Sunday Sermon: Do Not Be Unequally Yoked (2 Corinthians 6:14-7:1)

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You are listening to the teaching ministry of Gabrielle Hughes, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas.

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Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday on this podcast, we feature 20 minutes of Bible study through a

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New Testament book. On Thursday is our Old Testament study, and then we answer questions from listeners on Friday.

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Each Sunday we are pleased to share our sermon series, presently going through the letters to the

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Corinthians. This is the sermon that was preached last week from our pulpit. Here's Pastor Gabe.

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Second Corinthians chapter six, starting in verse 14, we're actually going to read through chapter seven, verse one, kind of totals this section that we're looking at here.

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The apostle Paul writing to the church in Corinth says, do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers.

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For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness?

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What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever?

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What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living

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God. As God said, I will make my dwelling among them, and I will walk with them, and I will be their

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God, and they shall be my people. Therefore, go out from their midst and be separate from them, says the

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Lord, and touch no unclean thing. And then I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the

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Lord Almighty. Since we have these promises, chapter seven, verse one, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God.

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Let us pray. Our great God and Savior, our heavenly

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Father who is above us, who sits enthroned over all that you have created, heaven and earth, things seen and unseen.

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We know that you search mind and heart. You cut through bone and marrow. You see to the very core of our being.

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There is nothing that we can hide from God most high. And so,

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Lord, as you seek out our hearts this morning, I pray that you would also convict us and that we would desire as your people to live holy, godly, upright lives in this present age.

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As you grow us in sanctification, as you grow us in an understanding of holiness and who you are, that we would turn away from every unclean thing and we would cling to the

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God of holiness above, a God who is so holy that we cannot even stand in your presence if it were not for the sacrifice of Jesus Christ upon the cross for our sins.

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By faith in Jesus, we're no longer the enemies of God, but we are the friends of God. And so, also, we are friends with everyone else who has been adopted into your family as your children.

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We are sons and daughters through the atoning blood of Jesus Christ. We are brothers and sisters in the

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Lord. And so, let us look out for one another and be united with one another in the spirit of Christ.

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First and foremost, God, may we be united with you, yoked with our

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Lord and Savior. And it's in being united with Christ that we are also united with his body.

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And so, grow us in an understanding of what it means to be a Christian with other

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Christians, encouraging and admonishing one another in the Lord. And it's in the name of our

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Savior Christ that we pray and all God's people said, amen. Thank you. You may be seated.

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If you grew up in a church -going Christian home and your home was anything like mine, then your parents picked your friends and you hated it.

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They told you whose house you could go to and whose house you could never visit without their permission, which meant you could never go there.

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And whenever you asked them if you could go there and why you could not go there, the response that they gave to you was, because I said so.

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When I was in middle school, I remember a Saturday that I wanted to go hang out with some of my friends from school.

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Two of those friends were a guy and a girl who were boyfriend and girlfriend and they were doing some things with each other, to put it mildly, were immoral.

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And again, this was in middle school. Needless to say, my parents did not like me hanging out with this group of friends.

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Instead of dealing with me moping around the house, griping and complaining that life was not fair and I couldn't hang out with the people that I wanted to hang out with, my dad made me go out back and mow the lawn.

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And while I was out there mowing, these very friends that my parents told me not to hang out with came walking by.

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And they said, hey, Gabe, come with us. We're going to go down to the diner and get a soda. Now, I know that sounds like an invitation that you'd get in the 50s, but I promise this was the 90s.

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And we actually had a little diner there in our small southwest Kansas town that was like a throwback to the 50s.

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And you would go down there and if you went in a car, you would have a car hop come to your car and take your order.

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If you sat in the little diner area, you got a little teeny bopper waitress who would come up to you and take your order.

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So it was just like that. We went down there to the diner and got a soda. So I left the lawn half mowed and I went with my friends to go get some cheese sticks and a float.

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Needless to say, my dad noticed that the mower wasn't running. And he knew exactly where I was.

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Like I said, it was a small southwest Kansas town, there were not a lot of places that you could go to hang out. So he came down there and picked me up, embarrassed me in front of all of my friends, which was even worse than the grounding that I got for a middle schooler to be embarrassed in front of their friends.

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And also, I still had to finish the lawn. Of course, I was mad at my folks, but I had no reason to be.

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I was the one who was wrong. I am the one who ditched my chores. I disobeyed my parents and went to hang out with my friends that my parents believed were a bad influence on me.

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And lo and behold, they were right. I'm thankful today for such guidelines and restrictions, but like anyone else's parents, mine were not perfect.

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There were rules that were enforced and some of which were just a good idea, but they were not always consistently enforced.

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And parents, if I may suggest to you, if you make a rule and your child breaks that rule and there is no consequence, that wasn't a rule.

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It was just a suggestion. And my parents had a few rules like that. They really weren't enforced.

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They were just suggestions to live by. When we lived in Pennsylvania, this was from age 7 to 11 years old, there was a group of neighborhood boys that I rode bikes with and played baseball with.

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It was a lot like the Sandlot gang. Has anyone seen the movie The Sandlot? It was a lot like that.

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Remember what those boys did in the Sandlot? It was a lot like that. On a late afternoon when we got together to play, one of those boys showed up with a certain magazine.

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That was how I was introduced to that particular topic. For those of you who were never exposed to that sort of thing at that young an age,

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I can't even begin to tell you what that does to a child's mind. The memory for me is so vivid,

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I can even remember the position of the sun in the sky as we flipped through the pages of that magazine.

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It was the first time in my life that I ever experienced lust. Every person will face that temptation at some point, but it shouldn't be at that age.

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Not when they're 8. It was a moment that in later years turned into an addiction and it could have been avoided if my parents had just enforced the rules.

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If they had just enforced who I could and could not hang out with, or at the very least, had talked with me about sex before the world tried to.

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As Paul said previously to the Corinthians, this was in his previous letter, 1 Corinthians 15 .33,

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do not be deceived. Bad company ruins good morals.

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Or as you have probably heard it growing up, bad company corrupts good character.

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The most immoral things that I have ever done in my life were at the influence of bad characters.

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Now, don't get me wrong, this is not me deferring blame. I'm not saying, oh, it was all their fault.

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If my parents had only done this, if these guys hadn't made me do this, the devil made me do it.

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Okay, that's not what I'm saying. I was wrong. I made the choice. I sinned.

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I can blame no one but myself. I am the one who is going to be held accountable for my choices.

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But surely, you understand the principle here. Had I been in better company,

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I would not have made such immoral choices. Either I would have been put in a situation where I would not have been given an opportunity to make that bad choice.

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Or one of my more good character friends would have acted as the voice of reason and convinced the rest of us not to make such a bad choice.

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Or I'd have been in the company of good friends whom I knew would never let me get away with making such bad choices.

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Or I would not have been trying to impress my friends with bad choices, knowing that such friends with good character would never have been impressed with me making such bad choices.

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Whatever the scenario, I think we all recognize good influences lead to good decisions.

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And bad influences lead to bad decisions. As I heard one teacher put it, have you ever heard of glovey mud?

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Never heard of glovey mud before, have you? No, you hear of a muddy glove. When you get your gloves in the dirt and they get muddy, the gloves get muddy.

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But the mud does not get glovey, right? So you get covered in the dirt, you get dirty.

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We do not make the dirt clean. The dirt makes us impure. And so this is why it is so important for us as Christians to stay away from those things that are unholy, those things which

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God has said, this is unclean, this is unpure. And if we are to be like our

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Savior God, we must direct ourselves to those things which are holy and righteous and pleasing unto the

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Lord. Now, what we're going to talk about today as we go into this passage here in 2

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Corinthians chapter 6, this is not going to be about me telling you that you need to pick your child's friends.

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I think there's some wisdom in that, some discernment that you as parents will need to exercise with your children as to who they can hang out with and who they can't hang out with.

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Let me just say that as we get into the school year, if your child is spending 40 hours a week at a secular institution, you have to make church an even greater priority than you were probably making over the course of the summer.

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Church is incredibly important. And these relationships are even more important than any relationship that you will have here on earth, your relationships with your brothers and sisters in the

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Lord. But as we approach this topic, this is not going to be about following our friends.

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It's not going to be about pleasing and impressing our friends or keeping some standard of goodness that's established by groupthink.

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This is about following Jesus and it's about pleasing Him and it is about keeping

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His commandments. And we cannot keep company with the world and with the

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Lord. Paul begins this section in verse 14 saying, do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers.

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Now, what does that mean to be yoked? Well, the word yoke acts as both a noun and a verb.

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As a noun, a yoke is a type of harness that joins a pair of draft animals together for the purpose of combining their energy to pull a heavy load at an equal pace.

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The main part of this harness is a thick wooden cross piece. Some of you probably know exactly what

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I'm talking about. You can picture it in your mind. It goes over the back of the necks of both animals and then there is another

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U -shaped bar that comes up underneath the animal that connects one animal to the yoke and then the other animal to the other side of the yoke and they are attached together to this cross piece.

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In the middle of that cross piece is a metal ring and tied to that ring is a rope connected to whatever the animals are pulling, whether that's a plow or a wagon or a carriage, something like that.

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Now, that apparatus that has bound these two animals together is called a yoke.

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The act of connecting them to that device is called yoking. The word yoke becomes a verb.

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I tell you the truth, I am not yoking, okay? That'll be my only pun,

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I promise. When two animals are yoked together, wherever one animal goes, where does the other animal go?

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With that animal. Both animals are going the same way at the same pace.

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Draft animals are domesticated animals. That means they have been broken in and they have even been bred to be able to carry heavy loads.

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When you have breeders who are breeding draft animals, they will look for those animals that have been the most obedient and the most responsive to proper training and discipline.

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And then they will breed them together and so breed animals for the purpose of drafting.

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And they will sell those animals to other farmers or other landowners or people who have carriages that do that for a business or something like that.

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They will breed those animals for drafting and they will be sold specifically for drafting.

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And the picture that's given to us here in scripture really isn't any different. The word that works here for yoke also is the same word that's used for breeding as it so happens.

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In fact, when you read it in the Greek Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the

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Old Testament, the Greek word that appears here in 2 Corinthians chapter 6 for yoke appears in the book of Leviticus for generations, for breeding, for one person producing offspring with another person, that they would be yoked together and in fruitfulness growing the people of God.

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And so Paul is very deliberate in the way that he uses this word, that it's not just about carrying a heavy load, but it's also about whom we are most closely associated with.

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So like I said, draft animals being domesticated animals that are bred to carry heavy loads. And the most common kind of draft animals in the world today are mules, donkeys, horses, oxen or cattle, reindeer, and water buffalo.

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Believe it or not, there are more water buffalo used as draft animals than any other kind of animal in the world, very popular in Asia, where they assist in the production of rice.

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Before an animal can be used for drafting, they have to be broken in or trained.

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Now, like I said, there are animals that are bred specifically for the purpose of drafting and they are easier to train than those animals that have not been bred for this purpose.

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The first thing that they need to learn is human interaction. They have to get used to being around people.

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If they're really nervous around people, you don't want to start connecting equipment to them, bad things will happen.

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They also need to understand human commands before they are put to work.

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They need to be used to having a harness on. They need to get used to working with another animal in tandem, side by side.

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And both animals need to be equally broken in before they can work together.

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If you have one animal that has been broken in and yoked to another animal that has not been broken in, an animal that is also referred to as green, so you have a trained animal and a green animal next to one another, which one of the two animals do you think is going to have more influence over the other?

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The green animal is going to influence the trained animal. The animal with all the bad habits is going to have a negative effect on the animal that has been given all these good habits.

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It never works the other way around. Neither of the animals will go straight, they won't listen to commands, and the untrained animal will actually untrain the trained animal.

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And you will be worse off than when you started. Trying to retrain an animal that had good habits and then has produced bad habits is more difficult than training the animal that had no training previously at all.

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Now you, by your nature, you are like a rebellious and a wild animal.

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You refuse to be taught, you will not listen to the commands of God, and you insist in going your own way.

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And this is not a metaphor that I'm making up for the purpose of being creative in this sermon.

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This is something the scriptures tell us. We just looked a couple of weeks ago at one such passage.

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All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way, but the

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Lord has laid upon Christ the iniquity of us all, Isaiah 53 .6.

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In Acts 26 .14, the Apostle Paul said that when the

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Lord first appeared to him, he said, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?

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It is hard for you to kick against the goats. This was a reference to Paul being like a rebellious animal, refusing even to respond to the direction of the master.

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Animals don't choose to start following the commands of human masters.

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And likewise, you did not decide that one day you were going to stop going your own way and instead start going

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God's way. You had to have your nature changed. And it is

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God who changed your nature from being rebellious against his word and instead being a listener and a doer of his word.

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Paul began his letter to the Corinthians. In 1 Corinthians and in 2 Corinthians, they both begin the same way.

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He introduces himself as an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God.

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He became a Christian by God's will. He became an apostle by God's will.

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He became obedient to God's will by God's will.

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Previously an enemy of God, the Lord gave Paul a new heart and a new mind to serve and to obey

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God. In Christ Jesus, we are transformed from being rebellious against God to being obedient to God.

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Now, Romans chapter 6 indeed says, you are no longer under the law, but you are under grace.

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It is by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God, not of works, so that no one may boast.

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I shifted from Romans 6 to Ephesians 2 there, by the way. That's Ephesians 2, 8, and 9. Verse 10, though, tells us that we have been created for good works.

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So yes, you are saved by grace and not by your keeping of the law. But now that you have been saved by grace, there is still a work of God that needs to be done that you have been called to do and obey.

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The problem, before you got saved, is that you could not have kept that law in any holy way.

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You could not have done that in a way that was pleasing unto the Lord. You would have been like the rest of the

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Jews of whom Isaiah said, and then Christ repeated this, you acknowledge me with your lips, but your heart is far from me.

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So you could do the law until you're blue in the face, but it wouldn't save you. It would not even transform your nature.

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Even obeying the law, you would still be rebellious against God because you would have a righteousness that you would think had come from yourself.

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I did this, look at me. And so there's really no submission to God there, even when you are keeping the law, if you do not have a heart that has been transformed to repent of your sin.

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And trust in Christ as Savior, knowing that you can't keep the law, you can't do it.

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James says you fail at any point, you have broken the entire law. And so it is in Christ that we receive forgiveness for the transgressions that we have committed against God.

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And he transforms us from being that rebellious person who was opposed to God and wanted to exalt our own righteousness.

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Didn't matter whether you were trying to follow the law or you'd made up your own law, you were trying to attain righteousness by yourself in rebellion against God and saying you could be just as holy as he is.

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And in realizing your sinfulness and your rebellion, in this very attitude, this orientation that you had in your heart, you have been transformed from rebellious to obedient.

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We've been given ears to hear God's commands and obey them. John 10, 27,

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Jesus said, my sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me.

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Psalm 95, 7 says, for he is our God and we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand.

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Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.

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If you follow the voice of Jesus, then you've been given a heart that hears and desires to do good works in his name.

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The more we hear his voice and you hear his voice every time you open the Bible, the word of God, every time you sit in church and you hear sermons preached from God's word, you hear the voice of God.

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And the more you hear his voice and the more you do his work, the more disciplined you will become.

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And we must be yoked to other followers who are likewise responding to the voice of the master.

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They are going the same direction that we are going. We are connected with people who are oriented in the direction of Christ.

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Do not be yoked to anyone who is not a follower of Jesus. If a person is not following Jesus, they're following whom?

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Satan. They're following Satan. Look again at verses 14 through 16 in this passage.

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Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness?

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Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has

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Christ with Belial? And that was the name that the Jews used for Satan in Paul's day.

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Belial. Satan is an opponent of God. That very name, Satan, means the adversary.

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What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever?

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What agreement has the temple of God with idols? Now, we understand the metaphor now, right?

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Do not be yoked with unbelievers. You understand what a yoke means. You know what it understands.

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You know and you understand what it means to be yoked to somebody else. But we're not literally cattle and we're not literally yoked together.

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You sitting next to the person that you are next to today, there's no yoke between you. Praise the Lord. That would be a painful church service.

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Thank God that pastor gave us not a hands -on example kind of guy, right? Everybody's got to wear their yokes to church today.

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So we're not literally yoked to one another. So how does this metaphor apply to us exactly?

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So I'm going to share two applications with you. The first is a direct application. That means that this is the context of exactly what

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Paul is addressing here when he tells the Corinthians not to be yoked with unbelievers. The second is an indirect application, which certainly applies, but it may not be as direct as the point that Paul is trying to make in this particular context.

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So here is the first application. What Paul is actually addressing with the

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Corinthians. Do not be unequally yoked with unbelieving teachers.

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That's the first application. Do not be unequally yoked with unbelieving teachers.

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When Paul says, don't be unequally yoked with unbelievers, what primarily is his appeal?

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He does not want the Corinthians listening to false teachers. If they're following false teachers, they're following Satan and not

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Christ. You as a Christian are a follower of Jesus, but anyone else who is not a

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Christian is a follower of Satan. My friends, the truth really is that black and white.

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It is that either or. Either you are following God or you're following the devil. Jesus said in John 4, 43 through 45, why do you not understand what

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I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word.

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You are of your father, the devil. And your will is to do your father's desires.

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He was a murderer from the beginning and he does not stand in the truth. There is no truth in him.

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When he lies, he speaks out of his own character. For he is a liar and the father of lies.

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But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me. Now get that there. Because I tell the truth, you don't believe me.

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Why do you not believe me? Because I tell the truth. Because these people whom

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Jesus was addressing were oriented to listen to the liar rather than the giver of truth.

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False teachers speak in lies. They do not speak the truth. Now they might give you half truths.

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I could name a certain false teacher and maybe you could say, well, yeah, but they're really good at saying this.

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But my friends, half truths won't save anyone. Half truths are as good as no truth at all.

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Jesus did not say in John 14, 6, I am half the way, half the truth, and half the life. No one gets halfway to the father except by half of me.

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Okay, that was not what Jesus said. It's all of Christ or it's nothing. A very influential pastor.

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One of the best -selling authors of all time, in fact, but not someone whose books

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I would encourage you to read. This pastor was teaching a class on how to evangelize and he encouraged his students not to use the words sin, repent, saved, convicted, born again, or even to tell somebody

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Jesus is my Lord. Don't do that when you evangelize. That was what he said.

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The funny thing about that though, if you watch the same video that I watched, you might notice that as he was teaching this class, he was actually using all of the words that he was telling his students not to use.

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So he could not identify the inconsistency in his own instructions.

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To give an example to his students of one way that you can share the gospel with somebody else, he showed his students what

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I like to call the napkin illustration. And you've probably seen this illustration before.

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And the reason why I call it the napkin illustration is because the first time it was ever shown to me, it was drawn on a napkin.

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And it's probably the way that you're even taught to use this illustration. Well, if you're sitting with somebody at the diner, pull out a napkin and draw this and share the gospel this way.

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You have a cliff, like a ledge, you just draw like an upside down L, and you've got a guy standing on that cliff.

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That represents you. It represents the world. You're standing on this side. And then there's a wide chasm.

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And on the other side, you're drawing another cliff. And you write the word God on that cliff. And the chasm represents sin.

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And at the bottom of that chasm is death and hell. You are on one side because of sin.

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You've been separated from God who is on the other side. And there's nothing that you can do to bridge that gap.

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Furthermore, your side is getting smaller and smaller as you get older and older. And eventually, there's going to be no ledge left to stand on, and you will fall into that precipice.

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So what are you going to do to get to the other side on which is God? And then perhaps you draw a cross there that bridges those two cliffs together.

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And you say the only way that we have to get to God, the only forgiveness from sin, the only deliverance from hell, is the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross for our sins.

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And this is an illustration that you use to share the gospel. It's a great illustration. It's very elementary.

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It's a wonderful way to share an understanding of how Jesus brings us to God, sharing that with a person who doesn't understand that concept.

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But it wasn't good the way that this particular pastor used that illustration.

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The pastor drew the guy on one side and God on the other, and he drew a cross to bridge the two.

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And then the pastor says to the person that he's evangelizing, you're probably somewhere along this bridge, so put an

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X where you think you are. And addressing the class, the pastor said that 99 % of the time, someone puts an

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X right in the middle. I'm about right here on this crisis. And the pastor says, great, what you're saying is you believe in Jesus, you've just not accepted him as Savior and Lord yet, right?

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Well, congratulations, you're halfway there. My friends, if you believe in Jesus, but you don't know him as Savior, and you don't worship him as Lord, you're no better than the demons.

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James 2 .19 says, even the demons believe and shudder.

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You're halfway to nowhere. There's no such thing as halfway to God. You're either all the way for him, or you are against him.

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What fellowship does light have with darkness? What accord does Christ have with Satan?

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The apostle Paul told Timothy that if you teach sound doctrine, that true teaching that flows from the gospel of Jesus Christ, if you teach sound doctrine, and you listen to sound doctrine, you will be a good servant, being trained in the words of the faith and of the good doctrine that you have followed.

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Have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths. Rather, train yourself for godliness.

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For while bodily training is of some value, godliness is a value in every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to come.

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1 Timothy 4, 6 through 8. Not only does the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ have the power to save the lost, but, my friends, it has the power to produce godliness in the lives of the found.

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You need the gospel as much today as you needed it the day before you first heard the gospel.

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Not only does the gospel save us, but it shapes us more and more into the image of Christ.

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And this is why, this is why Paul is so concerned with the

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Corinthians listening to the right teachers. Some of them were listening to false apostles, deceitful workmen who disguised themselves as apostles of Christ.

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They said all the right words. They could speak all the Christianese, but their hearts were far from God.

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And what they spoke was not the truth of the gospel. It was lies. They look like godly men, but they were godless.

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And Paul says, no wonder, chapter 11, verse 14, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.

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So it is no surprise if his servants, if Satan's servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness.

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Their end will correspond to their deeds. This is Paul repeating the words of Christ, who said, you will know them by their fruit.

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A bad tree produces bad fruit. Good trees produce good fruit. As your pastor,

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I have jealously yearned for the hearts of the people of this congregation that you would listen to right teachers and you would stay away from the wrong ones.

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At times, I've directly warned you who is a false teacher and I have called them out by name.

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There are times when that's appropriate. And there are other times when I've recommended good teachers and I've encouraged you to listen to them.

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Whenever I quote from these sound men of the faith, I want you to see two things. First of all, I want you to see that what

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I'm teaching is not just my thoughts. There are other sound men of the faith who have labored over these texts even more than I have.

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And they've come to the same conclusions that I've come to. And this is for your benefit, to grow you all the more in an understanding of the passage that we're studying.

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Furthermore, these men are likely more seasoned and understand these truths deeper than I do.

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So they can take you places in their maturity and their understanding and their faith that is even deeper than I can take you.

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So you would have a more robust understanding of the word of God. And you would consider the teachings of others who likewise love the gospel as I have.

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And as I encourage you to love the gospel. Second reason why I quote some of these teachers is because I want you to learn from more teachers than just me.

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Yes, I'm a jealous pastor, but I'm jealous for you to know the gospel. I'm not jealous for you to listen to only me.

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I'm not a cult leader. Even as a pastor, I have a responsibility to submit to the elders of this church, just as you do.

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Hebrews 13, seven says, remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God, consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith.

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Listen to those teachers who love Jesus and love his word and have nothing to do with teachers who love their own word and not

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God's word. Though they may use the name of Jesus, they use his name in vain.

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For Jesus said, whoever is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation of him will the son of man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his father with the holy angels,

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Mark 8, 38. A person who says they love Jesus will also love his word.

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Just as husbands and wives, you say you love your spouse, you love the things your spouse says.

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Husbands, you can't say, I love my wife, but I can't stand it when she talks to me. That's not love.

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You don't actually have affection for her. And so likewise, you can't say, you know what?

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I love God. I'm not so crazy about the Bible. There's just so much in there that, then you don't love

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God and be afraid because Jesus has said, I'll be ashamed of you when you stand before my father in judgment.

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A person who says they love Jesus will love his word and teaching the good doctrine of the faith that leads to eternal life.

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You will rejoice to hear the gospel every time it is preached because you know it is that gospel that saved you and is growing you in godliness and righteousness in Christ Jesus.

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So that is the first and most direct application of this passage.

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The apostle Paul says to not be unequally yoked with unbelievers because he does not want the Corinthians giving their ears to false teachers.

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You know, it's also worth noting that every single book in the New Testament warns against false teachers except one, and that's the book of Philemon.

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But every single book, including all four gospels, warn the hearers to flee from false teachers.

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And in fact, Paul is going to come back up to this again as we continue our study of 2 Corinthians. So that's the first application.

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A second application to this instruction is a little less direct, but it's still just as applicable.

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The first application, do not be unequally yoked with unbelieving teachers. The second application is this, do not be unequally yoked with unbelieving friends, fellowships, acquaintances.

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Now, understand I'm not saying that you can't have any non -Christian friends. For some of you, that's an impossibility.

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You're surrounded by unchristian believers all the time. Am I supposed to just be enemies with them all day long?

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No, I hope that you have friends that are unbelievers, and I hope that you share the gospel with them. But there's a difference between having unbelieving friends and being equally yoked with unbelieving friends.

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Do you understand the difference? Remember that Paul goes on to say in verse 15, what portion does a believer have with an unbeliever?

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Your Christian friends are fellow heirs of the kingdom of God along with you.

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That's your portion. In Christ Jesus on the day of glory, you will receive the kingdom of God, and so will all of your

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Christian friends. But your unchristian friends are not such heirs.

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Unless they repent, they will perish in eternal fire.

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So your relationship with them should be different than the relationship that you have with your brothers and sisters in Christ.

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Just as your relationship with your earthly brothers and sisters is different than the relationship that you have with other people.

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You know, as much as your brothers and sisters who are born from the same mother and father that you have might drive you nuts no matter what they do, they're still your brothers and sisters, right?

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They still came from the same parents you came from. And so likewise, all of us who are in Christ Jesus are named by the same father above.

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We are united in the same spirit. We have been atoned for by the same blood of Jesus Christ.

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So no matter what you do with or to one another, in Christ Jesus, you are still brothers and sisters in the

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Lord. Never forget that. Dr. Martin Lloyd -Jones was the pastor of Westminster Chapel in London from 1943 to 1968, and then he continued preaching until his last sermon that he delivered in 1980.

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Dr. Lloyd -Jones was the only preacher in London, the only one who refused to participate in the

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Billy Graham Crusades. And it was not because Billy Graham was a false teacher.

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That's not the reason why he didn't participate. It was because, unfortunately, even though Dr. Graham did indeed preach the gospel, he associated with a lot of false teachers.

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And despite Dr. Lloyd -Jones' misgivings about Dr. Graham's methods, the two of them still kept a good working relationship during Dr.

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Jones' life. In an interview published in 1980, Dr. Lloyd -Jones said,

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Graham certainly preaches the gospel. I would never criticize him on that score.

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What I have criticized is that in the Glasgow campaign, for example, he had

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John Sutherland Bunnell, who was a liberal theologian, address the minister's meetings.

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And I challenged that. And Graham replied, you know, I have more fellowship with John Sutherland Bunnell than with any evangelical minister.

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And I replied, now it may be that Bunnell is a nicer chap than Dr. Lloyd -Jones.

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I'll not argue that. But real fellowship is something else. I can genuinely fellowship only with someone who holds the same basic truths that I hold.

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And that's a good lesson on distinguishing a true teacher from a false one, as well as a helpful way to understand not being unequally yoked with unbelieving friends.

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We do not share the same basic foundational truths with unbelievers.

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And there are some even professing believers that we don't share the same basic foundational truths with.

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There are some secondary matters that we disagree on, and that's why we have multiple denominations. But those that we still hold the same fundamental basic truths with, we still fellowship and do ministry with, just as this church does with a couple of other churches in town, as I had mentioned about our

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Bible Lunch Tuesday ministry. We do not share the same basic truths with unbelievers for certain.

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Your core beliefs affect your judgment, the way that you look at the world and determine right from wrong, your worldview.

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For you to bind your heart with the heart of a person who is off kilter, or your mind with their mind who does not have the mind of God, they will affect your judgment and what you consider to be right and wrong.

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This is yoking yourself to an unbeliever and where the untrained animal goes, they will even untrain the trained animal.

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Proverbs 12, 26 says, one who is righteous is a guide to his neighbor, but the way of the wicked leads them astray.

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Proverbs 13, 20, whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm.

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Proverbs 22, 24 through 25, make no friendship with a man who is given to anger, nor go with a wrathful man, lest you learn his ways and entangle yourself in a snare.

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So even the Proverbs tell us this over and over again, you keep bad company, it will corrupt good character.

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Now you will have acquaintances who are unbelievers and like I said, I hope you share the gospel with them, but do not bind your heart to them.

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The worst way I see this happen, and this is probably the most prime example that I can give of this.

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It's the worst scenario, but it is the most prime example. And that is when a believer yokes with an unbeliever in marriage.

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This should never happen, but it is far too common. And my friends, I can tell you firsthand, this almost never works out.

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The unbeliever almost always leads the believer into unbelief.

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Now, how do I know this firsthand? Because it's happened in my own family. And it usually goes something like this.

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A Christian girl is seduced by the charms of a pagan young man, but she never says, yeah,

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I know he's pagan. She almost always says something like this. Well, he's not as spiritual as I would like him to be, but he's trying.

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If she was honest, she would say this. The guy's a pagan and he hates God, but oh wee, good looking.

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Okay, that's if she was being honest about it. On one very rare occasion,

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I actually did sit down and visit with a family who was honest with me about this. The oldest daughter wanted to get married, but the man she wanted to marry was an unbeliever.

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She admitted that he was an unbeliever. Mom and dad admitted to me that he was an unbeliever. My wife sat down with the daughter who cried tears of anguish over the fact that her boyfriend was an unbeliever.

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My wife tried to convince her to drop this fool that she had no business being with. But instead, what happened was this.

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That family left their church where the pastor would not marry a believer with an unbeliever.

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And they went and found a church where the pastor would marry this confessing

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Christian woman with an unconfessing pagan man. That unbelieving man managed to convince this entire family to abandon their church family and go somewhere else.

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James 4, 4 through 10 says this. You adulterous people, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?

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Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

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Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the scripture says he yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us?

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But he gives more grace. Therefore, it says God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.

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Submit yourselves, therefore, to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.

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Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double -minded.

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Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.

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Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will exalt you. I find that passage particularly relevant and bridging between what we're looking at today and what we're gonna be looking at next week as Paul goes into next having a grief that is a godly grief that leads to repentance and following in the

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Lord. And so James is here saying that same thing. Be grieved over your sin, but let that grief turn into humility before God and God is the one who will exalt you.

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How high will our God exalt you, my brothers and sisters in the Lord? He will make you a fellow heir of his heavenly kingdom.

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That's how high our God exalts us when we humble ourselves and we are united to him in Christ Jesus.

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In 2 Corinthians 2, 16 through chapter 7, verse 1, as we finish this section, the apostle

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Paul says, what agreement has the temple of God with idols?

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And remember that previously in 1 Corinthians 6, Paul said to the Corinthians, you are a temple of the

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Holy Spirit. So exalt no idols, nothing in the place of God in your heart, for we are the temple of the living

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God. As God said, and then we have quotes here that Paul draws from Leviticus and Isaiah.

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I will make my dwelling among them and I will walk among them.

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And I will be their God and they shall be my people.

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Therefore, go out from their midst and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing.

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Another way of saying, do not be united with the world. And then I will welcome you and I will be a father to you and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the

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Lord Almighty, since we have these promises, beloved.

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This is chapter 7, verse 1. And you just have to love and appreciate and feel the affection of the apostle whenever he refers to the church as beloved.

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So the Spirit calls us by that same name. As I heard Jared C.

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Wilson say about a week or two ago, you can call me whatever you want. God calls me beloved.

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And so as Paul says here to the church, 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.

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In another place to the Philippians, he said, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.

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Knowing that before we came to God through the gospel of Christ, we were under his judgment.

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God has the power and the authority to destroy both body and soul in hell, as even Jesus said.

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But in Christ Jesus, we are saved from the wrath of God. And so with fear, with a reverent humility and love of God, let us turn from sin and walk in holiness because the grace of our loving

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Lord God is good. In addition to Paul drawing from the

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Old Testament here in this closing section that we have looked at, we also see similarities with something that we see fulfilled in Revelation chapter 21.

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Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away and the sea was no more.

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And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

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And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, behold, the dwelling place of God is with man.

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He will dwell with them and they will be his people and God himself will be with them as their

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God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes and death shall be no more.

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Neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore for the former things have passed away.

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We are the holy city of God even now.

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And in this moment, my brothers and sisters, we're not as good as we are going to be, but it is with the love that we have for our

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God who is making us more and more into his image that we certainly aspire to be as holy as he is.

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Jesus said in Matthew chapter five, be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect. And it's with the help of Christ that we are being made holy.

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1 John 1 .9, if you ask forgiveness for your sins, he is faithful and just to cleanse you from all unrighteousness.

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To be holy means to be set apart. And in Christ, we've been set apart from the world to be his people for his glory.

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We were once the enemies of God, but now we are the sons and daughters of God by faith through the person and word of God.

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By the work of Jesus Christ, we've been called out from the world. So now we must no longer be part of the world.

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Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. Stop trying to go your own way.

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Stop kicking against the goads. Hear the voice of God. Be united with Christ.

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My closing passage for you is Matthew 11 verses 28 through 30. Jesus said, come to me all you who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.

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Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and lowly in heart and you will find rest for your souls for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

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♪ Come ye sinners poor and needy

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Weak and wounded, sick and sore Jesus ready stands to save you

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Oh Jesus, we will ask thee requirement is to feel your need of him

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I will love you Jesus He will embrace me in his arms

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In the arms of my dear Savior, O Charles Thank you for listening to our weekly sermon presented by First Southern Baptist Church of Junction City, Kansas.

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For more information about our church, visit fsbcjc .org

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On behalf of our church family, my name is Becky, inviting you to join us again this week, Growing Together in Christ, when we understand the text.