The Temple of The Holy Spirit

THE TEMPLE OF THE HOLY SPIRIT 
Reading from the last two verses of Chapter 6 
Acts 6:14. and certain hostile Jews set up false witnesses who said, “This man never ceases to speak words against this temple and the law, for we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and will change the customs that Moses delivered to us.” And gazing at him, all who sat in the council saw that his face shone like the face of an angel.

Acts 7: 1 Then the high priest asked Stephen ‘Is this true?’  

In order for Stephen to defend himself he determined to enter into a detailed account of their history, going back to Abraham, from the commencement of their nation then through to the story of Jacobs son Joseph who was beaten up by his brothers and left abandoned and supposed dead. Joseph was taken to Egypt as a slave of Pharoah who later made him the governor of the entire region. Joseph brought Jacob and his brothers into Egypt, saving them from the famine which was over the land, and there the twelve tribes of Israel grew into a nation. And after Joseph died these tribes became slaves of the Pharaohs for four hundred years. 
Then Moses is born and miraculously preserved from the edict of the cruel ruling Pharaoh to put all the Hebrew children to death, but Moses is saved by Pharaoh’s daughter and brought up in the courts of the Pharaoh and even looked after by his own mother. Moses knows he is called to be a deliverer of his people but one day at forty years of age he recklessly slays an Egyptian who was brutalizing one of his Hebrew brothers and in doing so he alienates his Hebrew brothers who reject him saying 'Who put you in charge of us?'. He is also rejected by the rulers of Egypt and is then forced to flee into the wilderness where he lives in exile for forty years.

We pick up the narrative in verse 32 where God has just spoken to Moses in the wilderness through an angel who appears to him in a burning bush. 

An angel appeared to Moses in the of flames of a burning bush, and Moses heard God's voice: 'I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.' 
"God said, 'Kneel and pray. You are in a holy place, on holy ground. I've seen the agony of my people in Egypt. I've heard their cries of distress and I've come to help them, and I'm sending you back to Egypt.'
This is the same Moses whom they earlier rejected, saying, 'Who put you in charge of us?' This is the Moses that God sent back as ruler and redeemer. He led them out of their slavery. God did miracles for Israel, at the Red Sea, and out in the wilderness for forty years. Moses told the people
'God will raise up a prophet just like me from your descendants.' This is the Moses who gave the life-giving words of the Commandments to Israel but our fathers resisted them. 
"They made a golden calf-idol and brought sacrifices to it. God let them go on doing it their way, to worship every new god that came across their path—and they lived with the consequences, as described by the prophet Amos: ‘Did you bring me offerings of animals and grain O Israel? Hardly. You were too busy Worshiping war gods and sex goddesses. And I put you into exile in Babylon’.

God had Moses make a tabernacle for true worship, made to God’s exact blueprint. They had it with them as they followed Joshua, when God gave them the land of Canaan, and still had it to the time of David.  David had asked God if he could build a temple for Israel to worship him. 
But God asked Solomon to build his temple. 

And all this resistance by Israel to God’s goodness led Stephen to the conclusion that God could no longer bear with them, and a time of judgment had come upon them. The whole story of Stephen’s defense revolves around the temple, God’s dwelling place where God meets with Mankind. Stephen teaches them through their Scriptures from Isaiah that God was going to one day make a new kind of temple with his own hands. It would be a living temple – God’s people as the temple of the Holy Spirit. 

We then read in verse 48-50. ‘However, the Highest God does not dwell in temples made by the hands of men. ‘Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool: What kind of a house will you build for me, says the Lord, or, where is my resting place? (Isaiah 66:1-2) Will not MY HANDS do this?’

Stephen then begins to condemn the council on the two major features of his revelation. First that God’s temple was to be the temple of the Holy Spirit, and secondly that they would come under God’s judgment for always resisting the Holy Spirit. 

51. You are all willful and stubborn, hard of heart and unwilling to listen, always resisting the Holy Spirit. You are doing exactly what your forefathers have always done. They persecuted every prophet sent to them and killed the ones who prophesied of the coming of the Messiah, whom you yourselves have just betrayed and murdered.
53 You were privileged to receive the Commandments - Commandments that you have not even kept. On hearing Stephen say this, they went into a rage, and began snarling at him.
55. But Stephen, full of the anointing of the Holy Spirit, looked up into heaven, and he saw Jesus standing at the right hand of God. 56. And he said; ‘I can see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God. 57. They all began to yell viciously and put their hands over their ears, rushing at him all together. 58. They dragged him out of the city and stoned him. They laid their outer robes for safe keeping at the feet of a young man called Saul. As they stoned Stephen, he called upon God, saying, ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit’
60. He knelt down and cried out with a loud voice, ‘Lord, do not lay this sin upon them.’ He said this, and then he died.

The whole theme of this chapter in Acts is that God has always wanted to dwell with us, not just from a distant heaven, and not just in a church/temple made with human hands where sacred things get done and sung and sacred things are said. His desire is to dwell with us, make his home in us, as we make our home in him. God spoke this over and over in the Scriptures through the prophets as we just saw through what Stephen spoke.
That is why Jesus was called Emmanuel, ‘God with us’.

In the Old Testament the only way that the Holy Spirit could share God’s truth was through the anointed prophets and the way God displayed his power was through his divine supernatural acts of salvation and provision and wonder. All of that Holy Spirit revelation of God’s truth and power was rejected by Israel. Nonetheless God still worked his powerful works of miraculous saving power in supernaturally overcoming the armies of their enemies in front of their very eyes.
God is saying the same thing to his people in these days, whether they go to church or not, or whether they believe or not, or whether they even know God or not. God has sent his Holy Spirit into the world, not just into the church. The church can see itself as a temple made with hands if they want to, but God sees his church as his living temple to express his Holy Spirit within and amongst his people, and Stephen is still speaking today saying ‘do not resist the Holy Spirit’. Each person is also a temple of the Holy Spirit (1Corinthians 3:16, 6:19).
And for those who do not do church or do not know church or do not even know God - God has sent the Holy Spirit. Jesus even told his disciples that it was better for him to go away and leave them so that he could send the Holy Spirit. 

John 16:7 If I do not go away, the HELPER will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. And when he comes, he will convict the world of sin and righteousness and judgment: concerning sin, because they do not believe in me, concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you will see me no longer; concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is 
Judged. DEEPER MEANING

To convict the world of sin means to reveal to the heart of everyone the sin in their heart.
That sin [hamartia] causes them to miss the mark of the target for our life - believing in Jesus.

To convict the world of righteousness is to reveal to humanity the heart of harmony and alignment that Jesus has with the Father, and for the Holy Spirit to make that alignment and harmony with the Father the desire of our heart. 

To convict the world of judgment because the ruler of this world is judged means to reveal the overcoming power of Jesus to overcome the darkness and evil that threatens our soul just as God overcame the enemy armies that came against Israel.

Jesus goes on to tell them that when the Holy Spirit came, he would lead them into all truth –taking the things that Jesus says and declaring them unto us.

When mankind resists the work of that HELPER that God has sent for us, the result is a troubled soul. A troubled soul is the spiritual bank vault of all of the stored-up acts of resistance to the HELPER who is struggling in the inner being of every person on Planet Earth to bring God’s love and truth into their lives, as the Scripture declares - the goal of our faith is the saving of the soul (1Peter 1:9).
But we have all learned to make our own helpers to defend ourselves with different kinds of reactions against harm or threats of harm, and these helpers can be very unhelpful to our emotions and our rational thinking and cause our soul a lot of unnecessary suffering. They came into action as we started to grow up – ‘I don’t want to be treated like this so here’s what I’ll do’ - and somewhere these get stuck in our souls and operate on autopilot. Their distress signals are a way that the Holy Spirit tells us that he wants to be our HELPER and to give us grace to not resist him but to receive him. When we open our hearts and minds to hear the HELPER that Jesus and the Father has sent, we begin to experience the salvation of our souls. 
The HELPER helps us to hear the message, believe the message, and to be the message.