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Ezekiel 45:1-2  When you allot the land as an inheritance, you shall set apart for the LORD a portion of the land as a holy district, 25,000 cubits [11.4 km] long and 20,000 cubits [9.1 km] broad.  It shall be holy throughout its whole extent.  Of this a square plot of 500 by 500 cubits [230 m x 230 m] shall be for the sanctuary, with 50 cubits [23 m] for an open space around it.

It is good for us, at our point in Salvation History, to be reminded that our God is a Holy God.  When the LORD met with Isaiah in the Temple to commission him for his life’s work, the seraphim heralded his appearance with the words, “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!” (Isaiah 6:1-3).  In the vision the Apostle John was given of heaven, a similar announcement was made by ‘four living creatures’: “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!” (Revelation 4:8).  On the strength of these declarations, Christian literature often refers to our God as the ‘thrice holy’ God.

We have the privilege of knowing that our ‘thrice-holy’ God actually descended into his creation in the person of Jesus, the divine Son of God, who became ‘God with us’, ‘Immanuel’, and whom we can now know personally as our friend.  Our problem is that we can become so familiar with this ‘friend’, who is “not ashamed to call [us] brothers” (Hebrews 2:11) because “he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.  For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted” (Hebrews 2:17-18), that we can easily slip into forgetting that he is also our ‘thrice holy’ God.  This reality hit the disciple, Simon Peter, hard when this new-found ‘friend’ with no fishing background outshone him and his colleagues at their own trade: “And when [Jesus] had finished speaking, he said to Simon, ‘Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.’  And Simon answered, ‘Master, we toiled all night and took nothing!  But at your word I will let down the nets.’  And when they had done this, they enclosed a large number of fish, and their nets were breaking.  They signaled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them.  And they came and filled both the boats, so that they began to sink.  But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, ‘Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.’” (Luke 5:4-8)

Yes, I like to sing with heartfelt meaning, “I’ve found a Friend, O such a Friend!  He loved me ere I knew him; he drew me with the cords of love, and thus he bound me to him; and round my heart still closely twine those ties which naught can sever, for I am his, and he is mine, forever and forever.”  (James G. Small) But it is good for me to have frequent reminders that I am a ‘thrice-unholy’ sinner, being impacted daily by ‘the world, the flesh and the devil’ (see Ephesians 2:2-3).

Everything about the earthly Temple, and the worship associated with it, was patterned on the holiness that separated God from his Covenant People, whom he loved, which makes the Incarnation of Jesus such a powerful miracle of grace, and therefore such an important theological truth.  It is not surprising that Satan Claus puts so much effort into minimising its influence every Christmas!  And, the Apostle Paul reminds me: “… do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God?  You are not your own, for you were bought with a price.  So glorify (your ‘thrice-holy’) God in your body.” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20)

– Bruce Christian