protecting us from His holiness

Today's reading from the One Year Bible is Leviticus 27:14 to Numbers 1:54. In it, Moses tells us that the Levis were assigned the task of "protecting the community of Israel from the Lord's anger." And that's one way to look at it.

But with more revelation, we understand things better now. We know that it's God's holiness that we both need in our lives, and need protection from, at the same time. When we have sin in our hearts, we need to repent before we can come into His presence. In the New Testament, we see this with the admonition not to receive the Lord's Supper in an unworthy manner, or we might eat and drink damnation onto ourselves. When we come to His presence, we have to lay aside our sins and make ourselves ready to receive His holiness.

Moses did this in the OT. He repented of his sins, and met with God on the mountain. That mountain is in the pic above. Pretty amazing, isn't it? I didn't know what Mount Sinai looked like. That is ONE awe inspiring mountain! When Moses came down from meeting with God, his face glowed. The parallels between this action, and the one where Jesus went up on the Mount of Transfiguration, are remarkable. But in Jesus's case, He didn't need to repent. In everyone else's case, we do.

God desires for all of us, every human being, to lay aside the sins that lead us away from Him, and to allow His holiness into our lives, so that we can become the people He created us to be. So that we can start using the gifts He's given us to live lives that will make us happy and satisfied. So let's lay aside every sin that so easily entangles us, and let His holiness transform us, like it did Moses.

God, thank You for Your holiness, which we need - and thanks for protecting us from it until we're ready.