Incomprehensible

Greetings, everyone!  Being yet again exhausted, I bring you a short meditation on Lev 10:3, instead of more Song of Solomon.  But I have free time coming in the next few days, so by God's grace we'll get right back to romance with Thursday's post!

For now, I give you this:

Leviticus 10:3 "By those who come near Me I must be regarded as holy; and before all the people I must be glorified."

If Lev 10:3 is offensive or incomprehensible to us, it's because we don't know God.  It's like a random person on the street coming up to us, demanding that we bow down to them, honor them, and sing songs about them.  We have no idea who they are, and we strongly suspect they're crazy and egotistical instead of deserving of honor.  

But if the President came up to you and asked you to honor him (even if you didn't like a particular President), you wouldn't be surprised. You'd expect the demand for honor, given his office. He's automatically honored and lauded everywhere he goes, because of the respect of his office. 

With God, we're not talking about a mere human leader. This is the ageless, eternal One who created absolutely everything in the universe, who knows every moment of history before it happens, who gives life to every human person, who determines the day of our death, who simultaneously holds in existence every molecule of your body from one moment to the next. He IS wisdom, love, beauty, power, holiness. He doesn't keep Himself distant from us; instead, He lived as one of us, communicating His love to us, sacrificing Himself by paying the ultimate price for us. He knows us, and He loves us. 

When you know Him, when you see Him for who He truly is, you would not hesitate to honor Him as He desires. Even the skeptic can see this by engaging in a small thought experiment: consider for just a moment that the worldview of the Bible is true, that God is real and is truly as powerful as Scripture describes, being the Creator and Destructor of absolutely everything there is. In that worldview, can you understand why someone would reverence Him?

If we want to draw near to God, we must regard Him as holy; we must honor, revere, worship, and glorify Him.  He deserves nothing less.  And if we honor Him this way, if we worship Him because of who He is, His grandeur captivates our hearts.  

That might seem strange, by itself.  Most of us have experienced boring church worship, at some point.  But that's not what we're talking about.  If you're bored, disengaged, and distracted during worship, you're not focusing on God as holy, on seeing the grandeur of who He is.  If you were, it would be more like the crowd at the Super Bowl after their beloved team just won a last-second victory after playing a brilliant game.  They cheer and celebrate and worship the team, because they see how amazing the game was, how well they played, how spectacular that last catch was.  They regard their team as holy; this is the team above all teams, highly worthy of praise!  Because they see the team's glory, they honor the team in ecstasy. 

Jesus deserves far more praise than any sports team.  And the great part of this is that I don't have to convince you of that.  Spend some time with Him; get to know Him.  When you do, when you see who He truly is, you will honor Him, and you will know joy.