Romans 15:16 - How Cleansing the Inner Temple Cleanses the Outer Court, Pt. 1 (01/01/2023)

Merry Christmas. Oh, it's too late. Happy New Year.

I said that with all the enthusiasm I can muster because I know the Bible says we're heading into apostasy.

Happy New Year. Now good to see all of you. I like what Dave said welcome back to church.

I like it. Yeah, because we missed that. And good to see each of you. Several have made it back from trips and that's good.

And several of us have made it back from illnesses I'm sure in different families, and that's good.

And we had. Well, let's see 12 grandbabies plus five kids team to 19 me and Charlotte 19 another one.

Well, how do we get it up there. Oh, I forgot that. I forgot the other kids. Okay, so I got to add, start over.

Well, 1719 and then five more 24. Well, and then we had no 25.

Thank you. So it was, it was 25. Last year because my mom was still with us.

So that put us down to 24 but Noah brought some brightness and joy, put it back up to 25.

But it is, it is something when you have your first Christmas without a loved one that's always there.

And so we all had some time to think about that this this Christmas, and, and we did think about it but we thought about it from a joyous viewpoint that she was looking down from heaven and seeing all these grandbabies around that table and smiling, so I hope all of you had a good season.

And we will have a good new year, because no matter what happens on God's time table.

We are his special beloved children has been taught Sunday school today.

And love is a choice, even with the being who is love in that interesting I think there's more to think about that there may we have to start up the men's coffee and ladies can come to they do come from time to time when they choose to.

And discuss how a person who is love still chooses to love who he wants to love isn't that interesting.

could talk about that in the sermon today. But you did a good job at Sunday school so let's do this let's pick it back up where we were and we'll go from there a little bit, though,

I think you know 2022 was. You know, quite the year if you started 2019 and went up through 2022 there are so many negative changes in the

United States of America, but that means for the whole world, because as America goes so goes the world, at least so far, and so many different like you can't even figure out what a boy and a girl is anymore, among the intellectuals in our country.

Boy, you know, would you have a can you even imagine Fred Mitchell living to see that right imagine that our joy, how about joy

Mitchell, she didn't see all that, can you imagine what she would say about that.

it's just it's just confusion from the devil at the highest order, and the nice thing about it is when you have one of these in your possession.

And you've been reading it, it does that stuff doesn't confuse you, you can tell a boy from a girl and vice versa isn't that nice.

And you can know a lot of things about how God meant for things to be and. I think it would be a nice study for every

American to go back and study the history of Sodom and Gomorrah and make that something for them to contemplate during January, so we can make

January Sodom and Gomorrah month. For studying history, but anyway,

I have already digressed way too much let's go into. let's see.

let's go to second chronicles 29 that might take you a moment to find it so let's go there this morning and we're still in our study of.

The believer priest, which is a sub study of why God accepts the offering of Gentiles, as you remember, out of Romans, which is where we're really supposed to be.

But we we kind of went out through the whole scripture and thought about that a little bit so we're still in that. So let me just review a little bit we're already past second chronicles 29 five, but let me read it for way of review because last time we didn't talk about this, we did more of a

Christmas thing. So let's pray and we'll get started Lord we just thank you for this time to study your word.

We ask your Holy Spirit to be in complete control of our room here of each of our minds and hearts and be our teacher today amen.

Second Chronicles 29 five and said unto them hear me you

Levi sanctify now yourselves and sanctify the House of the Lord God of your fathers and carry forth the filthiness out of the holy place remember that verse.

I like how that ties in with your Sunday school lesson been. It's not just your

God, it's the God of your fathers isn't that interesting. Therefore, he's your

God. Well, carry the filthiness out of the holy place if you remember last time we talked about the wilderness tabernacle, and also the temple whichever one you want to use as a picture, but it has these three parts, it has the outer court, it then has the holy place and then it has the

Holy of Holies remember, and that is in some ways a picture of you and me that the, the whole human and by that I mean a born again human which is all that God intended for a man or woman to be, or boy or girl to be a whole man not not, you know, not a deaf, blind person who can't even sense

God, which is how we come into this world naturally dead naturally blind naturally deaf.

Not that that's not how God intended Adam and Eve to be was it, but then they fell, but then

God provided the sacrifice, and the picture of becoming Messiah and ultimately the

Messiah came and died and rose again, and is at the right hand of the fathers our advocate, and now, when we know him personally we become back like a whole person that God intends to be.

In other words, we're not just a body and a soul walking around being soulish and fleshly.

We still have that part those components don't we but we're also a new man or new woman or boy or girl, and that spiritual level that spirit which is, it was like a kernel or a seed within you when you were lost but when

God saved you it sprouted and came alive and that part of you is the part that can communicate with God and walk with God and all the highest parts of your life come from the spiritual part which is really the new born again you that's who you are.

And that part of you has to run the rest of you or else you get in trouble. Your brain is not part of the new you.

I think the new you dwells in your brain. I saw evidence that in my studies this week but I don't remember where I saw it.

I should say I point I've got to make notes nowadays to remember stuff but then I lose the note so it doesn't really matter.

But, so the new you is dwells in your brain, but it's not part of the old man.

It's a distinctly new born again self which is really you at this point in forever.

And that's a wonderful mystery that the world at large does not know anything about nor can it comprehend or understand anything about it.

That's why we sort of bother the world, they see us when we're in the flesh, and they want to write articles about that, you know what you did when you sin, and you're supposed to be this big

Christian right and now if they can catch you at something they will publish that. But what they don't understand that's not even you that was the old man, and they'll never understand that unless they get saved.

So here we have a picture of all of you, the outer court is a picture of this body, all of its organs including your brain.

And the, the natural part of your brain as a natural organ which has both good and bad stuff in it that you have put in it on purpose some cases, and there it is.

And that's the outer court, the holy place which is the next level. That picture is your soul, which is an interface between your body and your spirit and then the

Holy of Holies pictures your spirit now all of that whole building pictures Jesus Christ too. But the interesting thing is the

Holy of Holies is the place where you and God meet. Now I think it's in your brain, but I'm not going to debate that or try to prove it,

I did find a verse but I've already lost the verse so I'm not going to try to prove it. But at any rate, somewhere within you is the real you, the new man, the new woman, and the

Holy Spirit meets you there and that is pictured by the Holy of Holies in the temple, and in the wilderness tabernacle.

So you have all of this picture. And so what happened here was the

Levites were instructed to go in and carry forth the filthiness from the holy place now the holy place is the part that pictures your soul not your spirit, but your soul.

And a lot of Christians get confused and think that they're being spiritual when they're actually being soulish because the soul can have it's the seed of emotions and all of that and you can you can just listen to a bunch of great music and think you're really spiritual and you might be in the flesh, you know, it's not correlated.

I remember hearing Dr. Rocky Freeman talk about that so often, how people have a hard time discerning between the soul and the spirit.

And you know what, what does the Bible, I'll give you a hint, what does the Bible say is the only thing that can discern between the soul and the spirit?

The word of God. It's in the book of Hebrews, if I remember the word of God. So what is that?

Oh, I'm, I don't know what that is. I'm, I'm beeping. Something's beeping.

It makes me think we need to do something. Do we need to run or like go to the restroom or I know we need to get, get the, the roast off the oven.

That's the good soulish thing to think about. Okay. So that's where we started here is bringing the filthiness out of that place.

Now, in the real temple, I mean, they had just not used it for years. The door was broken.

You couldn't even really get in there very easily and they had, they had just abandoned God's worship. Because to the

Jew, the only place you could meet with God was in the Holy of Holies. And if you weren't the high priest once a year, you had to be in the outer court or in the holy place if you were a priest.

And so if you don't go in there at all, you're just, you're ignoring the presence of God in your life.

And that's what it all pictures. And so it, it had, it had become filthy and they had to clean it up.

And that's a picture of us cleaning up the innermost part of ourselves, the thinking part, the part of us that thinks and feels and has emotions and, and all that is like, we don't, we have to not allow the world or the flesh to make it dirty.

And if it has done that, we need to clean it out. That's what this picture is. So we talked about that last time, if you remember.

And we went into quite a few verses where we talked about that the Bible teaches that there is such a thing as that innermost part of you, body, soul, spirit, and so forth.

Now, last time, I gave you Daniel 7 .15 talking about the spirit that's in the midst of our body.

And I gave you 1 Corinthians 6 .20. You're bought with a price, therefore glorify

God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's, right. And, but there was an interesting verse that I want to review.

Just, I don't want to review it, I actually want to teach it a little bit more, go into a little bit more detail.

So, turn to 2 Corinthians 7 .1

in the New Testament, 2 Corinthians 7 .1. And why you're, let's just leave it at that, 2

Corinthians 7 .1. And we gave quite a few other verses talking about the fact that we are a spirit, and we have a soul and a body and all that stuff.

And I'm not going back over that. I just want to point out something that I learned for the first time this week after being in the ministry 40 years and studying this past.

In fact, you know, all of us have different things that when we first got saved and started reading the

Bible for the first time, there were certain verses that would pop out, maybe you underlined them in your Bible or whatever.

They popped out as unusual and interesting to you, where for the whole rest of your Christian life, you still, you will come back to that verse.

And when you read it, you go, yeah, that's still interesting to me. That's really interesting. Well, this verse I'm going to talk about here for a second is one of those for me.

And I remember the first time I read it. So let's look at 2 Corinthians 7 .1. I'm going to share with you what

I believe the first time that I read it. And what's funny about it is even after studying theology and learning the proper way to interpret scripture and all the things, you know, through the years, you get better at interpreting scripture, the more you keep the rules, right?

And at first, you don't even know the rules. What's funny is my very first impression of this verse is what

I held on to all the way till this week. And I realized that was an early impression that I got before I even knew anything about studying the context of a verse.

So I actually studied the context of it this week and realized I've had it wrong my whole life.

And I've even said it incorrectly from the pulpit. The fortunate thing about it is I never made a big deal out of it.

I always, if I would mention it, well, the reason I'm bringing this up, I mentioned it Sunday before last.

But I did the same thing I've done my whole ministry is I often would come to it teaching something else and read it and think, man,

I should do a deep dive on this thing and preach on this, but I didn't yet. Well, Sunday before last,

I mentioned it. I thought the same thing. I didn't make a big deal out of it. I just said something about it. And so fortunately,

I've never actually out and out taught it incorrectly, but I have thought about it incorrectly. So I want to show you how important studying context is.

The main reason I want to do is I want you to know what this verse doesn't mean. Well, if you think about it, what

I grew up, if you want to put it that way, what I grew up thinking it meant, I always had a logical incontinence about it.

I felt like that doesn't make a lot of sense. And one of the things that made it interesting to me was that it didn't make sense with all the theology

I'd been taught. And I kind of like that sometimes. I like to challenge stuff that comes out of seminaries because sometimes it's wrong, right?

And they just all believe it because they were taught that. And I've always challenged those things my whole life.

So just because it was a little weird, I thought it was interesting. Well, now it's boring, but I know what it really means.

And when I say it's boring, what I mean is it doesn't mean anything new or different or weird. It fits everything it should fit.

So let's read it together. Now I've got it so built up, you're going to go, okay, thanks for that.

Let's have lunch. Okay, let's see. 2 Corinthians 7 .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.

That's the verse. But I want you to notice something. Look at the second word in the verse.

Having therefore. So whenever you see the word therefore, you got to ask, what is the therefore therefore?

And it always takes you up the chapter, maybe two or three chapters, even to the very first part of the book you're reading or the epistle that you're reading to find out what is this about?

What's the context? What's it even talking about? Who's it talking to? Does it apply to me in a primary sense or secondary sense or maybe not at all?

All those questions you have to ask about something you're going, especially if you're going to teach it. But even if you're just reading and you get something that's interesting, and you really want to know what it means, go back to the top of the chapter and read down and you'll get the true meaning.

Well, years ago when I first saw it, it was interesting. I didn't do that. And all through the years, I never got that in.

I wasn't like teaching this verse ever. So I never really looked it up. And because I mentioned it two

Sundays ago, I think the Holy Spirit bothered me a little bit about it and said, you know, it's like you're 68 now, you should look it up.

So I did. But first of all, here's what I thought it meant and why it was interesting to me and why

I always had this attitude, man, you need to look further into this and then just procrastinate and got more interested in other things and never did it.

But think about this. Having therefore these promises. See, there's the part that just screams at you, hey, go back and look and read what the promises were.

But I never did. So I will in a minute, but I never did. But here's where I took it from.

Dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and the spirit. That sounds like it means that your fleshly part, which we know can be tainted, right?

Our carnal self, the part that's not the new man or the new woman. It's the very thing that we're talking about in the tabernacle that that pictured when they cleaned out the filthiness from the

Holy Place. That's what that pictures. But now when it says that there's filthiness of the spirit, and yet you read in the book of First John that your new man cannot sin, nor will it ever sin, that makes no sense.

So I remember what I said, because what was interesting, I just mentioned this verse Sunday before last because I was using it just to prove we have a soul and a spirit, right?

That's the only reason I threw it in there with a bunch of others that prove that. And yet, it's always been an interesting verse.

So as I just read it to you two weeks ago, I remember that it's like the

Holy Spirit was saying, you know what, you never did go figure this out yet, and you're about to talk about it for a second.

You really need to figure it out. And all that's going on in my mind while I'm preaching. And so as I read it, the thought occurred to me that can't mean that your spirit needs cleansing.

So there are times when the word for soul, the Greek word for soul, is translated spirit in the

English Bible. And I mentioned to you, you probably don't even remember this, it's no big deal to you, but it was to me.

I remember mentioning, well, there are times, something like this, there are times when the

Greek word for soul is translated spirit. And that's probably the case here, because this would have to be your soul.

Remember, you may not remember me saying it, but I did say it, and it was incorrect. So I need to correct it.

It is not the Greek word for soul. It is the Greek word for spirit.

So that's what happened was this week when I was just studying some, I went back, I said, well, look, see, because I think that's got to be soul, not spirit.

And I looked and it was spirit. And then I thought, oh, my soul. Something's not right here with the way

I've always understood this verse. And so I just simply read the chapter.

Isn't that crazy? So let's just, because I know I've got your interest and excitement up so high now, that before we move on into our real study, we're going to see what this verse actually means.

So the key is always there when it says, having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, what it's going to say is the conclusion of this verse we're looking at is because of the promises that were made already.

So you should go back and look at what they are. All right. So it's as simple as that.

But first, before we do that, let me just give you a couple of definitions, just so you know. Normally, when you see the word soul in the

New Testament, we're not talking about Old Testament words, New Testament words, the word for soul is suke.

And it comes from a root word, suko, which means to breathe voluntarily, but gently.

So it's like if you're like all of you guys are out there breathing right now and you didn't even know it until I told you that you weren't, because you weren't thinking about it.

Right? You're just, your brain just had you breathing. So you could hear all the way to the end of the service, right?

And not die. So your brain just had you breathing, just normal breaths in and out, gentle breathing.

That's what this word means. And the root word that the other word comes from, it means that. So the word suke comes from that word and it comes to mean life or the life principle in a human being in particular.

I believe animals have a soul as well, not a spirit, but they have a soul because they have little personalities.

We were talking about Henry at Christmas. He passed away in 2022. And he had been there since Matt was a little boy.

And so I've got pictures of Matt and Henry all through Henry's life.

And it's kind of neat to look at, but they have a little personality. But the word soul comes from the idea that you're animated.

You have life. You're not just a brick. You're not just a clod of dirt. I have listened to quite a few debates between atheists and Christians in the time off and on YouTube.

And I listened to it. And sometimes it does seem like, Ben and I were discussing this, sometimes it seems like that the atheist gets the best of the

Christian, even though the Christian may be brilliant. There was this one Ben was talking about. The dude had written a 900 page book, the

Christian, a 900 page book. What was the topic? Oh, proving the resurrection happened.

I can imagine, you know, I can see how you could take 900 pages and talk about that. So you would think he would just blow the atheist away, wouldn't you?

But the atheist kind of whipped him. But that's because the atheist had studied debate his whole life and was just good at debate.

And the Christian was very knowledgeable on the subject, but he was terrible at debating. Well, that can happen.

I remember hearing W .A. Criswell, who was one of the greatest preachers of my lifetime,

Pastor of First Baptist Dallas, before he went to heaven. I got to meet him one time and the hair on my arm stood up when he walked by me.

He was that holy, but an amazing man. And I heard him on WBAP live debating

Madeline Murray O 'Hare, and she just tore him up. He did not win the debate. But the reason is he was such a gentleman to her.

He never raised his voice. He never called her a name. He never said anything unkind, and she was just letting him have it.

And if you didn't know better, you'd think she won. Well, that's how some of these are. But still, if you look at the content of what they have to believe in, it is so paltry and pitiful, the atheist,

I mean. The atheist is the most paltry, pathetic, empty life of any being or soul or rock or tree or bird or fish.

The atheist of all is the lowest and the worst life there can be, if they truly are an atheist.

And sometimes you doubt whether they really are. Why are they sitting there debating whether God exists if they're an atheist?

That'd be like spending three hours debating on the fact that Santa Claus isn't real. Would you really spend your time doing that if you didn't believe in him?

No, so they're not. That's a whole other argument. But my point is, they don't understand any of what

God has done, why he's done it, or why anything exists or where it came from. They don't know any of that.

Sometimes they do pretend to think they know where it came from, but they can't figure out where that came from.

They really don't, right? So we have the Bible, we have those answers. But the word soul, that means that you are different than a dirt clod.

You're animated. In fact, it means you're different than a plant. Because sometimes this word, tsuke, is translated life or living, like the living energy of a human being, but it's not like a living plant because it's different than a plant.

This is like the emotion, the emotional part of a person, the intellectual part of a person, the fact that they have many attributes that God has because we were created in his image, and this is part of the image of God is your soul.

Isn't that interesting? But what's the difference between that and the word spirit? Well, the word spirit is pneuma.

And the word spirit in the Greek, it's interesting because it comes from a root word that means breath as well, but it's a different Greek word than the other one we just looked at.

It is pneuma, and this means a strong current or a blast of air or to breathe strongly, to breathe out strongly, like you would if someone punched you in the gut.

It's a completely different word in Greek, and it's a much stronger blast of air or breathing.

And it has come to mean or be used in the

Greek to mean the spirit as opposed to the soul. It's a higher level.

It's a more forceful level. It's a higher level of the spiritual part of us, and that is our spirit.

So you have a spirit, you have the soul, which connects to the spirit, but also connects to the body, and then you have the body.

And that's what we have. So it's interesting to take a look at some of the verses in the

Bible that talk about the fact that we have both. For instance, Hebrews 4 .12

talks about that the Bible is the only thing that can divide asunder the soul and spirit.

It says the word of God is quick and powerful, sharper than a two -edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of the soul and spirit.

Do you realize that before you were saved, all you knew is you had a body and you could think and express emotions and intellect and feel things and observe the world and feel the world and be part of the world.

And so as far as all you knew is you had a physical side and you had a spiritual side that you might have called it your spirit or you might have called it your soul, but it's only one thing.

You didn't know that there's a soul and a spirit. You just knew there's a body and a soul or something like that. And then when you get born again, and you start reading the

Bible, you figure out, well, there's another part of me that never existed, or at least it wasn't alive yet. It was just a dead kernel and it's called my spirit.

And only after I was born again, did it come alive. And now I'm a

Trinity like God is. I have a body. I have a soul. I have a spirit, this thing called a spirit.

You didn't even know that as a lost person. So Hebrews 4 .12 explains why you didn't know it, but explains that it does exist.

Now 1 Thessalonians 5 .23 says, and this is the probably the best verse in the

Bible to prove that a human being is a Trinity. It's interesting if you study theology, there are some very old theology books where it is argued that really the spirit and soul are the same thing.

They're just synonyms of the same word and that a human really only has a body and a soul. Or you could call it a body and spirit, but it's just the same thing.

Well, that's incorrect because the scripture corrects that right here. 1 Thessalonians 5 .23, and the very

God of peace sanctify you wholly. I pray God, your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our

Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is he that called you who will do it. So how can you lose your salvation anyway?

It's a rabbit trail, right? How could you lose your salvation if that verse is true? Those two verses are true.

But anyway, it speaks of three parts of the human, the spirit, soul, and body, and it gives it an order from the highest is the spirit, then there's the soul, and there's the body.

So it talks about all that. Now let's go back into 2 Corinthians 7 and look at the context of this verse where it says to clean out the filthiness of the flesh and the spirit.

Because whatever this means, it is exactly what was pictured in our text in 2

Chronicles when they were commanded by the king. Don't you think it's interesting that the king of Israel sort of being a picture of the king of kings,

Jesus, being a type of Jesus, telling the priest to go in there and clean that part of that building out, which is picturing the innermost part of you and me and to clean it out.

It is exactly what this is talking about, so we need to know what this means. So let's go back and look at the context because it said there are promises that will help explain what this means in 2

Corinthians 7 and 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.

Well, what are the promises? Well, we have to go back a little ways, so let's go back to 2

Corinthians 5, two chapters back, and verse 21, and we start to see what the promises were that this verse depends on and speaks of.

For he has made him to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

That is perhaps the greatest verse in the Bible on the doctrine of imputation. What does it mean? So it's like an accounting term where God, the

Father, who is outside of time, not bound by time, so he reached 2 ,000 years into the future from Jesus' death point of view, 2 ,000 years in the future to your lifetime.

He took every sin you will ever do in your whole life, not just the ones you've already done, but all of them until the day you die or get raptured, all those sins, and he takes them back 2 ,000 years, and he places them in Christ, your sins in Christ.

And so it's like God took it out of your bank account and stuck it in Jesus'. So now he owns your sin.

And then he died to pay the price for your sins, and then he rose again. And then the

Father took his righteousness and perfection and beauty and perfectness, that's better than perfection, and imputed that.

He took all that out of his bank account, put that in yours. So now you are that, and when

God the Father looks at you, he sees Jesus in you, and he's satisfied, and you get to go to heaven because of that.

That's the doctrine of imputation. Well, the best scripture for it, if you want to get it in one verse, is right here in our context.

And it says, For God the Father made him, that's Jesus, to be sin for us, or in our place, or because of us, who knew no sin.

Jesus didn't know any sin. He didn't have sin of his own, so our sins were placed on him. Why? So that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.

So when we're saved and we become one with him, and we're in Christ, as the

Bible uses all three new tests, especially in the book of John, we're in Christ, now we have his righteousness, and he had our sins and died for him already, and so therefore you're perfect.

All of it, that's what grace is all about. It has not one thing to do with works.

It has nothing to do with being a good person or not a good person on any given day or any given moment, or sinning at a given moment versus not sinning.

It has nothing to do with that if you're talking about the cause of your salvation, and it has everything to do with imputation.

So that is the first promise that the verse we're studying today has to do. It says, having these promises.

What's the first one? That God took your sins away, put them in Christ, and let him die with them, and removed them, and then he took his righteousness after the resurrection, proving his righteousness, he took that righteousness and put that in you, and now it's yours.

So you have the perfections of Christ in you, and when the Father looks at you, that's all he sees.

In fact, if you went straight to God, the Father, and you said, forgive me for the sins I did last night, he would say, what sins?

You've never sinned. You can't sin. That's the Father's viewpoint, and it's because of what Jesus did.

It's because of the finished work of Christ and his continual work, but his finished work has already removed your sins from you, right?

That's the first promise. Are you with me? So we're going to talk about what are the promises that the other verse is talking about.

There's the first one. Then we go on to chapter 6, 2

Corinthians 6, verse 1. We then, as workers together with him. So the second promise is that God has made us to be workers together with him.

So we're in God's family business. He started it, and then he birthed us, and then he grew us up a little bit and got us to the place where we could work with him in his business, which is everything in the universe.

He owns it all. It's all his business. We get to work with him. That's the second promise. All right.

Let's see. We've got two sets of notes. I've got to be careful here. All right. Now, in 2

Corinthians 6, skip down to verse 10. There's another promise. As sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.

As poor, yet making many rich. As having nothing, and yet possessing all things.

Now this little passage of the scripture from verse 10 all the way down through verse 18 is specifically discussing the role of the apostle, which is not us.

There are no more apostles. So it really does not apply to us directly. It directly is written to and about the apostles.

But it has a secondary application to us, in my opinion. Please underline that I said that.

In my opinion, it has a secondary application that if we are living and walking in Christ, these same things can be true of us and could happen to us.

Such as it mentions persecution. We are killed so that you may live. Those sorts of things. Any of these things could also happen to us,

I believe. But it's a secondary application. All right. But now it continues.

It continues to say a lot of stuff from verse 10 through 13 about that. But then in verse 14, now all of a sudden it's speaking to all

Christians, not just to apostles. And it says, be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers.

For what fellowship has righteousness with unrighteousness and what communion has light with darkness.

And this starts to get into really some key information that helps us interpret the verse we're trying to interpret today.

So it begins to talk about how we have been saved by imputation.

God has given us the righteousness of Christ. Secondly, we are part of God's business.

We're workers together with him in this world. And it's an evil, dark world full of evil, dark, dead people that we're trying to help.

As salt and light. We're trying to be light to these dead people that hate God and hate us.

And that whole passage that I skipped from 10 to 13 is talking about how much they hate us and what they did to the apostles.

They all died except for John. Were killed because of their belief in Jesus. They're trying to love on these people and they killed them.

Well, that's the world we live in. And we're workers together with the Father too. We're not apostles, but we are workers together with him.

And that's the context of this. And that's part of the promise is that we're in that job that we have, we will suffer some persecution.

But we will also face an enormous amount of darkness from Satan and the demonic world.

Spiritual wickedness in high places. And this starts to get to the very crux of the meaning of the verse we're studying right here.

So follow along with me and look at it. Be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers.

Don't build a marriage or a partnership. It's specifically talking about business, but could that apply to a marriage?

There's other scripture that would teach that you need to think about that for marriage. Don't build a partnership with an unbeliever.

And it goes on and explains why. What fellowship does righteousness have with unrighteousness?

You have been made righteous. That's the first promise that he made you the righteousness of God.

And if you link up with a human being who's lost, they have nothing to do with that. They don't understand it.

They can't live it. They can't accept it. And deep down in their core, they hate it. You will be a complete agitation to this person over time because of your goodness that they hate.

And that will happen. That's why you don't want to link up with them in a partnership. Now, you can do business with them and make money for your family.

Paul says that, but you don't make them a business partner. You don't give them 40 percent of your business to take their money.

You don't do that. So, because you don't have fellowship, righteousness and unrighteousness.

What communion does light have with darkness? So now we're talking about not just lost people.

We're talking about the spiritual darkness behind their lostness. You see that? And what concord has

Christ with Belial? So you have Christ living in you. You are

Christ to the people that see you. They have Satan living in them, and they don't think so.

They think they have free will. They're just doing what they want to do. And the Bible says, no, Satan moves them at his will all the time is what scripture teaches.

So they don't have free will. They have a will and make choices, but it's influenced by Satan all the time.

So you can see why you don't want to link up with that. So it's pretty deep stuff, but it's talking about spiritual wickedness in high places that affect how these other people that are lost, how they live.

And what agreement has the temple of God with idols? Who's the temple of God? You are. That whole temple that we're studying with the outer court, the inner court and the

Holy of Holies, that's the temple of God and God's Shekinah glory was in it. And it was a picture of you right now, because his

Shekinah glory, although it's literally in heaven, but by the Holy Spirit, part of God lives in you.

And what's interesting about God is you can't take him into parts. And so every particle of God, if he had particles, would be all of God.

You've heard me say that before, but so you have God in you. You are the temple of the living

God. So what part could that have with someone who is the temple of Satan? You see, it's kind of heavy, doesn't it?

And really, when you start looking around you and the vast majority of human beings are lost, it can give you the creeps and it should.

This is saying, be careful with who you walk, be careful what friends you make, even in a Christian school or Christian college or church.

A bigger, this one, hopefully it's safe, we're still little, we can kind of keep an eye on everything, right?

But I mean, if you just put this thing up to say 120 people, you lose that ability.

Even with just 120, maybe with 80, you lose that ability. And all of a sudden, now at church, you got to be careful who you make friends with.

It might be the guy that steals your wife or the wife that steals your husband at church, right?

Because there are tears in the church. And there are also Christians who can backslide and get in the flesh in the church.

So you got to be so careful who you make friends with. Young people, if you're listening to me today, really, really think about this.

Be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers, all right? So here it comes in and it says, what agreement has the temple of God with idols?

For you are the temple of the living God. As God has said, I will dwell in them and walk in them and will be their

God and they will be my people. There's a promise. There's another promise. That's the fourth one, if I remember right.

Wherefore, come out from among them and be separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing.

Now this is talking about spiritual wickedness. And I will receive you and will be a father to you and you should be my sons and daughters, saith the

Lord God almighty. Now that is the context before 2

Corinthians 7, 1, which says, therefore, because of these promises, this next statement is going to be something you think about because of all that stuff we just studied right then.

So therefore, because of these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.

What the verse actually means is this, dearly beloved, let's cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of this flesh that we live in that tempts us to do unclean things.

We need to clean that out. And also filthiness that comes from the dark spiritual wickedness of Satan and his demonic world.

It doesn't mean your spirit is filthy. It can't be. It's the new you.

It can't sin. What it means is cleanse yourself from the way the world influences your flesh to sin against God and therefore defiles it.

You need to clean that out. How do you do it? First, John 1, 9. It's the only verse you need for that.

First, John 1, 9. And you clean that out. And secondly, you cleanse yourself from any spiritual wickedness that came into your life, into your mind due to demonic influence.

Unclean spirits, thoughts that they put in your mind. Listen, you need to know this. Not every thought that pops into your mind is your thought.

In fact, most of them aren't. Most thoughts that enter your mind throughout a day are not your thoughts.

They're placed there by Satan or a demon and are your flesh. But when you put all that together, it is the majority of thoughts, unless you're spirit filled.

When you're walking in the spirit, you won't have any of those thoughts. None of those can get through.

Isn't that interesting? That in itself is frightening. So if it's true that most of the thoughts that pop in our mind are carnal and fleshly or could in fact be placed there by a demon that wants you to think about something and see what you'll do with that thought, then don't you think we need to be cleansing ourselves from all of that?

The fleshly part that let that in needs to be cleansed is what it means, uncleanness of the flesh.

And the spirit that might try to put something in your mind needs to be cast out by Jesus.

So you ask the Lord, please bind and rebuke this spirit and send it away from me and give me the mind of Jesus Christ.

So now we see that 2 Corinthians 7 does not contradict the teaching of the fact that your spiritual self, the new man cannot sin.

And for my whole life, I got that wrong. Now I've got it right. Hallelujah. Thank you,

Jesus. So all of these different verses that talk about the fact that we have a body and a soul and a spirit are very important because the cleansing of the flesh and the spiritual wickedness that somehow we allowed to come into our mind through demonic influence because we just got in.

When we get in the flesh, we open ourselves to that too. We just don't know it, but we do. That needs to be cleansed out anytime we recognize that it's there.

And the best time to cleanse it out is when you hear it. So I've said it my whole life, a good

Christian thinks about what he's thinking about. Do you get it? You think about what you're thinking about at any given time.

And if it's not of Christ and it's not of the new you, then that means it's from your flesh or from a demon.

So kick it out. Or in case of the demons, you can't kick it out. You ask Jesus to do it because you don't get to rebuke demons yet.

You will someday, but not yet. What you can do, though, now the apostles could and the

New Testament prophets and the Old Testament prophets, but we don't have that ability. But what we do have the ability is prayer.

And we pray and we say, dear Jesus, I don't belong to this, whatever this thing is giving me these thoughts or these bad dreams or whatever it is.

I don't belong to them. They have no right to me. Please rebuke them, bind them, which means tie them up where they can't mess with you and rebuke them and cast them out and give me the mind of Jesus.

That's how we clean out the inner part of the temple. That cool or what? Those are all things we've taught, but they all coalesce here in this study.

All right. So what we want to note at this point is that all of this cleansing of this temple, which is pictured by the tabernacle, it all starts on the inside.

And of course, they did tell them to fix the doors first so you could get inside. Right. But it all starts on the inside.

This is the work of the priest to keep charge of the temple. So you as a believer priest, your first duty is to make sure the door is working.

Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If any man hear my voice, I will come into him and have supper with him.

Fellowship. Make sure you're always keeping the door of fellowship open to the Lord Jesus. And then you go into this innermost part of yourself, your soul, and you cleanse it and your flesh and you cleanse that.

And you ask the Lord to eliminate any unclean spirit that could be dealing with you.

And you do that. So it all starts right there. And it is the work of the believer priest.

Now, in Second Chronicles, chapter 15, verse eight, let me get you to look at that. I'm not going to go more than about three minutes and we'll be done.

We've been in Second Chronicles, twenty nine, five. I want to go back in the chapters a little farther back in Second Chronicles to chapter 15 and verse eight.

And let's pick up some of the things going on in the whole book. And when

Asa heard these words and the prophecy of Oded, the prophet, he took courage and put away the abominable idols out of all the land of Judah and Benjamin and out of the cities which he had taken from from Mount Ephraim.

And he renewed the altar of the Lord. That was before the porch of the

Lord. Now, remember, in our building. When you walk into the outer court.

Probably the first thing you would see is the altar. And that's where the blood is shed, which pictures

Jesus dying for us. Which is the only thing that makes it possible for us to walk farther into this place, into the holy place and certainly into the holy of holies is you have to have that blood applied to yourself, which that's what the

Holy Spirit did to you when he saved you. Right. So now we see that one of the things that they had to do was not only clean out the holy place.

They had to renew the altar of the Lord, which was before the porch of the

Lord. And so you're kind of moving from the innermost part out back towards the outer part again and eventually get to the door again.

And you're moving back and forth in this book. Now, this actually happened prior to chapter 29, obviously, because this is chapter 15.

So really, before they were able to go in and clean out the inner part, they had to take care of the altar and get it working again.

So they had not used it. One of the evil kings had removed the utensils that they used to deal with the sacrificial animals.

And so they had to be recreated according to God's model and placed back in that temple so that they could start the sacrifices again because they had stopped doing them, which means those people's sins were not covered.

In that day that lived prior to this for many months or years, they weren't covered.

And that's tragic. All right. So this good king says, we're going to start this up again.

So the first thing you need to go there is renew the altar of the Lord. And so renew there means to can mean rebuild or repair.

That's kind of what it means. It was in disrepair. They got it working again. Now, what is that altar picture for us?

Jesus, we don't need an altar in reality because what it pictured was the cross of Christ.

And so Jesus on that cross giving his blood is both our sacrifice and our altar.

Does that make sense? You could almost say the cross was the altar. But I mean, when Jesus died, all of this altar business pictured the ultimate death of the true lamb of God.

So you see that. So we don't ever need to repair that in reality, do we?

Because Jesus died once for the sins of his people. So you can't mess with that.

No human can. That's wonderful to know, isn't it? It cannot ever be in disrepair.

But it certainly pictures something in our life today as a believer priest. The altar being in disrepair for us pictures that we are not thinking about what we're thinking about enough.

That we've been going for a season in the flesh thinking about this thing in the world and that thing in the world and this boy and that girl or this man or this woman or this thing or that thing or this money or that money or this project or that project.

And we've just gotten our eyes at such a low level that we haven't been fellowshipping with the

Lord. We haven't been letting him come in the door and sup with us because we've been ignoring him.

And so in that sense, the altar needs to be repaired. Since Jesus is our altar and our sacrifice, we need to repair it when we're out of fellowship with him.

Does that make sense? Is that a good way to put it? We need to recognize that we haven't been using the altar because there is a sense in which

Jesus is the other side of the sacrificial system was that these things were done daily. Right?

They had to do it daily. And it pictured that it's an eternal thing when Jesus does it. He does it once and it's forever.

But the cleansing is forever too. The cleansing effect of his sacrifice is continual.

No priest has to do it, but it's continual. But the thing is, a lot of that, especially with regard to the cleansing of our conscience, is something that we have to repair from time to time.

And 1 John 1 .9 is another great place to go and really study every word in it and ask yourself, do I believe this verse is true?

Because if it's true, when you agree with God that you sinned, you are cleansed from every sin you've ever had and you're totally clean in God's eyes.

You just repaired the altar because you can't fellowship with a holy God if you're in sin, can you?

While you're in sin, let's put it that way. So that's kind of what this repairing of the altar,

I think, pictures for us today. So you could think about some

New Testament applications of this idea of them repairing the altar. Romans 12 .2,

it's a little more than three minutes, I know. Romans 12 .2, and be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

You renew the mind by remembering the altar, remembering the ultimate sacrifice.

So there are times we need to repair the altar in the sense of renewing our mind so that we're thinking about what

Jesus did for us and how important that is, what it means to us so that we start living right again. Does that make sense?

I mean, that's revival in the personal life, at the personal level. And that's what rebuilding this altar or repairing it pictured.

In Colossians 3 .9, it says, why not one to another, seeing that you have put off the old man and his deeds and have put on the new man, which is renewed and knowledge after the image of him that created the new man.

So there is something that's pictured by the repairing of the altar is, look, you're living in a body that's going to pull against everything you and God want to do.

So you need to put that off. That's your old man. You need to put him off and lay him aside over there because he's dead.

He was crucified with Christ. He's really dead. So you put him off. And today I'm going to walk in the new man, which, by the way, is part of the renewing of my mind because I'm also got to be reading scripture to do that, the cleansing of the water of the word.

That's in the book of Ephesians as well. And in Ephesians 4 .22, it says to put off the old man, put on the new man and renew and be renewed in the spirit of your mind.

That's the highest part of you. And you remember who you are and you walk with the

Lord instead of with the world, the flesh and the devil. And that's part of what this picture is of fixing this altar.

Then Ephesians 4 .22, that you put off concerning the former lifestyle of the old man that you used to be, which is corrupt according to deceitful lusts.

You put that off, the fleshly yearnings to do things that God tells you not to do.

You put that off and you be renewed in the spirit of your mind. And that you put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness, it cannot sin, ladies and gentlemen.

Isn't that remarkable? It says that in 1 John 2. So I like the way Paul said it, but put it in a more modern way.

Think about what you're thinking about. Doesn't that make sense? Put on the new mind.

So we'll stop there and there will be another movement through that temple next

Sunday, the Lord willing. And we'll find out that now what's going to happen is we're going to see how we've cleansed these inner parts.

And now we're going to move back out to the outer court. And because we've cleansed the inner parts of us, the outer court, which pictures our body, is going to be brought into the service of God and be doing good things.

Your body is not bad per se. It is fallen. But if it's under the leadership of your spirit and the

Holy Spirit, then it does good things. It does good works for the Lord. And the Lord loves that too, doesn't he?

And that affects the world. So let's stand and have prayer together. I went more than three minutes, but we'll stay three or four extra minutes and let you eat more dessert to make up for it.

Lord, thank you for your word and thank you for how it empowers us to serve with you in this world and help us to do just that in this wonderful new year you've given us.

And Lord, thank you for equipping us to go through whatever happens in 2023. And Lord, thank you for the food and the fellowship we're about to have in Jesus name.