The Enemy of Holiness
How do you make something holy?
Trick question—you can’t.
You can keep something holy, like the Sabbath. God told us to “remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy” (Exodus 20:8). Once every seven days, we make an effort to maintain the holiness of the 24 hours God that set aside on the seventh day of creation (Genesis 2:3).
But we don’t make it holy. It already is holy. We just keep it that way.
How do you make something unholy?
Not a trick question—you can, and it’s easy to do.
God instructed the prophet Haggai to “‘ask the priests concerning the law, saying, “If one carries holy meat in the fold of his garment, and with the edge he touches bread or stew, wine or oil, or any food, will it become holy?”‘ Then the priests answered and said, ‘No.’ And Haggai said, ‘If one who is unclean because of a dead body touches any of these, will it be unclean?’ So the priests answered and said, ‘It shall be unclean'” (Haggai 2:11-13).
It’s a one-way street.
Contact with holy things can’t make common things holy—but contact with unclean things makes holy things unclean.
When we make something unholy, we have defiled it or profaned it. We’ve made it common or ordinary—we’ve taken it off the pedestal God prepared for it, and we’ve treated it like something unimportant and insignificant.
What’s interesting is that a profane thing isn’t automatically a bad thing. Ahimelech told David that he had no profane bread available—no common or ordinary bread (1 Samuel 21:4). All he had on hand was holy bread—the show bread, which had been set apart by God.
Profane bread isn’t bad bread—it’s just bread that isn’t sacred. It’s the kind we eat every day; the kind that isn’t intended to sit in the temple before the presence of God.
Profanity is a problem when we use it to take something holy and make it common.
The Sabbath. The name of God. Our marriages. Our identity as God’s people. These are things God has made holy—consecrated—set apart from the normal and ordinary.
We can’t make these things holy. But we’ve been charged by God with keeping them holy—keeping them safe from the profaning influence of the world’s uncleanness.
How are you doing on that front?
Today, on this Sabbath, have you been making the effort to keep these holy hours holy? Or have you been letting the profanity of the rest of the week creep in?
I like how the NET Bible translates this passage from Isaiah:
You must observe the Sabbath
rather than doing anything you please on my holy day.
You must look forward to the Sabbath
and treat the LORD’s holy day with respect.
You must treat it with respect by refraining from your normal activities,
and by refraining from your selfish pursuits and from making business deals.(Isaiah 58:13, NET)
The profane, the normal, the average and everyday things don’t belong in the spaces God has made holy.
We can’t make them that way—but it is our privilege to keep them that way.
Until next time,
Jeremy
