Moses went up to Mount Sinai to
receive instructions from God for forty days and forty nights. It
must have been a holy and humbling experience for Moses, standing
in the midst of our Glorious God! There God gave him instructions
on the clothing of the priests, the dedication of the priests, the
layout of the Tabernacle, the utensils and items in the Tabernacle
etc. And as I was reading this and all the detailed instructions, I
realized how Holy God was. How absolutely holy! Everything had to
be done specifically to honor His holiness.
Nothing defiled with sin could come
into His holy presence and therefore the priests, the clothes, the
Tabernacle and the sacrifices had to be clean and consecrated in
order to meet God. It was not a quick encounter, but it took a lot
of planning and time to get ready to seek God's presence and
forgiveness for their sins. Plus the high priest could only enter
the Most Holy Place once a year on the Day of Atonement, to come
into God's presence and ask for atonement for the sins of the whole
nation. He couldn't go whenever he pleased, if he did, he would
surely have died.
Today we can enter into God's
presence at any time due to the wonderful work of Jesus Christ. He
took away the barrier between us and God, allowing us to enter
freely into God's presence. We can come just as we are without
special attire and special arrangements. We don't need days' of
planning and getting ready for God's presence, we can just come.
And because it is so easy to do, we tend to do it very casually. We
tend to lose something of the holy regard for God that the
Israelites had. We rush into worship and whilst worshipping our
thoughts would be on something else.
I feel that we have lost something
of the holiness of God today. We talk casually of Him and when we
pray, we sometimes pray the same sentences over and over again,
resulting in a mindless action, as we know it off by heart.
No, we can learn something from the
way God instructed the Israelites to approach Him. God is the same
yesterday, today and tomorrow, He has never changed, He is still as
holy as He was in Moses' day and we should always remember that.
The way of worshipping Him has just become easier, but no less
holy. He is our Almighty Creator, the Sustainer of the Universe and
we should approach Him with the correct reverence and respect He
deserves. Remember that next time you pray and enter into His
presence. I certainly need to remind myself of that too!
God, You are holy, holy, holy,
today and forevermore. You deserve respect and reverence. Please
forgive us if we do not treat You like that. We are frail human
beings and we are sinners, but thank you that we know that You
still love us. Thank you Father, Thank you Jesus, Thank you Holy
Spirit. We love You too. Amen