[0:00]What is the role of boundaries in our lives? Boundaries create opportunities for us to know where certain activities are appropriate or where they're not.
[0:10]Boundaries also protect us. Boundaries give us opportunities to have order where there was chaos. Now, if we look at Exodus chapter 19, what we see is God setting up a variety of boundaries to protect the people and himself. If we look carefully, first 21, Moses is actually on a high mountain, symbolic that he has entered into the presence of God. God himself has come down to earth, and there's this meeting point, the sacred meeting point, top of a mountain, a temple is symbolic between God and man. He says in verse 21 to Moses, go down, charge the people, lest they break through unto the Lord to gaze, and many of them perish. So God is saying, the people should not yet come into this holy spot of the mountain until they have been prepared. We have an interesting connection with the temple. When we go to temples today, there are boundaries or gradations of holiness or sacredness. First, we have to be worthy. Second, we need to get a recommend from somebody who stands in the place of Moses, who represents, um, us to God and God to us. Third, we go into the temple and we change our clothes into symbolic clothing of holiness. And even in the temple, there are different stations or places where we ritually enact forms of holiness to remind ourselves that we are drawing closer to God. And the main point in the temple is the celestial room where after a series of actions of symbolically holy actions, we have made our way into the presence of God. In these passages here, from from verse 16 all the way down to 25, you have something similar where God wants the people to be prepared for his presence. And you also have these very biblical Old Testament themes of God is a God of fire and thunder and smoke. And for some people, this very terrifying. And partly what's being signaled here is the power and majesty of God that he is somebody to be feared. And that word actually means respected. That we should not treat God as trivial or his holiness as trivial, or his holy locations as trivial or to be trifled with. Instead, he wants us to feel a deep amount of respect and reverence about interacting with him. So if you look closely at these verses, this is what God is establishing his boundaries and gradations of holiness for his people to be prepared to interact with him. And we can do the same. It might be starting with prayer, definitely faith and repentance. Partaking of the sacrament on a weekly basis, preparing to participate in temple ordinances and seeing that the temple itself is simply a microcosm of a larger story of the planet of salvation, representing our onward progress, moving through the boundaries and the gradations of holiness back into the presence of God. So wherever you're at, you can find more holiness in your life and find yourself closer to God and having his presence more fully in your lives.
