Behind the curtain . . .

The "middle wall of partition" between Jew and Gentile, the circumcision and the uncircumcision, is literally the marker whereby you can identify where you are dispensationally.

“But there’s another wall,” says Jordan. “Even on Israel’s side, on the right side of the wall of blessing of the middle wall of partition, there was a wall beyond the middle wall of partition. God made it abundantly clear that it was impossible for sinful man just to come into the presence of Him, the Holy One of Israel.

“Even though they lived on the right side, and were not excluded as the uncircumcision were, they couldn’t just walk in to the presence of God because they, too, were sons of Adam.

A great illustration of that is in Exodus 33: [18] And he said, I beseech thee, shew me thy glory.
[19] And he said, I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the LORD before thee; and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy.
[20] And he said, Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live.

“Moses says, ‘Show me your presence, show me your glory,’ and God says, ‘Okay, I’m going to take my glory and let it pass right in front of you; I’m going to let you see it.’

“It’s, ‘Boy, I just got all those blessings but wait, there’s a wall. I can get so much, but I can’t see His face.’ God put up a wall, even between Him and Israel.

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“When God gave the tabernacle and is going to live in it (later on in the temple), He gives Moses the dimensions of it. It’s going to be a tent. There’s going to be an opening and there’s going to be an altar. Then there’s a laver to wash. There’s another little building inside and in that is the table of shewbread and the altar of incense and the candlestick.

“The priests would make the sacrifice, put the blood upon the altar, and they’d go in there and wash and come and minister, but there’s another wall. There’s the Ark of the Covenant, the ‘mercy seat,’ but there’s a wall inside.

“He called the outer part the ‘court’ and the inside the ‘holy place,’ and then there was the Holiest of Holies. And He says, ‘My presence is going to manifest itself right there. My glory is going to dwell right there.’ But when it does, He puts up a curtain that keeps them out!

“There’s another wall where they can’t go in. In fact, the only time the priests go in here, they work in here all year long, but they don’t go in there. Only one man in Israel can go in there and he can only go in there one time a year and he has to go in with blood.

“The reason he’s going in there is to put blood on the mercy seat. He’s not going in there just to say, ‘Woo, I went in and saw God today!’ He’s going in there to apply the blood on the mercy seat. That mercy seat, that Ark of the Covenant, was a little box. It had a lid on it. It’s sort of like a cedar chest.

“You know, your grandma had a cedar chest at the end of the bed where she had all the blankets and stuff in.

“In that box, there were the Ten Commandments; the stones that Moses got on the mountain from God. There was the ‘little pot of manna’ and then there was Aaron’s rod. This is why it’s called the Ark of the Testimony.

“The problem with that thing is what have they done with the commandments? They broke them because this is the copy.

“Here’s the glory of God up here. The glory of God is simply the manifestation of the character of God. It’s in a blazing light. In Ezekiel 1, He says the appearance of that glory is like a bow in the day that it rains.

“The light was like a rainbow. You know who had the original coat of many colors? The Lord Jesus Christ did when He walked in the Garden with Adam. Adam had on a garment of light and that refracted light of colors, and the glory of God, shone out of there from that place. But the problem was there’s the broken law in here, and by the law is the knowledge of sin.

“So, once a year they would go in and put that blood on that mercy seat and you’ve got the blood covering over as an atonement, a covering for their souls, that stood between the glory of God and the sinfulness of man.

“That thing is in that little room where God’s glory is and God puts everybody else out. Exodus 40: [20] And he took and put the testimony into the ark, and set the staves on the ark, and put the mercy seat above upon the ark:
[21] And he brought the ark into the tabernacle, and set up the vail of the covering, and covered the ark of the testimony; as the LORD commanded Moses.
[22] And he put the table in the tent of the congregation, upon the side of the tabernacle northward, without the vail.

“That’s talking about where He puts the furniture. Within the veil He puts the ark. That thing was about a foot thick and it’s made out of animal skins and it took, according to history books, 300 people because it was so heavy. I can’t imagine 300  people getting in that little space, but the idea was it was big, heavy and bulky and it was designed to keep out any light and any people. And it separated the priests.

“Exodus 30:10 says, ‘And Aaron shall make an atonement upon the horns of it once in a year with the blood of the sin offering of atonements: once in the year shall he make atonement upon it throughout your generations: it is most holy unto the LORD.’

“Only one time a year could one man, the high priest, go in there. The only one that ever went in that room that wasn’t a high priest was Moses. God let Moses go in but after Aaron starts it was nobody but the high priest.

“If you went in there and you weren’t supposed to, you know what happened to you? Yeah, he said ‘thou shalt not add thereto, nor diminish from it.’ You could lose your life!

“The reason the two sons of Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, got killed is they put strange fire on the altar. Strange fire meant fire God didn’t light. They got there one day, they got up late, they didn’t have the fire burning, and they went over and said, ‘The fire’s out here, we’ll fix it,’ and took their Bic lighters out (I’m embellishing, you understand) and lit it themselves and they dropped dead. God killed them. He didn’t want strange, inappropriate fire. He had to be the one who started it.

“You see, you couldn’t go in there all the time. He could only go in there once a year and Leviticus 16 is ‘the day of atonement’ in Israel where that one time a year they sent the scapegoat away, they slew the goat, and he, the high priest, would take the blood and put it in and cover up.

"He did it once a year because one day the Lord Jesus Christ is going to come and fulfill the picture and once for all make the sacrifice.”