First Love

Voiceover: Welcome to First Love with Dr. Robyn Kassas and Dr. Nathan Kassas, where faith meets real life. In this weekly broadcast, you’ll discover practical and spiritual keys to reclaim God’s story in your life, deepen your relationship with Jesus, and encounter him as your first love, whether for the first time or all over again. No topic is off-limits as we make Jesus real, relevant, and relational. Stay with us, your journey back to first love starts now.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Hello everyone, and welcome back to First Love. My name is Dr. Nathan Kassas, and I have the amazing Dr. Robyn Kassas. Dr. Robyn, how are you today?

Dr. Robyn Kassas: I'm doing fine, thank you. Did you have a good holiday everyone? We sure did.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Yes, it was beautiful. We got to spend time singing and worshipping the fulfillment of all things, Jesus Christ, and also having great fellowship with family and friends.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: That’s the best.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: We’re coming up to the new year, and we’re getting ready to crossover into 2026. We’re already in the Hebraic year of 5786. What a timely episode this is about going through the veil and into the first piece of furniture in the Holy of Holies. I know you wanted to quickly mention a couple of things before I begin to expound on what the veil represents. Why don’t you go through it?

Dr. Robyn Kassas: I think we should remind everyone that we were coming into the presence of God through the altar of incense where we were able to be lifted in balance before the Lord as we look to go past that veil into that place of the Ark of the Covenant. I want to remind people that we become worshippers. We lift our hands, our eyes, and our hearts before the Lord, and that brings us to go through that veil.

Once we go through that veil, we will come to the Ark of the Covenant and what it really represents to us and our walk in Christ. I’m going to ask you now as we go through this veil to tell us what the veil means, and then we’ll end with what the Ark of the Covenant means to us as Christians.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: It would be my pleasure. The veil is important because there are two different instances that occur. In the first testament, we have the veil, and in the second testament, the veil is torn from top to bottom. We have a dichotomy here where before the cross, the veil is there, and after the cross, the veil is no more. Is the veil there anymore? Literally it’s not, but there are certain things that are still veiled that God allows to be veiled so that we go through the process.

The third veil before the Holy of Holies is not decorative; it was protective, preparatory, and purifying. This veil marked the boundary between illumination and habitation, between knowing about God and dwelling with him and in him. Matthew 27:51 says, "And behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom." Before this veil was torn, the old veil actually separated human limitation from divine presence and it separated ministry to God from life with God.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Yes, correct.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: That veil is very important because Jesus brings the union from ministry to God to life in God and life with God. This veil testified to what we’ve mentioned many times: access without intimacy doesn’t work. Another dynamic where this goes further is that access without transformation is dangerous.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: When we’re referring to these things, if we were to just cut that down, we would say that as we go through this veil and into the presence of God, we are now balanced out with our emotions. Now we’re coming into a place where we come into our spirit, moving from the body and the soul into the spirit. That’s where we come into the very presence of God.

Dr. Dr. Nathan Kassas: It’s very important that you’ve said that because the veil actually helped the soul to regulate the amount of the spirit driving the soul. We have to realize that we are human beings. If we have all of God’s glory in all of its essence and power at once, our cells would literally obliterate.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: I know you’re the expert on that one, so I’m looking forward to hearing you talk about how this affects our physical body. Remember, as we enter the spirit from the body and the soul, we come into the very presence of God. As you enter into the Holy of Holies, you meet with God there. That’s what we need to get to an understanding of as we go through this veil and meet with the Ark of the Covenant.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: It’s very important that you’ve said that because of the way our nervous system works. I like to tie these things into the biological, physiological, and neurological because God is in creation. He’s in our DNA and our biology, and it speaks of how he works. He never does anything that’s not in his image.

Because our nervous system cannot take sudden overstimulation, if it is flushed immediately with overstimulation of one thing all at once, it actually registers in the brain as trauma. God would not let us come in all at once because his power is so great that it would actually traumatize us. He said to Moses, "I’ll put you in the rock and I’ll pass by and you’ll see the shadow of my glory, but you can’t see my face and live." Literally, our systems cannot take it because of sin.

This is important before we get into the Ark because when Jesus tore that veil, he was that veil. He was torn on the cross. His flesh was torn, and blood and water flowed. Jesus is the mediator between me and experiencing the fullness of God’s presence. Because Jesus was fully human and fully spirit and fully God, he takes into himself the power and presence of God, but then he delivers it to me through his Holy Spirit in a way that I can actually respond and process it. He is that veil that was torn from top to bottom, but now he is the one that regulates me into the power, presence, and glory of God because otherwise my cells would obliterate.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: That’s a good way of explaining it. I think people will understand that so much more now than they would have if we had just entered into the Ark of the Covenant without explaining what the veil represents.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: If I could quickly wrap this up, as I said, in the first testament there was a veil and in the second testament there isn't. But we need to apply it. There are still veils that have to be torn in our lives today to access full intimacy with God. I have five veils here that I want to quickly mention before I go over to you because I’m really hungry to hear about this Ark.

The first veil is the very obvious one: the veil of performance. This is where our worth was measured by productivity instead of presence. The second veil is the veil of control, where safety replaces surrender. The third veil is the veil of knowledge without intimacy. This is where we substitute information for transformation.

The fourth veil is the veil of emotional avoidance, where God was approached intellectually but never relationally. The fifth veil is the veil of spiritual convenience, where access was mistaken for intimacy.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: These veils are constantly in our lives.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: They are constantly having to be torn. The last statement before we go to the break is that the Father tore the veil so nothing external could stop you, but he now lovingly tears the veil within so nothing internal can stop you either.

Voiceover: You’re listening to First Love with Dr. Robyn and Dr. Nathan Kassas. The story isn’t finished yet, and neither is what Jesus wants to reveal to your heart today. Let’s jump back in and pick up right where we left off.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Okay, Dr. Robyn, we’re coming back in, and that was a lot before the break.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: It was a lot, but very good.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Now I’m going to throw it over to you because we’ve gone through the veil and we’re coming to the first piece in the Holy of Holies: the Ark of the Covenant.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: It’s very interesting. The Ark of the Covenant is the Holy of Holies. When you speak those words, you’re actually speaking about God. That’s God's very presence. This is called the sixth piece of furniture, and it represents the immediate presence of God. You don’t have to do anything else; you are immediately in his presence. That means we are immediately in our spirit because when we’re in our spirit, we are in the presence of God.

We have come to a place where you will see God, not just find God. You will hear God through your spirit because you’re immediately spirit to spirit.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: This correlates with not just finding God but seeing God. The pure in heart shall see God everywhere. We’ve gone on that process of going through the outer court and the inner court to be purified, no longer smelling like the world, and the whole point is to see him in everything.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: As we find the presence of God, it’s not about having to do something. You’re immediately there and move in your spirit immediately. That means that you can speak immediately in that presence to God.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: There doesn't have to be a work up.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: I’d like to speak about the Ark of the Covenant. This is what this piece of furniture possibly looked like: a chest which had several items in it, and on the lid was called a mercy seat. This is where the cherubims were. On top of that mercy seat there were two carved cherubims. There’s a reason for this. These cherubims are two angels which had the tips of their wings coming together and touching.

This is where the voice of the Lord would speak to Moses. It would speak right below the tips of their wings. That means they would speak mouth to mouth and face to face with the Lord. That’s what we need to do too. Sometimes we don’t see the importance of being face to face and mouth to mouth, and so we are foreign from what we really should be doing.

I want to look at the articles in the chest. We know the Ten Commandments and the rod of Aaron are there, but we’re not going into that tonight. I want to talk about what it meant to be in the presence of God and to speak face to face and mouth to mouth with him.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: That’s so powerful and prophetic.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: In this chest, let’s concentrate on the wings touching and what that really means, because we come face to face with his presence. That meant we actually meet with the righteousness of God. That means we come and we can put on the robes of righteousness and be able to come boldly to the throne of grace, clothed with the righteousness of Christ.

It would not be our own righteousness. When we’re coming to find God, we have to separate to see which is us and which is him. Now we’re in the very presence of God, spirit to spirit, and we are facing the righteousness of God that can give us a chance to come boldly before the throne of grace. Our righteousness is not the righteousness of God.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: That’s true. The Bible says that our righteousness is still like filthy rags in the sight of God. Dr. Robyn, the power of that scripture in Isaiah referring to "filthy rags" is actually referring to a menstrual cloth in Hebrew. That means that anything we birth in our own righteousness, God would rather see it literally go through menstruation and die and never become fertilized than see it compete with his righteousness.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Yes, it would create a life because when a woman has that experience, she is actually getting ready to create something.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Unless the Father fertilizes it with his sperma, which is his word, he will not finish it.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: That’s a beautiful thing because we get to put on Christ and his righteousness, the robes of righteousness. We’ve never known what that meant, the significance of it, or even the purpose of it. We hear a lot in the Bible about this, but now we’re getting understanding of it. We immediately would assume it would be about action and doing.

I want to talk to you about attitude versus action. We’ve got to get into this because it is so important. Action is not what God’s looking for; he looks at attitude. If we get our attitude right, our actions will take care of themselves. That’s the first thing that God requires from you in the Ark of the Covenant.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: That is the best place to stop and whet their appetite. What’s the last word that you’ve got for the 2025 year?

Dr. Robyn Kassas: I think that we will never be righteous enough. But if we allow the righteousness of Christ to clothe us, we will take on that which clothes us. We will then be able to see that it is not our righteousness that brings us into his presence, but it is his righteousness.

To finish up with 2025 moving into 2026, we’re coming into a new way of walking through connection. There’s only one way you can connect, and that is through the righteousness of God. It is not your action, but it is your attitude. This is the way it is.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Focus on attitude and not action, and you’ll see him face to face.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: That’s correct.

Voiceover: Thanks for spending time with us today on First Love. We’ll be back next week, same time, same truth. And as you go, don’t forget: the one who loved you first is still loving you best.