APPROACHING GOD:

APPROACHING GOD:

“Put limits for the people around the mountain and tell them, ‘Be careful that you do not approach the mountain or touch the foot of it...” -Exodus 19:12a

When God told Abram “Go,” he went. When God told Abram “Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them… so shall your descendants be,” Abram believed and it was credited to Abram as righteousness. But when God said “I am the Lord, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of it.” Abram’s faith in God wavered and it caused him to query, “Sovereign Lord, how can I know that I will gain possession of it?”

So God told Abram to go get a bunch of animals and chop them up. For us -modern day readers- this is odd, but alrighty let’s roll with it…  Then God prefaced His response to Abram by saying, “Know for certain that for four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own and that they will be enslaved and mistreated there. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great wealth.” All this anticipated what happened at the end of Genesis and opening of Exodus: i.e. the nation of Israel winds up in Egypt as slaves.

Then God gets back to the whole animal thing... God told Abram to cut the animals in half and it formed a bloody pathway. This imagery was very familiar to Abram and people of the Ancient Near East. They didn’t have any lawyers or attorneys back then. They didn’t have 2,000 page legal documents full of lawyer-talk just to buy a goat or a piece of land. They would “cut” a contract/covenant by literally cutting up animals. Then both parties would walk through the bloodpath - to say in vivid picture form - “This is what you can do to me if I violate our contract agreement.”

What is significant about God’s response to Abram is that God alone walked through the bloodpath. We read in Genesis 15, “When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot (God) with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces. On that day the Lord made a (unilateral, or one-sided) covenant with Abram…” Abram and his descendents would gain all the benefits of the agreement, but -ALL- the responsibility and consequences were upon God.

From before the foundation of the cosmos, God knew - and in fact had ordained - that Jesus, the Son of God, the Second Person of the eternal Holy Trinity, the Lamb of God, would die for humanity, and that the Holy Spirit would come to bless us with the gift of faith and give us the new hearts Ezekiel 36:26 anticipated. God never expected dead, broken, sinful, twisted, perverse humanity (us) to earn His love, warrant His offering at the Cross, deserve His free gift of grace by faith, and certainly never intended for us to ascend -or even approach- God.

In Genesis 2 God told us that the consequence of independence, autonomy, rebellion, distrust, selfishness, abandonment, and indifference -all culminating in the eating of the forbidden fruit- would be literal death, i.e. separation from God. Dead people can’t save themselves. Dead people can’t rationalize their way back alive. Dead people can’t negotiate or do ANYTHING of any value or merit in the eyes of God. Dead people certainly cannot ascend to where God is.

As Isaiah 64:6 instructs us, “All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts amount to filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.” We’re not talking about a paper towel with some grape jelly on it. The imagery here is the blood soaked rags from a woman’s “time of the month.” Offensive? Exactly. It’s an affront to the Sovereign Creator Holy God of the Universe to think that anything we say, think, or do amounts to anything more than filth apart from His gift of faith and the power of the Spirit of God working in and through us.

After Moses lead Israel out of their 400 years of oppressive bondage as abused and mistreated slaves… after Israel witnessed God send plague-after-plague… after revealing God’s love and protection for His people and the impotence of Egypt’s false gods… after peeling open the Red Sea and utterly destroying 100% of Pharaoh’s army… after guiding Israel, feeding them from heaven, transforming bitter waters into high quality H2O… after all that - God did not tell Israel to ascend Mt. Sinai. Instead we read that God told Moses, “Put limits for the people around the mountain and tell them, ‘Be careful that you do not approach the mountain or touch the foot of it… warn the people so they do not force their way through to see the Lord and many of them perish. Even the priests, who approach the Lord, must consecrate themselves, or the Lord will break out against them.”

It wasn’t enough for God to condescend from heaven to Mt. Sinai. It wasn’t enough for God’s glory to enter the Most Holy Place and be the epicenter of this kingdom of priests and holy nation. It wasn’t enough for God’s presence to dwell in a fancy temple of gold and cedar. God always - even from before “the beginning” of Genesis 1:1 - planned and knew that His presence and glory would have to literally dwell (tabernacle) in the hearts of humanity. That’s what God meant when He said, “Let us make humanity in our image (community) according to our likeness (selfless altruism).” Our minds and bodies were merely incomplete vessels designed to receive and showcase the glorious presence of YAHWEH Elohim - The LORD God Almighty.

Toward the end of Exodus we read that God’s presence/glory condescended from Sinai and “tabernacled” in the midst of the community. Centuries later, in the book of Ezekiel, we read “the glory of the Lord departed from over the threshold of the temple…”

Moses wasn’t capable or qualified to atone for Israel’s sin. In fact, Moses was disqualified from entering into God’s presence in the tabernacle, and was eventually disqualified from entering into the Promised Land, because of his predisposition toward frustration and anger. Israel failed as a kingdom of priests and a holy nation because of their perpetual idolatry. The priesthood failed. The kingship failed. The prophets failed. The law failed. But what they all did perfectly was to reveal humanity’s depravity -and- anticipate something greater - in fact someone greater. The Serpent Crusher, the Lamb slain before the foundation of the cosmos, i.e. Jesus Christ.

In the first chapter of John’s gospel we read “The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.” Jesus, the eternal Word (logos), stepped down from heaven “and pitched His tent with us (i.e. tabernacled), and we beheld His glory as the only Begotten One, intimately united with the Father.” Jesus came to dwell, tabernacle, and identify with humanity perfectly and permanently.

God never expected, nor does He now expect, for us to ascend -or even approach- Him. The story of the Exodus and Israel at the foot of Sinai in Exodus 19 depicts, in vivid fashion, that when we are liberated by God’s grace from our bondage to sin - it is NOT God’s intent or desire for us to ascend to glory. Contrastingly, God’s plan and desire is to tabernacle with us permanently, and to give us new hearts transformed by grace through faith in Christ so that our new, transformed, and selfless lives become the literal manifestation of God’s presence and glory in the world.

This fundamental paradigm shift of perspective allows us to celebrate relationship with God in Christ rather than merely participating in a formalized, ritualistic, checklist oriented, religious system. It changes that perspective from “going to church” to actually “being the church.” It realigns our old stone hearts from merely being recipients of God’s grace to the new living hearts of active participants in God’s mission - and vessels of God’s eternal grace.

So what about you? Are you still trying to approach, ascend, and achieve the grace, love, and blessings of God through a life of morality or religion? Or have you realized the truth of Scripture: “in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form, and in Christ you have been brought to fullness…”

In Christ we have been brought to fullness. Thank you Jesus!

Blessings,

-Kevin M. Kelley

aMostUnlikelyDisciple.com

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