35 Bible Verses about drawing near to God

Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, sinners, and purify your hearts, double-minded people!

Then He said to Moses, “Go up to the Lord, you and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and 70 of Israel’s elders, and bow in worship at a distance. Moses alone is to approach the Lord, but the others are not to approach, and the people are not to go up with him.”

The Lord came down on Mount Sinai at the top of the mountain. Then the Lord summoned Moses to the top of the mountain, and he went up. The Lord directed Moses, “Go down and warn the people not to break through to see the Lord; otherwise many of them will die. Even the priests who come near the Lord must purify themselves or the Lord will break out in anger against them.” read more.
But Moses responded to the Lord, “The people cannot come up Mount Sinai, since You warned us: Put a boundary around the mountain and consider it holy.” And the Lord replied to him, “Go down and come back with Aaron. But the priests and the people must not break through to come up to the Lord, or He will break out in anger against them.”

All the people witnessed the thunder and lightning, the sound of the trumpet, and the mountain surrounded by smoke. When the people saw it they trembled and stood at a distance. “You speak to us, and we will listen,” they said to Moses, “but don’t let God speak to us, or we will die.”

“Come, everyone who is thirsty,
come to the waters;
and you without money,
come, buy, and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without cost!
Why do you spend money on what is not food,
and your wages on what does not satisfy?
Listen carefully to Me, and eat what is good,
and you will enjoy the choicest of foods.
Pay attention and come to Me;
listen, so that you will live.
I will make an everlasting covenant with you,
the promises assured to David.

No descendant of Aaron the priest who has a defect is to come near to present the fire offerings to the Lord. He has a defect and is not to come near to present the food of his God.

Seek the Lord while He may be found;
call to Him while He is near.
Let the wicked one abandon his way
and the sinful one his thoughts;
let him return to the Lord,
so He may have compassion on him,
and to our God, for He will freely forgive.

“The Lord spoke these commands in a loud voice to your entire assembly from the fire, cloud, and thick darkness on the mountain; He added nothing more. He wrote them on two stone tablets and gave them to me. All of you approached me with your tribal leaders and elders when you heard the voice from the darkness and while the mountain was blazing with fire. You said, ‘Look, the Lord our God has shown us His glory and greatness, and we have heard His voice from the fire. Today we have seen that God speaks with a person, yet he still lives. read more.
But now, why should we die? This great fire will consume us and we will die if we hear the voice of the Lord our God any longer. For who out of all mankind has heard the voice of the living God speaking from the fire, as we have, and lived? Go near and listen to everything the Lord our God says. Then you can tell us everything the Lord our God tells you; we will listen and obey.’

How happy is the one You choose
and bring near to live in Your courts!
We will be satisfied with the goodness of Your house,
the holiness of Your temple.

She has not obeyed;
she has not accepted discipline.
She has not trusted in Yahweh;
she has not drawn near to her God.

“But the Levitical priests descended from Zadok, who kept charge of My sanctuary when the Israelites went astray from Me, will approach Me to serve Me. They will stand before Me to offer Me fat and blood.” This is the declaration of the Lord God.

I have struck down your children in vain;
they would not accept discipline.
Your own sword has devoured your prophets
like a ravaging lion.
Evil generation,
pay attention to the word of the Lord!
Have I been a wilderness to Israel
or a land of dense darkness?
Why do My people claim,
“We will go where we want;
we will no longer come to You”?

Aaron’s sons Nadab and Abihu each took his own firepan, put fire in it, placed incense on it, and presented unauthorized fire before the Lord, which He had not commanded them to do. Then fire came from the Lord and burned them to death before the Lord. So Moses said to Aaron, “This is what the Lord meant when He said:

I will show My holiness
to those who are near Me,
and I will reveal My glory
before all the people.”

But Aaron remained silent.

For there will be a day when watchmen will call out
in the hill country of Ephraim,
“Get up, let’s go up to Zion,
to Yahweh our God!”

The chamber that faces north is for the priests who keep charge of the altar. These are the sons of Zadok, the ones from the sons of Levi who may approach the Lord to serve Him.”

Jacob’s leader will be one of them;
his ruler will issue from him.
I will invite him to Me, and he will approach Me,
for who would otherwise risk his life to approach Me?
This is the Lord’s declaration.
You will be My people,
and I will be your God.

Then the man said to me, “The northern and southern chambers that face the temple yard are the holy chambers where the priests who approach the Lord will eat the most holy offerings. There they will deposit the most holy offerings—the grain offerings, sin offerings, and restitution offerings—for the place is holy.

For the Israelites must live many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred pillar, and without ephod or household idols. Afterward, the people of Israel will return and seek the Lord their God and David their king. They will come with awe to the Lord and to His goodness in the last days.

You are to give a bull from the herd as a sin offering to the Levitical priests who are from the offspring of Zadok, who approach Me in order to serve Me.” This is the declaration of the Lord God.

“For just as the new heavens and the new earth,
which I will make,
will endure before Me”—
this is the Lord’s declaration—
“so your offspring and your name will endure.
All mankind will come to worship Me
from one New Moon to another
and from one Sabbath to another,”
says the Lord.

It will be a holy area of the land to be used by the priests who minister in the sanctuary, who draw near to serve the Lord. It will be a place for their houses, as well as a holy area for the sanctuary.

“When the man with the discharge has been cured of it, he is to count seven days for his cleansing, wash his clothes, and bathe his body in fresh water; he will be clean. He must take two turtledoves or two young pigeons on the eighth day, come before the Lord at the entrance to the tent of meeting, and give them to the priest. The priest is to sacrifice them, one as a sin offering and the other as a burnt offering. In this way the priest will make atonement for him before the Lord because of his discharge.

The Lord is near all who call out to Him,
all who call out to Him with integrity.

On the eighth day Moses summoned Aaron, his sons, and the elders of Israel. He said to Aaron, “Take a young bull for a sin offering and a ram for a burnt offering, both without blemish, and present them before the Lord. And tell the Israelites: Take a male goat for a sin offering; a calf and a lamb, male yearlings without blemish, for a burnt offering; read more.
an ox and a ram for a fellowship offering to sacrifice before the Lord; and a grain offering mixed with oil. For today the Lord is going to appear to you.” They brought what Moses had commanded to the front of the tent of meeting, and the whole community came forward and stood before the Lord.

Return, you faithless children.
I will heal your unfaithfulness.
“Here we are, coming to You,
for You are the Lord our God.

Ascribe to Yahweh the glory of His name;
bring an offering and enter His courts.

So tell the people: This is what the Lord of Hosts says: Return to Me”—this is the declaration of the Lord of Hosts—“and I will return to you, says the Lord of Hosts.

Serve the Lord with gladness;
come before Him with joyful songs.
Acknowledge that Yahweh is God.
He made us, and we are His —
His people, the sheep of His pasture.
Enter His gates with thanksgiving
and His courts with praise.
Give thanks to Him and praise His name.

“Since the days of your fathers, you have turned from My statutes; you have not kept them. Return to Me, and I will return to you,” says the Lord of Hosts.

But you ask: “How can we return?”

What should I bring before the Lord
when I come to bow before God on high?
Should I come before Him with burnt offerings,
with year-old calves?
Would the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams
or with ten thousand streams of oil?
Should I give my firstborn for my transgression,
the child of my body for my own sin? Mankind, He has told you what is good
and what it is the Lord requires of you:
to act justly,
to love faithfulness,
and to walk humbly with your God.

Therefore, brothers, since we have boldness to enter the sanctuary through the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way He has opened for us through the curtain (that is, His flesh), and since we have a great high priest over the house of God, read more.
let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed in pure water.

(for the law perfected nothing), but a better hope is introduced, through which we draw near to God.

Food will not make us acceptable to God. We are not inferior if we don’t eat, and we are not better if we do eat.

If then, perfection came through the Levitical priesthood (for under it the people received the law), what further need was there for another priest to appear, said to be in the order of Melchizedek and not in the order of Aaron? For when there is a change of the priesthood, there must be a change of law as well. For the One these things are spoken about belonged to a different tribe. No one from it has served at the altar. read more.
Now it is evident that our Lord came from Judah, and Moses said nothing about that tribe concerning priests. And this becomes clearer if another priest like Melchizedek appears, who did not become a priest based on a legal command concerning physical descent but based on the power of an indestructible life. For it has been testified:

You are a priest forever
in the order of Melchizedek. So the previous command is annulled because it was weak and unprofitable (for the law perfected nothing), but a better hope is introduced, through which we draw near to God.

Since the law has only a shadow of the good things to come, and not the actual form of those realities, it can never perfect the worshipers by the same sacrifices they continually offer year after year. Otherwise, wouldn’t they have stopped being offered, since the worshipers, once purified, would no longer have any consciousness of sins? But in the sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year. read more.
For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. Therefore, as He was coming into the world, He said:

You did not want sacrifice and offering,
but You prepared a body for Me.
You did not delight
in whole burnt offerings and sin offerings.
Then I said, “See—
it is written about Me
in the volume of the scroll—
I have come to do Your will, God!” After He says above, You did not want or delight in sacrifices and offerings, whole burnt offerings and sin offerings (which are offered according to the law), He then says, See, I have come to do Your will. He takes away the first to establish the second. By this will of God, we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once and for all.