"Keep my commandments and follow them. I am the LORD. Do not profane my holy name. I must be acknowledged as holy by the Israelites. I am the LORD, who makes you holy and who brought you out of Egypt to be your God. I am the LORD."
Everything hangs on the first 6 words, "Keep my commandments and follow them", a double exhortation of the same thing. The Hebrew language loves repetition for emphasis because the Scripture was meant to be read aloud by teachers and scribes.
For God to be holy, he needs to be recognized as wholly other, that is, something so completely different that it could not have possibly come from the world. God is unlike anything else that has ever existed because he caused all things to exist. This God needs to be seen as radically distinct from every other God to the Israelites as to say there is no comparison.
And it is this holy God who makes us holy through the law and commandment. The law sets us apart from the world. Through obedience we are sanctified and through faith we are justified. Disobedience, behaving just like the nations around us, profanes the Holy Name of God. It tells the world that our God is no different than any other God, that He isn't holy. What use is a God like that? Why not worship idols? But who is like the Lord? There is no one like our Lord, Jesus Christ! Amen!
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