"Unequally Yoked" 2 Corinthians 6:14-18 Sunday Evening Worship Service

Tonight, 2 Corinthians 6, let me tell you why we're here and then I'll pray again and then we'll really begin.

Um I wanted to do this passage because uh a couple weeks ago um we did uh church discipline on someone at a communion service Sunday morning.

And you know that's something that the church has always done, and by the church I mean the Protestant church, ever since the days of the upper room discourse with Jesus, has often done church discipline at communion services.

It's in the same way that Jesus separated from Judas, sent Judas out before instituted communion.

It's just been the custom through church history.

Calvin wrote a lot about this in the institutes.

There's a great book called Christ Center Worship by Brian Chappell.

Um I know many of you are familiar with that book, where he explains the history of doing church discipline at communion services.

And it's I think it's important.

But somebody uh asked me and said, you know, we don't hear a lot of sermons on sexual immorality against sexual immorality.

You know, we do discipline for sexual immorality, but there's not a lot of sermons about that.

And so my mind went to this passage about that.

But the more I've studied it in the uh the couple weeks since then, um, because Ryan's been preaching Sunday morning, so I've been filling my time on this passage, uh, you know, the more obvious it is that this is not primarily even about sexual immorality.

It's about the kind of ministry a church does.

It's about the partners that a church takes on.

It's about what happens at church.

Um and so that's why I wanted to look at it in depth tonight.

Um I mean, I'd like to spend, you know, four or five sermons on this passage, but we'll cram it into one tonight.

If I talk fast, I'm asking for your forgiveness ahead of time.

Let's go before the Lord together and we'll begin.

Father, we do ask for your mercy to be in our life tonight.

Um we know that you have the power to save people.

And you use that power not just to save, but to to really transform the life.

And so we're here tonight, in a sense, with an already not yet tension.

We've already been saved, we've already come to faith in Christ, but we're not yet who you want us to be.

And so we're reaching forward for the image of Christ, and we pray that you would use this passage tonight to challenge us and to mold us so that we look more like Christ through your word tonight.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Let me read our text for us tonight, 2 Corinthians 6, 14, down to the end of the chapter.

Paul says, Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers.

For what partnership is righteousness with lawlessness?

Or what fellowship has light with darkness?

What accord has Christ with Belail?

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, 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 separate from them, says Yahweh, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing.

Then I will welcome you, then I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty.

This is a very common verse that people turn to to speak of the sinfulness of marrying outside the Christian faith.

If there's a believer who wants to marry an unbeliever, this is kind of the go-to pastoral passage.

Believers should not be unequally yoked.

And of course, Paul explains this in more detail in his first letter to the Corinthians, 1 Corinthians 8, where uh, or 7 rather, where he explains quite clearly that you should uh remain in the situation you are in which you're saved.

And so if you are a non-believer and you're married to an unbeliever and then you get saved, Paul says, stay in your marriage.

Don't leave your non-believing spouse just because you're saved.

If he wants to go, let him go.

But don't you initiate the divorce just because he's not a Christian, after all.

God saved you in that circumstance, remain there.

Well, if you're not a Christian and you want to marry a Christian, this is a verse that is a problem for you because this verse commands believers not to marry non-Christians.

But this verse, that's just the most obvious application of that.

The big picture here in 2 Corinthians 6 is not even about marriage, although, as I just mentioned, it is a pretty obvious application of it.

The big driving command here in this passage is that believers and non-believers should not have a spiritual partnership with each other.

In the one sense, this is a command, but in the other sense, this is kind of just axiomatic.

I mean, Paul is saying it should be an impossibility for believers and non-believers to have any kind of spiritual partnership with each other.

Now, this structure of this verse really centers in on the middle of verse 16.

Therefore, in the middle of verse 16, uh, Paul writes that we are the temple of the living God.

Now, if the church is the temple of the living God, what place should idols have in the temple?

To get the gravity of what Paul is addressing here, and really just the amazing picture he's painting of the church, you have to be a little bit familiar with the notion of a temple.

There was no temple initially in the Old Testament.

When God made the Garden of Eden, he made it with Adam and Eve and the tree, but no temple.

God himself walked in the garden with the people.

There is no need for a temple.

Adam and Eve could meet with God, and they did so regularly.

And remember, when they sinned, they were separated from God.

Their own sin separated them.

They hid from God.

God called them and they were hiding.

Then after the flood, God sends Noah back in the world to populate the world and gives them a command and divides the languages.

There's no temple then.

And so there really is people reaching out trying to find God, but unsure where to go.

That's the language Paul uses describing that era in Acts 17.

The Gentiles went their own way in Paul's speaking in Acts 17 about the Tower of Babel forward.

The Gentile nations went their own way in the world, looking for God, but not knowing where to find him.

And Paul uses his language, they were groping in the dark, like someone looking for a light switch.

They couldn't find God.

Then God comes first in the burning bush with Moses and leads them out of Israel, the pillar of fire and the cloud.

That's what guided them.

And Moses went up onto Mount Sinai to meet with God, and that was a terrifying experience.

Remember, there was the whirlwind and the trumpet, and the Israelites were begging God to not speak to them anymore.

So terrifying was the sight that Moses said that he's overrun with fear.

He couldn't endure the words that were being spoken to him.

Moses goes up on the mountain, meets with God, comes down glowing.

He has to hide in his tent.

I mean, this is the just the transformative nature of what it meant to meet with God then.

Eventually, they established the temple.

This was David's goal in conquering Jerusalem to bring the Ark of the Covenant there, which he did not see the temple really established in his lifetime.

It fell to Solomon to do that.

Solomon dedicates the temple, and at that dedication, this is in 1 Kings chapter 8, the temple becomes the meeting place between God and man.

1 Kings 8 · chapter mention

The Spirit of God indwells the temple.

The glory of God resided there.

And if you wanted to meet with God, you could pray to God from anywhere.

But he dwelt in a very specific way in the temple in Israel.

That was the meeting place.

That's where the Ark of the Covenant was.

That's where the sacrifice happened.

The Passover lamb would be slaughtered there.

The blood would go in with the high priest and be sprinkled on the altar and on the Ark of the Covenant in the middle of it.

This was a monumental place.

There was no place like that in the world.

The Jews prayed facing it.

This is where God dwelt.

Now we know the Lord doesn't dwell in a temple made by human hands.

But for the sake of accommodation, for the sake of meeting with his people, the Spirit of God resided in the temple in a unique way.

God's omniscient, he knows all things, he's omnipresent, his knowledge is everywhere in the world.

You can't hide from him in the ocean, you can't hide from him in the closet, you can't hide from him anywhere.

He knows all things, he is everywhere, but he has set aside the temple as the unique place for God to meet with mankind.

What did the Israelites do with the temple?

Well, they brought idols into it, is what they did with the temple.

Even Solomon allowed this.

And as king after king came and went, the idols multiplied in the temple.

And soon the temple became filled with idols.

This is the way it was in the reign of Manasseh.

Who was the worst king Israel ever had?

The tribe of Judah ever had, the worst king to reign in Jerusalem.

The temple was so filled with idols that it was virtually impossible for the priests to do their work in there, to even make it to the Ark of the Covenant.

The Spirit of God departs under Manasseh, leaves the temple, vacates the place because it's filled with idols.

Manasseh himself gets dragged into captivity with by the attackers of Israel.

He spends some time in captivity.

They then give Manasseh back, which is just very comical, the Babylonians do.

They captured the king and had him for a while and then throw him back in.

He wasn't big enough to keep.

And Manasseh gets converted to that process.

And you remember he goes back to the temple, 2 Kings 21, and he begins throwing out the idols that are in the temple.

He begins hurling them over the wall.

He he starts, it's it's showering idols outside the temple.

This is the revival that happens there.

Nevertheless, the Spirit of God does not return.

Ezra comes back from exile with the Israelites.

70 years later, after the captivity, Ezra comes back, leads them in, and builds the temple.

But the Israelites don't stay faithful to God, and the Spirit of God doesn't go back to the temple.

It becomes a decorative place.

Now it's still, there's the pilgrimages where they go to Israel, the Jews from the Diaspora, they journey back to Israel every year to pray and for the Passover and other religious festivals, but the Spirit of God is not dwelling there.

He's been removed from the people of Israel.

The glory of God has departed, Ichabod, as they say, until the announcement of the birth of Jesus Christ.

And then the angels declare that the glory of God will dwell again with mankind.

That a new temple is coming.

And this new temple is the person, Jesus Christ.

He is the glory of God dwelling with mankind.

What the temple used to do, Jesus now does.

That's why Jesus can say, tear down this temple three days later, I'll raise it up again.

And they think he's out of his mind because of how long it took to build the temple, but they didn't understand he was talking about his own body.

He is God dwelling with man.

If the temple is where God meets with mankind, Jesus is the temple.

And of course they do that.

They crucify Christ, they kill the Lord of life and bury him.

He raises from the grave on the third day, teaches for a while, and then ascends into heaven, taking the glory of God with him, mind you.

And so then where is the temple?

With Christ gone and in heaven.

There's a new temple, the book of Ezekiel describes.

A new temple, Revelation says, that will come to earth, but in the meantime, where is the temple?

And then Pentecost happens, and the Spirit of God comes upon the people that put their faith in Christ, and the Spirit of God abides with them and dwells in them, unlike anything that ever happened before, unlike anything in the New Testament in the Old Testament.

There is no Old Testament reality of the abiding nature of the Holy Spirit.

The Old Testament had the prayer, God, please don't take your Holy Spirit from me.

But not in the church.

In the church, the Spirit comes and saves and indwells and convicts and transforms and will remain with you throughout your life.

Well, are you the temple then?

Not quite.

Close, though.

You're a brick in the temple.

That's the language that Paul uses in 1 Corinthians.

That we are all the temple being built together brick upon brick.

And so the church then becomes the temple in the church age.

The church is where you meet with God.

Not the church building, of course, we understand that.

That's not true.

But the Spirit of God indwells believers.

We are the temple of God.

Our body, and when we say our body, I don't mean the corporal nature of me up here.

Our body, meaning the body of believers, Emmanuel Bible Church, that is the temple.

The Spirit of God dwells there.

So a question for you.

What did the Israelites do with the temple?

They filled it with idols.

What should we do with the church?

Should we fill it with idols?

Of course not.

Although there's always a temptation to do that.

This is what Paul is addressing here in 2 Corinthians chapter 6.

2 Corinthians 6 · chapter mention

Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers.

This is the main statement of this verse.

Paul is making the statement that the temple and idols should have no partnership with each other.

The temple and the idols are not compatible with each other.

They should not co-labor together.

If you were the chief architect of the temple under King Hezekiah, a godly king, and you went to the marketplace and you saw a nice idol for sale, and you thought, well, this would look just great next to the Ark of the Covenant.

It's the same kind of, you know, bronzed furnish and it's got the same kind of carvings on it.

It looked great.

They really complement.

Round out the room.

Should you buy it and put it next to the Ark of the Covenant?

Of course not.

They did, but you shouldn't.

That's the main declaration of this passage.

It flows from, as I said, the middle of verse 16, that we are the temple of the living God.

The rest of this passage is an appeal to you to not yoke the temple with non-believers.

Now, as I said, clearly marriage is an easy application of this.

Believers should not marry non-believers because there's no more spiritual relationship on earth closer than the relationship of marriage.

If you marry a godly spouse, that will be a great boost to your godliness.

If you marry an ungodly spouse, that'll be a great hindrance to your godliness.

And there's always a trade-off because somebody's got to be relatively ungodly to marry you.

And so you marry someone, and the two of you strive to be conformed to Christ's likeness.

The two of you strive to grow in Christ's image together, and the Lord works with you throughout your life.

As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.

That's never more true in marriage.

And so it'd be foolish then for a believer who wants to grow in godliness to marry a non-believer because after all, I like them.

Do you like Jesus more?

But that's only the most obvious application of this.

I've heard people say that the principle here applies to uh business partners.

You know, you're a Christian and you want to start a business, should you partner with a non-Christian?

Look, 2 Corinthians 6 says no, you shouldn't do that.

I don't think so.

I don't think this is a prohibition against a business partnership or a business venture.

Although there's wisdom questions that come up with that.

If you're gonna partner with somebody, should you be able to trust his word and all that?

I've heard somebody argue that it's better to partner with a non-Christian because then if they cheat you, you can sue them and you don't want to sue a Christian.

Sounds like advice that comes from experience.

I think that's still missing the big point here.

This verse comes out of nowhere in the flow of 2 Corinthians.

The context of 2 Corinthians 6 doesn't help you with this verse.

Paul makes an appeal in 2 Corinthians 6, verses 11 through 13.

2 Corinthians 6:11–13

He tells the Corinthians, Why do you hate me?

Paul says, I haven't done anything wrong to you.

Why do you hate me?

He's really been building to that appeal all through the whole book.

The whole point of 2 Corinthians is to ask the Corinthians, why are they trying to get rid of Paul?

Why do they hate Paul?

Why have they turned against him?

So he's gone over all of his sufferings for them and how he's just an ambassador, and by rejecting Paul, they're really rejecting Christ.

But Paul doesn't want them to reject him.

So he's appealing to them.

He says, I want to still love you.

Why don't you love me back?

He asks in verse 11 and 12.

And then he pauses in verse 14 to the rest of chapter 7, verse 1, as a little interlude here that has nothing to do with the context.

It's Paul doing a tangent to explain from his perspective why the Corinthians don't love him.

And the answer is because they're worshiping idols.

And so that's why chapter 7, verse 2, we can go back to make room in your hearts for us, Corinthians.

Get rid of the idols.

But in the middle of this is this declaration.

The church turns against godliness when it partners with unbelievers.

Let me give you three parts of this outline.

We're going to begin with the declaration.

The declaration in verse 14: don't be unequally yoked.

Don't have spiritual fellowship.

Don't be unequally yoked.

Now, this is an Old Testament command.

This is not new revelation.

This command is seen in the Old Testament, in the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 22.

Deuteronomy 22 · chapter mention

Moses commands you do not plow with an ox and a donkey together.

They're different animals with different strengths, different size legs, different temperaments.

And what does the ox do when it gets tired?

Bites you and keeps working.

What does the donkey do when it gets tired?

Sits down and then kicks you.

So if you yoke the two of them together, you're not going to plow your field.

So part of it is practical.

Don't put an ox and a donkey together because they don't plow, right?

Part of it is humane towards your animals.

The kind of harness that would fit on one won't fit on the other.

The animals will get hurt, and the donkey might break his neck or break his back or the ox might be pierced by it if it was too small for him.

And so part of it is humane, but mostly it's practical.

But it's fishing for this larger point of figure out what you're doing and get the right resources to do it.

That's the spiritual point here.

It's not the ox God has really cared about.

Paul says that in 1 Timothy.

It's not the ox God is concerned about.

He doesn't care really if the donkey breaks his neck, although it's nice if he doesn't.

The real concern here is a spiritual principle.

Figure out what you're doing with your life and get the right resources to do it.

Leviticus 19, verse 19.

Leviticus 19:19

Yahweh says, Keep my statutes.

Do not let your cattle breed with a different kind of cattle.

Well, why not?

Can't you get the big buff beef cattle that way?

Why not?

Well, part of it is humane towards the cattle, and you don't want genetic diseases or whatever.

But the real issue is God is teaching his people that you're separate.

You're separate.

You're not like the other nations.

Your cows can't be like the other nations.

Cows.

Don't sow your field with two kinds of seed.

Pretty common practice, by the way.

Different kinds of plants can take different nutrients from the ground.

You could make an argument that it's better to rotate crops on a field.

But the Jews were not allowed to do that.

Why?

Because they had every time they looked at their field, they had to recognize that we are a distinct people.

We don't mix.

We're distinct.

They weren't, Leviticus 19, verse 19, you're not allowed to wear a garment made with two different kinds of cloth.

Leviticus 19:19

You're 90% spandex, 10% cotton t-shirt or whatever.

I don't even know if that thing exists.

I just made that combination up right there.

You're not allowed to have that in Israel.

No.

It's a reminder to you that your clothes are different than the clothes of the nations.

If you can't mix your clothes and you can't mix your crops and you can't mix your cows, how could it enter into your minds that you could mix in marriage?

Or how could it enter into your minds that you can do spiritual work with an idol pulling a spiritual plow?

And Jesus picks this up, Matthew 11, verse 29.

Matthew 11:29

Take my yoke upon you, Jesus says.

Learn from me.

I am gentle, I am lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

My yoke is easy, my burden is light.

The gospel message begins with an appeal that you take off your yoke of works and you put on the yoke of faith.

You're still gonna wear a yoke, you're still gonna be plowing, only the appeal of the gospel is that you would plow for the Lord, not for your own self-effort, not for the works-related righteousness of the Pharisees.

Take off the old yoke, put on the new one.

And so the Corinthians ostensibly had done that.

They had been converted.

Nevertheless, in their converted state, they were trying to do spiritual work with kin by connecting themselves to non believers.

They thought that non believers could help them.

We get examples of this through 1 and 2 Corinthians, both.

We get examples of this in wanting to worship where the idols were, and eating meat sacrificed to idols, and participating in the pagan festivals, and the kind of sexual immorality the pagans have.

And you can understand the logic.

If you want to reach the pagans with the gospel, then you should go to the place the pagans are.

If you want to reach those in the nightclub, then you should hang out in the nightclub kind of logic.

The Corinthians had that logic.

And Paul tells them, stop.

Stop.

Bad company corrupts good morals.

Good morals aren't gonna pull up bad company.

Bad company pulls down good morals.

That's the way that system works.

Now, this is, again, applications galore on this.

And the most obvious one, apart from marriage, but the most obvious corporate one in the last hundred years of church history, I really think has been the Billy Graham Crusades.

And if you've read the book Evangelicalism Divided by Ian Murray, it makes the same point over and over and over again.

That Billy Graham, early on in his ministry, made the decision to partner with Catholics, to have Catholic priests and Catholic cardinals come and pray at his crusades.

And I worked in on some of these crusades, the one in Albuquerque in 1998 or 1999, whenever that was, and they filled out the cards.

And we were working with the Catholic Church.

It would get the cards from the altar call, and the cards, some of the cards would go to the Catholic Church to do follow-up on.

That's the trajectory of that kind of thing.

The logic is: well, we want Catholics to get saved.

We want Catholics to hear the gospel, and they won't come unless they have a priest who's praying for the event.

So put the priest on the stage, have him come up and pray for the event.

Then at the altar call, people fill out their cards and let the priest take some of them back to his church with them.

Do you see how this is a spiritual enterprise with two different animals pulling?

You know, I was so disappointed by my experience with that because I had spent weeks praying for this crusade and, you know, volunteering time to make it happen and go well, praying to people in Albuquerque, it's a big deal to get saved out of Catholicism.

And then after all that, to see people come forward with the altar calls and to see the cards go home with the Catholics.

You think, how can I wound the tape, I should have read a book, I should have read Evangelicalism Divided.

Like that's what's going to happen at it.

The initial motivation is great, let Catholics hear the gospel.

But then when you yoke yourself to somebody with a different gospel, don't be surprised when the ox and the donkey aren't pulling in the same direction.

They start biting each other.

I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying when I've mentioned that illustration before, people have come to me afterwards and saying, You're saying nobody got saved at the Billy Graham Crusades?

Of course not.

I bet many of you got saved at the Billy Graham Crusade.

Or you called the phone number on the screen or whatever.

Of course, people get saved through the preaching, and that's what makes it so almost frustrating.

Because it is a spiritual work.

It is a spiritual work.

It is preaching the gospel.

It's just preaching the gospel yoked to a confusing message.

Yoked to somebody that's going in circles.

And so when you jump to the end of his life and his ministry, of course, and you hear him say things like, you know, it's possible for those who have never heard the gospel to go to heaven through a different way than through Jesus Christ.

I know some people say, oh, this, he was he was getting old and he was losing his mind and cut him some slack on that.

Sure, maybe that's true.

But also understand that that ministry had a big directional shift set at the very beginning of it.

At the very beginning of it, it was pointed that direction.

This is the most obvious application of 2 Corinthians chapter 6.

2 Corinthians 6 · chapter mention

Do not be unequally yoked with non-believers.

Again, I'm not saying people who partnered with the Billy Grand Crusade are unbelievers, of course not.

They are believers.

That's why they're being unequally yoked.

That's the point.

We've got so many other examples than this, but I'll save some more for later on in the message.

So this is the call.

Don't do a spiritual enterprise with unspiritual people.

That's the point.

Now, Paul's gonna follow this with a conviction.

The conviction is a series of five rhetorical questions about this.

The conviction is that because the two groups are mutually exclusive, you're serving two different kingdoms.

So don't conflate the two kingdoms.

Don't act as if you weren't radically saved from one kingdom to another.

There's two different worlds we're talking about here, and they are not exc they are not compatible.

They are mutually exclusive.

He's gonna make that by asking five questions.

Let's go through these five questions very quickly.

The first question he asks, what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness?

These are all rhetorical questions.

Rhetorical questions mean the answer is supposed to be obvious.

What partnership does righteousness have with lawlessness?

And the answer should be none.

This was made clear earlier, the chapter before, 2 Corinthians 5.21.

The church is the righteousness of God in Christ.

Our righteousness is not a righteousness that is our own, by the way.

We're not righteous because we do righteous things, we're righteous because 2 Corinthians 5.21 says, Christ is our righteousness.

We have the righteousness of God because we have faith in Christ.

So when you read this, this is not a holier than thou attitude.

This is not a, oh, I'm sorry, I'm too holy to partner with you.

No, it's a, I'm sorry, Jesus is my righteousness, and if he is not your righteousness, then I can't do ministry with you.

That's the point.

Our righteousness is not our own, it comes from God.

And so how can you be righteous as declared by God and yet walk in lawlessness and partner with lawlessness?

That's the point.

And these questions are going to get progressive, by the way.

The second question what fellowship is light with darkness?

In the end of verse 14.

What fellowship is light with darkness?

Can light and darkness hang out with each other?

Of course not.

The lights are on in this room right now.

If darkness came, the lights would go.

And if this room was dark, you would turn the lights on and darkness leaves.

They're exclusive.

You can't have a room that is both light and dark at the same time.

My kids push the threshold of this with their nightlights all the time.

The nightlights multiply those things.

They got like three of them in the room right now.

It's like the sun in there.

But they're nightlights, so it's dark.

No, this passage rebukes that kind of night light doctrine right there.

It is light or it is dark, okay?

And the Bible begins with this very basic distinction.

I mean, the first day of creation.

God creates light.

And darkness is different.

He separates the light from the darkness.

They don't mix.

What partnership does dry ground have with the ocean?

That's the logic here.

What partnership can light have with darkness?

None is the answer.

The very thing that was separated at the beginning of the Bible.

So, Christians, we're supposed to be light by obedience, by virtue of faith, by having our life transformed.

Darkness drowns out the light.

Darkness pulls away the light.

Jesus makes this point in John chapter 3.

John 3 · chapter mention

The light comes into the darkness.

John chapter 1, the darkness didn't understand it.

John 1 · chapter mention

John chapter 3.

John 3 · chapter mention

When the light turns on, the darkness flees.

Third question.

What accord has Christ with Belial?

It's an Old Testament word for chaos and depravity.

In the New Testament, it is used to refer to the person of Satan himself.

Christians are in Christ, of course.

This is the whole concept of being in Christ.

The most common description or the preposition in the New Testament is that of being in Christ.

Something like 80 times Christians are described as being in Christ.

So what accord has Christ with Belail?

In other words, if we are in Christ, why can we partner with the devil?

Now, does it seem harsh to say that non-spiritual people are actually the devil?

This is the point Paul made back in 1 Corinthians chapter 10, verse 20, when he says, Let me just tell you a hard truth about idols.

1 Corinthians 10:20

This is 1 Corinthians 10 verse 20.

1 Corinthians 10:20

An idol doesn't exist, but it is actually a demon.

Those that sacrifice to idols, they sacrifice to a statue, but the recipient of their sacrifice, 1 Corinthians 10 verse 20, is in fact a demon.

1 Corinthians 10:20

The false religions, they have no God.

There's no real God behind them, but there are real demons behind them.

There's real supernatural power behind the false religions in the world.

The sacrifices that people make and the candles they burn and the perpetual sacrifices that happen are demonic.

They are.

Because they're not done through faith in Christ.

They're to a different gospel, to a different God.

They are demons.

And that's just the straight truth from 1 Corinthians 10.

So now you jump to 2 Corinthians 6, and Paul's point is you're in Christ.

How can you partner with the devil?

But that's what you do when you link up for spiritual enterprise with non-spiritual people.

When you come to faith in Christ, an exchange of identities taking place.

And that exchange, described in 2 Corinthians chapter 5, is that you take on the righteousness of Christ, Christ takes on your sin.

2 Corinthians 5 · chapter mention

That's the exchange.

Christ does not take on the sin of the devil, he doesn't take on the sin of demons.

Christ does not die as a substitute for the demons and the devil, nor does he give them their righteousness.

There's a very clear divide.

We should have no fellowship with the devil.

In contrast, Satan is the God of this world who blinds people.

Satan blinds people, Paul says.

Ephesians chapter 2.

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

He's the prince of the power of this world, and he deceives, deceives people who think idols are real.

What a great picture we saw that this morning in Acts 19, by the way, huh?

People just chanting and chanting and chanting, positive that Artemis is going to have, is be dethroned, you know, that if you worship Christ, Artemis will lose her glory.

I mean, what kind of God needs a riot to protect him?

That's a demon.

That's what kind of God.

That's how you answer that question.

Fourth question: What portion does a believer have with an unbeliever?

This is the same kind of language that he used in 1 Corinthians chapter 8, and then again in chapter 10 to describe the Lord's Supper, to describe the communion table, that you can't have the communion with sexually immoral people, Paul says.

1 Corinthians 8 · chapter mention

1 Corinthians chapter 5, that with such a person, a believer, a so-called believer who's leading a sexually immoral life, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 5, with such a person, don't even eat.

1 Corinthians 5 · chapter mention

In chapter 8, and then again in chapter 10 of 1 Corinthians, he describes a so-called fellowship around the table of idols.

Believers shouldn't be there.

Here he's using that same kind of language.

What portion does a believer share with an unbeliever?

And the word portion here, I think Paul likely has in mind, the afterlife.

There's two different worlds you go to when you die.

I was at a funeral today.

Jordan closed it out so well by just telling everybody that was at the funeral, listen, there's two places to go when you die.

You'll open up your eyes in the next world, either in heaven or hell.

That's the reality.

It's the basic reality.

You can't open your eyes in both places, is the point.

The two spheres don't overlap.

That's Paul's fourth question here.

What inheritance can a believer have with a non-believer?

You're not going to get the same way.

You're not going to be neighbors in the afterlife.

So why partner within a spiritual enterprise here?

Why yoke yourself to one here when you're going in different directions?

And finally, number five, what agreement has a temple of God with idols?

He asks in verse 16.

This is the final of those five rhetorical questions.

What agreement is a temple of God with idols?

And the answer to that is harder than we want to admit.

In the Old Testament, they had lots of agreement.

Yahweh's temple was filled with idols.

And this is exactly what brought the wrath of God.

The church ought not be the same way.

Now I said these are rhetorical questions.

Rhetorical questions doesn't mean you don't need to answer them.

It just means the answer is obvious.

Why would somebody use a rhetorical question, by the way?

They're trying to make a point.

Sometimes we use rhetorical questions sinfully.

Did you really think I meant for you to put the cat in the dishwasher?

It's a rhetorical question.

The answer is obviously no.

So take the cat out.

Why use a rhetorical question?

Well, just to show how obvious it is that you're such a good parent and how silly your child is.

It's a sinful reason, as I said earlier.

Why is Paul using rhetorical questions here?

Do you really think it would be pleasing to the Lord to bring non-believers into the mission and the ministry of the church?

That's his question.

He gives you five different ways to ask it, but that's the question.

Now, he's gonna spell this out with this series of references from the Old Testament.

He strings all these together.

This is still under my second point here.

He gives you, I'm gonna call it five Old Testament citations, because it goes with the five rhetorical questions.

Five different verses.

He strings them together like a string of pearls.

It's hard to tell where these verses stop and start because so many of these are repeated in different places.

There's not one verse in the Old Testament that says all this, but you can find five different places that together say all this.

Paul just weaves it all together, slaps some quote marks on it, and here you go.

This is what he says.

That's clearly a reference, I think, starting with the book of Exodus, chapter 6, verse 7.

Exodus 6:7

I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, God says to the Israelites, I will be their God.

This comes uh right after, or right before God is gonna lead the Israelites into freedom.

He tells Moses this I'm gonna take the Israelites out of Egypt and I will be their God.

So you have to leave Egypt.

What about an Israelite who says, God, I want you to be my God in Egypt?

No, that's not the way this whole Exodus thing is gonna work.

You can't have Yahweh as your God and stay in Egypt.

He's leading you out.

You have a choice to make.

There goes Moses with all the gold plundering the Egyptians.

There's the Pharaoh with the chariots chasing.

Are you going to stay in Egypt or are you going to go with Pharaoh?

That's the choice.

And if you're Yahweh's people, you gotta go.

That's the verse he's referencing here.

He's saying that as a New Testament reality.

If you're going to be a Christian, figure out whose side you're on.

Do you want to stay and serve in the world, or do you want to leave and go serve Christ in the church?

You have to make a choice.

That's where he starts.

And he goes from there to they shall be my people.

I think he's shifting here to Leviticus 26, verse 12.

Leviticus 26:12

Therefore, go out from their midst, which is a reference to Isaiah.

In Isaiah, by the way, it's a command to priests.

Priests are supposed to come out from the midst of the Babylonians and go back and return with the Israelites and the midst of the Persians and go back and return with the Israelites.

At the end of captivity, the priests should separate themselves from non-believers and go back to ministering in the temple.

That's the command.

Here, Paul takes that command and applies it to Christians because we're all priests.

Separate from them is the idea.

Go out, verse 17, from their midst.

Come out from them.

Come away from them.

Go out, verse 17 says from their midst, be separate from them, says the Lord.

Touch no unclean thing, and I will welcome you.

I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me.

This is a command to figure out whose side in this world you're on.

Do you trust in chariots or do you trust in Yahweh?

Do you trust in God to fight your battles through David, or do you trust in Saul's?

Who do you trust?

If you separate from this world, you will have warm and welcome reception in the arms of God.

That's the point.

Touch no unclean thing.

I commanded the priest in the book of Isaiah, and God says, I will welcome you.

Leave the sinfulness of this world, and I will welcome you.

Now he's not talking about a works righteousness that if you do good enough, God receives you.

Because remember, he's talking about the point of conversion here.

He's saying you're looking at two worlds, the world of Christians, and then the world of the devil that he operates in, those two different world systems, and you choose which one you go.

To leave one, you go to the other.

And when you go to the other, you're not earning your way there with works.

He makes that so clear in 2 Corinthians 5.

He's not talking about working for your righteousness.

When you go there, God declares you to be righteous.

But the whole point is that you had to leave this world.

There's this image here of God making a new people for himself.

A people that aren't like anything that's gone before.

Not like the Jews, not like the Gentiles, a new thing.

A new thing.

Taken from both groups, put together in one new body.

It's interesting that he makes this, Paul, there's a little tweak here to the Hebrew.

He makes it gender inclusive.

Do you notice that?

I will be a father to you, not a father and a mother, by the way.

God always is always described as a father.

But then Paul makes the second part inclusive.

I think to make it clear, he's shifting from the priest to all believers now.

I will be a father to you, God says, and you will be sons and daughters to me.

He's talking about the priesthood of all believers.

Both men and women are priests in the church.

We all have the power to serve the Lord by ministering to other people.

With God as our Father, that's the command.

It requires separation from the world.

Let me talk about one error from this passage real quick.

There's the error, I think, through a lot of American evangelical history of secondary separation.

Secondary separation was the error that says, you know, if this person partners with Catholics in ministry, then I'm not going to partner with this person.

See how that's secondary separation?

Here's the Christian.

And I look at the Christian and they're partnering with liberals in ministry, or they're partnering with Catholics, or they're doing a, you know, some kind of ministry with the Muslims down the street, and that's wrong.

That's wrong with what they're doing.

They shouldn't be doing that.

But then you look at this person and you say, so I'm not going to work with you because you're working with them.

That's secondary separation.

Secondary separation often turns into cannibalism very quickly.

Because you run out, I mean, then it becomes, I'm separating from this person because they didn't separate from that person.

And eventually everybody knows somebody who didn't separate from the right person.

You're all separated from everybody.

I mean, that's what that's what killed fundamentalism, really, and that's the danger in this passage.

In the passage, you can overapply this passage and say, I would separate from somebody who doesn't separate from someone who doesn't separate from someone who doesn't separate from someone who should be separated from.

The command is not that.

The command is clear, though, that you are to separate from non-believers.

Now, this doesn't mean you separate in things of the world.

Paul says this in 1 Corinthians 5.

He doesn't say, you know, separate from non-believers in the world.

He says you separate from so-called believers who practice immorality.

If you wanted to separate from all believers, you have to leave this world.

I think most of us aren't in danger of that.

You know, most of us buy our car from a Christian car dealer, get our hair cut at a Christian barber, take our clothes to a Christian dry cleaner, send our kids to schools with Christian teachers, get our glasses done at a Christian optometrist.

Whatever the word is.

Everything is Christian all the way down.

I don't think we're in danger of that.

The real danger I see in our world is this idea that there can be a spiritual goal that can be accomplished through unspiritual means.

Let me give you a couple very practical examples of this.

And here, and when I say examples, I'm talking here's two different ones that are real life decisions that I've had to make and that I don't know if I made them right or not, but I'm trying my best with them.

And the first one I think is the March for Life, would be the first example I'll use.

So the March for Life.

I've gone to that every every year the past few years.

I don't view that as a ministry of the church.

I don't go because Emmanuel Bible church is going for the March for Life.

You know, that's how Catholics view it.

They go with their big banners and everything and all that.

Jordan and I went one year and he fell into a group of Carmelite, barefooted Carmelite monks.

It was incredible.

You know, waving their banner and everything.

You know, Emmanuel Bible Church is not doing the March for Life as a ministry of the church because if we were, that would be a huge problem.

That would be a pretty flagrant violation of 2 Corinthians 6.

It'd be hard to come up with, it'd be hard to invent a more flagrant violation of it.

I go to the March for Life to as a form of protesting what our government is allowing.

It's a part of the democratic process that we have the right to assemble and to protest our government.

And I think that's a right we should avail ourselves of.

I'm thankful for the First Amendment, thankful for freedom of religion and of the press and of assembly.

So I take advantage of the religion part, I get angry at the press part, and I go march up.

The assembly part.

I think it's a good use of that.

It's your democratic freedom, and you can march alongside Catholics and Muslims and Jews and whoever because you're not marching for a spiritual goal.

You're marching as part of the democratic process.

The word that's often used by theologians is co-belligerence.

It's good to co-belligerate, is the verb.

It's good to appeal to the government to stop doing crazy things, stop allowing immoral things.

And everybody, the more different groups they can unite against the immorality that the government legalizes, the more powerful of an argument is.

But it's not a spiritual goal.

You cannot legislate morality, of course, and what I mean by that is pass all the laws you want, they don't change human hearts.

It's good to restrain evil by laws, that's the function of government, but that doesn't save anybody.

So there is a huge danger when you have a spiritual goal and you're partnering with non-spiritual people.

March for life, not a spiritual goal, a political goal.

We march to the Supreme Court.

But what about something different?

What about ministry outside of an abortion clinic?

Are you outside of an abortion clinic and you have a sign or you're handing out flyers to women going in telling them that you'll adopt their baby?

Please don't do that.

It's a ministry I've done before.

And then a group of Catholic people show up and they want to stand with you.

And they want to hold signs with you.

They want to pray the rosary while you're doing ministry.

In my experience, I've told people no.

No.

We'll stand on the other side of the sidewalk.

It's a big sidewalk.

But we don't want the world to be confused that we're doing something together because that in my mind is ministry.

I'm trying to advance the gospel.

I'm not going to advance the gospel being yoked to non-believers.

That's where I've landed that plane.

Let me give you another example.

The election a few years ago with a school board, our school board was going crazy here in Fairfax County.

And there was a political candidate that wanted to come talk to the church.

And so we allowed that candidate to come and address after evening service.

If you remember, I made a point.

I closed the evening service in prayer.

Now the service is over.

I even turned off the cute little slide.

Turned it off.

Then she came and did kind of a QA with people.

Perhaps many of you remember this.

I think that was okay, although it's kind of flirting with the line because it was in the church.

But I thought it was the right decision because I was making it clear this isn't a spiritual thing, it's a political thing, but I don't know if that was the right decision.

But then a year later, I see political candidates at the church in the hallway.

Some of them even invited by people from IBC, which is great.

Invite political candidates to church.

That's great.

I hope they come, hear the gospel, and get saved.

I mean, that would be incredible.

That's the goal.

But that wasn't what was happening.

They were in the hallway shaking people's hands, and they had flyers that were printed on our copy machine and handing them out to people, and they have all kinds of Christians coming up to them saying, you know, let's pray for the election Tuesday because we're doing God's work together.

Was a line I heard over and over and over again.

I wanted to pull out my hair.

We're doing God's work together?

No.

No.

They're not believers.

They're very clear about it.

We're not doing God's work together.

That's a problem.

And do you see how easy something like, hey, vote this certain way in February or March or October, whenever the election is, vote this certain way at the election can quickly become, if Christians get together, then God's will will be done.

All it takes is us to partner with these non-believers and God's will can be done.

And when you start thinking like that, you've just propped up a big idol right in the middle of the church.

And what happens when that idol gets toppled?

What happens when you get trounced in the election?

What happens when the candidate you support does ridiculous things?

Then what?

I sure hope he's not yoked to your savior when that happens.

Listen, it is so much better to be politically homeless, to say, I don't have a party, I don't have people.

And I hope my homelessness drives me to a better longing for heaven than it is to yoke the work of the church to a non-believing enterprise.

Now I'm looking out here, I see many of you that work on the hill and work for politicians, and some of you are politicians.

And praise God that God has put Christians in those places.

And I hope you advance the kingdom through personal evangelism.

I hope you are a light in a dark place.

I recognize that.

And just understand that politics is like any business, then.

It's like being a plumber, it's like being a real estate agent.

I hope God blesses your business.

I hope you're an ethical person when you do it, and I hope God uses it to provide for your family and make a difference in the world.

Pass righteous laws, do it.

Sell houses of the glory of God, do it.

And recognize that it's a spiritual enterprise as much as you're honoring the Lord when you do it.

But it crosses the line for me to stand up here and say, hey, here's a Christian realtor, so sell your house with them so God's kingdom advances.

See the problem?

It's the same thing when it comes to politics.

I tell you all this because we're gonna go to the Lord's table now.

We're gonna get around the Lord's table.

We're gonna celebrate the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

How insane would it be to put an idol with you at the table and say, oh, this is an idol, it means so much to me.

It just fits in right here.

It's so important to me.

So can this idol take communion?

Of course not.

What fellowship does light have with darkness?

Or what portion, what seat at the table do these have with each other?

Lord, we do pray for wisdom in a confusing age.

We pray that we would take stands for righteousness and that we'd be lights in the dark world.

We recognize that we're pilgrims.

We don't have a home, but what a joy it is to read this passage and see that when we separate from the world, you receive us with open arms.

We want to run into your arms, Lord, not to the arms of the world.

Receive us because you've said you will.

We turn to the table now with hearts of gratitude for your saving work in our life.

We're filled with joy for your love for us.

Jesus, his body was broken.

It was broken for our sin.

His blood was spilled.

And it was spilled for our sin to make atonement.

He is the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.

This is a celebration of grace.

So we pray that we would receive your grace tonight.

It's a ministry we don't deserve, Lord.

To be invited to a seat at your table, we don't deserve it.

But you give it to us through faith.

So we receive it with gratitude.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

Thank you for being with us today.

And now a parting word from Pastor Jesse.

If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, emmanuelbible.church.

If you're not a member of the local church and you live in the Washington, D.C.

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I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service.

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Now may God bless you this week if you speak to us constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel faithfully.