What was the most sacred place that you have ever been in? The kind of place where awe and reverence for God were experienced, a place that was set apart from all other places, a holy place. You know, as I tried to answer that question myself I kept drawing blanks. There have been a lot of awe inspiring places like Notre Dame Cathedral in Montreal or the mountain ridges of the Yukon or the wonder of the light in the sky at daybreak that seems to breathe promise. But the most sacred place I could remember has been in the presence of other people as we together discovered the presence and reality of God?s holiness and grace. I remember praying with a woman in my office for healing and to both of our amazements it occurred right there and then and we were filled a sense of awe and worship at God?s grace and presence. I can remember a time of sitting in a friends living room and hearing of how someone had come to a place of faith in Christ and was selling his cabin, traps, fishing nets and moving back to town where the people were so that he could be a Christian there among them. I remember a time of decision in my own life where I cried out to God in the midst of uncertain circumstances and declared Him to be my God, whether I stayed or went, whether to do this or to do that?He is my God and I will seek after Him. These were the most sacred places that I could remember. Two things contributed to the sense of the sacred, my conscious awareness that I am in the presence of God in some . . .

What was the most sacred place that you have ever been in? The kind of place where awe and reverence for God were experienced, a place that was set apart from all other places, a holy place. You know, as I tried to answer that question myself I kept drawing blanks. There have been a lot of awe inspiring places like Notre Dame Cathedral in Montreal or the mountain ridges of the Yukon or the wonder of the light in the sky at daybreak that seems to breathe promise. But the most sacred place I could remember has been in the presence of other people as we together discovered the presence and reality of God?s holiness and grace. I remember praying with a woman in my office for healing and to both of our amazements it occurred right there and then and we were filled a sense of awe and worship at God?s grace and presence. I can remember a time of sitting in a friends living room and hearing of how someone had come to a place of faith in Christ and was selling his cabin, traps, fishing nets and moving back to town where the people were so that he could be a Christian there among them. I remember a time of decision in my own life where I cried out to God in the midst of uncertain circumstances and declared Him to be my God, whether I stayed or went, whether to do this or to do that?He is my God and I will seek after Him. These were the most sacred places that I could remember. Two things contributed to the sense of the sacred, my conscious awareness that I am in the presence of God in some unique way and the amplification of that as I experience the moment with other people. This morning I pray that this will be a sacred place for you as these two very things occur and reflect to you the wonder of God?s love for you and the glory of Who He is.

Let?s look at a few verses of Scripture which will direct us, verses that were meant to help a Jewish mind move through Old Testament images and discover the riches they pointed to. Turn with me to Hebrews 10: 19- 25?

I. The Wonder of God Is That He Chooses the Way of Discovery For Us.
Did you see the imagery in those first three verses? They present a picture of the high priest performing his sacred duty in the temple just once a year on the Day of Atonement. He would take the blood of the sacrificed goat, blood that represented the life of the animal, and walk around the edge of a massive curtain that separated the room into two parts. The curtain served as a sort of demarcation point, on the one side was where priests did their regular duties but on the inner side was the place that belonged especially to God. The high priest would take the blood from the slain animal and go into this sacred place and there he would sprinkle the blood on a wooden chest, overlaid with gold, called the arc of the covenant. The priest; the sacrifice; the curtain; the sprinkling of blood; the ceremonial washing of the priest?all of these were the ways in which God had directed the people to come to Him. All this was but symbol or picture of what God was about to do through Jesus Christ. Jesus was the fulfillment of the High Priest, Jesus was the also the sacrifice, the blood was His blood, the body of Jesus was the curtain which separated man from God, a curtain which was ripped in two from the top to the bottom, both literally and figuratively at the time of His death on the cross. What is it that all this imagery is trying to tell us about the way which God has chosen for us to come into His presence, the most sacred place on earth? In essence it is as though God were trying to help us see a disease within us that desperately needs to be treated. It?s like the story of Birke Nigatu. She was just four years old when they first began to see a reddish spot on her skin. Her family tried a number of solutions from sorcery to ceremonies of cleansing but nothing worked. Eventually they gave up trying to find a way to heal her, for the next ten years she lived in increasing isolation. Birke had a disease called leprosy and neither she nor her family knew what to do about it. Leprosy damages the nerve endings causing a numbness so that people cannot feel it when they?ve been injured, wounds are frequent, infection dominates. Sin is like that in all of us, we don?t even see it until we recognize the insensitivity it generates. Our spirits are dead as we come into this world, we easily trespass against God and don?t feel a thing. It is why God has prescribed a way in which we can be healed from the deadness of our spirit, not only so that we no longer be unaware of sin but so that being healed we can come freely, naturally, boldly into His presence. By God?s grace Birke eventually found the African Leprosy Rehab Training hospital, she was cured of her leprosy and now is the chair of Ethiopian National Association of Ex-Leprosy Patients. God has prescribed the blood of Jesus Christ as that unique treatment for the washing away of sins isolating effect of man from God. By the action of our faith the blood of Jesus Christ restores the spirit of man to rightly sense the truth of God?s revealed Word, to feel the presence of the Holy Spirit and the life of Christ within us. In fact God even uses the death of Jesus Christ to change your identity, by taking the disease of your sin and putting that upon Christ and at the same time taking the righteousness of Jesus and embedding that in your newly alive spirit, He changes your identity from self made man to child of God. Then he says, ?Come confidently to this sacred place of My presence. Enter through the torn curtain of My Son, given for you.

II. The Wonder of Man Is That the Discovery of the Sacred Occurs in Communion.
There are three invitations as to how we are to experience this communion:

1. Draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith. You can be deeply sincere but that doesn?t make it right, for it is possible to be sincerely wrong. Sincerity needs to be established on that which has worthiness, that which by truth has the power and the glory of God to actually transform me. Communion with God is a cleansing process, first for the forgiveness of sin unto salvation and then for the failures of my human nature even after He has transformed the depths of my identity in Christ. You could say that every time God meets with us in a deep way, He instructs us to ?wash our hands before we eat?, clean our consciences in Christ and then come to receive.

2. Hold fast the confession of our hope. The word hope is from the Greek word ?elpis? referring to the expectations we have according to what Christ has promised. It can refer to that place where you find refuge, a place where in the upheaval of your world there is peace. The thing is as a Christian you already know about the promises of Christ, that?s why it?s called the confession of your hope, but look at what you are to do?Hold it fast. When you speak to God, when you draw near to Him, speak to Him of your hope, your expectation, your need of Him for a refuge.

3. Consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds. This is the community of communion. We can enter into the experience of being in a sacred place when we assemble together and spur one another on to love well and to serve well. This is often an unplanned experience, a time when someone shares their struggle and others gather about them. It can be a time when we declare our faith for the first time and the entire assembly is moved by the awe of God?s working in their life. The caution is to not forsake, abandon or leave in a helpless condition?the assembling of the church. How easy it is to conclude that we will never be missed or that the church won?t be affected by our absence, or the work of Christ in the church won?t be altered at all by my not being there, or that I won?t be affected at all by not being connected to the body in worship and serving one another, or that I really don?t need to prepare for the return of Christ.
The discovery of the sacred occurs in communion, a communion with God where I come in sincerity and transparency before Him and it is also a communion with others who also have life where before there was numbness, who once had no hope but now in Christ, live in sacred places.

Rev. Spence Laycock pastors at Church of the Open Bible, Ponoka, Alberta, Canada.
www.churchoftheopenbible.ab.ca