Unequally Yoked

Good morning again. It's good to be with you and good to open the Word with you again. It's been about a month since we were in this book of 2 Corinthians.

And so let me invite you, if you want to find chapter 6 of that book, 2 Corinthians chapter 6. And as you're turning there, especially if you're new with us in the last month, or maybe if you're just a little bit rusty on what this letter has been all about, let me give you a chance just to kind of catch up.

2 Corinthians 6 · chapter mention

I'll give us a quick bird's eye view of what we've seen so far. This is a letter from the Apostle Paul, one time Christian hunter, now turned apostle and church planter, planting churches all across the Mediterranean.

He has established a church here in this city of Corinth and moved on to do other ministry. Only for this church here at Corinth, there have been some problems.

Rivalries, divisions, sexual immorality, lawsuits among believers, abuse of the Lord's table, abuse of spiritual gifts even. And so they really are kind of a mess, like many churches.

So Paul wrote them a couple of letters prior to the one we're looking at right now. He tried to address some of these things. And even while he was doing that, we know that another big problem popped up.

It was the arrival of the so-called super apostles. Super apostles, that's actually Paul's term for them. And so Paul goes on to write this letter that we have right here, mostly in response to this problem.

He's wanting to prepare this church for a visit he's going to make, an impending visit. And up to this point, he spent a lot of time defending his personal integrity, teaching them about forgiveness and what it means to be the aroma of Christ.

He's talked about the ministry of the new covenant, a ministry of life and glory, not death. He's told them that they should renounce, like him, shameful, underhanded ways of doing ministry.

And we know that's a shot across the bow at those rivals. And we've also heard some personal testimony from Paul about all the afflictions that he's faced.

And just prior to our passage right here, Paul has urged the believers to see themselves as a new creation. As Christ's ambassadors who are individually entrusted with the ministry of reconciliation.

He's been pleading with them that they not receive God's grace in vain. And that they would open wide their hearts for him. And so here we come to verse 14.

And in this verse, Paul is probably about as direct as he's been thus far anywhere in this letter. So follow along with me as I read for us.

We're going to begin in verse 14. And we're going to keep reading through chapter 7, verse 1. 2 Corinthians chapter 6, verse 14. This is what Paul writes.

2 Corinthians 6:14

As God has said.

I will make my dwelling among them and 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. And I will be a father to you. And you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty.

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.

Let's go to the Lord once more, shall we? Father, we ask a blessing on the teaching of your word today. I pray that these words would be faithful to what you want us to hear.

I pray that you would use them to form us, Lord. Help us to understand. Help us, Lord, by your spirit to not simply understand and hear, but also to live accordingly.

And we pray this in the name of Jesus, our Savior. Amen.

Well, if we were to try to reduce all these verses we just read down to one theme. One dominant theme. I think we'd have to agree that that theme is holiness.

Holiness as in being set apart. Set apart from any defilement, body or spirit of any kind. As Paul says right here in the last verse. He says, since we have these promises, let us cleanse ourselves.

Or you could also say sanctify or purify ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit. This, Paul says, is how we bring holiness to completion in the fear of God.

And that's an interesting last three words in our passage. Fear of God. They are critically important for us to keep these words and this concept in mind.

That as Paul pursues holiness, as Paul calls the church to also pursue holiness, it is done out of a motivation that is from the fear of God.

Sometimes we think that, you know, it's terrible to think about God and have any kind of fear whatsoever from Him. And God is not wanting us to be afraid of Him in that sense.

Although there is a sense of holy reverence. But the fear of God is a very big and important concept in Scripture. Sure. The book of Hebrews in the New Testament refers to God as a consuming fire.

Our God is a consuming fire. It also says that it's a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Meaning judgment. And while I certainly don't think that every Sunday should be a, what, Jonathan Edwards, sinners in the hands of an angry God Sunday.

Right? Not every week. It is still sometimes appropriate to remember this. Paul fears God. And his fear is a healthy fear of God. The same God who also loves him.

But it's part of what motivates the pursuit for holiness. Well, this is where Paul ends in the last verse. But the overarching command of the passage, that actually comes to us in the very first verse.

And that actually is very simple. Verse 14. Do not do something, he says. Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. And really, you could just kind of put a period there.

Because Paul goes on and says some other things. But there's no qualification. There's no exceptions. No caveats from Paul. Oh, in this case, it's okay.

He simply says, do not do this. I know in my years in the church, I've mostly heard this passage applied exclusively to the realm of marriage.

And I do think that that is an appropriate application. However, there are a couple of other things in Scripture when we talk about marriage that I think help us qualify things a bit.

Let me point out a couple things. For starters, we need to say that if a person is already married, this does not mean that you're supposed to divorce your spouse.

A marriage covenant, even a marriage covenant with an unbeliever, is still a holy covenant made before God. And it's one that God respects and honors and intends to be kept for a lifetime.

God does not want unequally yoked couples to read this verse and then go split up. God does not want a believing spouse to walk out of a marriage.

In fact, quite the opposite. This is what Paul says in his first letter. So his first letter to the Corinthians, back in chapter 7, verse 13, he actually says this.

If any woman, and you could substitute man, if any woman has a husband who is an unbeliever or any man has a wife who is an unbeliever, and they consent to live with them, she should not divorce him.

He should not divorce her. Being married to an unbeliever is not a sufficient reason to get a divorce. Just to be clear on that. As a matter of fact, Paul goes on in the very same chapter to talk about the believing spouse in a marriage,

and he actually talks about how they bring a sanctifying effect upon the marriage. And so if you or someone you know is in a marriage with an unbeliever, God wants you to stay married, number one, and God also wants you to be a good spouse, and God wants you to pray for your unbelieving spouse,

and he wants you to represent the very best of the fruits of the gospel to your unbelieving partner. Of course, having said all this, for those who are already married, the best time to apply this verse, 2 Corinthians 6, verse 14, is before you get married.

2 Corinthians 6:14

Right? And although Paul doesn't say this explicitly, I guess this is me going a little bit out on a limb, I would suggest that it should have application to how we date.

Right? Since that's how we, in our modern society, tend to do things. I mean, maybe in a few places, marriages are still arranged, or, you know, whatever it is.

But generally, there's some kind of a dating process, or I guess a courtship. And it would make sense that you would not date someone. I mean, maybe I'm crazy.

Do we date people we wouldn't marry? Do I need to say that to the young people? Should you date someone that you don't ever intend? I would never marry that person.

I'm just going to date them. I would say that's not wise. So young people, or any of us who are single, who maybe are not so young, if you are considering marriage, remember this.

Even casual dating is not meaningless or harmless. You know, people do fall in love. It's a real thing. Now, that's the biggest, and some would say maybe, most obvious application of verse 14, do not be unequally yoked.

And I think it's good to address that right up front. But it's not the only application of this verse. And to understand this, we need to kind of delve in a little deeper into Paul's meaning here.

Some Bible translations actually have this, don't be partners with, or don't team up with, or don't link up with, or be mismatched with unbelievers.

Actually, the technical term comes from farming. Now, we don't know that. We have tractors, and we don't have to pair up tractors to plow a field, right?

But in the ancient world, you did have to pair up a yoke of animals to pull a plow and plow a field. And actually, this is a metaphor that gets used frequently in the Old Testament.

In fact, the sense is contained in a passage like Deuteronomy 22, verse 10. What does Deuteronomy 22, 10 say? It says, You shall not plow with an ox and with a donkey.

Deuteronomy 22:10

In other words, don't try to double harness these two different animals and expect them to plow side by side because one of those two animals is a whole lot stronger than the other, and one of those animals is pretty docile, and you can kind of get it to do what you want it to,

and the other animal's not nearly as strong, and it's going to do whatever it wants. Take a guess which one. The donkey. It's that they're incompatible.

And actually, this becomes a principle in what's often called the holiness code of the Old Testament. The holiness code given to the Israelites.

The law, in fact, applied it to everything from farming practices to even clothing and food. Some of us are familiar with a few of these laws, and it especially applied it for the Israelites to their social relationships.

God instructed His people not to mix differently. He said don't mix different types of seeds, and don't mix different types of fabrics. Now, that's not because, you know, wearing a wool blend or, you know, wool cotton blend sweater that I've got on right now is somehow unholy.

I hope not. I'm in trouble. It's not because cotton and polyester are somehow incompatible with each other. We know that this was an illustration for the Israelites.

Imagine that. Just like preachers give you an illustration in a sermon, God gave His people illustrations. And for them, it was to be a powerful illustration, even in what they wore on their body, to remind them that they needed to keep themselves separate from their pagan neighbors that worshiped other gods.

It's like, if I, God, am giving you laws about not mixing your fabrics or your seeds, then imagine how serious I am when I say, I don't want you to intermix with people of other faiths, with pagans around you.

And that's exactly what Israel had around them. So this is what Paul means, and this is the principle that right here in the New Testament he's applying in chapter 6.

Don't be unequally yoked. And we'll notice that he goes on not to qualify it, but actually to give a number of questions, or I should say list out a series of questions.

These are rhetorical questions for us to really get a sense of what he's talking about. But rhetorical questions, of course, are ones where the answer is so obvious you don't really need to answer it.

And in each of these questions, you could cry out a resounding no or none, nothing. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness, Paul asks?

The answer is none, no partnership. Or what fellowship has light with darkness? None at all. Or what accord has Christ with Belial? It's like, do we even have to ask?

None. And please understand, the terms that he uses here, like partnership and fellowship and accord or even portion, Paul's talking about more than just associating with people.

This isn't like, oh, as a Christian now, don't talk to unbelievers. Buy up all the houses in the same neighborhood so you don't have to have a neighbor who's not an unbeliever.

No, that's not it at all. In fact, Paul actually had to address this in, again, his first letter. Let me take you back to 1 Corinthians 5. 1 Corinthians 5, verses 9 and 10.

1 Corinthians 5:9

This was written in a situation where there was unrepentant sin in the church with a leader, a man in the church, in sexual immorality. Here's what he writes.

He said, But here's what I didn't mean. Not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy, or swindlers, or idolaters, or any other kind of sinner.

Since he writes, then, to do that, you would have to, what? Go out of the world. And isn't it sad that in the history of the church, at various points we had groups of believers that missed this and did exactly that.

They cloistered themselves off. They were ascetics that ran out in the middle of nowhere, went up on a mountain to live away from everybody.

Paul says, That's not what I mean. Paul's talking about the intimate fellowship of the church family. The sacred bond between believers. And what he was saying here was, When you get one of the faithful caught up in an unrepentant sin, not a slip up and I'm sorry, I'm repentant,

an unrepentant sin like what was happening here, you need to break off association with them. You need to not associate with them as a redemptive act, as a way to try to bring that person to repentance.

But when you're dealing with the people of the world, with rank and file people who don't know Christ, who are unbelievers, it's different. You're going to be among them, Paul says, and you should be among them.

It is not God's plan for you to leave this world. In fact, you are to be leaven to this world. You are to be my ambassadors to your unsaved friends and neighbors and family members and co-workers.

In fact, in 1 Corinthians chapter 10, Paul even talks about a really practical, common scenario where, you know, you've got an unbelieving neighbor and they invite you to dinner.

1 Corinthians 10 · chapter mention

Why don't you come over to our house for dinner? And Paul says, Go! You should go! Be a good neighbor! Share the table with them! So that's not what he's talking about here with these terms.

What kind of yoking is he talking about then? What kind of yoking is he forbidding? And where does he see it being a risk? Let me try to answer that.

What he's talking about is a kind of yoking together where a believer will begin to adopt the values of an unbeliever. The kind of union or partnership where the world's values start to collide with the values of the kingdom.

And where a believer might be inclined to compromise, might start to adapt to ungodly patterns, fleshly ways of thinking and living, and begin to behave like someone who is unregenerate, who is not a Christian.

That happens in close, intimate partnerships. You know, I've been married for over 30 years now, and my wife and I, we have adapted to each other, right?

Doesn't it happen? Even when we were, you know, years ago building our house, I don't know, 15, 17 years ago, our contractor, I remember, he was so amazed, and when we picked everything out, we agreed.

I learned to like whatever she likes and dislike whatever she dislikes. And, you know, I know it's funny. You're like, of course, that's a smart marriage.

Do whatever she wants. But there was a synergy between us. Few of you know me. I have opinions about things. The staff knows me. Even when I don't have opinions, I really do.

But we were able to agree on everything because we just had lived together. We had come to like things that were the same. And that's the way it is when you are living in the same home, when you, in our case, have raised children together, and the effect is seen in our children.

Now our children share a similar value system. You know, it works itself out. I mean, you know, they have these algorithms that study us online all the time.

You probably don't know that. It's probably frightening to think about, but it's true. And the algorithms probably think Terry and I are the same person.

They probably do. This is what happens in a close relationship, especially in an intimate relationship like a marriage, and even beyond marriage.

Again, I work here with a team. I work alongside ministry staff. We do ministry together. I work with many of you as lay leaders in different capacities.

And it's amazing to me how often we are unified in our thinking. It's because we share the same values for our ministry. And we are together.

We spend time together. And we love one another. And we tend to agree.

But let's get back to the rhetorical questions. Paul goes on. He starts with this one. He says, well, what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness?

See, when we join in an endeavor with someone, whether it's in business, education, education, a sport, an extracurricular activity, it involves a sharing of a purpose together, much more so than just going to the store and buying something.

I mean, you're all customers, I guess. But there's something different when you've got kids on the same sporting team or in the same arts performance or whatever it might be.

You want your child, if you're a parent, in that sport to learn good life lessons. And so do all the other parents. They have got their kids there for the same reason.

And what Paul is saying is that there is righteousness. In other words, there's approaching whatever it is you're doing in that commitment, that activity, that capacity, with a commitment to right behavior, right conduct, ethical conduct, to pleasing God in the way we do it,

to playing for God's glory. And then there's someone who is not bound by what God wants. Paul calls that lawlessness. They don't care about God's law.

This is why Paul offers warnings like he does. Again, in the first letter, 1 Corinthians 15, verse 33, he says, Do not be deceived. Bad company ruins good morals.

1 Corinthians 15:33

Bad company ruins good morals. In other words, the company you keep tends to influence you. And if it's bad company, it's going to ruin your morals.

I could tell you stories about the culture of a team that I've seen as a parent, where one team member has an attitude, or gets upset. And if they're a high performer on the team, or if they're a leader or a captain on that team, guess what?

It starts to affect the rest of the team. I've seen it. You probably have too. Next, Paul goes on. Next rhetorical question. He says, Or what fellowship has light with darkness?

The thing about light and darkness is that you really can't have them both together, can you? Without light, of course, the absence of light is darkness.

But when you shine light, the darkness dispels. Paul uses the word here, fellowship. You know that word in the Greek, some of us have heard it, it's koinonia, fellowship.

This is deep association, a close relationship where there's bonding. The kind of fellowship that we have here in our church. Or maybe that you experience even a higher degree of it in a men's group, or in a women's group, or mom's group, or care group.

He's talking about that bond of fellowship, deep. And Paul's point is that light doesn't have any fellowship with darkness. In fact, again, darkness gets dispelled by the light.

1 Thessalonians 5, verse 5. Here's what Paul writes over there to the Thessalonians. He says, For you, speaking to the church, you are all children of light.

1 Thessalonians 5:5

Children of the day. We are not of the night, or of the darkness. Or to the Colossians. Colossians chapter 1, verse 13. What's he say there?

Colossians 1:13

He says that God has delivered us, rescued us, from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son, a kingdom of light.

Next rhetorical question. What's this one in verse 15? What accord has Christ with Belial? Accord means agreement. It means being allied with someone, having an alliance, working together in a coordinated way.

And the answer to this question is pretty obvious. What accord does Jesus Christ have with Belial? And by the way, Belial is like an intertestamental Hebrew nickname for Satan, for the enemy.

It's his personal name. Like in English, we often will say Lucifer, when we're referring to the devil. Paul wants to use the very personal name of the enemy, with the very personal name of Christ.

What fellowship does Christ have with Lucifer? None at all! He goes on. Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? Portion, as in future destiny.

The inheritance that's up ahead. What the Lord has in store for every believer. He says, that's very different than what he has in store for those who are not believers.

And then we come to verse 16. And now Paul, with that last rhetorical question, starts talking about the temple. What he says is this, verse 16.

Last question. What agreement has the temple of God with idols? A lot of scholars say, you know, probably in Paul's mind was some of those terrible days of the kings of Israel, the kings that we looked at, you know, last year.

Kings like Manasseh, that polluted the Lord's temple with idols. Like, the narrator said that was kind of the height or the absolute depth of idolatry to pollute God's temple with idols.

But remember this, Corinth as a city was a city notorious for its temples. All kinds of temples everywhere in that city. To various false gods and idols.

Because monotheism was not something that the Greek culture felt compelled to stick with. They thought you could worship many gods. In fact, there was never any sense that one God would get mad at the other if you worshiped them both.

It was the more the merrier. And so they had temples everywhere. Temples to the whole Greek pantheon, Apollo, Zeus, Aphrodite, you name it. And Paul says, God's temple can't have anything to do with idols.

And that was a big challenge for the church members here in Corinth. Because socially speaking, that's where a lot of the action in town was, was at the temples.

That's where people went. That's where they went to frequent. There would be these pagan feasts. They would sponsor a feast to this or that deity.

And it was just normal to invite someone to go along with you. It would be like inviting someone to go to a ball game with you. You want to go see the Cubs?

You want to go watch the Indiana Hoosiers? Let's go. That's what it was like. It was the thing to do socially. The problem was, is that there were some really wicked things that happened there.

That's a little different than going to a Hoosiers game, I think. Sexual immorality, debauchery, all kinds of weird ways that they worship these false gods.

In fact, Paul warned them about this again in the first letter. Back in 1 Corinthians chapter 10, again, verse 21. Here's what he said there.

1 Corinthians 10 · chapter mention

He said to the very same people, you cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons.

What he meant was, you know, these false gods, yes, they're false, they're fake, they're not real, but behind them is a demon. And you can't go on Saturday night and sit down at a table for the demons and do wicked things or watch wicked things or participate in wicked things

and then come show up on Sunday morning with your church gathering and take the Lord's Supper. You can't do that. That doesn't mix.

He goes on in the second half of verse 16, and he reminds us of this profound truth, that the temple of God is no longer a structure. It's not a building.

It's now a people. You. We. We. For we are the temple of the living God, he writes. First letter again. Don't you know that you're a temple of the Lord?

He means this corporately, that when we gather together, we are like building blocks of the holy temple of God here, having nothing to do with the actual structure, bricks of the building, that you and I, our very souls are blocks in the temple of the Lord.

But he also means this individually. Your very body is sacred. He says, don't take the members of your body and do things that are sexual because you're the temple of God.

And then what Paul does after this is he takes a detour to the Old Testament, you might say. What he does, starting in the middle of verse 16, is that he takes us on just kind of a quick little, I guess you could call it a tour,

or maybe like a mashup of six different Old Testament texts. And why is he bringing up these texts? Well, because they all deal with promises.

Promises to God's people, to God's ancient Israelites, the old covenant people. But you know what Paul does, is he takes these promises in these texts, and he applies them to the church.

He applies them to us. He says, the promises that were spoken to them, they're now for God's people today. Verse 16, a promise that I, God, will make my dwelling among them, and walk among them.

And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. That's a mashup of a text from Leviticus 26, another one from Ezekiel 37. In both passages, God is speaking to his redeemed people, and he's telling them, I'm going to be present with you now.

I'm going to dwell with you. And of course, we know on this side of Pentecost, with the release of the Holy Spirit into our world, we have the dwelling, indwelling presence of God's Spirit in us now.

We experience the dwelling in ways that those Old Testament saints never could. The Spirit of God himself dwelling in us. Verse 17 is another mashup of a couple of Old Testament passages.

He says, go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing. This is again, kind of a mashup between a couple different Old Testament texts that are spoken to Israelites, who at this time were living as exiles in Babylon.

Babylon was a very cosmopolitan ancient city, with a lot of idolatry, a lot of wicked things. And God was saying, I know you've been around all of that.

I'm going to call you, my people, back to your homeland. And you're going to have to leave that stuff behind. And you're going to have to sanctify yourself now.

Touch no unclean thing. Purify yourselves. Because that's what intimacy with God demands. A separation from all that's unclean. And from any who would drag us into unclean patterns of living.

End of verse 17. Purify yourselves. Then, says the Lord Almighty, then I will welcome you. Verse 18. And I will be a father to you. And you shall be sons and daughters to me.

Here again, a couple more Old Testament passages. Again, one from Ezekiel 20, verse 41. And this one's combined with a very unique promise, once made to an ancient king.

Ezekiel 20:41

2 Samuel chapter 7. The other passage, kind of being mashed together here, is when the Lord spoke his covenant promise, originally to David.

2 Samuel 7 · chapter mention

As in King David. Where the Lord said to David, David said, Lord, I want to build you the temple. I want to build you a house. And the Lord took that, and turned that phrase right around, and said, David, I'm going to build you a house.

And what he meant was not a structure. He meant a household. And he was giving the promise of an heir. That there would be someday a true son of David.

A perfect son of David. And really, we extend this promise now in Christ to every member of Christ's household. Now elevated to the status of a son or daughter.

With God as our father. Adopted children into God's family. And so with a snapshot of these promises, Paul now concludes in the very last verse of our passage, which happens to be the first verse of chapter 7.

And that verse again is this. Chapter 7, verse 1. Since we have these promises.

Beloved, since we have these promises, loved ones, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God.

Do you see what Paul's doing here? He's taking all of these Old Testament promises. Again, promises once made to an ancient, old covenant people.

And he's applying them. He's extending them now to us. To the church. He says, church, these promises now apply to you. And they should serve to motivate you.

To motivate you. Because simply having a promise applied to you doesn't guarantee it's a fulfillment. It doesn't guarantee. Yes, you've been declared righteous and made a new creation in Christ.

But you must also cleanse yourself. Let us. And notice that Paul throws himself in here too. He says, let us cleanse ourselves from every sort of defilement of body and spirit.

Because it's in this way that we will bring holiness to completion in the fear of God. Yes, Paul's telling us that as believers, we are to take the holiness that's imputed to us.

That's a word we sometimes use. Imparted within us is what imputed means. Given to us because of what transactional cosmic thing Christ did at the cross where he took our sin and substituted himself.

And then he gave us, he transacted his righteousness. He says, yes, you're declared completely righteous. But being declared completely righteous is not the same thing as actually being completely righteous.

And that's where the work comes in. To take that righteousness Christ transfers to us and perfect it. He says here, bring it to completion. And that will necessarily involve separating and cleansing ourselves from anything and everything that would taint us.

Well, as I said, when we started out this morning, our passage is really fundamentally about holiness. Holiness in the believer's life. And we understand that the church Paul originally writes to here, they're at risk.

At risk of joining and partnering with unbelievers in ways that would closely bond them together with their faithless values, their worldly beliefs and practices.

He says, if you partner and bond with unbelieving people, Corinthians, you risk mirroring their values. You risk compromising and crossing boundaries that will not please the Lord.

And of course, we know when we come to study a scripture like this one, yes, it had an original application for an original church, but it's been preserved in scripture, in our Bible for us for a reason.

And that reason is that it applies to all of our churches. It applies to our church right now and to our lives. We need to remember that there is this clear line of demarcation between a believer and an unbeliever.

There aren't really shades of gray. We need to remember that the believer is bound to God's law and an unbeliever is not. We need to remember that one person is still lost in darkness while the other's been found and brought into the light.

One is still under the power of the enemy and the other person has had the enemy's power broken in their life. And so for every Christian listening to this this morning, I think the word to you is very straightforward.

Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. Don't partner with lawlessness. Don't fellowship with darkness. Don't stand in harmony with the devil.

And don't hold common ground with idolatry. Now what's that look like practically? Let me touch on a few areas. Let me make you uncomfortable.

Right? Let's touch on a few areas. Let's start with marriage. We started there. Let's go back to marriage. Clearly this teaching applies to this most sacred of covenants.

But I think maybe we should apply this, give it application before we get to the point of marriage. And I have an opportunity to talk to some of you that are not married.

Some of you who are young people. And I would simply say, if you don't want to get married to an unbeliever, don't get engaged to one. Does that make sense?

And if you shouldn't get engaged to an unbeliever, don't start dating one. That's in our culture the pattern, right? We start with dating and then it moves to betrothal, to an engagement, and then we get married.

Do I need to say that to our young people? Don't date an unbeliever. But let me back it up even younger, because some of us don't have kids that date yet, right?

Some of us have little ones. And I would say as a parent, if you're a believer, you should ingrain this teaching in your children to tell them that you're praying for them to find a believing spouse, if that's what God has for them.

Not everyone is to be married. But if they are, that you're praying that they would find someone who's a believer. Let me go beyond marriage.

Beyond marriage, aren't there some activities that we busy our lives with as we pull out our schedules for another new year? Don't our calendars fill up with all the things we're doing?

And are we not sometimes, you know, partnering with other families, partnering with other people in these activities? And sometimes we partner in ways that form us.

Sometimes there's a value system that's present in, like I said a few minutes ago, like a team culture. I'm thinking about all the activities that we enjoy doing and get our families involved with, from sports, yes, to the arts, all manner of the arts, to various clubs,

to all manner of organizations where you will share a common purpose at some level and you're going to spend a lot of time together forming and being formed.

You think sitting in the stands with other parents and talking with them isn't, you know, kind of an activity where there's some interchange of values that goes on?

Yeah, there are. I've done it. Or riding together. I mean, what parent can go to all the activities or the away games or the performances? Sometimes you send your kids in another person's car and you trust them.

There is forming that happens here. Kids soak things up. It's true that sometimes baseball is just baseball, right? They hit a ball. They run the bases.

But sometimes a sport can be treated like an idol. Really? Is that a newsflash? An activity can be elevated to the point of being supreme. Above family?

Above an important thing like maybe dinner time together? Above church? Above youth group? Parents, if we bring up our kids and we show them that sports come first, then do not be surprised if your kids grow up

and show a lifetime commitment to sports as first. And if you don't think our society's love affair with whatever your preferred activity is hasn't only grown in intensity these days, well, you're not paying attention.

It has grown in intensity. Choirs, bands, ballet. I mean, let's not only pick on sports. Scouting, robotics, archery club. I mean, I've heard it all.

Let's be sure that A, these things don't become idols. And B, that we're not giving our hearts over to an inappropriate relationship or fellowship in these things.

Listen, I'm a parent too. And we tried to commit early on that our activities, our kids' activities, would never be at the expense of our family or at the expense of their involvement in our local church and in recent years, the youth group.

And sometimes that's not been easy. Sometimes there are negatives that blow back on you when you say no. If practice runs past a certain time, you need to tell the coach you have to come home.

Now, it gets a little easier sometimes if you homeschool, I guess. You're in control. Or if you go to a Christian school. But even Christian schools these days, it's been hard.

Public schools is even harder. I'm a parent. We made this commitment early. And I think that that sows something into the next generation. Because if it's hard for us, if it's hard for me and for you right now, it's going to be even harder for your adult children.

How about another area? What about the area of business? Are you saying, Jason, that a Christian can't work for an unbelieving company? No, I'm not saying that at all.

Again, you'd have to leave this world. Most of us work for unbelieving or secular organizations. I'm talking about the kind of business relationship where there's a close partnership, where there's a yoking together.

Like when someone starts a company together with someone or someones. Or buys into a company as a part owner. Listen. How you treat your clients.

How you bill your customers. The ethics that you bring to your work. How you stand behind your work or don't. How you stand behind your word or don't.

Your reputation. When you yoke together with someone, you are yoking up to their values and their worldview. So let's be mindful of our close partnerships in business.

Let's not find ourselves unequally yoked. Because if the light of Christ is in you, and you're striving, and I hope you are, to bring righteousness to your business dealings, if you partner up with someone who is not bound by God's law, you could be on a collision course.

There could be conflicts.

And finally, one last area before we finish that I think we need to touch on. I think it also affects close partnerships and fellowships with the church.

And by that I mean all of us together as a church as Redeemer. Does Redeemer, a church like ours, partner up and have close fellowship with just any other ministry?

Any other faith? And the answer is no. We are Christian in our faith. That is an exclusive belief system that is in conflict with other faiths ideologically.

And even within the church, the Christian church, sometimes there are distinctions. In some cases, those that call themselves churches have compromised.

They've compromised sometimes core theological doctrines, like the Trinity. There are churches that don't believe in the doctrine of the Trinity.

Oneness Pentecostal would be one example. There are churches that don't believe in the doctrine of hell. There are churches that believe there are multiple paths to be saved.

We don't partner with them for a reason. And in our recent days, there are churches that have corrupted moral doctrines too. Churches that have moved the goalposts on what the Bible teaches about gender, male, female, two genders given by God.

Or have moved the goalposts on sexual behavior. Listen, if a ministry does that, if they move the goalposts on some truth or some moral behavior that contravenes Scripture, we cannot partner.

And we will not fellowship with them. Because we don't share the same portion or destiny. And we don't serve the same master. So my prayer for you, for you personally, for your family, and for our whole church this morning,

is that we would not compromise in any of these ways. Because that will only prevent us from seeing the outworking and the fulfillment of God's wonderful promises to us.

And let's not lose sight of those promises. In the midst of don't do this and work on holiness, let's remember what God promises to dwell with us, to walk among us, to be his sons and daughters.

And so let's behave like his adopted children. And let's you and I commit to pursuing holiness in the fear of God. Let's pray, shall we? Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word,

even at times where it pricks and hurts a bit. Father, we thank you that you are a God that never gives up on us when we fail. You are a God that even out of conflicting things, messes, broken pieces, you can recreate beautiful things.

And so Lord, I pray for those of us in the trenches right now. I pray for especially those of us that are in situations where we're feeling some of that conflict.

Lord, it's challenging. It's tricky. We might make people upset. We might make our kids upset. But Lord, will you help us to want things that please you more than pleasing even our children?

Will you help us, Lord, to grow in this holiness that you tell us to bring to completion? We know we need your Holy Spirit to grow in holiness, and we thank you that you've given your spirit to us.

He dwells within us, and we praise you for that. So Lord, we thank you this morning that you call the people to be your sons and daughters. that you have adopted us into the family.

And we pray this in the name of our brother and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen.