And you shall make of these a sacred anointing oil blended as by the perfumer; it shall be a holy oil (30:25).
And the incense that you shall make according to its composition, you shall not make for yourselves. It shall be holy to HaShem (29:37).
God gave the exact recipe for the anointing oil that was to be used to anoint the tent of meeting and each article that He has been directing Moses to make: “the ark of the testimony, the table and its utensils, the lampstand and its utensils, the alter of incense and the alter of burnt offering with all its utensils and the basin and its stand” (30:26-28).
They were to be anointed with this oil, thereby consecrated and made most holy. Aaron and his sons would likewise be anointed with this oil and thus consecrated to HaShem.
It was the same with the incense – God told Moses exactly how to make the incense and specified that it would be holy to HaShem. No one was to duplicate it for personal use.
The holy things were to be for God’s use only. “Holy” means “set apart.” Things set apart for God could not be used for any common purpose.
We have been reading that the priests were set apart for God’s service. But as we’ve noted, all God’s people are called to be holy. We see in this in Leviticus 19:2: “Speak to all the congregation of the people of Israel and say to them, ‘You shall be holy, for I HaShem your God am holy.’” And again in Leviticus 20:26: “You shall be holy to me, for I HaShem am holy and have separated you from the peoples, that you should be mine.” Also in 1 Peter 1:15-16: “But as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, “you shall be holy, for I am holy.’”
That’s our calling – to be set apart for God. But what does that look like? God Himself tells us in Leviticus 19:2-4: “You shall be holy, for I HaShem your God am holy. Every one of you shall revere his mother and his father, and you shall keep my Sabbaths: I am HaShem your God. Do not turn to idols or make for yourselves any gods of cast metal: I am HaShem your God.”
There’s more. God continues with many more instructions for what “set apart-ness” looks like. In a nutshell, it looks like living the way God instructs us. I have written these things previously and I might sound like a broken record, but we are going through God’s Word chapter by chapter, and this comes up regularly so it must be important! And as noted before, while our motivation for being holy, for living God’s way, should be simply that God told us to be holy, it is a way of life that will bring blessing, as it is the way we were made to live.
Prayer: You, O God, are holy! You call me to be holy. Please help me to know what that looks like in my daily life, even if it means being different from others, even from others who love you. Amen.