How do we draw near to God today?

God gave two things to the Israelites to enable them to draw near to him: his law given at Mount Sinai (Exodus 20 to Leviticus 27), and priests.

Obey God’s law and God would personally bless them (Exodus 19:5-6) and be “near them whenever they prayed to him” (Deuteronomy 4:5, 7). The flip side to that was God being “angry with them and hiding his face from them….because of all their wickedness in turning to other gods (31:17-18). 

There was a solution, though. When the Israelites broke God’s law, a system of sacrifices and offerings administered by priests from the tribe of Levi enabled forgiveness and the removal of guilt. And once a year the head priest, or high priest, was allowed by God into his presence for the cleansing of all sins committed by all Israelites (Leviticus 16:21, 30). 

This combination of law and priests, then, seemed like a good system for the Israelites to experience God near to them – in both blessings for obedience and the peace of mind that came with his mercy (Numbers 6:24-26). But there was an endless problem the law and the priests could not solve, and that was the Israelites’ “hearts always going astray,” that so often caused them to “turn away from the living God” (Hebrews 3:10, 12). They could never fully obey God or trust him, so they never truly drew near to him, or “entered his rest” (18-19).

But then we find out in Hebrews 10:1 that “The law was only meant to be a shadow” that couldn’t make the Israelites perfect anyway (7:18-19). Nor could “repeating all those sacrifices year after year” either (10:1). Instead, they served as constant reminders that nothing the Israelites did could totally absolve their guilt or their inability to obey God fully (3-4).

But that only applied “until the time of the new order when Christ came as high priest” and “offered himself unblemished to God” (9:10-11, 14) – and “by that one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy” (10:14). That’s an amazing statement, because it means the perfection needed to draw near to God – that the Israelites were never capable of – is now ours forever. 

In asking, then, “How do we draw near to God today?” Hebrews cries out with a simple answer: we’re already near to God, because “We have a High Priest too”….(next blog)