Pentecost and The Temple Of The Holy Spirit

1 Peter 2:4–5 (ESV) —  As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious,  you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. 

“Is the Holy Spirit in this place?” 

“Is the Holy Spirit in my life?” 

These might not be questions you wrestle with very often, but they are actually parallels to common questions we struggle with all the time.

“Is God near me? What is He doing about this?” 

Those are questions about God’s presence in our lives, and they can become pretty common when things are going a little rough. Conversely, when things are going really well, we probably should be asking “Did God pull all this together? Was this His hand? Is He here in the midst of all this?” 

The core of these questions is a need to know if God is near us. This is a primal human need (Deuteronomy 8:1-3, Ecclesiastes 3:11), which is why, across all human history, even when they strayed from the path of God’s truth, the vast majority of cultures built temples for their idolatrous gods. 

The fall separated all mankind from God (Genesis 3:23) and this is the state that everyone is in until they come to Christ (Ephesians 2:11-13). Despite this separation, mankind did not abandon worshiping gods. They still built temples. They still built false religions. This is because the human soul was created to have a relationship with God. Even when that relationship is severed, humans will try to recreate it by their own power. 

The uncertainty of not knowing “is God with me in the midst of this?” drove people to build temples, so they could offer sacrifices to their god and leave that temple with a feeling, albeit a false one, that they had earned a god’s presence. 

But the Gospel of Truth shows us clearly that our relationship with God is not based on us rising up to God to bring Him down to us, it is based on Him coming to us (Deuteronomy 30:11-17, John 3:12-13, Romans 10:6, Ephesians 4:10). For a time, God gave His people a physical temple so that they could come to a knowledge that God was with them through it. He has now, however, changed what He calls His temple, and the new Temple is much more fitting. 

The End of The Old Temple

Mark 13:1–2 (ESV) —  And as he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher, what wonderful stones and what wonderful buildings!”  And Jesus said to him, “Do you see these great buildings? There will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.”

Really, the events of Jesus’ crucifixion should have made it abundantly clear to the world that the temple in Jerusalem was no longer a place that God uniquely blessed with His presence. God exposed the holy of holies by tearing the temple curtain entirely open (Matthew 27:51, Mark 15:38, Luke 23:45) so that the whole world could see in and see how barren it really was. If God’s presence had still been in there, seated on the Ark of the Covenant, God’s presence would have burst out against all people in the area (see 2 Samuel 6 or Leviticus 10:1-3). That surely would have been a noteworthy event. 

That is not what happened, however. The reason that the tearing of the curtain was not a catastrophic, mass casualty event for Jerusalem was because that physical temple building no longer had an exclusive blessing of God’s presence. That’s not to say that God was not still doing incredible things there. There were still synagogues meeting and worshipping near the temple. The Word and Spirit were still very powerfully at work, but they were not tethered to that specific building. 

This is why Jesus could say to His disciples “oh yeah, that magnificent temple building; the one built to honor my Father and I, it’s going to be entirely destroyed.” If this building was truly the exclusive dwelling place of God, that statement of His would have been either nonsensical or completely abominable. Obviously, since it’s Jesus who said it, it is neither of those things. 

The Holy Spirit Signals The New Temple

Jesus didn’t just stop at declaring the old temple to be spiritually null and void. If that is all the further this story ever went, we’d be in a pretty sorry state of affairs. Every time we had the nagging question of “is God with me?” we would be left with the weight of that question, but no good answer for it. 

Jesus, through the power of His Holy Spirit, sent a huge signal to the whole world so that everyone could be drawn into His Temple. The public unveiling of this New Temple (kind of like a spiritual grand opening really), was the events of the first Pentecost after Christ’s resurrection.  

You can read about this event in Acts chapter 2. The highlight of that chapter is Peter’s sermon which leads to the conversion and baptism of something like 3000 people. There were other important signs that went along with this incredible sermon though.  

Probably the most incredible is the fact that the disciples came pouring out of this house that they were in, and they were all preaching in different languages. The Holy Spirit gave them power to speak in all the tongues of the crowd, thus drawing people into God’s presence from every corner of the known world. Theologians call this the “ingathering of the nations”, and it was prophesied to happen long before it did. Micah 4:1-2 is just one example of these prophecies:

Micah 4:1–2 (ESV) —  It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and it shall be lifted up above the hills; and peoples shall flow to it,  and many nations shall come, and say: “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.” For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.

Micah, and many other prophets, saw this ingathering of the nations and spoke of it. God draws people from all over the world into His Temple, but not by dragging them all to a physical mountain. His Temple is no longer a singular place. His Temple is now expanding into all the world through the preaching of the Gospel, and Acts 2 documents for us the beginning of it. 

There were other signals pointing to this new Temple too though. The tongues of fire that rested on the disciples were more than just a neat parlor trick. They signified the Holy Spirit’s gracious presence in, with and around the disciples. Like the burning bush that was never consumed (Exodus 3:2-3) or the pillar of fire that led Israel through the dark (Exodus 13:21-22), these tongues of fire signified that God’s Spirit was present there, but in grace instead of wrath. 

Thus, it also signified a change of temple. Formerly, the fire of God defended His temple (Leviticus 10:1-4), and at the inauguration of Solomon’s Temple, fire from heaven even signaled God’s approval and presence (2nd Chronicles 7:1-3). 

Now the Lord God was signaling the same thing, only the fire didn’t rest on a building. The tongues of fire rested on a people, and these people were very conspicuously fulfilling prophecies made about the “house of the Lord”. 

The Congregation As The Temple

Jesus told His disciples that the Romans would destroy the temple in Jerusalem and that there would not be a single stone left of it (Matthew 24:2, Mark 13:2, Luke 21:6) because He needed them to understand that after His resurrection and ascension, His presence will not be tied to a single place. By the power of His Holy Spirit, He is graciously with His believers even to the end of the earth (Matthew 28:19, Acts 1:8). His Temple is where ever two or three are gathered in His name (Matthew 18:20). Believers don’t have to ever worry that we are outside of the Holy Spirit’s presence. 

This is why Peter can describe believers as “living stones being built into a spiritual house.” In the era of Christ’s ascension, the Temple is not a place. It is a people. It is God’s people: the Christian Congregation. 

There is still much more to explore about the New Testament Temple! Next month we will begin to look at Paul’s theology of the New Testament Temple from his letters.