Having realised that acceptable worship to God is the only means to understanding God’s holiness, and having understood that acceptable worship is living in grateful obedience to God’s precepts laid out for us by our heavenly Father in His Word, let us be reminded that our body is the body of Christ, and a temple for the Holy Spirit (1 Cor 6:19). This means that anything that comes into our redeemed body, be it in the form of spirit, mind or matter, if it is not in accordance with God’s precepts, this thing defiles the holy place and the holy name. And that which defiles the holy place and name of God is both an idol and prostitution to thereof, and are an abomination to the Lord.

Now “what agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. And God has said: ‘I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God and they will be my people.’” (2 Cor 6:16).

But God also said, as warning against persistent disobedience of His precepts, “I will destroy your high places, cut down your incense alters and pile your dead bodies on the lifeless forms of you idols, and I will abhor you.” (Lev 26:30). And today, the Israelites still await the fulfilment of Ezekiel’s prophecy of the glory of the Lord returning to His people and His temple to be with them forever. Now that day will come, for the Lord has proclaimed it. But what a desolation it has been for the people of Israel in being disobedient to the Lord, the most Holy One: The absence of His presence and thus the absence of His holiness among them to this day.

Surely, how much more should we, who live daily in the presence of God, through His son Jesus Christ and in the Holy Spirit; we who are considered His temple; how much more should we not be made horrified at the desolation of Israel’s disobedience, such that we may be daily reminded that we stand in the presence of a holy God who abides no idol before Him, and will one day destroy all who defile His holy name. Let us then be determined to be obedient to the worship and design that God has laid out for His temple.