Accessible God

At the moment I'm reading through a book of the Bible called Leviticus. The intro to this book states that Leviticus' central theme is the holiness of God.
It sometimes may be hard to read this book as it covers the instructions involving sacrifices and the law the Israelites had to follow. But let's look a bit beyond these instructions to why did God give them?

God is holy, pure and just. We are not. So we can't have access to Him as we are. Yet, God wants to be close to us. The purpose of the creation of mankind was that God wants relationship. So how can that happen?

For the Israelites, God's chosen people, God required animal sacrifices given in particular ways to remove their wrongs.
In our present day lives it may seem strange to hear about the particulars of animal sacrifices. But God had to have things done exactly, in a set order, in a set way. This shows how apart from us He is. God is holy.

God wanted to restore relationship with the Israelites (and us) so He made plans. He revealed to Moses how the everyday person can receive forgiveness and peace from God. God through Moses gave the Israelites instructions on how they could be made right with Him, even when they'd made mistakes - Blood had to be shed.

In Leviticus, God states, 'the life of the flesh is in the blood'. Blood has special purpose, it gives life to us, we are dead without it, literally and spiritually.
The thing is, you can only really get to the blood of something if it dies. Life can only come through death. Through the death of an animal (through the appropriate sacrificial ceremony), the 'life' of the blood was released so that in whichever area the people of God went wrong, life can be brought out of it instead of death.

This is how the Israelites lived, day in, day out, presenting themselves and their offerings to the priest in order to get right with God every time they did something wrong.

I don't know about you, but I think about how many times I get things wrong.
The truth is, I would be seeing the priest quite often in one day, animal in hand.

I love the fact that we have the opportunity to read about how the Israelites could get access to God. This shows how blessed we are because its difficult for us to understand as we haven't had to live like that.
We don't need to get access to God that way.

Because there was a man called Jesus. The Son of God, who is holy, pure, and just.

Jesus followed the law and fulfilled it. Jesus is the last sacrifice that we have to hold up before God.
Jesus is the; atonement, free will, peace, sin, consecration and guilt offering.

Jesus is the one sacrifice that removes all sin, past, present and future.

Jesus was not offered up by us, but by God. Jesus, an innocent, holy, pure and just man, chose to die horrendously and have his life blood shed by being crucified on a cross. So that we, in our everyday lives have the opportunity to have access to a relationship with God. Through faith in Jesus all our sins are removed, forever.

This is no small thing. This is something not experienced by those everyday Israelites.

We do not have to shed blood, we do not have to approach the Holy Place, we do not even have to go through ritual cleansing and wear special clothing.

We...... just...... come.

God is accessible whether you're at work, home, cleaning or eating. I am so grateful that I can come to God even before I've brushed my teeth or had a shower! I don't need to go through a process to be with my God. He's there! The real question is; how often do you meet with Him?

He's waiting.