I recently finished my first draft of Miriam’s story, my work-in-progress to release in 2021. To say hers was an easy story to tell would be lying. As is true of pretty much every woman in Scripture, in order to understand Miriam, I had to understand her brother Moses.
So I studied Moses’ life and read or skimmed through pages and pages of God’s laws, trying to make sense of how I could put a story together from all of the instructions God gave to Moses and all that happened to the children of Israel.
It was a truly daunting task, and I am sure the book needs a lot of editing, but as I came near the end, I had one of those “ah ha” moments that I honestly didn’t expect to find.
You see, tucked into all of the trips Moses made up Mount Sinai and the people wondering what happened to him and Aaron weakening and giving into their desire for a god of gold, was something I hadn’t really pondered before—this one truth:
God wanted a relationship with people, but there was one problem that I think even Christians overlook.
We miss the problem if we don’t travel with Moses up Mount Sinai. If we don’t stand with the children of Israel at the foot of that mountain and hear the thunder of God’s voice, the blast of the ram’s horn, the earthquake that nearly sent them flat on their faces, or feel the fierce terror that gripped those people in that day. If we don’t go back and read those sections of Scripture and step into their sandals to feel what they might have felt, or hear what God said to Moses, we won’t get it.
To put it succinctly, though I encourage you to read it in Exodus, God wanted to meet with the people. He truly wanted relationship with them. But His Holiness would not allow it because when holiness comes into contact with sin, sin either has to be punished or satisfied/appeased/forgiven.
God can’t arbitrarily forgive the fact that we’ve broken His Laws unless He exacts punishment for the sin or somehow satisfies His Holiness with a covering for sin. Blood sacrifices were the constant covering He set up throughout the Old Testament.
But in the wilderness before all of the government and laws were set in place, God longed for His people. (They longed for Egypt. He longed for them.) To those who believed Him and obeyed (Moses did, among others) He could reveal Himself. But to the crowds, He could only come so far. They had to meet Him at the place of obedience to His laws, so he told Moses to tell the people to consecrate themselves for three days. Then He wanted a barrier put up around the mountain and the people firmly warned NOT to cross that barrier. Not even an animal could accidentally cross it without being killed. (Again, God was making His Holiness perfectly clear to His people.)
When Moses climbed the mountain to speak again to God, God repeated the instructions, as though He was telling Moses, “Make sure!” God did not want His holiness to break out against their sin.
In His holiness, that coexists with His love, mercy, and grace, God cannot look at sin. Can’t overlook it. Can’t forgive it. Can’t do anything but judge it.
So in Moses’ day, He came down that mountain in a dense cloud with a whole lot of warnings and terror…and I think, despite what it might look like in a cursory reading of the passage, that this action showed how God desperately longs for us. Because He wanted the kind of relationship He had in the garden with Adam and Eve when they were perfect (before sin), He risked allowing His Holiness to descend just enough to be near His people.
But as time went on, the people just would not stop rebelling against God’s laws. They were bent on rebellion, stubbornness, pride, and unbelief, despite the miracles they’d witnessed. And God knew He could never walk among them without making a way, building a bridge between Himself and the people.
So God went through with His plan to send His Son to become one of us in order for God to have that restored relationship with His Holiness. Through Jesus He could show His love and mercy and grace up close and personal to each one of us. Jesus, the God/Man, built the bridge between a Holy God who can’t look at sin and a sinful people who can’t look at God and made it possible for us to be one with Him again.
This sounds like New Testament teaching and it is. But it was Moses who taught me how much God could not go against His own holiness. If He did, He wouldn’t be God. Yet His holiness was also in perfect harmony with His love and it was that mingled love and holiness that showed me a piece of God’s heart and His deep desire for you and me. This truth has always been there. But God shows us through Moses that animal sacrifice can never truly cover sin. Only the blood of His perfect Son could accomplish what had to be done to satisfy His Holiness.
Until we desperately want God as much as He wants us…Until we are ready to surrender our will to His and can say that Jesus is Lord of our lives…our lives are not our own, we are His…we won’t get it. We can’t understand or even slightly grasp God’s unfailing Holy Love for us until we see God as He truly is. Not the way we’d like Him to be.
Do you understand God’s holy love? Does it fill your heart with wonder and awe? I hope so. My only prayer for every person I meet is for them to know Him and understand His character. It is the first step in accepting that He is God and we are not. But we CAN have a relationship with Him. It’s what He longs for most.
And the only thing in life that truly matters.
~Selah
#theonlythingthatmatters #godsholiness #godlovesyou #jesuscameforthis
