Unequally Yoked - part 7
2 Corinthians 6:14-7:1. Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial? Or 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 said, “I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Therefore go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; then I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty.” Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God.
I have just read for you a passage from the English Standard Version Bible, and we know that this passage is what God says. What are some of our concerns with this passage and the Word of God when we are dealing with each other? What is the world saying, even better what are we believing when faced with the common views around us? Righteousness verses lawlessness need to become our major focal point to how we our live instead of our opinions and emotions. Listen to the commands from this portion of the Word of God;
1. Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers
2. Therefore go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord
3. Let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God.
Today I want to be very practical and it may seem that I am addressing our teens; this message is for all of us. There is a way of thinking and a way of behavior among us today that leads to trouble and serious sin. And it stems from an extension of what we may classify as normal behavior and good judgment.
Here is what we do and we can usually justify this behavior. We get a sample of a food or a small taste (a sip) of a drink that we are eating or drinking for the first time. And we do this to see if we like it or not, that is to see if it is compatible with our taste preference.
We try on shoes, clothes and even head gear before buying them to see if it fits, if it is comfortable and compatible with our style of clothing.
We test drive a vehicle before purchasing it to see how it handles, how it feels, and if the drive is compatible with our own driving habits.
Some visit colleges, walk around the campus, look into some of the rooms, and talk with other people who are attending before enrolling or applying to see if we would be happy there.
We, modern day people, are not the type who jump head over heel into a new food, a major purchase or engage in an activity without trying it out first to see if it will work well with ourselves. And most of us would call this wise behavior, but there is a problem here New Hope that lurks in the shadows for we being creatures of habit take this same philosophy, this same paradigm into our male and female relationships.
My brothers and sisters, I have yet to meet the person who would say or admit that they want to marry a person, have a husband, have a wife or for that matter have a close friend who was not compatible with them. They want and desire their relationship to be equally yoked together.
That is not the issue or the argument, my brothers and sisters. Even this passage of Scripture, 2 Corinthians 6:14 – 7:1, there are no major debates over what this is saying. The problem is what criteria you will use to determine this equality. The world has its criteria. And this worldly criteria is loud and clear. Compatibility is determined by intimacy. The more intimate one can become with another person will determine if that is the right person for you or not.
Let me see if I can make this plan; movies, television programs, advertising, fashions, the internet, health classes in our schools, and even pharmaceutical companies, place a tremendous amount of emphasis, time and money on a three letter word that begins with the letter ‘S’ and that word is not ‘sin’ but ‘sex’. The sexual revolution of the 60s and 70s, that myself and those of you who are close to my age was a part of, has brought force in just about one generation later, a sex-saturated culture. And I am here today to say that in this sex-saturated culture in which we eat, drink, work, play, sleep, and eventually die, the way sex is promoted, advertise, thrown into our face, and the encouragement to engage in it, is temptation to sin and we are yielding to this temptation and engaging in sexual sin. And to many of us, we see nothing wrong with it; therefore it is not in our list of confessed sins.
Because of that, when this passage says to cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, I can respond by saying; ‘you missed a spot’!
All of what I said earlier can be applied to sex. It is okay to sample it, try it, test it, and visit it before making a commitment. For when you do these things, then you will know beyond a shadow of a doubt if this person is compatible with you or not. And if this person is not compatible then you sample it, try it, and visit it again and again until you find that person who is compatible. And when this happens, you are equally yoked and you know it. That’s the world view and our young people not only hear it loud and clear, they’re listening, taking notes and putting it to practice. It appears in many ways that sexual involvement is the right of passage for our teens and especially our teenage girls
Today I stand before you as one who has been liberated from the sexual revolution of the 60s and 70s, for at one time such was I. And I stand in defiance of this world view. Because I can now stand before you armed with the sword of the Spirit which is the word of God. This word of God reassures with passages like; 1 Corinthians 6:9-11. Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
And I also stand before you in the fear of the Lord Almighty, and brothers and sisters of New Hope; I stand agreeing with Philippians 3:12-14. Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
Now I said I want to be practical and I want you to leave here today with more than the world view, I want to be aware of God’s view.
For this is what God says in 1 Thessalonians 4:3-5.
For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God;
Do you hear it? This is the will of God; this is what God wants to happen and what pleases Him. And in fear of God, I reverence Him and I desire to please Him in what I do and think. Paul mentions that fact in verses one and two leading up to these verses, listen; 1 Thessalonians 4:1-2. Finally, then, brothers, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received from us how you ought to live and to please God, just as you are doing, that you do so more and more. For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus. Verse 3 gives us the more and more, it is our sanctification.
Not only are we to cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God, we are to walk in this in a practical manner. Being sanctified is the ongoing process of becoming increasingly free from sin and filled with love. Sanctification and being sanctified means to belong to God and to show the same character as God, it is being in the image of God and this is holiness.
The passage defines a way to do this and that way is to abstain from, or avoid, sexual immorality (The Greek word is porneia), means mainly fornication – that is two people acting as if they are married when they are not married. Touching each other and sleeping together in a way God designed only for a man and a woman married to each other. I would like to include with ‘porneia’ two other names; pornography (obscene sexual explicit, writings, drawings, photographs or the like), and homosexuality (same sex or having sex with someone who is of the same gender as you are). I have not tried to name all of the sexual immoralities. The world view on these three is to help yourself to it, engage in, or indulge yourself with them, and if you can not be there in person then fantasize about it. God’s view, and the Word of God says it, is to abstain from and I like the word avoid sexual immorality.
If our teens and our young people are honest, a typical comment and question would be; Pastor McCreary, I hear what you are saying but it is tough to follow this when sex is constantly being thrown in my face. So how are we to do this? The answer starts with this passage of Scripture.
But before we go back there we must preface this with another passage of Scripture and even as a teen you must believe this in your heart. 2 Timothy 3:16-17. All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work. And this must apply to you teenage boy and teenage girl. Now with that in mind our passage says; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God;
To reach this knowledge, we must realize that the fear of God is the beginning of knowledge and wisdom. And this fear of God is the result of Jesus being real in your heart. So who owns your heart? Is it you or Jesus, or someone or something else?
You are a product of your parents so parents please don’t be naïve to think that all of this stuff that is in the world is not affecting your child because it is! As a teacher in a high school, I am still amaze at the number of parents who are not aware of what their own teens are engaged in. And usually the discovery is after the fact. Here is what I am saying, my brother and sister parent; if you were rebellious, did that pass along to your children, if you were friendly and outgoing, did that pass along to your children, if you my brother thought you were a player, did that pass along to your son or even to your daughter, and if you were gullible, did that pass along to your children? So I ask why does the learning how to control our own body in holiness and honor has to be a ‘trial and error’ learning experience?
God is letting us know His will for our sanctification and He has blessed us with the means to accomplish it. Fornication, sex before marriage, for the fun of it or to determine compatibility is wrong. A young lady and her boyfriend living together to test to see if they are equally yoked is wrong. It may be popular, it may save some money but it is still wrong. And the local church has got to deal with these questions from a Biblical basis when they are asked or implied.
My teens, my little brothers and sisters, and my potential brothers and sisters, agree or disagree, it is still what thus says the Lord. And in conclusion listen to the remainder of this passage in the context and a passage from Galatians;
1 Thessalonians 4:6-8. That no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you. For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness. Therefore whoever disregards this, disregards not man but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you.
Listen again closely and I say this because you are teens or young adults and some of you may feel that you got all of this in control your way, but the Word of God says; “whoever disregards this, disregards not man but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you.”
And from Galatians chapter 5, verses 16-26
Galatians 5:16-26. But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.
May the Lord bless the reading, the hearing and the doing of His holy Word. Amen