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Source: https://www.sermonindex.net/speakers/tom-baker/a-separated-life/
2nd Corinthians in chapter 6 and verse number 11. O ye Corinthians, our mouths are open unto you, our hearts is enlarged. Ye are not straightened in us, but ye are straightened in your own bowels. Now for a recompense in the same, I speak as unto my children, be also enlarged.
Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? And what commune hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? Or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel?
And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? For ye are the temple of the living God. As God has said, I will dwell in them and walk in them and I will be their God and they shall be my people.
Wherefore, come out from among them and be separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing and I will receive you and will be a father unto you and you shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.
Chapter 7 verse 1, having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. Now God will bless what we listen to in this public reading of his word we've read together this afternoon.
I don't know what you would think of me if I came to a meeting today with a pair of Nike tennis shoes on my right foot and a dress shoe on my left foot. As you see me walking around the corridor of the high school here, you'd probably say to yourself, that guy's really crazy.
He doesn't know how to dress properly. Because you know as well as I do, a Nike tennis shoe has its purpose and a dress shoe has its purpose. But the two don't go together. You're either going to wear the Nike to do something out there or you're going to wear your dress shoes for something, let's say, in here.
What the Apostle Paul has in mind is that you and I have to learn what it means to be separated from this world. He calls us saints. Saints just simply means someone who has been separated, set apart for use for God.
That's what you are. If you're a Christian today, you are called a saint. And consequently, as a saint, you have to live, God would have you live, a life that is different, distinct from the world that you live in.
And that's what I'd like to talk about today. Now the Apostle begins as he talks to these Corinthians. He loved them. He spent a lot of time with them. If you go to the book of Acts, you'll see how he took the gospel to that place.
It was a place full of debauchery and drunkenness and evil of all sorts and all kinds. Yet the message of the gospel came to Corinth and people were reached and saved by God's grace. And God moved in a powerful way and an assembly was established right there.
But then there was some difficulties along the line, just as there are in our lives. There was a sense of, well, okay, we're saved now, but what now? And there is that time of drifting and shifting, going back and forth.
And some of them were just kind of being a little bit too friendly with the world. And by friendship with the world, they were bringing things into the assembly at Corinth that were not acceptable. There were things that were from the world and things that were not to be for God's honor and for God's glory.
And he was trying to teach them, listen, if you're going to live for me, if you're going to be part of an assembly, you leave the world where it is, and you separate yourself from it, and you live in a relationship with me.
Now, the apostles, he speaks about this. He begins to tell them about a way in which you can enlarge yourself. You know, the world tells us how to enlarge ourselves, and they say, you go out there into the corporate world or whatever business you want to be in, and you make money, you climb the ladder, doesn't matter whose toes you step on or fingers you step on, you go up that ladder, and you reach the top.
But so often, when you get to the top, you find the ladders leaning against the wrong place. It's not what you thought it was. And so Christ shows us another way to get to the top, another way to be enlarged.
And that enlargement comes from giving of yourself, a giving of yourself. The Bible speaks the Lord Jesus to his disciples, and he says to the disciples, take up your cross daily and follow me. And then he says to them, you know, to do that, you've got to look at this world in a complete different, through a different prism than what the world sees it as.
You've got to look at it as there's a sense in which you can save your life, in other words, you can go for all the gusto of this world, and live for it, and love it, and enjoy it, and end up empty at the end.
Or you can look at this world, and you say, you know, this world really doesn't have much to offer. I'd rather live for God. The Lord Jesus says, anything that you lose for Christ's sake, you will gain.
Whatever you suffer, or whatever you lose out on, for Christ's sake, you will gain. In other words, Paul was teaching us to have this same mind in us that was in Christ. And what was that? He looked not upon his own things, but he looked upon the things of others.
You see, you want to be enlarged? Get involved. Get involved in activities of the assembly. Get involved in the lives of other people. Tell someone about your Lord. Tell someone how to be saved. Someone that you would have an exercise about, and you look for them, and you love them, and you consider them, and you say, you know, really, I've known this person for X amount of years, or X amount of months, and I've never spoken a word to them about the gospel.
I've never shared my Lord with them. Think about how you can do that. And as you do so, do it out of love. And you know what you'll find? You'll find there'll be a sense of joy and satisfaction in your heart just by sharing something of Christ with someone else.
And that is called spiritual enlargement. You know, when we were just moving to California, we lived for a year in a little camping trailer, you know, in the driveway of one of the brethren. I'm not complaining.
It was all right. He was nice enough to let us live there. But five of us living in a camping trailer was a little tight. The day came when we were able to get a house. It wasn't a very big house, the same house we're living in today.
About 1 ,200 square feet, if I remember correctly. But our son, he was about five years old then. He walked into the door and he looked around. He took to turn to us. He says, Are we going to live here?
We say, Yeah, we're gonna live here. He took off running like a dart, running around the house in through the rooms. He says, I'm free. I'm free. I'm free. We didn't tell him to do that. He just did it.
You know, after living in a camper for a year, it's, you know, feel good. You know, there's a certain amount of freedom. A freedom and serving Christ, a freedom of putting your life on the line, a freedom of being able to exercise your energies, your talents, your abilities in the direction that's going to promote the things of Christ.
There's a freedom in that there's an enlargement of that. Enjoy it. And that's what the apostle Paul is telling these believers. Listen, you're narrow in your thinking. You're so deprived of really what it means to live.
And because of it, your life was all distorted, twisted. Yeah, Christians, yes, but not living the way they were supposed to live. Now, relationships, relationships. The apostle Paul is bringing to our attention the concept of dangerous relationships.
And at the end of this passage we read together, he's given it to us. Dynamic relationships, dangerous relationships. Yes. Dynamic relationships. Yes. And that's what he has in our mind for us this morning or this afternoon, excuse me, for a few minutes to think about dangerous relationships.
You know, there's a man in the Old Testament, and if you want to turn to it, you can. It's in First Chronicles and, excuse me, Second Chronicles in Chapter 17. I'm just going to go through a few points about this man.
He was a good man. He was a king of Judah. And you would have looked at him and you'd say, well, he has a lot of strong points. But he had one weak point. And I want to bring that weak point, first of all, strong points.
And then it's one weak point to your attention in just a minute. Notice, if you will, his name is Jehoshaphat. And in Chapter 17 and Second Chronicles, it says that Jehoshaphat, his son, reigned in his stead and strengthened himself against Israel.
Now, what was happening is Jehoshaphat was the king of Judah and the king or the Judah, the people in Judah were seeking to follow after the things of God. That's where the temple was. And you were trying to go in the right direction, at least at this time.
And he was strengthening himself. In other words, he had inner convictions about what was right and what was wrong. He was a man that looked off the off to the north, where the where the the king of Israel was.
And he knew what's out there is not right. It's anti God. In fact, if you just look at it in Chapter number, number 19. When he did build up a relationship, I'll talk about that a minute. But if you look at Chapter number 19, you'll notice that Jehu came up to Jehoshaphat and told him this.
Shouldest thou help the ungodly and love them that hate the Lord? That's what was up there in Israel. That's the way those people were. They were ungodly and they hated the things of God. But this man, Jehoshaphat, he strengthened himself.
There was an internal strength and power in his love and devotion to God against Israel. And it says in verse three, the Lord was with him. And then in verse four, and he sought but sought up to the Lord, Lord God of his father and walked in the commandments and not after the doings of Israel.
Therefore, the Lord established the kingdom in his hand and he had riches and honor and abundance and his heart was lifted up in the ways of the Lord. This is Jehoshaphat. What a wonderful king he was.
What an example for others to follow. And there he was as a king of Judah. He was so much into serving God. He wasn't only concerned about himself, but he was concerned about his other people, the other people that were around him.
He sent missionaries out. If you would continue to read in the chapter, he sent missionaries out to all the cities of Judea and they went out and they brought the gospel to the people, the word of God.
And as they taught the word of God to the people, they became strong and they became fortified in their faith. And not only that, he was a man who was strong in his defense. He had a strong army. They were like the, you know, the Navy SEALs.
You've heard of them. That's what he had. He had a group of men around him who were like the Navy SEALs who would go into very dangerous areas and fight and defend and protect the people of God or the people of Judah.
He was a great man, a great king. But I said he had one weakness. He had one weakness. And that was in relation to his relationships. And you turn over a globe down the, for me, it's just looking down the page in chapter 18.
And you'll see that Jehoshaphat had riches and honor in abundance. But listen. And joined affinity with Ahab. Joined affinity with Ahab. Linked himself up in a union, in a yoke, with a man who was so ungodly, he hated the Lord and he hated the Lord's people.
You would say to yourself, Jehoshaphat, what are you doing down there? What are you thinking? Well, listen to what happened. Verse two, it says, and after certain years, he went down to Ahab, to Samaria.
Now, geographically, Samaria is up north. But spiritually, this man was going down. Down. Because of a relationship. And he was linked, he was in a, I was saying the word in Spanish, yoke. He's linked in a yoke, an unequal yoke.
And then in verse number, in verse two, it says, and Ahab killed sheep and oxen for him in abundance and for the people that he had with him and persuaded him to go up with him to Ramoth Gilead. Just quickly, you see how he won him over?
He won him over with his riches. He put a splash out. He put a large display of all that he had. Oh, it was tempting. All the things that were attempting to the flesh drew Jehoshaphat towards Ahab. And Ahab made it out there in abundance.
Listen, when the world calls you and the world beckons you and Satan wants to draw you away from the things of God, he's going to make everything out there look just so beautiful and so attractive and so plentiful.
As if there was no end to all this. But I tell you, there is an end to it. We've worked all our lives with people that were in gangs. And I look at billboards, advertising drinks like Coors or Budweiser, I should call it Bud Dummer.
But anyway, whatever it is, they advertise all of this stuff and they have the people, they look so with such a physique, you know, and like they're having just the greatest old time. And man, this is where the party is.
This is where life really begins right here at this can of beer. I feel like just taking that billboard and just ripping it back and look what's on the other side and see broken homes and see little children without shoes.
Hungry. Nothing to eat. Tears, pain, agony. That's what's on the other side. That's what I have was offered. He's offering to make it look so pretty. And that's what the devil does to every one of us.
He knows your weak spot. He knows mine. And he makes it look like it's going to be just all right for you. It's going to be a good fit for you. I tell you, just look beyond it. There's nothing but sorrow and pain.
Joseph, I'd had to learn that. And, you know, I don't have time to go into it. But if you would go further down into Chapter 21, I believe it is. You'll find that Jehoshaphat, his son, Jehoram, married Ahab's daughter.
Was that when this relationship began at this time of festivity, when Jehoshaphat should have been in Judea? He was down in Israel and being contaminated by a relationship. And that contamination, that corruption that took place affected his own son.
And now his son is married to the wickedest man in Israel, Ahab's daughter. Or married to the daughter of the wickedest man in Israel. Excuse me. You know what happens about Jehoram? It says of him that God stirred up the Philistines and the Arabians against him.
It was God that turned against him. He was so angry, such a man that he killed his own brothers. And it says of his brothers that they were better than he. And then it says of him, he died a death of pain and misery.
Undesired and undesirable. Such was the pain, such was the faulty step that this man took when he went down there, no doubt with his son in hand, and went to a place where he should never have been. There's much more, but let's go back to our passage that we read together in 2 Corinthians.
And here we find that that was the relationship that was a dangerous relationship. You might say to yourself, well, does that mean that unequally yoked? Does that mean that I got to just kind of go into a shell and just be totally reserved, like go to a monastery and become a monk?
And as being a monk, I just live a life that's so, you know, kind of like really weird, really different from the world around me. No, it's not. God's not wanting monks. He's wanting missionaries, not monks.
In fact, there's a story about a monk. You may have heard it. He went to the monastery and he took an oath of silence and he could only say two words every year. After his first year was up, he went to the head man and he said, bed hard.
Another year went by, went to the head man. He said, soup cold. Third year went by. He went to the head man. He says, I quit. And the man said, well, you might as well have done his complaints that you've been here.
God doesn't want us to be monks. God wants us to be missionaries. Isn't that what the Lord said to his disciples? Go, go. All power is given unto me in heaven and earth, but you go. My presence is with you.
You go. Are you going? Are you just doing what you're supposed to do? You're in the world, but you're not of the world. You know the analogy of the ship. The ship's going through the water and the water is there, but the ship doesn't take on the water.
If it does, he's in danger. And so it is with you and me. We are to live in this world. We are to be missionaries. We are to be wolves who take the gospel. We are to live Christ before others. Let me ask you this.
Has anyone that, you know, any of your friends, your peers, has any of them ever approached you and said to you, you know, when I think of the Bible or when I think of the Lord Jesus Christ, I think of you.
I think of you. Does anyone ever said that to you? They should be. They should be separated from the world to live for Christ. And what a difference, what impact you'll have in the lives of others. So that's the reason why he gives this command that he says, come out from among them and be separate, saith the Lord.
This is a dynamic relationship. We saw the dangerous relationship, but just for a few minutes, a dynamic relationship that God has for us. And you see. When we were saved. Everything changed. Ephesians chapter four tells us that we were of an old nature and that old nature was corrupt.
It just had nothing of value as far as God is concerned. It was corrupt. But then he gave that gave us a new nature. And he says in that new nature, he says, which is after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.
When God gave you a new nature, if you're saved. He made you righteous and he made you holy. And Paul is building on that principle. You have been made righteous. You have been made holy. That new nature is inside of you.
And since you have that new nature, you have become something that you were not before. What are you? What are you? Or who are you? Maybe it's a better way to ask the question. Who are you as far as this scripture is concerned?
You know, he tells us who you are. He tells us this. You are a temple of God. You're a temple of God, the living God. You know, that word temple means. That you as a person. Is what the holy of holies was in the tabernacle and in the temple that the holy of holies was made was if you went in there, it was all gold.
What value there was in that place, just in the material aspect of it, what a place of beauty, gold. But, you know, that wasn't worth anything. The gold was worth nothing. What made that place of value was the presence of God in that place.
You don't make you distinct. That's what made the tabernacle distinct from all other emphasis in that whole area. What makes you distinct is the presence of God in your life, the living God. You know, sometimes when you get a little downcast or feel like giving up or whatever, just go to the Bible, go to if you have a computer and you have the Bible on the computer, just type in the words, the living God.
And it'll refresh your soul. Daniel knew the living God. He was called the servant of the living God as he was snuggled up alongside those those lions down there in the dead. He was called a servant of the living God.
Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, he knew the living God. And on down the line, you'll find men who knew the living God. And you and I, we know the living God who lives with inside of us. That's who we are.
We are, he says, we are the temple of God. Not only that, he says, we are the dwelling place of God. He says, as God has said, I will dwell in them and walk in them. And then he says, we are the people of God and they shall be my people.
And then also that he says, you are in the family of God. I will be a father unto you and you shall be my sons and daughters. That's who you are. That's who you are. Well, who is God? We see who we are.
Who is God? Well, he says, first of all, we've already said he is the living God and he is the one who is the Lord. Almighty. There is none that compare with him. Who are you? You are the temple of the living God.
You are the dwelling place of God. You are a child of God. You're in the family of God. Who is he? He's the living God. He's your father. He's the almighty Lord. Based on that, he's calling us and all that he is to you and all that he is to me to separate, to come out from among them.
And notice he say, if you will come out from among them, you see, there is, is there, is there a big gap between the world out here and all that it has? And if you're mingling among it, among it, and if you're out there and you're out here and then, then, then God is over here and he's calling you.
He says, come on over here now. And, and, and how are you going to bridge from, from here to here? Is there a big vacuum here? Is there a big space between that over here and, and God who's calling you over?
No. And as soon as you make the choice, as soon as you decide that those not the world for me, it's God for me. As you step out of that and separate yourself, come out from among them. And as soon as you do, you've got a God that meets you right there.
No vacuums. He fills your life with his presence and with his person. You're coming out to something that's far greater than something you're going to leave. What you're going to leave will die out there and become nothing.
But what you come out to will live forever and be everything to you. He says, come out and I will receive you. It's a wonderful thing to know that Christ is there and it is he who calls us and what he offers is far, far superior than anything that the world can offer.
Be ye separated, the Lord says.