Upper and lower elementary students. You guys are still in here. This is your cue. You can go ahead and be dismissed. And we'll keep on flowing today. Thank you to the team for leading us. Such a powerful time of worship. Why don't you guys just say hey to somebody really quick as you're finding your seats?
So happy to have you. If it's your first time with us today, we hope you feel right at home. Uh for those of you who uh are around, you could probably look around and see that we've got a lot of our leaders, a lot of our pastoral team who are actually dispersed all over the place today. We've got Glenn and uh Glenn's in a wasso and Jonathan Cook, Jerry Vine, Ron Jones, they're actually in France today. So if you think about those guys, be praying for them. They're ministering in France. And we've got the Eslix out of town. The Hudson's are in Kansas.
So I hate to tell you guys, but you're stuck with me today because everybody else is all over the place. Jim and Doritha are they're the faithful pillars today, holding it down. But I'm truly I'm excited today to dig into the word together. And if you've been around, you know that we have been walking through the book of 2 Corinthians. Who's enjoyed that? It has been rich, it's been challenging, it's been so good. And uh I was joking earlier as I was discussing the passage of scripture that we're going to be walking through today. I'll just give a disclaimer.
It's not a passage for the faint of heart today. This is a Strong words, some might say it's a little bit of a heavy challenge to us, but this is why I'm so grateful that as a church we've been walking through a book of the Bible and preaching through it that way because we don't get to avoid the passages that we would rather skip. But we actually have to look at what the word says, and we have to ask God, what are you saying to us today as your church? Because how many of us know, even though not every scripture was written to us as its audience, it was all written for us. Right? So there's something. that we can glean. There's something that God would say. So just to give a little recap, the last few chapters of Second Corinthians we've been in,
chapters four, five, six, Paul in his letter to the Corinthian church, he's addressing a lot of different things.
There's a lot of different themes, but one of the last themes that's particularly strong in
chapter six is Paul. If you heard the message last week, he's really talking to the Corinthian church about the authenticity of a true Christian life and really what it will take to endure in this life as a believer, not just with your faith intact, but really with your credibility intact as a believer. And he's walking through using his own life even as an example. And he's really writing this letter to bring some clarity and to help this church distinguish between what is authentic and what is inauthentic. And that's where we find ourselves. As he continues in
2 Corinthians chapter 6, we're going to begin in
verse 14 today. So here's what he says: Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness?
What fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial? That's another word for Satan. What portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God. And as God said, I'll make my dwelling among them, walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Therefore go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing.
Then I will welcome you, I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty. And then into
chapter seven, verse one. Since we have these promises, beloved, Let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God. So we might be reading that and we might be having some questions. What does it really mean to be unequally yoked with the nonbeliever? What does it mean to clean ourselves? What does it mean to live set apart unto the Lord? That is what we're going to explore today as we unpack this passage of Scripture.
So if you're taking notes, the title of the message today is Standing Against Unrighteousness. Standing Against Unrighteousness. So we'll start with
verse one where Paul says, do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. He's not saying when he says that we are not to have relationships with non-believers, right? That would contradict Jesus' life and message, right? Jesus even had the nickname Friend of Sinners. He was eating with prostitutes and tax collectors, right? He came to seek and to save the lost.
So Paul is not insinuating that we as believers should cut off relationships with non-believers. But what he's saying here is not to be unequally attached or partnered. And that phrase, unequally yoked, many of us might know what that means, but if you don't this morning, it's really a phrase we see first used in the Old Testament.
Deuteronomy 22 is actually a command that God gave his people. He said, Don't yoke up or harness. Uh ox with a donkey. So a yoke was like a farming, a piece of farming equipment, right, where they would attach two animals together for the purpose of plowing. And so Paul is using this language as a symbol, a symbolic picture really of what we look like when we are trying to walk out the purposes of God, and we are partnering ourselves spiritually with those who do not know God.
And that is really the place that the church in Corinth was finding themselves, as we've heard in earlier chapters, they have been allowing false apostles to infiltrate the church. People who actually claimed Christ and even took the message of the gospel, but did not know God. And they claimed Christ in his name, but they did not represent Christ in his nature. And so this is where the church was finding themselves. They were starting to get influenced by the things of the world because of these false apostles. And it really displays something, I think, for us. It displays that this young church, even though they were saved and they were full of spiritual gifts and full of all kinds of zeal, you can read about that in 1 Corinthians, they still fought like the world. And they lacked the discernment to recognize unrighteousness from righteousness.
And I think there's a challenge in that for us today, church. We can be saved, we can be adopted by the Lord, we can be chosen, we could be gathering with the church, we can even Know some scripture. Maybe there might be areas of our heart where we're pulled by the value system of the world and blinded to be able to discern the difference between what's of God and what's not. And this is a sobering reminder today, but it is true that there are some things God hates. It's real quiet in this room today, but it's true. Especially in the Old Testament, very clear about specific things that God detests, right? Arrogance, pride, a lying tongue, right? I could go on and on.
Why are those things mentioned in Scripture? It's not because God is not love. We know God is love, right? But He's also just. And if there was nothing that God was opposed to in his nature, he would not be holy. So it's challenging when we come up against those places in scripture that describe what God hates. But can I just say I think if we lean into that a little more, it will allow us to fall more in love with the holy God. Because He is perfect.
He is perfectly just. He is the moral standard. I'm so grateful that we serve a holy God. Right?
First John 2 15, Jesus actually says, do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in them. What is Christ saying there? In context, he's again, he's not talking about the people in the world.
He's talking about The things, the mindsets, the paradigms, the value system that the world would have, he's saying if you love that, you'd actually don't have the love of the Father in you. Again, in context, he mentions the three things that Jesus was actually tempted with
the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life Possibly quoting 1 John 2:16. Those were what Satan brought to Jesus in the wilderness to tempt him. And can I say those are still the areas where Satan comes to us as his church to try to shift the affections of our heart away from what God values, right? And that can look a variety of different ways. So when Paul starts to list here in verse 15 these things that are opposed to one another, he starts to ask rhetorical questions, right? What accord has Christ with Satan? What portion does a believer share with an unbeliever?
What agreement has the temple of God with idols Possibly quoting 2 Corinthians 6:16, right? What fellowship has light and darkness, right? He's asking these questions to highlight the fact that there are some things that are incompatible. with righteousness. Not just opposed, but actually completely incompatible. It's almost like this is a very loose metaphor, but it's almost like oil and water. Right? You try to mix oil and water, it just doesn't happen. Why?
Because they are different on a molecular level, right? But at the same time, when I try to mix these two substances that are different at the core of their nature, there is a sense of pollution, isn't there? That's why they try to clean up oil spills in the ocean, right? Very difficult to do. And again, that's a loose metaphor, but I think it gives us a little bit of a picture. So what's going on in the church in Corinth that Paul's writing to is that again they were saved, but they had the wrong affections. They begin to lack discernment and they were also surrounded by a culture of idolatry. If you read Even a little bit, right, about the culture of ancient Corinth.
To me, it actually kind of encourages me. Like, if the church can get through that and survive that, like God's kingdom is gonna continue to advance, right? But you read about that culture, and it is one of the most disgustingly immoral cultures that has existed in history. Sexual immorality was not just rampant, but it was expected and it was even elevated because it was actually a part of their worship to false idols. Um, it was a culture that valued power. And domination and strength and all these things. And so the church in Corinth is coming out of this culture of idolatry. And yet, when these false apostles come and they're claiming Christ, even though they are not full of the nature of Christ, the Corinthians fall back into idolatry once again.
Propping these people up, allowing the affections of their heart to shift from the things of God. And so here's the encouragement to us: is that idolatry will always be a part of the world that we live in, right? Culture is always gonna have its idols, the things that it worships. We just don't want idolatry to seep into the church. And that is something that we need to be aware of and guard against. And that is why we are called. Not just to be discerning as the church, but to be distinct. To be distinct as believers.
Verse 16, Paul continues. He says,
For we are the temple of the living God. As God said, I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them. I will be their God, and they shall be my people Possibly quoting 2 Corinthians 6:16. This is Paul quoting a lot of phrases that we see repeated over and over and over again in the Old Testament. God actually says this over and over. Actually, if you go to the next slide, you can see. Uh a list of all the references where this phraseology repeats itself over and over and over again in the Old Testament.
It's almost like it was God's eternal plan to have a people, to not just live in a tent, to not just dwell in a building, but to redeem for Himself a temple. I don't know if we really understand or have a true revelation of that as the church. God didn't just save you to be a good person. He didn't just save you to make your life easier. He didn't just save you to get you to heaven. He redeemed you and he bought you with his own blood and he cleansed you so that his spirit could dwell in you and so that you could bring glory to him in a way that nothing else in all creation does. Wow, what a privilege! Wow, what a holy reality that you and me together as this covenant community, people of every tribe and language and tongue and nation, we could be called out as God's temple.
That is powerful, and that's what Paul is reminding the church of in this. And then verse 17. He says, Therefore, go out from their midst and be separate from them, says the Lord. Again, this is a quote. From several places in the Old Testament,
Isaiah 52 and
Ezekiel 20, where God is actually giving a command to the nation of Israel to physically separate themselves from the pagan nations that surrounded them. And this was not, again, because Israel was better. This was because he had an eternal plan, right? To get Christ into the earth so that Christ would draw.
The nation of Israel had to remain physically separate so that they did not become polluted by the idolatry around them. Paul's including this to remind the church that's in the new covenant, even though you're not called to physically separate, right, and create like a Christian country club. Looking like and emulating those that are around you. And and here's the the question again, why is this, right? Is this just because God is harsh and He wants us to live in behavior modification mode and live out of perfectionism and striving? No. Again, it's because we are the temple of the living God. We have been washed, we have been cleansed, and we represent a holy God to creation.
And so when we live as distinct followers of Jesus that are different than those around us, and we reflect the nature of a holy God, this also preserves our. And this is I'm just gonna I'm just gonna say it. This is again challenging today. It's something God has been challenging me with on a very deeply personal level. Everything we do when we claim Christ publicly. Everything we do from that point forward is giving other people a clearer picture of what God is like or a more distorted picture of what God is like. There's a weight to that. There's a responsibility to that, but that is a privilege.
It's a privilege, and it's one that the Spirit of God helps us with. Right? But I'm just also gonna say this because I think it's relevant for our cultural moment. Many of us who've been walking with the Lord for a while and who read the Word of God, we can acknowledge that because God is all powerful, He can work in the midst of some really dark situations, can't He? We've seen that throughout scripture, we see that throughout history. Even in Scripture, you see situations where God can even use some unholy people to accomplish his providential purposes. But in the midst of that, We can't allow our confidence in God's providence to allow us to be flippant about unrighteousness. Because even though God is powerful enough to work in the midst of darkness, he's still opposed to darkness.
He's still opposed to unrighteousness. So that's just a challenge to us today that as we even celebrate the fact we're confident that God is providential and he works in the midst of what might seem like dark times, or even uses some unholy people at times. If we do not acknowledge unrighteousness, we might actually send a message to the world that our God also does not care about unrighteousness. And that our God is not holy. So there's a balance there, isn't it? There's a tension that we walk out in our present time. But I love what Jesus has to say about how we behave in the world.
Matthew 5, he says, be salt and light, right?
You're a city on a hill. Let your light shine before men so that they may see your good works and what? Not glorify you. But your Father who's in heaven.
John 17, I love this passage. It's one of my favorite passages. Jesus is praying to the Father before he goes to the cross. He's praying about the church.
And he says, Father, I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you sanctify them in truth.
