The second picture is that of distance. God is not only “high above” us but “far away” from us. We dare not approach too close. Indeed, many are the biblical injunctions to keep our distance. “Do not come any closer,” God said to Moses out of the burning bush. So it was that the arrangements for Israel’s worship expressed the complementary truths of his nearness to them because of his covenant and his separation from them because of his holiness. Even as he came down to them at Mount Sinai to reveal himself to them, he told Moses to put limits for the people around the base of the mountain and to urge them not to come near. Similarly, when God gave instructions for the building of the tabernacle (and later the temple), he both promised to live among his people and yet warned them to erect a curtain before the inner sanctuary as a permanent sign that he was out of reach to sinners. Nobody was permitted to penetrate the veil, on pain of death, except the high priest, and then only once a year on the Day of Atonement, and then only if he took with him the blood of sacrifice. And when the Israelites were about to cross the Jordan into the Promised Land, they were given this precise command: “Keep a distance of about a thousand yards between you and the ark; do not go near it” (Josh 3:4).
It is against the background of this plain teaching about God’s holiness and about the perils of presumption that the story of Uzzah’s death must be understood. When the oxen carrying the ark stumbled, he reached out and took hold of it. But “the Lord’s anger burned against Uzzah because of his irreverent act,” and he died. Commentators tend to protest at this “primitive” Old Testament understanding of God’s wrath as “fundamentally an irrational and in the last resort inexplicable thing which broke out with enigmatic, mysterious and primal force” and which bordered closely on “caprice.” But no, there is nothing inexplicable about God’s wrath: its explanation is always the presence of evil in some form or other. Sinners cannot approach the all-holy God with impunity. On the last day, those who have not found refuge and cleansing in Christ will hear those most terrible of all words: “Depart from me” (e.g., Mt 7:23; 25:41).
John Stott. The Cross of Christ.