Protecting the Holy Presence of God

Holy.

Have you ever been at a point in your life when you were suddenly overwhelmed by the Presence and holiness of God? A time when you felt the only appropriate response was to prostrate yourself before Him?

Sadly, those times are few and far between in my life. Holy is a huge part of who God is.

When God brought the Hebrew people out of slavery in Egypt, an intricate symbol of what He has done for believers through Christ, one of the first things He taught them (and reminded them of over and over again) was His holiness.

“Moses, take off your shoes. You’re on holy ground.”

“Tell the people to cleanse themselves in preparation to meet Me. And don’t let them come near my holy mountain.”

Nahab and Abihu, killed instantly for taking their office and responsibility lightly, and offering unholy fire before the Lord.

“Be holy as I am holy.”

Almost always, in the Bible, when people came face-to-face with the holiness of God, they fell on their faces. (See Isaiah 6:1-15; Revelation 10:1-17.)

In Numbers 2, we see God giving instruction to Moses on how the Levitical tribe was to surround the tabernacle, a symbol of protecting His holiness. In fact, He told them that anyone not authorized to come near the sanctuary, where His Presence dwelt, would die.

This is a magnificent picture and lesson for us today. And a lesson we need to heed. We seem to have lost a sense of God’s holiness today, at great personal cost and loss to us. We live in the midst of a culture that’s no longer awestruck by Holy and Almighty God. He’s been squeezed out of our schools, banished from our government, and shelved by our communities. Even in Christian circles, we’ve narrowly defined Him, reduced Him to neatly fit in a box of our own making, and made Him over in our image.

And the Lord said, For as much as this people draw near Me with their mouth and honor Me with their lips but remove their hearts and minds far from Me, and their fear and reverence for Me are a commandment of men that is learned by repetition [without any thought as to the meaning], Therefore, behold! I will again do marvelous things with this people, marvelous and astonishing things; and the wisdom of their wise men will perish, and the understanding of their discerning men will vanish or be hidden. ~Isaiah 29:13-14

As believers under the covenant of grace, God still takes our holiness–and His–seriously. He is in the process of conforming us to the holy image of Christ, and we are to sacrifice our lives as a holy offering to Him.  So the application of Numbers 2 is a reminder to protect God’s holiness in our lives, in the communal life of the church, and before a watching world.

Without that holiness, we lose a true sense of who He is, because He is holy.

I think this song expresses it well: