Receive the Holy Spirit - Part Two

You are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.- Ephesians 2:19-22It would be hard to overstate the significance of the Jerusalem’s temple in the mind and life of a first century Israelite like Paul.The gospel authors record the awe Jesus’s disciples felt when they encountered the temple. But even more impressive that the great architecture was that in Paul and the Apostles' thinking, the Temple was the centre of the cosmos. It was THE place that heaven and Earth overlapped; the hotspot of God’s presence.But Jesus saw the corruption of Israel's leadership behind those massive stones and the magnificent buildings. The week before he was arrested Jesus went into Jerusalem, right into the Temple courts, and openly accused the priests and the leaders of Israel of corruption. Messing with the temple system is dangerous business. At Jesus' trial one of the false accusations used against him was that he claimed he would destroy the physical Temple and rebuild it in three days. But Jesus’s claim was that he was the new Temple. In him, God’s presence and rule had come into the world in a new way. Now, Jesus is the place where Heaven and Earth overlap - not the physical Temple building. Jesus was referring to his own body, that would be destroyed and rebuilt in three days when he rose to new life.After his death and resurrection, Jesus said that God’s presence would come and live in and among his followers. That they would become communities of people  where God rests and rules. They would be temples!And through these communities - these living temples - God’s presence, rest and rule, God’s dwelling with his people, was to fill the whole world. All because of Jesus’s life, death and resurrection. We, Trinity Vineyard Church, are being built together to become a dwelling  in which God lives by his Spirit. Sometimes it's hardly noticeable. Sometimes work seems to leap forward massively in only a few days. But whether we notice it or not,  IT IS happening. Come Holy Spirit of the Living God. We continue to ask to receive Your presence. Build us, your living temple, into a unified space, hosting your presence.