Exodus 29-31
The idea of holiness permeates today’s reading even more than yesterday’s. The word “holy” occurs 22 times in these three chapters (in the ESV, at least). Perhaps we should pay attention…
My sense is that holiness is practically a foreign concept for most 21st-century Western evangelicals. We can easily understand the idea of being “set apart”, but when it comes time to actually treat something as holy, we are at a loss. For example, we call the main congregational space in the church a “sanctuary”, but really it’s just a big room where we can gather, mostly for worship, but sometimes for meetings, sometimes for parties — it really doesn’t seem to matter. We enter the sanctuary on a Sunday morning to worship, but we chatter and gab with our neighbors. I’m glad that we’re happy to see one another, but we are missing any sense of the holy.
That is not at all what we see here in Exodus. To be holy is to be utterly devoted to the LORD, and it is deadly serious — literally. Our God that we call Father now is the same God that spoke these instructions to Moses. He has not changed. He is still holy. We would do well to remember that and to act accordingly.
In saying all this, am I commending myself? Not at all. On the contrary, I am reminded all the more of my own failings. But neither my failings nor anyone else’s mean that we should (or even can) lower the standard. God is God, and He is holy.