Draw Near?

Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.  James 4:8......"Ascribe to the Lord the glory due His name; Bring an offering and come before Him.; Worship the Lord in holy array." I Chronicles 16:29

In the western church, we have so magnified the place of His grace through the New Covenant in Jesus Christ, that we tend to dismiss almost entirely His calling upon us through His original covenant. The result has been a corruption in what we call "worship." 

In the Old Testament, He established a holy priesthood that was to minister to Him on behalf of the people. These priests were to be ceremonially clean when they came into His presence. His holiness was magnified before both the priests and the people. Scripture says that He dwells in "unapproachable light." So great was His glory, is His glory, that He told Moses that "no man may see Me and live." The priests came before Him with a holy reverence, and only the High Priest could enter into the Holy of Holies where the Ark of the Covenant, the symbol of His Presence was. 

With the coming of Christ and the New Covenant given us through Him, we may now come into His presence freely. Those who are His have total access to the Creator of the Universe. A Hebrew living in Old Testament times could surely have no concept of how wonderful this is. And that my friends is what I write about today. I want to speak of how far we have drifted in the modern church from a holy reverence for Him in what we call "worship." 

I am so thankful that through Jesus Christ I may draw near to Him, but how easily I forget how I am to draw near to Him. James speaks of coming before Him with clean hands, a pure heart, and single minded devotion. The writer of 1st Chronicles speaks of worshipping Him in "holy array." This references how even the vestments of the priests were to be perfectly clean when they came to minister to Him. Our holy array is to be our hearts. We are to come before Him not only clean outwardly, but inwardly as well. He expected His people in the Old Covenant to come before Him with fear and trembling. Not as a result of being carnally afraid of Him, but in awareness of how Holy He is, and that His Holiness is so great that apart from Christ, we can never come before Him, that His holiness would kill us were it not for His grace. This should fill us with awe, but I would make the point that the average attendee in the western church expresses little awe and reverence upon entry into whatever place they join into corporate worship. This reality should trouble us greatly. Why doesn't it?

A good pastor friend of mine described a recent visit to a large church in Texas. He said the presence of God was so powerful and so corporately felt that you couldn't help but be overcome by the wonder of it. He said that at the conclusion of the singing part of the service, a time of worship where no one had to be asked to stand before Him, He realized he had tears streaming down his face. He felt like he had joined with a people who knew personally the wonder of their God, and entered His sanctuary in awe, reverence, and yes, fear and trembling. You and I may feel we belong to a very good body of believers. I know I do, but tell me, when you observe His people coming to His church, entering into His presence, do they, do you and I, do so with an awesome sense of reverence and wonder? Are we acutely aware of our need for clean hands and pure hearts? Are we acutely aware of any part of us that is not clean, that is not holy? Where we are not, at least in part, clad in "holy array?"

We're invited to draw near. I am so thankful for the invitation. How do we come? With clean hands and a pure heart, clad in holy array? This is not a plea to "clean ourselves up" before we come to Him. He's the only One who can make us clean. What it is is a plea to live in deep awareness of Him, of His holiness and wonder. To realize and sense that we are always in His presence whether we acknowledge it or not. To realize that because of this, wherever we stand is holy ground, because He is there with us. When this becomes our way of life then His Spirit is continually at work within us, giving us, as the chorus says, "clean hands and pure hearts." And that is how we enter His presence, and we would not enter, could not enter, in any other way.  

May we draw near, live near, and never depart. Clean hands, pure hearts, encountering and experiencing our awesome God. May it be so. May it be so now.

Blessings,

Pastor O