For many Christ followers, Good Friday is merely the warm-up act to the main event; Easter Sunday. But I believe there is tremendous “soul-filling” value for leaders in focusing on a key moment in the Good Friday narrative.
It starts by looking at two critical “walks” that God took with his people.
The first walk took place in the Garden of Eden, where Genesis records how God would walk in the garden with Adam “in the cool of the day.” Imagine how much God must have enjoyed those times, simply strolling with His people, just doing life together.
But the next “walk” we read about takes place in a very different reality. God was about to lead Moses and the Israelites on a 40-year walk through the wilderness. But the presence of sin meant that God would not be able to enjoy the kind of communion he enjoyed in Eden.
Instead, God instructed Moses to:
Make a curtain of blue, purple and scarlet yarn and finely twisted linen, with cherubim worked into it by a skilled craftsman…The curtain will separate the Holy Place from the Most Holy Place. (Exodus 26: 31–33)
That curtain came to symbolize the separation between God and his people.
But on Good Friday, everything changed. At the moment where our Savior cried out, “It is finished!” we read that:
At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. (Matthew 26:51)
It was as if God reached down out of heaven, took hold of that symbol of separation and ripped it apart with his bare hands! In that moment God was declaring, “No more separation! With the sacrifice of My beloved Son, communion is restored. We will once again walk together, just as we did back in Eden.”
As followers of Christ we live in the power of the resurrection, making Easter Sunday a day completely worthy of celebration.
But on Good Friday, let me urge you to take time to remember the ripping apart of the veil. For it was in that moment that God declared for all time that you and I would walk together with Him, “in the cool of the day.”.
For Christian leaders, that’s the walk that keeps us going
