesus. Hebrews 10:19-20 says that the faithful enter into the sanctuary by the “blood of Jesus, by the new and living way which he opened for us through the veil, that is, through his flesh.” Here we see the image of Jesus’ flesh being ripped and torn for us just as He was tearing the veil for us. The temple always foreshadowed things that would come. It stood for what God promised his people. No longer would God be hidden away from His people. The Holy of Holies is empty now, just like the tomb, God is with His people! No longer would we have to approach him with sacrifices, instead Jesus, our High Priest, opened the way forward for us. God’s new temple is your heart.
So as we go forward in this season, To the Tigers – Bless you boys,
To the people of God,
God has blessed you, and He will continue to bless you, until he calls you home to the mansions of heaven. Through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ; given and shed for you!
-Pastor Dan