AP

Numbers 35:34  Do not defile the land where you live and where I dwell, for I, the LORD, dwell among the Israelites.

As the Lord was preparing his Covenant People, Israel, to occupy the Promised Land after delivering them from bondage in Egypt, he gave Moses specific detailed instructions about how they were to to live there.  At the heart of these instructions was the fact that he, their thrice-holy God, would be living among them, and therefore they were to be holy.  “I am the LORD your God; consecrate yourselves and be holy, because I am holy.” (Leviticus 11:44).

Until I started to look into the implications of what God says in Numbers 35:34, I always avoided using the term ‘the Holy Land’ in reference to that land today – it seemed a bit outdated and inappropriate, but at least I can see now where the term originated.  Nevertheless, as I thought about it, I realised that the point the LORD was making has much wider implications for us today.  Two things come to mind.

Firstly, the Church, the Bride of Christ, purchased with his blood, is now God’s Covenant People – the ‘New Israel’.  As the Apostle Peter says of the Church, “But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: ‘Be holy, because I am holy’”, and “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light” (1 Peter 1:15-16; 2:9), and the Apostle John, “I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.  And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them.  They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.’” (Revelation 21:2-3)  John’s vision refers to the ‘New Heaven’ and the ‘New Earth’, but until then the Church here is to live appropriately in anticipation of it, and even now Jesus is ‘Immanu-El’, ‘With us [is] God’.

Secondly, I realise how out-of-touch God-denying, modern humanistic ‘science’ is with reality as it fails to recognise our Universe as as a created ‘Geo-centric’ Universe (as Genesis 1 makes clear), and as it searches desperately for evidence of extra-terrestial life; whereas God, the Creator, tells us that we are made (exclusively) in his image and likeness, that his Plan A, from the very beginning, was to redeem us through the death of his own Son, and that he has given us Planet Earth, formed specially to meet our needs, and has put the Universe around us to give us times and seasons, and everything else we need (light, darkness, warmth, photosynthesis, etc, etc), and to display his glory.  As King David says: “The earth is the LORD’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it; for he founded it on the seas and established it on the waters.” (Psalm 24:1-2)  I love the way Timothy Dudley-Smith sums up the whole situation: “The Lord made Man, the Scriptures tell, to bear his image and his sign; yet we, by nature, bear as well the ancient mark of Adam’s line.  In Adam’s fall falls every man, with every gift the Father gave; the Crown of all Creation’s Plan becomes a rebel and a slave.  Herein all woes are brought to birth, all aching hearts and sunless skies; brightness is gone from all the earth, the innocence of nature dies.  Yet Adam’s children, born to pain, by self enslaved, by sin enticed, may still, by grace, be born again, children of God, beloved in Christ!  In Christ is Adam’s ransom met, Earth, by his cross, is holy ground; Eden, indeed, is with us yet, in Christ are life and freedom found!”

– Bruce Christian