In our
second article in this series on holiness I would like to lift up some ideas
about holiness from the Old Testament.
If you
have ever tried to read through the Bible beginning at Genesis, and if you are
like most people, you probably got to the “begats” in Genesis chapter five and
gave up. However, if you pushed through
Genesis 5 things got better and you got to read about Noah, Abraham, Isaac,
Jacob, and Joseph. But then you got to
Exodus and Leviticus and had to read, in painstaking detail, about how the
Tabernacle was to be constructed. We all
love our church buildings, but imagine sitting down in the morning with a cup
of coffee and reading devotionally about how many bricks, of what color, went
into each wall and how the mortar was mixed, and on and on. If you get through that, you get to read how
the priests were to sacrifice animals in details that rival your very worst
memories from high school biology. (Hope your class was not right after lunch!)
You may
have found yourself wondering, and I have been asked as a pastor, “What is all
of this stuff about?” It is about God’s
holiness. You will remember from the
first article that “holy” essentially means “different” or “set apart.” The message that God is trying to send to the
Israelites, and to us, is,
“I am
holy. I am different from you. I love you and I want to be near you and I want
you to worship me. But, just so you remember who I am there are going to be
some rules about how you worship me. I am going to have you build a beautiful
tabernacle and dress your priests in fine robes and I will give you beautiful
ceremonies so that your worship of me will inspire awe and not ‘aww.’”
In my
opinion, the problem with the church today, and for a long time now, is that
our ideas about God and our worship have been too much “aww” and not enough
“awe.”
The
holiness of God is a major theme in the Old Testament, and in the whole Bible. Another major theme is the holiness of God’s
people. God wants his people to be
holy. God says, in Leviticus 20:26, and
other places, “Be holy because I am holy.”
God says
we should, and can, be holy. If you are one of the determined few who press
though Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, at the very end of
Deuteronomy, after reading through all the commandments and all the rules and
regulations, you will find this, in Deuteronomy 30:11 & 15, “Now what I am
commanding you today (everything in Exodus-Deuteronomy) is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach… See, I set before you today life and
prosperity, death and destruction.” God
offers us a way of life called holiness. The choice is ours to choose life,
God’s way of life.
