Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] We stand this morning as we go to the Lord in prayer.
[00:00:03] I want to just pray today that our world, which is really very fragile, and we know there's so much conflict in our world right now. Let's pray for what's happening, but let's pray for our nation too, that we would respond in the right way, that we as the church, would respond in the right way. And that's really what the message is about today. So, Lord, we just come before youe. We recognize our world is broken.
[00:00:30] And. And as we look at our society around us, Lord, we see so many people leaning on their own understanding, walking in human wisdom. And we recognize the shortfall of all of that, Lord, As a matter of fact, yout Word commands us to trust in youn with all of our heart, not to lean to our own understanding, but in all our ways acknowledge youe. And you'd said you'd would direct our paths, Lord, and not to be wise in our own eyes. And so, Father, we come to you, the source of all wisdom. And we ask today, as you speak into our lives, that you would guide our steps, Lord, that we would experience your divine purposes, not only for us individually and for our family, not only for our congregation, but Lord, for our nation and the nations in our world. And we thank you for that. In Jesus name and God's people said, Amen. You may be seated.
[00:01:23] Okay. PowerPoint, is it up there? No.
[00:01:30] Okay, so this message this morning. There we go. How to live a holy life in a contaminated society. Very interesting.
[00:01:39] So the question I want to raise is what actually impedes our spiritual life from flourishing and growing?
[00:01:46] One of the questions we need to ask ourselves, Whom are we associating with? Or who are who maybe we need to disengage from? To what degree should we relate to the culture of the society around us?
[00:01:59] What dangers do we need to guard our minds against regarding the values of a contaminated society? What do you mean by contaminated? It's a society that's not following God. And when we do that, it brings uncleanness or contamination.
[00:02:14] What may be even more subtle is watching out from deviations from the purity of the gospel that calls us forth from a disassociation with people that many times they'll disagree with a radicalized, maybe a narrow, maybe even a wrong view of what the Scriptures are actually teaching. You know, what I'm trying to bring across to us this morning is simply this, that oftentimes we think the world around us is the enemy.
[00:02:46] Many times we think pressure from outside is the problem.
[00:02:49] But I'm going to argue this morning that what's really the issue is what's happening within the church and how we respond to what God is calling us to.
[00:03:02] We're the solution, folks. I think we look to other things as a solution to our nation, but really the church is the only hope for the nation of Canada.
[00:03:11] And so when we look at it that way, then we got to take a hard look at ourselves and we got to look not only at our own congregation, we have to look across our nation and we have to think about what's being communicated to people. Are we deviating from the gospel of Jesus Christ?
[00:03:27] Interesting. James Warren Jones began attending church as a child, and after finishing university, he decided to enter the ministry. In 1955, he established the Wings of Deliverance, a Pentecostal church that eventually became known as as People's Temple. During this time, he was noted for his work with the homeless, and in the early 1960s, he served as a director of the Indianapolis Human Rights Commission.
[00:03:52] He championed the cause of racial integration when it was extremely unpopular. He was a charismatic leader and eventually moved his followers to California and later to Guyana. And after facing allegations of monies being redirected to his personal account, he ended up setting up this agricultural community called Jonestown in the country of Guyana. On November 14, 1978, US Representative Leo Ryan of California arrived in Guyana with a group of reporters and relatives of this group of people that were meeting in this commune to conduct an unofficial investigation of alleged abuses. Four days later, as Ryan's party and 14 defectors from this group prepared to leave from an airstrip near Jonestown, Jones ordered the group assassinated. However, only Ryan and four others, which included three reporters, were killed. Fearing that those who had escaped might bring in authorities, Jones activated a suicide plan, and on November 18, he commanded his followers to drink cyanide adulterated punch, in order that the vast majority of them passively and inexplicably obeyed.
[00:05:04] Jones himself died of a gunshot wound in the head, possibly self inflicted. Guyanese troops reached Jonestown the next day, and the death toll of the group was eventually placed at 913 people dead, including 304 who were under the age of 18.
[00:05:22] Some death tolls include the five people killed at the airstrip, bringing the total number of deaths to 918 people.
[00:05:30] Now, while this is a tragic ending in an extreme case as it was, I think what we fail to realize is that all deviations from truth will eventually lead not just to earthly death, but ultimate separation from God, which is described in scriptures as the second death. And one of the things that I think that we need to understand is that, you know, when people eventually move away from the gospel and they embrace a distorted understanding of it, and we're going to look at this, how devastating that can actually be. And it leads people not only to disassociate from true believers, but it also creates, as we see in this situation, a group of people who think they're totally in the right.
[00:06:19] And yet one day, when we stand before Almighty God and find out that they've never been right, can you imagine those haunting words when Jesus said, those who do not do my will, even though they're going to say to him, lord, Lord, did we not do all these things in your name? You'll say, depart from me. I never knew you. And I think that we have to have a little understanding that the greatest threat to the church today doesn't come from the outside.
[00:06:45] The greatest threat to the church today comes from within itself, from its own understanding of the word of God.
[00:06:52] So we can tell that associations impact our lives. How many know people influence us, whether we believe it or not, they do. They have an effect upon our lives, either for good or for bad. And what we're about to discover is that Paul is not suggesting that we stop relating to unbelievers.
[00:07:10] Rather, he's going to warn people about those who profess Christianity but are deviating from biblical truth. Which people leads people away from a biblical lifestyle. And so I want to just bring this out. So in the first letter, here's what Paul says to the Corinthians. He says in chapter five, verse nine, he says, I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people, not at all meaning the people of the world who are immoral or the greedy or swindlers or idolaters. In that case, you'd have to leave the world. In other words, he's saying, listen, people are contaminated today. So if you're going to live in society, you're going to be affected and touched by people who have a totally different understanding and lifestyle. And we know that that is true. But he says, but now I'm writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister but is sexually immoral. Greedy, idolater or slanderer or drunkard or swindler, do not even eat with such people.
[00:08:09] So now Paul is making a delineation, is he not? He's basically saying that we should disassociate or not be as we're about to read in Second Corinthians, which our passage we're going to find today in chapter six. We're not to be unequally yoked with non believers, but I think sometimes we don't fully understand where Paul is really coming from. And so what he's saying here in the first letter is simply that, listen, there are going to be people out there who that have a sinful lifestyle. He said that's normal. I don't expect non believers to be living a holy life or a moral life. Now some of them do live a more moral life, but a lot of them don't. He's saying those are the people you have to live amongst. We work among them, they're neighbors. We rub shoulders with people like this. He's saying the people that we need to pull away from are the people who claim to be a Christian and yet are deviated from the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And we're going to see that very clearly when we look here at the second letter of Paul.
[00:09:10] What we're going to discover in our text today is that these false professors of faith are propagating teachings that are false and lead not only themselves but also others into idolatry in a false worship system. And Paul reinforces the idea of separation from those who are propagating, propagating these ideas because the greatest threat, as I've already mentioned, does not come from outside but from within the church.
[00:09:36] And Paul says it to Timothy, he's saying it this way, who are now following deceiving spirits and things taught by demons.
[00:09:45] Well, that's a pretty proper statement. What is he saying is a deviation from the gospel of Jesus Christ is actually not a gospel at all. And that this gospel is a perversion. And the enemy comes along and, and the reason he does it is because really as a church, what we really have is a message that we're proclaiming to people. It's the message of the good news about Jesus. And what the devil wants to do is distort it. And if he can distort it a little bit, he can lead people away and away from the truth and away from the person of truth, which is Christ himself.
[00:10:20] So false teaching actually moves in two directions. And let me just point out the two directions that you usually find false teaching in. Number one, I Legalism, you say, what is legalism? It's people who are, you know, they become very rigid and they have a set of rules that they're trying to keep and they become self righteous in their endeavor to keep this law or this set of rules. And they move away from an empowered life in the Spirit, which enables us to walk in God's grace. How many know you and I can't do this life apart from God? Somebody figured that out yet? Actually, we need God's, you know, and God. We're going to read it in our text. God's spirit comes inside of us and empowers us to live a holy life. And that's what we need to understand. We're going to define holiness in a minute. Okay, so let me move. That's one direction.
[00:11:08] So I'll say it this way. Anytime we add anything to the work of Jesus Christ, we are actually negating the work of Jesus Christ. We're diminishing it, we're subtracting from it. So a lot of times people will say, you know, you. You got to believe in Jesus, but you got to do these other things to be saved.
[00:11:29] Well, no, you don't. That's not what the Scriptures are teaching. You and I are trusting in Christ and Him alone. We're believing in what he has accomplished for us. Now, that does not negate the fact that once you and I put our faith and trust in Christ, that now we begin to do things in response to his love, and we begin to respond in keeping the moral law of God. And we're doing it by the work of the Spirit of God within us. See, the Holy Spirit is never going to contradict Himself. And when he's living inside of us, he's going to empower us to do what he wants us to do. And that's found in the Scriptures. Now, the opposite error, which is really the opposite, is a thing called antinomianism. Now, this word anti means no in Greek, nomi, nomenism. Nomi means law.
[00:12:22] No law, no moral law.
[00:12:25] It's basically promoting licentious behavior, which is often sexual in nature, and it's a disregard for moral, legal, or social constraints. So these are people who have no boundaries in their lives.
[00:12:38] How many know that if you're living a healthy life and you can even see it on a physical level, that there are boundaries to our lives? How many know if you violate what we'll call healthy physical boundaries, for example, you don't get enough sleep, you don't eat correctly, you don't do enough exercise. How many know it's going to affect you in a negative way? How many know that's true? That's just the law of physics, the law of how our bodies work, and same thing in the spiritual realm, there are moral laws, and when we violate those boundaries, we're going to diminish ourselves. And so God's law, his moral law, has never been eradicated.
[00:13:15] You know, God is basically. And he summarizes it. You say, what's the law, Pastor? Love God with all your heart and love people as you love yourself. That's what Jesus summarized the whole law in those two commands. So the behavior that we have, you know, we put God above everything, and then relationally, we connect with people in a proper manner. You know, he talks about, don't kill people. Don't. You know you can kill people by verbalizing negative things about them? That's killing people, too. Jesus talks about that in the Sermon on the Mount. He moves away from a strictly rigid, legalistic, physical thing and incorporates the law of God and reinterpret, not reinterprets it. He's explaining the essence of it in the Sermon on the Mount. And you get a deeper sense of it.
[00:13:58] Where Jesus is explaining the problem is within ourselves.
[00:14:02] You know, a lot of times we look around and we say, the problem's out there. And what we're about to hear today, the problem is in here. We got to deal with the stuff inside of our own soul. And when we get the victory inside of our lives, what begins to happen is we have a greater impact in the lives of people around us. And that's exciting.
[00:14:20] So in addressing these false messengers, Paul is going to call the Corinthians to a holy life. But you say, but what is holiness?
[00:14:30] Well, the Hebrew word for holy in the Old Testament is kadesh.
[00:14:35] And its primary meaning is to be separate.
[00:14:38] It means to be unique. When you think about God, God is holy. So what does it really mean that God is holy? Well, God is unique. He's separate from us. He's wholly other. He's distinct. He's transcendent. That means he's beyond us. God is not part of the creation. He created the creation. He's outside of the creation. The creation was created at some point. God is eternal. He's never been, but always been. And what I'm saying is he's never been a part of creation. He's always been apart from creation, and he's eternal in nature.
[00:15:11] And why do we say God is immutable? Or why is God unchanging?
[00:15:17] Very simply, God's perfect. How many know you don't have to change if you're perfect?
[00:15:22] Unfortunately, most of us in this room, we're just not perfect. So there's room for Growth, there's room for improvement, there's room for change. That's what we need to understand.
[00:15:30] So when the word is used in the ancient Near Eastern world, it almost always is used in religious settings. And the opposite of holy is what is common or profane.
[00:15:40] And the common understanding of holiness is a moral or ethical nature, but it's also a statement of being. To be holy is inconceivably and unknowable. Belonging to the sacred realm. We only become holy as we are in relationship to God.
[00:16:02] No one is holy independently from God. You can't be holy apart from God. How's that so? But God is going to call us to holiness. You're going to see that in our text and you're going to see that in other texts in the scripture.
[00:16:17] It's interesting in the New Testament, what we discover, holiness is found in a person, and the person is Jesus. Okay, now I want you to understand something.
[00:16:28] God becomes a man, but he's fully man.
[00:16:34] In Jesus, what we have is the standard of what a human life should look like.
[00:16:40] So, you know, a lot of times we measure our lives well, I'm better than this person, or this person's better than me. Drop all of that stuff. It's nonsense, okay? I'm going to free you from all that. There's only one person you have to line up against Jesus.
[00:16:53] That's your standard. You go, oh, Pastor, that's pretty tough to take. I mean, he's God, you know? But people think that this kind of life is impossible. But we fail to realize that in his humanity, Jesus was enabled and empowered by God's Holy Spirit.
[00:17:12] So what happened at Jesus baptism? The Holy Spirit came into the humanity of Christ. It came upon him. That's what it says. He was anointed by the Spirit of God. He was full of the Spirit of God. And Jesus actually was living a life fully in submission to his Father because he said, I only do what my father tells me to do. And I only say what my Father tells me to say. So he was living a life of absolute surrender to the will of God. Really beautiful. And listen, that's the life he's calling us to, that you and I allow the Spirit of God to have his way in our lives so that we do the will of God. You say, well, how do I know the will of God? The Word of God is revealing to us the will of God. How is that? And we have to obey God's word, but we can't do it apart from the Spirit. And so the Spirit of God is empowering us to do what's right in the eyes of Almighty God. So, in other words, Christian holiness is not a life of discipline or struggle alone. I'm going to tell you it is a life of discipline, and there is struggle in it.
[00:18:18] But that's not all there is to it. There's something more profound than that. There's the Spirit of God.
[00:18:24] I'm going to say this. The closer you get to God, this is going to shock you. The more intense the spiritual life becomes, the more you recognize temptation, the more you'll recognize struggle. You might have more despair inside of you at moments.
[00:18:38] It's really designed to bring you and I closer to God, to cry out to God, to seek God, to experience the spirit of God inside of us, sustaining us through the trials, the temptations, and the challenges that we're faced with.
[00:18:54] And so it can only. That's how Jesus lived it.
[00:18:58] So we were reminded last week that we as believers are partakers of God's very nature.
[00:19:03] And because of God's promises to us, God brings us his very presence to live inside of us. And therefore, we're temples, because a temple is really where God lives. And so you and I, when we receive Christ, we're now temples. God lives inside of us.
[00:19:18] That's a pretty profound thought if you think about it. How can the God whom the universe cannot contain all of a sudden live inside of me? Whoo.
[00:19:27] That's pretty powerful. So, you know, we got to stop making excuses for ourselves. There is a power inside of each of our lives that's so profound and dynamic. Dynamic.
[00:19:36] We need to embrace that. We need to say, wow, you know what?
[00:19:41] I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Yes. Christ is there empowering our lives. So Paul's call for holiness is going to require a response on our part, and we need to know that. So here in Paul's argument regarding acceptance, not only of himself, but because he's been making this argument throughout the whole Second Corinthians, but more importantly, the message that he is communicating.
[00:20:08] So what Paul is really saying to these guys is, listen to this. He's saying, if you reject me, what you're really rejecting is not me. You're rejecting the message I'm bringing. And the people that you're embracing right now in the church who are distorting the message are false messengers and they're deceiving you. And if you don't disassociate from those individuals, you're in trouble because you're not just rejecting me, you're rejecting God's message. This is the essence of what I'm trying to get across today. So I'm going to look at two reasons we need to break from unbelievers as Paul defines them. I'm going to qualify that. We need to break from unbelievers as Paul defines what an unbeliever is in this context.
[00:20:55] So the first reason we need to separate ourselves from the opponents of the gospel is because of their influence.
[00:21:02] They have a profound influence. They're going to shape people's lives. We need to understand what the separation means and what it does not mean.
[00:21:11] Who are we to break from and why? And the idea of being holy is to be set apart for God and his purposes. So who are these opponents?
[00:21:19] We need to start with an understanding of who they were and in Paul's time and therefore who they are today.
[00:21:26] So who were they in Paul's time? Okay, Ralph Martin and Carl Tony wrote in commentary and they're explaining this status and he says it this way, these unbelievers.
[00:21:36] Now he's in the Greek language Apistos, which means. Apistos means belief or faith. And A is a negative. It means no, just like I said, no law. This is no belief. These are no believers or unbelievers, we call them.
[00:21:54] Now, there's three different viewpoints. This is interesting. I think at points they're all correct. Okay, so let me put it you this way. They can be the traditional viewpoint, just non Christians.
[00:22:07] Sometimes we have to disassociate with certain non Christians because they're having an undue influence in our life and are taking us down.
[00:22:14] How many have ever noticed that? You know, haven't you noticed that if you're a parent, you have your kids and they're hanging with certain people and you notice their behavior is changing. Anybody experience that?
[00:22:24] You know, And I can say to myself, yeah, I know who they've been hanging with, you know, just because it's affecting them, it's influencing them.
[00:22:32] Right.
[00:22:33] We know that's true. Sometimes you have to disassociate from certain people because they're having an undue influence on you.
[00:22:39] Now let me just say it to you this way as we're going to hear, he says, don't be unequally yoked with these people or partner with them. And so we could just talk about, you know, one of the reasons why Christians, and I don't understand why they do this, you know, because I'm a minister and I'm trying to do weddings. And I find people that have, you know, they want to get married to somebody. And this is a person that says they're a Christian. This person is not a Christian. I'm going, well, why are they together?
[00:23:05] It doesn't make any sense to me. Like, this is the most important thing in my life is my relationship with God. Wouldn't I want to share the rest of my life with someone who has the same heart and value after God that I have?
[00:23:16] And I used to do this when I was a youth pastor. You know, I'd get up on a table like this and I would tell the youth, I said, okay, I want you to try to pull me down, I'll try to pull you up.
[00:23:26] You know what happens? They were pulling me down. And I tried to point out to them, it's a lot easier to pull people down than it is to lift them up.
[00:23:34] But we're called to lift people up. And so. But I don't believe that we should be marrying person to try to lift them up. So I don't believe in missionary dating.
[00:23:44] Okay, you say, well, what's that? Well, that's when somebody is going, well, I'm going to win this person to Christ and that's why I'm going to build a relationship with them. And then they fall in love with them and then they get married to them and then for the rest of their life their spouse. Is their mission field problematic?
[00:24:01] You know, when I was in Bible college, when I met Patty, I decided I want to marry a girl who has a call of God on her life to be in the ministry so that her and I can work together as a team so we can actually do the ministry and the people there are the mission field and we are two people in agreement.
[00:24:22] That's very important. I think it's critical. Okay, so Paul was actually equating his opponents with these unbelievers. And a mark of reconciliation between Paul and the Corinthians was separation from the unbelieving world of which his opponents, by preaching a false gospel, were a part of.
[00:24:42] So I think we need to be careful we don't dissociate with other believers who may have different biblical interpretations in what I call non essential issues.
[00:24:52] What do you mean by non essential issues? Well, you know, people disagree today about women in ministry. Does anybody know that? Of course they do. Is that essential? No, I don't think that's going to affect your salvation. So I call it non essential.
[00:25:04] Okay, what about the role of the Holy Spirit in the church? And the gifts in the world today? Well, we have the church divided on that. Some think the Holy Spirit's gifts died after a certain period. Other people say, no, they're still available.
[00:25:16] Is that salvation essential? No, it's not. Yet. I can still fellowship with people that don't agree with me on this point. Okay, that's not the essential, but what is the essential is the gospel.
[00:25:29] Who Jesus is and what Jesus did, that's essential.
[00:25:35] That we are living in a fallen world. That sin is the issue that needs to be addressed. That God addressed that issue in the person and work of Jesus Christ. We need to understand that humanity is not delivered from sin through their own efforts or our own efforts, but is redeemed through the sacrificial death of Jesus. So that what we believe about Jesus and what he did is essential. I agree with you. It's essential.
[00:26:03] Right? It is essential.
[00:26:06] So why should we go about disassociating with these opponents?
[00:26:12] Well, Paul's going to give us a number of reasons in this dramatic stance.
[00:26:17] Paul's defense of his ministry has been sharing that those who have been opposing him are doing so because they're promising a different gospel, which is no gospel at all.
[00:26:28] It's a distortion of the real message of the gospel and that will lead people astray. He now warns in this little interlude his argument that joining with those who are advocating a false message will prove disastrous. And. And he begins by asking five questions which are actually detailing the contrast between what is true and what is false. We're going to read them. I'm just going to outline them here, and I'm going to come back and actually read the text. But it says, what does righteousness and wickedness have in common? What's the answer?
[00:26:59] Thank you. Nothing. What fellowship can light have with darkness?
[00:27:04] No, not a lot.
[00:27:06] Nothing. Okay. What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? I'll explain who Belial is in a minute. It's actually another name for Satan. Nothing. What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever?
[00:27:20] Well, spiritually speaking, nothing. Now, they might have other things in common, but not spiritually. What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols?
[00:27:31] Nothing.
[00:27:32] The answer is simply that they're in conflict and are in contrast to each other. Therefore, the right response is to depart from embracing a dualistic or synergistic approach with these opponents. What do I mean by that? That somehow we marry into the ideas. You know, there's a lot of pressure today for ideas to be blended.
[00:27:52] And by the way, that's always been the case. Go back to the first century. You know, Rome would tolerate every religion except for the ones that were exclusive. That created all kinds of problems. Because if you're a Christian, you're going, there's only one Lord and his name is Jesus, okay? And it creates tension right now.
[00:28:14] So let's take a look at this statement here. Second Corinthians 6:14. We're going to look at a few verses. Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? What does fellowship and light with darkness? Linda Belville explains the intensity in Paul's remarks. She says, actually, the command is even more pointed. Stop yoking yourselves to unbelievers. Use of the present imperative shows that Paul is not merely warning these guys from this, the Corinthians, about a potential danger. Do not start, but instructing them to stop an action that's already in progress. That's pretty strong. She's saying, you're already doing this, so stop it.
[00:28:54] That's what Paul is telling him. You're doing this already. You need to stop that behavior because it's going to take you down. It's going to destroy you.
[00:29:01] Now, the first two questions. Considering the partnership of moral opposites, what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? What fellowship can light have with darkness? The believer and the unbeliever are driven by a different set of values. The one characterized by righteousness and the other by lawlessness.
[00:29:21] Wow. Those are totally different values. There are no shared values because the one follows God's will and the other does not. So there could be no real partnership with them. Do you know how hard it is to walk the Christian walk and have somebody tied to you, yoked to you, and they're going in the other direction?
[00:29:39] That's pretty hard. That's tough going. As a matter of fact, you know, Amos says it this way. Do two walk together unless they have agreed to do so?
[00:29:48] You know, the old King James says, you know, how can two walk together unless they be agreed? I mean, you got to be in agreement to go in the same direction. You can't be, you know, and there's a lot of relationships. There's constant conflict. You know, when I was, you know, young pastor, I couldn't figure out my wife and I are quite different.
[00:30:06] We're a lot opposite of each other. You know, matter of fact, I was doing a test one day, and I think I thought maybe we're almost the complete opposites.
[00:30:15] And we got along so I'm going, what's the deal? Why am we getting along? And why do I have couples in here? Probably I can take the same test, run them through the test, and they're going to have a lot more in common with each other. And they're bickering like crazy. And I came to a sudden epiphany one day. Values, they don't share the same values. And conflict is always over values. And you never really notice it until you have kids because that's when all these value decisions begin to pop up.
[00:30:42] You got to be on the same page.
[00:30:45] Otherwise you have conflict. You got to have the same values.
[00:30:54] Paul is basically telling them, flee from these false teachers and renew their commitment to the truth. What harmony is there between Christ and Belial, which I've said is another name for Satan.
[00:31:06] The Hebrew word belir.
[00:31:09] I mean, the Greek word. And it takes from the Hebrew word it means worthless or good for nothing. How many like that name for Satan? Worthless and good for nothing? I don't think he appreciates being called that. But that's, you know, but really there's no worth and there's no. It doesn't produce any good.
[00:31:25] And so we got to be careful. That's what he's saying. He's saying, hey, what are you going to do? Have someone who's, you know, a child of Satan or a child of God? You see, I think there is a dichotomy, not a dualism. What I mean by that is God and Satan are not equal, folks. God is far above Satan. But there's a dualism in the sense that, you know, Satan is opposing the realm of God, and God allows it. And you go, why does God allow that? Because I believe it's a test.
[00:31:54] God is allowing us to. You and I, we need to discover what's inside of us.
[00:32:00] How many know? We think we know what we're made of, and then something happens in our life. You go, man, I did not respond well in that situation because the Bible says our hearts are concealed from us. You know, we don't really know how deep the depth of depravity is within the human heart. Jeremiah says that in 179, he said, you know, the heart is deceitfully wicked. Who can really know it? That's pretty strong language.
[00:32:25] And so when you, you know, Pastor Mark was preaching last week here, and he was talking about the nature of human beings. He was talking about that very thing, that we need a new nature. And when we come to Christ, he gives us his nature, and now we still have the old nature, but we have a new nature. And this is what starts happening all of a sudden, the new nature. As we feed that nature and sense that we're yielding to God, that nature overcomes the old nature in our lives, begins to dominate it. And we begin to put that nature to death. And we don't let that thing rise up, because that's deadly. It'll kill us. He goes on here to say, what agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said, I will live with them and walk among them. I'll be their God, and they will be my people. He's actually quoting from the Old Testament.
[00:33:16] God can only be among us if. If we've separated ourselves from idols.
[00:33:22] How many know that's true?
[00:33:23] Yeah, God is everywhere present at one time. I know theologically that's true. But God is only going to dwell in our lives and control our lives if we're yielding to him. Otherwise, what happens is, you know, we can live in rebellion against God.
[00:33:39] Most of our society is living in rebellion against God. I don't know if you realize that they are, you know, we cannot engage in this behavior. You say, well, this doesn't happen today. I said, don't be naive. Over the years, even some who have been in roles of leadership, even in this congregation, have drifted into unbiblical teachings and have drifted away from a vibrant faith. I remember as a young pastor, one of our leaders, you know, got. Went to some seminar, got caught up in it, and it was like. I went to talk to him. I mean, just a leader.
[00:34:14] And I was trying to reason with him. I was trying to explain, how did you go from here to here? I just could not believe it. And you know what it was like talking to that wall back there?
[00:34:24] Nothing.
[00:34:25] You know, he was telling me, well, we just don't have the full gospel.
[00:34:30] I'm going, will you tell me what? And then he started laying out all of these Jesus plus stuff. Jesus plus this, Jesus plus that, Jesus plus this. I'm thinking to myself, it's Jesus minus.
[00:34:42] You're negating everything about the work of Christ by everything you're saying. I couldn't get through to him. And, you know, I was so distraught as a young pastor. You know, when I got back, I said, God, what's going on? And then I was reading in Colossians, and it says, you know, he's been taken captive and he's been kidnapped. It's actually literally the translation in Colossians he's been kidnapped. And I went, man, have you ever.
[00:35:07] That's the best way to describe it. This person was literally kidnapped and I couldn't retrieve them.
[00:35:15] You know, isn't that amazing what false teaching can do?
[00:35:20] Scary stuff.
[00:35:24] What does it mean not to be yoked or partnering with these unbelievers? Kricheanor says Jews who adopted the Greek culture and became uncircumcised joined themselves.
[00:35:35] A term also used as yoking to gentiles. Now I'm gonna see he's got first Maccabee 1 15. This is the Apocrypha. So I'm not. This is not biblical, but, you know, the apocrypha does have moral lessons in it. Okay. So it would be like reading a good Christian book. I'm just. It's not canonical. That's not authoritative. But we can learn from it. And I'm going to quote from first Maccabees 1:15, because I have the.
[00:35:57] Read the Apocrypha. And it says this. In those days, certain renegades came out from Israel and misled many, saying, let us go and make a covenant with the Gentiles around us. For since we separated from them, many disasters have come upon us. The proposal pleased them, and some of the people eagerly went to the king, who authorized them to observe the ordinances of the Gentiles. So they built the gymnasium in Jerusalem according to the Gentile custom. Oh, by the way, do you know anything about gymnasiums? In ancient times, the Greeks? No. They worked out. It's like going to, you know, the fitness center over here, but they don't wear any clothes. They're all naked.
[00:36:33] Yeah, that's how the Greeks did it. You didn't know that. But here's the problem. If you're a male and you're Jewish, you've been circumcised and everybody else is uncircumcised. So immediately they know you're Jewish. Right.
[00:36:45] And remove the marks of circumcision and abandoned the holy covenant. They joined with the Gentiles and sold themselves to do evil.
[00:36:54] What does all that mean, Pastor? It means simply this. These people were renouncing their Jewishness and their faith, and they were moving away from their uniqueness and identifiable markers as God's people.
[00:37:07] Well, that was an external thing.
[00:37:11] What is Paul urging? The Corinthians. We need to abandon those ideas and values and behaviors that are contrary to God's word, which move us away from being God's unique people.
[00:37:22] However, this did not mean that we live in A spiritual ghetto and a monastery.
[00:37:27] What does that mean? Well, you know, a lot of people go, I'm going to be holy, but you know, everybody around me is contaminated. So I'm just going to live by myself.
[00:37:35] You know, that's what they did. The early Christians sometimes did this. They went out in the desert and they lived all by themselves. They didn't want to be contaminated. But you know what? They found out they were still contaminated because it comes from within.
[00:37:48] That's a problem.
[00:37:50] Now we need to be aware that total separation was not mandated because they were living among Gentiles. Even Jews were in the Diaspora. In other words, they weren't just living in their own country, they were living among Gentiles. Craig Keener says complete separation from Gentiles was not possible in the dysporia. And even rabbis were very selective in their restrictions. Practical considerations also limiting restrictions and avoiding less scrupulous Jews. But strict Jews and Christians would forbid compromise of one's faith and heritage, which I think is important.
[00:38:22] Warning against being mismatched would at least include marital unions.
[00:38:27] So we're learning something. You know, they're saying, hey, you can't yoke up with these people. You can't be a partner with them. So what are some of the areas that we should apply to our lives today in our teaching and lifestyle? Well, I think we need to stick to the basics.
[00:38:41] You know, we need to stick to who Jesus is and what he's accomplished on our behalf in lifestyle. To be, not to be in partnership with people in marriage or business who have a totally different value system. It'll prove disastrous. I warn you from that. And I even told somebody the other day, they were, they came forward for prayer and they said, I'm going to business as a person's a Christian. They said, no. I said, don't do it just like that.
[00:39:07] You have to have the same values. And I would even question even believers because sometimes people say they're believers, but their behavior is not believers behavior and their value system is wrong. You better be in line with this person if you're going to enter into those kind of relationships.
[00:39:26] Okay? So the second reason why we need to separate ourselves from the opponents of the gospel is to be acceptable to God.
[00:39:36] Not everyone enters God's presence. Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount said something very interesting in Matthew 5. 8. He said, Only the pure in heart will see God.
[00:39:45] The pure in heart, purity, holiness. This is important stuff. You know, the Old Testament spends a lot of time defining what is clean and pure and what is unclean and impure? How many? I'm just reading through Leviticus here, and I'm going, oh, look at this stuff. Clean, unclean, pure, impure.
[00:40:02] And when a clean thing bumps into an impure thing, it gets contaminated.
[00:40:08] Anybody notice that? How many have ever read through Leviticus? Some of you go, I haven't read that book yet. Well, you go over there and you'll find out. It's all this ritualistic stuff, but it's teaching the lesson.
[00:40:19] You know, it's telling us what is common and profane, what is holy. And we find in that book these distinctions. It talks about what's clean and can be defiled by touching what is contaminated.
[00:40:30] But listen to what happened.
[00:40:34] One of the roles of the priest was to distinguish and teach the difference between what was holy and profane. The fact that the priests did not fulfill this responsibility was one of the causes of why the nation became defiled or contaminated. And God brought them into exile to correct them from their false worship or idolatry and sinful lives.
[00:40:55] Let me read Ezekiel.
[00:40:57] He says, her priests do violence to my law and profane my holy things. They do not distinguish between the holy and the common. They teach that there's no difference between the unclean and the clean. And they shut their eyes to the keeping of my Sabbath so that I am profaned among them. In other words, I'm not honored among them.
[00:41:18] This is people who are casual. Everything goes. No big thing. This is. I would say these are the antinomianists. These are the guys that are going, hey, I'm just going to do my thing. God love me. He wants me to do whatever I feel good about.
[00:41:30] Oh, isn't that great?
[00:41:33] A lot of people, you know, I've had people come up pastor, this is what I feel God's leading me to do. I go, God's not leading you to do that. They go, how do you know?
[00:41:41] He told me to. I said, no, he didn't.
[00:41:44] What do you mean? I said, right here in the Bible, it tells you to do the opposite of that. So how in the world can you tell me that God's telling you to do this?
[00:41:53] That's nonsense.
[00:41:55] Or I have somebody say, well, you know, God wants me to have this, or God wants me to do this because he really loves me. I'm going, yeah, I know he really loves you. And he's smart enough to know that if you did that, it would hurt you.
[00:42:06] How many know you don't let your kids do everything they want to do, right? Come on, well, God's a good father.
[00:42:16] He's got healthy boundaries for our lives. He's going, this is what will make you happy.
[00:42:21] And if you violate these things, you're going to do it to your own hurt. Okay?
[00:42:25] So if we were to apply this to our nation, we would have to say that the core issue in our nation, what needs to happen? What needs to change our nation. Here's what I'm going to tell you. The core issue. We need to get back to preaching the gospel. We need to get back to preaching the whole counsel of God. We need to address the issue of idolatry and sin in our own lives. And when the church repents and gets right with God, we become a holy people once again. We get cleansed and we have an impact on our society.
[00:42:55] But if we don't do that, we become contaminated by our society and we become just like the rest of the people.
[00:43:02] And we just go further down that rabbit hole.
[00:43:05] So there's a call for holiness. So I'm going to stop right here.
[00:43:09] Wow. There's just so much more I could say. But I'll tell you what, let's stand.
[00:43:14] And if you want the rest of the notes, they're on my site. You know, this message was actually very challenging for me to develop. I'll just tell you that. It took me five days working on it, so that's longer than I normally spend.
[00:43:31] Why is this so important? Because you know what Peter says to us in His Epistle?
[00:43:37] He says, be holy.
[00:43:40] God says, I'm holy.
[00:43:43] God wants us to reflect Him.
[00:43:47] We need to be like Him.
[00:43:50] Matter of fact, the Bible teaches us that God's goal for your life is to make you like Jesus.
[00:43:57] Anybody got any room for improvement? I don't know.
[00:44:01] I got room. I got room. Lord, there's some things, like, you got to help me, right? I want to become more like Christ.
[00:44:08] What's Christ like? Loving, compassionate, forbearing, kind, understanding, patient.
[00:44:19] Right. Aren't those beautiful things? Don't you want to be more like that? You know, one of my prayers is, Lord, when I grew up, I want to be just a little bit more like youe. I'm still growing up. I want to be more like youe.
[00:44:31] And so God's calling us to Himself. He says, I want a holy people. I want a distinct people. I want a unique people. I want a people that reflect who I am to society.
[00:44:42] Isn't that a beautiful picture that you and I can reflect Christ to our world?
[00:44:47] And it starts right here in the church, starts with the pastor. The pastor has to humble himself and say, God, help me to just preach your counsel.
[00:44:56] Just preach the unadulterated word of God. Let's let what's being communicated, communicate it. Explain the word of God to people so they get it. And then the people are saying, yes, I've heard God's voice. It's not. I'm trying to make God in my image. I'm trying to allow God to refashion me into his image. Isn't that different?
[00:45:16] See, I think a lot of people are dummying down the gospel so they can have God accept bad behavior. He's not going to do that, guys.
[00:45:25] He's not going to do that. He's going to call us to himself. He's going to call us to separate ourselves and be different and embrace the true gospel. As we're going to continue through this book, Paul's going to say some pretty challenging things about these false ministers. He's going to call them ministers of darkness. He says they appear as angels of light, but they are servants of Satan. They're masquerading.
[00:45:52] A masquerade is they're faking people out. They're deceiving people. They're leading people astray. Wow, that's bad.
[00:45:59] And people gullibly just, you know, and I marvel sometimes. I go, how could they go from here to there? But there had to be some sort of a drift happening all along.
[00:46:11] So we have to open our hearts and say, God, I want you.
[00:46:14] I want the truth.
[00:46:17] And if you don't love the truth, God will send you a lie. God himself will allow you to be taken in because he's exposing your heart.
[00:46:27] You know, be a lover of the truth.
[00:46:30] You know, it's the truth that sets people free, not lies.
[00:46:34] Don't change the messaging.
[00:46:36] Don't change the messaging. We got to respond to God. We have to come to God on his terms and not on ours.
[00:46:45] Isn't that true?
[00:46:47] Amen.
[00:46:48] So let's open our heart to God. Maybe there's things God speak in your heart right now and you're saying, you know what? I feel God's challenging me today. There's a stirring in my heart. God is saying, you know what? I've got to shift the way I'm thinking about it. I got to conform my life or allow God to transform me. I got to conform to his word. I got to embrace what God is saying and allow that to be the standard of my life.
[00:47:12] I measure my life by the word of God.
[00:47:15] This is the measuring line.
[00:47:17] And Every day as I kneel down before him and I spend time with him, I'm reading scripture, I'm going, this is the measuring line.
[00:47:25] This is the way I need to live.
[00:47:28] This is where there's joy. This is where there's love. This is where there's hope. This is where there's strength and energy. It comes from here, comes from the presence of God.
[00:47:38] So with every head bowed, right now, some of you are saying, lord, let's just ask him for help.
[00:47:44] We can do that. We can say, lord, I need a little help right now to be more like you. I got both hands up for me. I need a little more help to be more like you. I do need your help. I want to walk in holiness.
[00:47:57] I want to walk a separated life. I want to walk a distinctly different life than our society. I want to walk an uncontaminated life. I want God's life to flow not only from me, but from my family and from our church family. That the life of Christ would flow from us and that we would impact our city, our province, our nation and the nations of our world. Because we're allowing the life of Christ to flow from us.
[00:48:25] And Father, where we have failed you, we ask for forgiveness. We pray right now that you'd bring your cleansing grace into our lives, the love of Jesus, the sacrifice of Jesus, that you would apply the blood of Christ into these areas of failure in our lives. Father, forgive us our sins and lead us not into temptation. Deliver us, O God, from the ways of this world, Father, because this world's perishing.
[00:48:50] But what we are doing is eternal. And so we want to walk in the way everlasting. We want to walk in the way eternal. We want to serve you wholeheartedly, Lord. We want to have an impact in our generations. We want to be a people that make a difference because we're like you.
[00:49:08] And we thank you for that. In Jesus name, amen. God bless you as you leave today.
