Numbers 15:32-36: in context

This is a hard passage. While Israel was in the wilderness, a man was found gathering sticks on the Sabbath day. He was brought to Moses and Aaron, and held in custody, because it was not yet clear what should be done with him. Then the LORD gave the sentence: the man was to be put to death, stoned by the whole congregation outside the camp. And so it was carried out. The severity is real, and the passage records it plainly.

We should not pretend this passage is easy; it troubles us, and it is meant to be faced honestly rather than explained away. A man gathers sticks on the Sabbath and is put to death for it. To understand even a little, we have to see what the Sabbath was in that covenant: it was the sign of the covenant itself, the appointed mark that Israel belonged to God and lived by his rhythm, not the world's. Deliberate, open Sabbath-breaking, in the very wilderness where God was daily providing manna and had just given the command, was not a small lapse but a public defiance of the covenant sign, a declaration of independence from the God who had redeemed them. The severity of the sentence measures the seriousness with which God regarded that defiance. And here is the sobering point the passage presses, even across the distance of covenants and centuries: God takes his holiness, and his commands, far more seriously than we are inclined to. We tend to treat God's commands as suggestions, his holiness as something mild, our own casual disregard as no great matter. This passage stands as a witness against that casualness. It does not mean God deals with us now as he dealt with that man; we live under a different covenant, and the same God has borne the weight of our sin in Christ. But it does mean that our light, casual attitude toward God's commands is not God's attitude. He is holy, and his commands are not trifles; the passage that troubles us is, at least, a corrective to the ease with which we treat as small what God treats as grave.

Do I treat God's commands as suggestions and his holiness as something mild, casual in my disregard of what he takes seriously, and can this hard passage, without my explaining it away, at least correct that casualness, reminding me that God regards his holiness and his commands far more gravely than I am inclined to?