2 Corinthians 6:11-7:1 (Guard Your Heart, Jeff Kliewer)

us that now we are the temple, that your Holy Spirit dwells inside of us. I pray,

Lord, that we would treat the temple in a way that is fit for the

King, the King of Kings who dwells here. Lord, in the church, which is the temple, the building, as we are living stones built together, rising up to be a place fit for your worship, where we can worship you, we pray for us individually, that the idols of our hearts, the things that we cling to, that don't belong in the temple of our hearts, would be torn away this morning.

Tear down our idols and set us free. And do that, Lord, we ask by your word, because it's only your word wielded by the

Holy Spirit that's more powerful than our hearts. Move among us this morning through your scriptures,

Lord, we pray, in Jesus' name, amen. There was a very evil villain in history that some of you are probably familiar with named

Antiochus Epiphanes. In 168 AD, Antiochus Epiphanes, the

Syrian king, came to Jerusalem after failing in Egypt to conquer, and being in a rage, in a fit of rage, like a wild animal, he came back up through Jerusalem and conquered the city of Jerusalem.

The book of Maccabees, which is not in the Bible, but some would say it is, and second

Maccabees, we hear that he was like a raging wild animal. He set out from Egypt, and when he came to Jerusalem, he slaughtered 40 ,000 people, 40 ,000

Jews, and he did not spare women or children, even infants were put to the sword, 40 ,000 dead, and also 40 ,000 others were put into slavery.

As if this was not enough of an atrocity though, he went to the temple in Jerusalem and entered the temple and tore out all of the articles that God had prescribed to be there.

He tore away the altars and the basins for washing, he desecrated everything, and then he went to the altar itself and took a pig and sacrificed a swine on the altar of God to desecrate the temple, to mock the

Jews, who of course saw the pig as an unclean animal, according to the Jewish code.

And so this villain of history defied the living God. He came right into the temple, and after that, because under the

Syrian rulership, Jerusalem was subjugated and they had little power, many people began to accept this as the new normal.

Antiochus Epiphanes ruling, idols in the temple of the living God, the

Jewish people forbidden from having the scriptures, all of the scriptures were burned that Antiochus could find, their children were no longer allowed to be circumcised and those that were would be killed, and so many acquiesced and began to accept this new normal, the new way that the temple would look for them.

But there were some zealots among them, one of them was named Mattathias, and refusing to accept the desecration of the temple, he led a rebellion and was actually chased out into the wilderness where a year later he died.

But his five sons continued this rebellion against Antiochus Epiphanes, one of them was named

Judas Maccabeus, from which we get the Maccabees, and this Maccabean revolt gained steam in the wilderness and practicing a kind of guerrilla warfare, they came and fought the stronger power, refusing to allow the temple to be desecrated.

By the year 160, they actually conquered and took the temple back for the living God. Of course,

Antiochus Epiphanes now rallied an army to send to Jerusalem to put this rebellion down, but Antiochus Epiphanes died that day, and so the army was called back and the

Jewish people prevailed. They refused to allow the temple of the living God to be desecrated.

They fought tooth and nail for the temple of the living God. First Chronicles 26, was anybody just reading

First Chronicles 26 this morning? I'd be impressed if you were. That's one of the passages that we don't tend to go to very often, we don't read

Chronicles very often, but in First Chronicles 26, there is a prescription that there would be guards set in the temple.

At every entrance and in the in the open areas, there were guards to preserve and protect the holiness of the temple.

Of course, these temple guards would later turn on Jesus and be used in his arrest, but Jesus had said, tear down this temple and on the third day,

I will raise it up. By this, he was not referring to the physical building in Jerusalem, but his own body would be torn down, put in a grave, and on the third day, he would raise it up.

Like guards stationed at the temple doors, Christians must open wide our hearts to the apostolic teaching and keep out anything that might defile the temple.

And by temple, I don't mean the physical building in Jerusalem, because when

Jesus came to Jerusalem, he cried and said, if only you knew the hour of your visitation.

And he said that all of Jerusalem would be torn down and the temple itself, not one stone would be left upon another.

But rising from the dead, the church becomes the temple of the living

God. And you and I as Christians become the temple where the Holy Spirit of the living

God comes to dwell inside the Holy of Holies. And we need to guard this temple as zealously as the

Maccabeans guarded the second temple in Jerusalem. So where are we in the book of Corinthians?

We've been talking about the main idea of 2nd Corinthians, which is really an argument that Paul is making to convince the

Corinthian church to remain with him, to hold on to his teaching. There have been some false teachers that have come into the

Corinthian church and they are leading many astray with destructive heresies. They are leading, they had many teachings against the resurrection of Christ, 1st

Corinthians 15. They had certain problems with idols, 1st Corinthians 10. They were allowing sexual immorality because they had a dualistic view of the body and the spirit.

So in 1st Corinthians 5, we saw that they refused to rebuke someone who was in blatant sexual immorality.

So there were all kinds of problems in the Corinthian church that Paul had left behind. And from Ephesus, he wrote that first letter, and now the second letter.

So not everything is well in the Corinthian church. In fact, Corinth, as a church, is teetering in the balance.

They may follow Paul and continue in the path of truth, the apostolic teaching, or they may follow the sophisticated philosophers who have come in after Paul with a deeper religion.

And that's what the book of 2nd Corinthians is really all about. So as we get to the sixth chapter, Paul is explaining his life.

Why would he be doing this? Talking about how he was beaten and he was imprisoned and all the afflictions and calamities and everything that he endured for the sake of the gospel.

He's commending his life so that they will continue to remain with him. So pick it up now in verse 11.

He's pleading with them to the Corinthian church, hold on to this gospel that I preached to you in the first place.

We're in 2nd Corinthians chapter 6 and today we'll go from 11 to 18. We have spoken freely to you

Corinthians. Our heart is wide open. You are not restricted by us, but you are restricted in your own affections.

In return, I speak as to children, widen your hearts also. 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. And in fact, let's take chapter 7 verse 1 as well because that's the concluding thought of this section.

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.

So back in verse 11, God has spoken freely, but notice that the hearts of the

Corinthians are somehow restricted. Paul says he kind of wears his own heart on his sleeve.

Verse 11, we have spoken freely to you, Corinthians, our heart is wide open.

It would have been possible for Paul at some point in all of these transactions, in all of these exchanges that he's had with the

Corinthians, for his heart to begin to clam up, for him to build a shell around his own heart because after all, his ministry has been rejected by many and he's been demeaned and made fun of and ridiculed for the ministry that he brought, mocked because of his beatings.

He must not have the stamp of God's approval if he's treated this way. If he suffers everywhere he goes, he must be suffering for his own folly or sin.

He's been mocked and there would be a natural human tendency for Paul to begin to guard his heart and no longer open up to the

Corinthians because of the charges that have been falsely brought to him and yet somehow Paul is able to keep his heart wide open to them.

A temple guard must keep the door open into the holy place for the things that belong there.

There are things that belong in the temple and if you'll notice Paul is appealing to them that his teaching would be admitted into the temple and brothers and sisters you are a guard of the temple of your own heart and you as that temple guard determine what comes in and what is disallowed.

You must allow the teaching of the apostle Paul to penetrate into your heart, to open his word, open

God's word and allow the teaching to come in. Verse 12 he says, you are not restricted by us but you are restricted.

There's some restriction between the Corinthians and Paul. It's not coming from Paul and in the same way

God in giving us his word has not held anything back from us. We have in the scriptures everything we need for life and godliness.

We have what God has given us to be sanctified, to be changed. God has not held back from us but the restriction is where?

In your own affections. The Corinthian affections, the hearts of the

Corinthians, their affections, the heart speaks to the seat of emotion, the deepest part of the human soul.

In their affections they are hardening themselves against the teaching of Paul and Paul says you must open this door.

In return I speak as to children. Now that's not condescending there. He's not saying in any condescending way

I'm speaking to you children. He's speaking in a fatherly endearing tone here as to children.

Widen your hearts also. He pleads with them to listen to his teaching. Seems to me that the apostle

Paul is the most derided of any biblical character outside of the church.

Meaning the world hates the apostle Paul. If you talk to just about anybody outside of Christianity there will be a general fondness for the person of Jesus Christ.

They'll accept that he's a good moral teacher and somebody to look up to perhaps a prophet but when it comes to Paul there is where the lightning rod is placed.

In fact there's a whole movement called red letter Christians that will accept the teachings of Jesus and what he said in red letters but often reject so much of what

Paul said to explain the meaning of Jesus's life. In both cases

God himself is speaking because all scripture is God breathed and useful for teaching.

Not just the red letters but the black letters and what Paul writes is every bit as much the word of God as what

Jesus says in the gospel. Many people stumble at that point. One of the most prominent guys in recent times who came to believe in the word of God and became a

Christian is Nabeel Qureshi. Some of you know Nabeel's story. He was a Muslim raised in a very devout

Muslim home and taught by his parents to despise the doctrine of the trinity, to despise the idea that Jesus is

God and he had a very strong aversion to the apostle Paul because the teaching in Muslim countries is that Jesus was just a

Rasul, just a prophet like the ones that went before him and Muhammad would then be the seal of the prophets but what happened in the early church according to Muslims is that the apostle

Paul came and corrupted what Jesus originally taught about himself and it was

Paul who made Jesus out to be God and Paul who said that Jesus died for our sins whereas the

Quran says he never died at all on the cross and so Paul becomes the lightning rod.

Well Nabeel Qureshi began to encounter at Old Dominion an apologist whose name was David Wood.

At that time he himself was just a young college student and David Wood began to share the gospel with him and one idol after another was torn down.

One barrier in the heart of Nabeel Qureshi was torn away after another until finally intellectually

Nabeel could say Jesus must have really died on the cross, that's what all the evidence shows.

Jesus must have rose from the dead, that's what all the evidence shows which means that his claim to be

God would be validated by the fact that he rose from the dead so he had an intellectual assent to what

David was teaching but still in his heart he had such a strong heart tie to Islam and such a strong aversion to the truth that he couldn't accept.

One day David said to him he said Nabeel if what I'm telling you about Jesus Christ is true would you want to know and Nabeel had to think about that for a minute and finally said yes and no.

Yes because I want to know the truth but no because it would destroy everything

I am. My family would disown me or at least be so heartbroken that I would become a reproach to them.

It would destroy everything. His heart was enslaved by the chains of Islam.

He couldn't do it. In time though God continued to work on his heart and by the gracious miracle of regeneration those chains were ripped apart and that veil that covered his eyes was lifted and now in his heart he believed and his eyes were open and he was gloriously reborn and became an apologist for the gospel.

That sounds a lot like the story of Paul. The same thing happened to Paul the antagonist of Christianity.

God's power overcame that aversion but guys very often any of us are prone to allow heart ties to the things of this world to keep the teaching of the apostle

Paul and all of the scripture out. These things are idols that keep us from hearing.

What is that feeling when you go to open the word of God or to spend time with God but something tells you you don't want to do it?

This happens to all of us. Happens to me a lot. I've been trying to read through the the book Knowing God by J .I.

Packer and I try to read before I go to sleep but I always have the temptation to turn on SportsCenter or NBA TV and not pick up that book and then as soon as I do pick up that book like a couple nights ago

I read a couple pages and I fall asleep while I'm reading. It's just hard to train your heart to open up to the things of God.

I woke up with a sore neck because of the position I was sitting in but guys there's something in our hard hearts that doesn't want to let the word of God in.

There's some aversion and the role of a temple guard is not only to keep the bad things out but to encourage the good to come in.

You as the guardian of your own heart must fight this war. This is where the war begins.

This is the Maccabean revolt to say we are letting in the word of the living

God. When your flesh tells you not to open this book a war is underway.

When your flesh tells you to prioritize something else you are in a war and you must go to war like a guardian of the temple and say this is the temple of the living

God. I'm preaching to Christians right now by the way. If you're born again I'm speaking to you. You are the temple of God.

Let his word and his light flood in. That's what Paul is pleading with them.

Look at verse 11 to 14. He's telling them you're restricted. Something is holding you back. Open up.

Open your heart. Let my teaching come in and these very words that he's writing to them are that scripture that they need to receive.

Next verse is 14 through just verse the first half of verse 16.

Christians must keep unbelievers especially the influence of unbelievers out of the heart's inner chamber.

There is a guarding that has to take place where we have to reject things from coming through the eye gate of our eyes and the ear gate into the heart.

If we don't fight against these things these things will overtake the temple. So what does it say?

Verse 14. 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? Notice that there's a repetition of this same concept six times over.

In each case there's a difference between what is of God and what's not of God.

And it's a stark contrast isn't it? Notice believer or unbeliever. Righteousness or lawlessness.

Light darkness. Belonging to Christ or Belial which is a name for Satan.

A commonly used term at that time in Judaism. Or again a believer and an unbeliever.

The temple of God idols. Do you see the contrast is as stark as it could possibly be.

And one of the two is allowed in the other must be rejected. I use some

Greek terms here to show you the words that Paul uses. Now when I if you notice here in your notes there are six different words that he uses to describe the yoking or the partnership or the agreement or the portion the fellowship.

Notice each different word brings a slight different angle to help us better understand.

Now be careful here. I don't want us to become the kind of Christians that begin to throw around Greek words in order to sound cool.

I've noticed that a lot of people like to call their community group or their life group an oikos because the word oikos means house or church or inner circle of friends.

And my thinking is if you call it an oikos to sound cool you're probably not going to sound cool.

What are you going to do? You're going to repel anybody who would ever possibly come there. If you invite someone to your oikos to have some koinonia, they're going to run for the hills.

So let's be careful when we're using Greek. I'm not saying we need to learn all these Greek words but I do want you to look at some of these terms and notice the the nuance of what we're shown to see what it is that Paul's excluding and what it is that he wants to include.

So the first one is heterozygontes. That's a weird word. It's a long word.

But hetero, you recognize that as different, right? Different as opposed to homo which would be same.

So hetero, different. And the zugos, the second part of the root, would be a yoke.

So what's in view here? This is a being yoked together differently. What should come to mind is in the the law code

Deuteronomy 2210, we're told do not yoke together an oxen and a donkey.

These are different animals with different natures. A yoke is what is used for plowing a field where you would pair together two animals to pull the field in a straight line.

And the problem is if you put an ox with a donkey, they have different natures and they're not going to pull together in a complementary way.

It's not going to be a straight line. It's going to be a mess. So put an oxen that's meat for an oxen.

Pair them together and let them pull. Or a donkey with a donkey of similar strength and they'll pull a straight line.

That's the concept here. Believer and unbeliever are of completely different natures.

Can't be yoked together the way a believer can be yoked with another believer.

Metoce, that's sharing or partnership. Some of you know koinonia, this idea of fellowship.

Symphonesis, where we get the word symphony. There's no harmony between a believer and an unbeliever.

Meris, so there's a portion that you're sharing. You have each have a portion.

And finally syncathesis, I can hardly say that one. You see the word thesis, you agree, you're in sync with the thesis.

There's agreement between the two. Notice in every nuance, the point is the same. Believer and unbeliever are fundamentally different.

And if you allow a yoking together a believer and unbeliever, you'll ruin the temple.

You'll destroy the temple. So it says in verse 15, what accord has

Christ with Balliol? With Satan? Or what portion does the believer share? What agreement has the temple of God with idols?

It is our role as guardians of the temple, of our own hearts, and of the church, the temple, the body of Christ built together.

It's our role to keep certain things out. Now what are those things? That's where the question gets a little bit murkier.

Because we can't overreact and become like the Amish and run for the hills and make a complete break from the world.

That would be contra the teaching of 1 Corinthians. Remember? In the ninth chapter, what does Paul say?

I become all things to all people that by all possible means I might save some.

To the Jew, I become a Jew. To the Greek, I become a Greek. Paul encourages us to be in the world.

What does this look like? Well, there are business opportunities, school, a number of different areas of life where you are able to be in the world without being of it.

It's possible to do that. But in every one of these cases, it's important to guard the heart from a tie to an unbelieving system that would desecrate the temple.

So the two main areas that I think are in view here would be marriage, for one, because there's no tighter yoke, there's no stronger heart tie than the two becoming one.

In Genesis 1, a man shall leave his father and mother and be united to his wife and the two shall become what?

One flesh. If that's not being yoked, I don't know what is. And so the application

I'll say to you, all unmarried people in this place, do not marry an unbeliever, period.

Do not marry an unbeliever. You would be yoked like a donkey with an ox.

Do not marry an unbeliever. Now, if you are married to an unbeliever, according to 1 Corinthians 7, remain in that marriage and try by the life that you live to win the other to Christ.

Who knows if they would come to believe? But the second area besides marriage really has to do with ministry.

And I think this is the context that Paul is writing in. Do not yoke yourself together in ministry with unbelievers.

And Paul here has in view the false teachers who have crept in behind him and deny many of the fundamentals of the faith.

Paul is deliberately fighting a war for the Corinthians, and he's fighting against unbelievers.

He wants them to choose him and his teaching, but also simultaneously reject the false teaching.

Not allow it to penetrate the hearts of the Corinthians. And so there's a battle to be fought here for us as well.

What do we have to disallow from entering into our hearts? Certainly, pornography, all forms of sexual impropriety, even the more soft pornographic images that come across television that belong to the world and not to Christ.

They belong to Belial and not to the king of kings. The temple belongs to the king.

And here's my point. If Christ is the temple, He died, He was resurrected on the third day,

He did this to pay for our sin. Is He worthy of all of our devotion?

Is He worthy of us going to Him in purity? Of us making hard decisions to cut things out of our lives for the sake of the temple, which is

Him, the true temple. Is He worthy of a sacrifice like that?

And what would that mean for the lives of any one of us? Now, fortunately, Paul is not legalistic in how he presents this material, is he?

He presents it as a principle which we then apply in love from the heart to our own lives.

So someone might have a conviction about Christian school and homeschooling and someone else might not.

And that's within the freedom of God. For you to apply 1 Corinthians 9 to be a light in the world but not of the world or conversely to come out and do homeschooling or Christian schooling.

But there's not a legalistic formula for that in the same way in your business relationship.

Should you take as a partner an unbeliever? Should you participate in mutual funds?

And at what level does the Christian need to come out and be separate? The scripture is not dogmatic about the particulars of those things.

But it does call us to be separate. And I would put this final punctuation on it. Make sure that you are guarding that inner chamber of your heart.

And you know when something is coming into your life that you're having partnership with, if it's becoming an idol that doesn't belong in the temple, that needs to be torn down.

This is a matter of prayer. And we cannot take these questions lightly. By saying that the

Bible doesn't spell everything out for us, it doesn't mean that we don't have to go to him in prayer and to seek his wisdom.

Because what we allow into the temple either defiles us or makes us stronger.

So we need to eliminate the things that defile. Now finally, the last point here. Picking up the second half of verse 16.

I want you to see that to go to Christ, if he's our temple and now we are the temple, it requires a breaking away from the world in which we will bear reproach for this.

There will be a cost to pay. But the promise associated with making this break is more than worth it.

Look at the promise. It's really a quotation, not from one passage of the Old Testament, but I'm counting five.

There's some difference between commentators as to which verses are being cited.

But in the second half of verse 16, I think quite certainly it involves

Leviticus 26 .12 to begin with. In the context of Leviticus 26, that's a breaking away from idols.

And then we'll go to Isaiah 52 .11. These are in your notes. There again, there's a breaking away from idols.

And the very next part of that passage is the prophecy of Christ, which begins at the end of chapter 52 of Isaiah and is fulfilled in Isaiah 53.

Then there's Ezekiel 20 verse 34. It's again a breaking away from idols. And then 2 Samuel 7 .14,

where David desires to build a temple for the living God. And finally, Deuteronomy 32 .18

and 19. So it's a really an amalgamation. It's like Paul here is fusing a number of Old Testament prophecies that all have to do with breaking away from idols.

And he meshes them together to make this promise. He can do that. Why can he do that?

Because he's an apostle. He's writing Theanusta, the very words of God. So we wouldn't be able to necessarily use scripture and fit them together the way

Paul does here. But Paul is able to do that by the Holy Spirit. I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them.

Here's the promise. He will dwell with us. Tabernacle. I will be their

God and they shall be my people. He will be your God and you will be his people.

That's the promise. Therefore, here's the condition of the promise.

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.

That's the promise that it's getting even more personal and intimate here. I will be your father and I will love you and you will be my sons and my daughters, says the

Lord. And since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the sight of God.

Here we have one of those great and precious promises that are given unto us. Second Peter 1 .4.

These promises that should motivate our lives. The promises closeness with God, intimacy with God, that you would know him and be known by him, that you would feel in your heart a burning that nothing in this world can match or even approach.

The fire of God's Holy Spirit, love for God, and the knowledge that he loves you.

The fullness of the Holy Spirit, no longer grieving or quenching the

Spirit, but filled with the Spirit. Joy unspeakable, a passion in your heart that makes you want to wake up early in the morning and spend time with him.

The promise of knowing God, the title of J .I. Packer's book. This promise, according to this passage, is for those who are willing to bear the reproach of breaking away from the world.

We're told in Hebrews 13 that when the animals were sacrificed in the temple, their bodies were taken outside of the camp and burned.

And in the same way when Christ was crucified, he was crucified outside the camp.

Outside of the camp. And if we were to come to him, if we were to come to him, to know

Christ, to have intimacy with Christ, we must go meet him where? Outside of the camp.

Bearing the reproach with him. There needs to be a breaking away from idols in order to experience this promise to know

God. You can't know him in the clamor of a perverted temple.

You can't know him amongst the false religion of false professors.

You certainly can't know him in the blatant worldliness of all that surrounds us.

To really know God, you have to be willing to bear reproach. To say no to the things of the world and to go out to him.

That's where he's experienced. Outside of the camp. And this is the promise we're given.

Jesus was the temple. He was mocked for saying he would raise it in three days.

Do you know when he came into the temple? The physical earthly temple, not his body.

He saw that it had become filled with idols. Money changers were selling birds and animals.

And when he saw that his heart filled with zeal that consumed him, my zeal consumes me.

And he made a whip and he cleared the temple. And he was hated for that.

But then a week later, having been torn down himself, rising from the dead, he goes and appears to his disciples.

And they come to him away from the earthly temple. They make a break with everything in order to follow him.

Consider the cost. Peter and James and John would no longer be welcome in the temple.

They would be derided. Of the 12 apostles, 11 of them would be killed for this.

I told you the story of Nabil. There was one encounter that David Wood and Nabil had where Nabil said, you know, it was all

Paul that corrupted the Bible, corrupted Jesus's message. It was all

Paul's fault. And David said, well, why would he do that? Why would he change and say that Jesus is

God? He was Jewish himself. Why would he ever do that? And Nabil's answer, which was the typical

Muslim answer, was he was power hungry. He saw a vacuum of leadership and he stepped in there and he tried to grab power.

David, hearing that, chuckled and then explained the life of Paul.

Because Paul had power. He was the leading student of Gamaliel, wasn't he?

He was positioned to be a ruler in Israel. And because he followed

Christ, he was rejected everywhere he went and stoned and left for dead and beaten time and again, time and again receiving the 39 lashes.

He was willing to bear reproach for the sake of the name. And that's the theme of 2

Corinthians. You'll see these lists in three different places of all the sufferings of Paul. He bore the reproach of Christ outside of the camp, not taking a position of power and authority as a power hungry grab.

The opposite was true. He went out to Christ and bore the reproach with him.

And this is what we're told here, chapter 7, verse 1. 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.

So in closing and application, we need to consider the value of that promise. He promises us that we would know him, the true

God, which is eternal life, and to know Jesus Christ, whom the Father sent. We need to make war on sin.

Like temple guards, when defiling enemies of God approach our hearts, offering lies and seeking entrance, we need to make war to fight those things out of our lives.

And by make war, I mean it needs to be violent. Every fiber of your being turned against this enemy, the way the

Maccabees fought off the Syrians who were defiling the temple. And we need to let in the light of God's word to flood our souls with truth.

How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word.

Psalm 119, verse 9. Guard your heart. Don't just let anything come in to your life.

Worship team, if you'll come up, we're closing a word of prayer. I want to give a few minutes here just for quiet in the sanctuary as the worship team gets ready.

I want you to think about your own heart as being like a temple of the Holy Spirit.

And I want you to think, is there anything that you've allowed into that temple that doesn't belong there?

This is how we make war. We cast down vain imaginations. We take captive thoughts and make them obedient to Christ.

In these moments of quiet, pray about your own life. Examine your heart. What needs to go?

What needs to be cast out? And make a commitment to let the word of God in. To guard your life by living according to the word.

So take a few minutes here before the worship team plays. Just quiet. And I'm aware that maybe there's somebody here that you've never trusted in Christ in the first place.

This is a time in the quiet, in the solitude, where you can turn your faith to Him. Why would you do that?

Because He died on a cross to pay for your sin and He rose from the dead. He is the

King of Kings and He is worthy of your life. Yes, your life. There's nothing else of value compared to Christ.

There's nothing else that competes with the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. His promise is sure.

You will be His son or His daughter if you trust in Him. So right now in the quiet, trust in Jesus who died for your sins and rose on the third day.

Let's pray. And Father, I pray for those in the building today that they may recognize that they are not yet believers.

They're still in darkness, controlled by the evil one. I pray right now,

Lord, that you would save them. Open their eyes. Show the value of your son.

The value of his blood shed on the cross. Pray that you would save sinners again here this morning.

Pray for all of us who do believe and yet we've done a poor job of guarding the temple. Give us strength to fight,

Lord. Fight for us,

Lord. Cast out the idols of our imaginations. Set us free from the evil one.

Cleanse the temple, Jesus, like you did. Almost 2 ,000 years ago. But in your heart, sanctify the

Lord Jesus. Set apart Jesus as Lord. We do that now, Jesus.

You have our hearts entirely. We hold nothing back from you. Flood us with your light.

Not just this morning as we look to the Word, but all week long. Help us to open the doors of this temple.

Let the King of Glory come in. Meet with us every day,

Lord. Revive us. Revive us again,

Lord. Return us to our first love. Help us,

Lord, to be willing to bear the reproach of a world that thinks we're strange. Because we do not plunge with them into the same flood of dissipation.

Help us to bear that reproach with joy. Glad that we're counted worthy of suffering for the sake of the name.

Lord, we welcome beatings and imprisonments and whatever it takes. That the world would see that you are worthy.

Because no temptation has come upon us that you yourself did not bear first.

Because you suffered, you can strengthen us to endure as well.

We look to you this morning for help. Be the paraclete. Come and help us.

Strengthen us. Give us courage to fight for this temple. For you are worthy.