PREPARE to be Holy!

For I am the Lord your God. Consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am holy. And you shall not make yourselves unclean with any of the swarming things that swarm on the earth. Leviticus 11:45

As a child I went to church every week in the Greek Catholic tradition. When I would enter the sanctuary, I knew I was someplace special. The scent of the entire church was of a deep musky woodland patchouli. I can still recall it. The priest would enter from a side room adorned in all his special robes and garments, swinging a incense burner as he went from the front of the church to the back blessing each pew and person. I was in awe!

As I got older I began to understand that the robes, the incense and the entire process was right out of the book of Leviticus. God gave all of these instructions to Moses to pass on to Aaron and his sons as the high priests to set them apart from the rest of the Jewish population. They were to be ‘holy’ in their washing, their garments and their lives. Their rules were very strict. Acceptable and unacceptable offerings are listed, as well as the conduct of the high priests. Read Leviticus 21. When the laws God gave Moses were not obeyed by Aaron’s sons, they died! God was serious.

I took that fear of God very seriously until I came to know Jesus when I was 19 years old. That’s when I began to think about what all the ceremony meant that I had experienced all my life. I realized, with a revelation from the Holy Spirit, that the Greek Catholic church was still performing the ceremonies laid out by Moses in the Old Testament! As beautiful and meaningful as they are, when Jesus died on the cross the Temple was shaken and the veil between God and man was torn in two! We can now be as priests ourselves and enter into the presence of Jesus!

As glorious as that sounds, and it is, it comes with huge responsibility! We ALL must come before Him now with clean hands and a pure heart, not just the high priests who carried our sins to God. Now, we all had to follow and obey the ‘laws’ that were laid out in the New Testament. And we still do. We have become the ‘high priest’ who carries our sin to the ‘Holy of Holies, Jesus!’ When John the Baptist was taken into the Temple to be dedicated to the Lord, Zechariah the High Priest offered this prophetic son about the coming Messiah;

Zechariah’s Song

⁶⁷His father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied:

⁶⁸“Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel,
    because he has come to his people and redeemed them.
⁶⁹He has raised up a horn^[a] of salvation for us
    in the house of his servant David
⁷⁰(as he said through his holy prophets of long ago),
⁷¹salvation from our enemies
    and from the hand of all who hate us—
⁷²to show mercy to our ancestors
    and to remember his holy covenant,
⁷³    the oath he swore to our father Abraham:
⁷⁴to rescue us from the hand of our enemies,
    and to enable us to serve him without fear
⁷⁵    in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.

⁷⁶And you, my child, will be called a prophet of the Most High;
    for you will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for him,
⁷⁷to give his people the knowledge of salvation
    through the forgiveness of their sins,
⁷⁸because of the tender mercy of our God,
    by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven
⁷⁹to shine on those living in darkness
    and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the path of peace.”

When I was a child going to this Greek Catholic church, while everyone in my school went to the Roman Catholic church, I never felt like I fit in. In fact, I always felt like I stood out. I had different holy days, different traditions, different foods and fast days, even different references to holy items. I was ‘set apart’ from the rest. I struggled with it then, but now I feel like it prepared me to be ‘set apart’ for Jesus. You see, that’s what holy means; set apart. While everyone was going in one direction, if you have been set apart for Jesus, you go on a different path, the narrow way, the way that Jesus has set out for us that is not well traveled!

NOTE: PLEASE EXCUSE ALL THESE ADS, i COULD NOT REMOVE THEM!

NIV Jesus BiblePLUS1 entry

NIV Biblical Theology Study BiblePLUS10 entries

NKJV Chronological Study Bible NotesPLUS2 entries

NASB Charles F. Stanley Life Principles Bible NotesPLUS2 entries

NKJV Charles F. Stanley Life Principles Bible NotesPLUS1 entry

NIV First-Century Study BiblePLUS1 entry

Case for Christ Study BiblePLUS4 entries

New Spirit-Filled Life BiblePLUS3 entries

NKJV Study BiblePLUS9 entries

NKJV Lucado Encouraging Word BiblePLUS1 entry