God has always wanted to be close to us. It was mankind who chose to separate from Him, through disobedience in the Garden of Eden (Gen. 3). But from that moment, God worked on a plan to restore us to perfect relationship with Him! He spent the rest of the Old Testament bringing that plan to pass.
His amazing plan was to give the most precious thing He had – His only begotten Son – to be our sin substitute.
So as we read the Bible we see that, in spite of our choice to sin, the heart of our Father never stopped crying out for His sons and daughters.
God grieved over mankind for 4000 years. From the moment Adam and Eve sinned, He began looking forward to the day when He could redeem us and that lost fellowship and communion could be restored – through the cross.
Isaiah 48:16-18 says,
God cried out to His people to follow Him and obey Him, because He wanted so much to bless them! He never stopped taking care of mankind, even when they didn’t listen to Him.
Isaiah 65:2 says,
He was reaching out to them, but they couldn’t respond because of their sinful nature. Light has no fellowship with darkness (2 Cor. 6:14). Their spiritual condition denied them access to fellowship with Almighty God. He still loved them, still wanted to help them and guide them and be their all in all.
But He couldn’t reach them. For the most part, they didn’t understand or even know He was there. It was heartbreaking.
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God has always wanted to be close to us. It was mankind who chose to separate from Him, through disobedience in the Garden of Eden (Gen. 3). But from that moment, God worked on a plan to restore us to perfect relationship with Him! He spent the rest of the Old Testament bringing that plan to pass.
His amazing plan was to give the most precious thing He had – His only begotten Son – to be our sin substitute.
So as we read the Bible we see that, in spite of our choice to sin, the heart of our Father never stopped crying out for His sons and daughters.
God grieved over mankind for 4000 years. From the moment Adam and Eve sinned, He began looking forward to the day when He could redeem us and that lost fellowship and communion could be restored – through the cross.
Isaiah 48:16-18 says,
God cried out to His people to follow Him and obey Him, because He wanted so much to bless them! He never stopped taking care of mankind, even when they didn’t listen to Him.
Isaiah 65:2 says,
He was reaching out to them, but they couldn’t respond because of their sinful nature. Light has no fellowship with darkness (2 Cor. 6:14). Their spiritual condition denied them access to fellowship with Almighty God. He still loved them, still wanted to help them and guide them and be their all in all.
But He couldn’t reach them. For the most part, they didn’t understand or even know He was there. It was heartbreaking.
Behind the Veil
During those 4000 years of separation from mankind, the presence of God on earth lived in a box called the Ark of the Covenant. He had to separate Himself because we humans, in our sinful condition, could no longer meet face to face with Him.
The Ark was housed in the tabernacle or the temple, in the center of Jewish life. God still wanted to be in the center of His people’s lives, but He had to stay removed from them, dwelling behind a curtain in the Holy of Holies. From this place He extended mercy to His people when blood was sprinkled once a year on the Day of Atonement (Lev. 16:15-33).
This curtain (or veil) signified that man was separated from God by sin (Is. 59:1-2). Only the high priest was permitted to pass beyond this veil once each year on the Day of Atonement (Ex. 30:10; Heb. 9:7) to enter into God’s presence for all of Israel and make atonement for their sins.
It’s important to note that the separation was because of mankind’s sin. It was never God’s choice. We bore the shame and the bondage of our sin. No matter how hard we tried, we couldn’t do right, we couldn’t cleanse ourselves from our sin nature.
But our Heavenly Father was looking forward to the time when One would come to redeem us. He had a plan all along!
Think about being separated from your loved ones for 4,000 years. That’s the picture of God throughout the Old Testament. He longed for the restoration of the fellowship He used to have with His creation. That’s why He made a plan to redeem us. And what a wonderful plan it turned out to be!
Karen Jensen Salisbury has been in ministry for almost 30 years, and a writer for almost 40. She and her first husband, Brent, traveled as itinerant ministers, and also pioneered two churches in the Northwest.
In 1997, upon Brent's unexpected death, she became Senior Pastor of their church in Boise, Idaho. She raised their sons, Josh and Ryan, through their teenage years into young men on fire for God.
Karen was an instructor at Rhema Bible Training College in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma from 2005 to 2014. In March of 2014 she married businessman Bob Salisbury, and they live in Minneapolis. Now in addition to writing books, Karen travels across the U.S. and overseas, sharing what she has learned about the faithfulness of God through good times and bad.
Her teachings and writings have influenced the lives of hundreds of thousands of people all over the world. Her humor, her never-give-up attitude, her love for God and her strong stand on His Word will bless and inspire you.