KNOCK BEFORE YOUR ENTER

This may seem like a minor point – but could any point be minor when it has to do with Yeshua (Jesus)?  I was listening to a rabbi speaking from Israel yesterday in a class I often join online. He was speaking about the Old Testament High Priest, the cohen gadol, having bells on the hem of his blue garment. The reason he said, presumably from the Talmud, is so that a sound would be made before entering the Holy of Holies on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, that one day each year when he was to offer a sacrifice for all the people of Israel, for the nation as a whole.  The sound of the bells, he said, are like a response to, “Knock before you enter.”

 

He was letting God know that it was he, the high priest, who alone was allowed to enter this holy place of atonement.  Anyone entering there without the sound of the bells would, it was expected, die immediately in God’s holy presence.  Only one man as the high priest was sanctified and anointed for the task of so great an atonement, for the whole nation, for an entire year. 

My thoughts went immediately to Revelation 3:20 which says, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me.”  Here is prophesy fulfilled. Yeshua is letting us know that He is the fulfillment of all the High Priest was to be to Israel. As we are told, “Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Messiah Yeshua” (Hebrews 3:1). And it is He who is doing the knocking, now on our hearts, having been the only Holy One who could both fully enter God’s holy presence and who accomplished the ultimate and final sacrifice. 

This is one more Messianic prophesy in which we can recognize the Messiah in the Tenach, the Older Covenant, hidden in the bells on the high priest’s outer garment.  And as we know, He accomplished that final and holy, though horrible atonement not just for Israel but for the whole world for whosoever would receive it for themselves.  And not for just a year but forever!! 

I believe He knocks not only once for what might be an initial response to Him, to invite Him in to our lives, but a friend doesn’t just come once. They knock to let us know that they are there and wish to come in to our homes to ‘fellowship’ with us.  And so with Yeshua. It is a continual “knocking.” Always wanting us to know Him in a new and more precious and meaningful way… as our High Priest, as just one way to know Him.  So next time you even have a suspicion that He’s knocking, open the Door!