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Profaning the Name of the Lord: How Can or Do People Do It? (Part Two)
Moses meets the LORD in Exodus 3:1-6 and I’m stopping in verse 6:
1 Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro his father in law, the priest of Midian: and he led the flock to the backside of the desert, and came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb.
2 And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.
3 And Moses said, I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt.
4 And when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am I.
5 And he said, Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.
6 Moreover he said, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face; for he was afraid to look upon God.
Moses is in the special presence of God at the burning bush. God said, “Here am I.” So He’s there. And then there God commands Moses to do something that would treat his proximity to God’s special presence as sacred. God calls this place, “holy ground.”
Holy Ground and Reverence My Sanctuary
What makes the ground holy where Moses stands? It is the nearness to the special presence of God. God is there. Moses knows it.
God gave Moses a symbolic means by which he could set apart this place where he stood, show it to be unique or majestic. Moses could demonstrate respect to God through a physical act, one that had not as of yet been established as a signal of reverence. It wasn’t just in the heart where and how this occurred. God expected and expects more. Later in Leviticus 19:30, God says through Moses to the people of God, “Reverence my sanctuary.” God doesn’t say how, assuming that they would understand how to obey this command.
A parallel elsewhere in the Old Testament for consecrating something is the truth of a “solemn assembly.” God mandated solemnity for holy occasions, again implying the knowledge of an application. By taking his shoes off, Moses could distinguish the occasion of meeting with God at the burning bush. It made the circumstance a more solemn one.
Solemnity
People today do not, as a whole, like solemnity. They want chipper, vivacious, bouncy, funny, and casual, informal, and laid back. Silly most times is better than solemn. I could give more descriptions of the variations of what people want that revolve around self-interest. True reverence in most cases is not even an option any more. It is a deal-breaker for attraction. People are in fact put to sleep by solemnity, because it’s just boring to them. In that sense, the people keeping something solemn lose their audience and ruin the meeting.
Music is a major component for promoting the opposite of solemnity and reverence. Churches choose what people want, which corresponds more to the wants of a majority. Scripture commands, “Abstain from fleshly lust,” and churches accommodate and promote fleshly lust with their music. Music can express solemnity, majesty, and something sacred. It distinguishes itself from the spirit of the age or what some today call a “vibe.”
The lack of reverence and solemnity trickles into many other various aspects of culture, which at one time did more to reflect on the nature of God. Work places and educational institutions among other spheres of authority had dress codes. The organization expected fulfilled standards for language and other forms of conduct. I was recently watching a podcast in which the spokesman used “normalcy” to describe the way it once was, but generally no more.
Put Into Practice
I’ve been alive long enough to remember when opening the top button of the dress shirt signaled a drop in the solemnity of the occasion. Someone had to keep his hair combed and completely orderly to communicate the proper respect. Churches did not look like theaters. No one would want this juxtaposition or association with the profane. The architecture of a building needed a solemn or reverent appearance larger in scale than removing ones shoes, but in the realm of that ideal.
Weddings were a holy convocation. This was a solemn covenant before God. It was not an expression of personality, hipness, coolness, or popularity. Plans revolved around the expression of God’s character or nature. As an activity, it was kept distinct from something common, playful, or vulgar. I’m using the wedding as an example so that you can imagine occasions and how they change in culture away from God.
Someone writing about the exact subject of this series, said the following in 2017:
Implicit in the rejection of the sacred is the idea that there should be no restraints for anything. It is unjust that there be anything set beyond the reach of others. It is wrong that anyone is recognized as being more than someone else.
Thus, in a society that has lost a notion of the sacred, no one stands out, no prizes are awarded, and disordered passions must never be held in check. Everyone must be equal, whatever the cost. There can be no sanctuary for any privileges. Nothing can be withheld from others. Rather, everything must be available to all.
The Separateness of God
God is High. Required solemnity acknowledges the separateness of God. To give Him His proper recognition, protocol must reflect His Highness. This is setting Him apart.
The cherubim around the throne room of God without ceasing treat God with His deserved solemnity. God requires this of these creatures, but He also reveals this scene in many places in the Bible (Ezekiel 1, Isaiah 6, Revelation 4-5). He expects people to mimic this reality. It’s not there in the Bible to ignore. These heavenly creature use two sets of six wings to cover their faces and cover their feet (Isaiah 6:2). This signifies reverence and humility, modesty and respect, ways to give God His proper due and treat Him with appropriate worthiness.
Scripture is replete with means of solemnity and reverence. Either the opposite or some variation that diverts from this solemnity and reverence is then profaning. Some kind of profaning occurs with the diminishing of reverence and solemnity.
More to Come
The Tragedy of Young Women Taking Their Clothes Off in Public
One of the earliest moments of the whole Bible is God clothing the man and woman with a modest garment as opposed to nudity and their fig leaves. Their coats God made are a Hebrew word for tunic all the way to the floor and long sleeves. This is the same word used to describe the priestly robes. Genesis 3:21 says, God “clothed them.” God wants people clothed.
Why in particular do young women want to take the will of God on clothing in a different direction? God wants them clothed, but they want to take their clothes off in front of people. Even when they’re wearing clothes, they’re tight. I’ve walked behind so many males and females in these colder winter months, both wearing pants. Two were in front of me at the bank today, and consistently young women wear leggings, a garment that could be mistaken for paint, leaving nothing to the imagination. The male usually wears loose fitting trousers and the woman has some kind of very tight pants, which is mostly what differentiates them from what the man wears.
Young women are wearing their underwear in public, tiny little things that barely cover anything. They are scriptural nudity. They leave a lot of their skin and body parts uncovered on purpose. They are going for people seeing their legs, their breasts, their navel, their bellies, and many other things in between. When they choose a skirt, they on purpose choose one that is well above the knee. They also stand in a manner, one leg in front of the other, for a fuller exposure. The shoes, whatever kind and if any, accentuate a bare leg.
All of what I’m describing, that young women are doing, is wrong. That’s not why I’m writing this. There are many biblical arguments against young women dressing like they do today, and sadly how professing Christian women are dressing, or worse undress, especially because churches are not teaching on it. They don’t preach biblical dress standards or enforce them, even defend or justify unscriptural dress for young women. I’m writing this to explain the tragedy of the undressing of the young woman.
The first tragedy is that God isn’t pleased. He isn’t being honored by these young women because of their dress. God’s angels cover themselves in His presence. An argument for modesty for a woman is shamefacedness, which relates to the presence of God. The pure in heart shall see God. These young women are not pure in heart. They are not ashamed. They glory in their shame. They snub the holiness of God.
Also while I was standing at the bank today, a woman twice in exclamation said the two words, “holy ___________,” the latter word a crude word for excrement. She said it to a younger woman, while looking down at something together. The nature of those words is what these young women are doing with their undressing. They are made in the image of God and they are profaning that image with their immodesty.
The second tragedy is that these young women are defrauding their fathers. Their fathers or their brothers may not care. I say brothers, because I think of the Shulammites brothers in Song of Solomon chapter eight, who protected their younger sister by guarding her modesty and her virginity. If she was a wall, they would reward her, and if she was a door, they would enclose her with boards of cedar. Instead of enclosing her, some fathers and brothers are exhibiting her in her nudity today.
Today the young woman may say that the brother or a father, which seems to be absent, would not have a right to enclose her with boards of cedar. That is for her to decide. What scripture says is that when she is a door, that is, she gives intimate access to herself, that she is defrauding her father. He is to give her away, not her giving herself away. 1 Corinthians 7:36-38 says that she belongs to the father to give away. That’s a joke in today’s culture, a joke protected by the actual me-too movement.
A young woman, who undresses herself in public, is giving herself away to everyone. She is intimate to everyone. She is defrauding her father of that right, but she is also defrauding her future husband, profaning herself, making herself common. She isn’t special any more. She isn’t unique. She is a trampled garden in the parlance of what the brothers were protecting. They were saving her beautiful garden for a future husband. She would have greater value. So, third, she’s defrauding a future husband.
Fourth, the unclothing young woman forsakes future intimacy when she takes off her clothes in public, related to what I said in the previous paragraph. She isn’t the gift she once was and by her choice, so, fifth, she has become easy for someone, who will not have to be a man or show manly qualities. He can avoid a father, because she has given herself to not just him, but everyone who sees her. She has done this because she wanted to. She loses this. She can get some of it back, but once she’s out there, she can never get all of it back. She’s lost something. This matters too, because it will never be as special now. She’ll never know.
Related to the previous paragraph, she is opting for less of a man or not a man at all. A real man would only go through her father. A real man would have the confidence to do so. She has narrowed her pursuers to those who need it easy for them. She has made it easy. Those so-called men who take that easy road will have an easy woman. She has made it that way.
Seventh, is a comparison to fly paper. Fly paper attracts flies. Everything sticks on it. The young woman who undresses might have in mind who she wants to look at her skin, objectifying her, making her a mere object of lust by her choice. However, she’s going to have everyone else sticking to that fly paper as well. Every creepy minded and practicing person will be in on her show.
Someone might say that the above undressed young woman just lacks the confidence to wait, the satisfaction with God, with Jesus Christ, what is characteristic of a true Christian, to stay covered and wait for the right person. That’s all true too, but she’s getting the lust of every man in public. Maybe she thinks that is high praise, that men like seeing skin, her skin and body parts. That doesn’t require anything but lust and sin.
Eighth, the young woman who takes her clothes off in public is encouraging more of that with others. She is offending one of these little ones. She might not be taken advantage of to the extent that someone else is, but she will be partly at fault for it. She is downgrading the culture. She is turning it into Sodom and Gomorrah, a place for a righteous soul to have his soul vexed and for unbelievers to be made twice the children of hell they once were. She is doing that.
I’ve given you eight reasons explaining the tragedy of young women taking their clothes off in public. There are actually many more than these eight and those are all bad too. None of them are good. There is no good reason for young women to take their clothes off in public. You can take some time to meditate on these eight. They are enough reasons to stop this practice.
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