What Do We Have in Common
2 Corinthians 6:14-16 · Mike Doyle · Jun 5, 2022
Letters to the Corinthians, No. 110
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261927171811

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Good morning. Hi. I don't know if you noticed or not, but when Jim was reading there last week, we studied down through verse 10. And today we're picking up at We're going to pick up beyond verse 10 and we're going to go directly to 14. Here's the reason. Maybe this will show us why. 11 through 13, which would have been the next three verses that I would teach, talk about Paul's solicitation to the Corinthians for affection. And then there's this section that we're going to talk about today and next week, both weeks, about don't be unequally yoked with non-believers.

And then picking up again in chapter 7, verse 2, it's right back to the theme of verses 6, 11 through 13, make room in your hearts, etc. So probably 11, 12, and 13 is not enough. for a whole sermon. And so what we decided to do last week is that Roger, in two weeks when he's up, he'll start at 11. He'll do 11, 12, and 13. Then he'll jump to 7, 2 through 4. And so for the next two weeks, You're stuck with me doing 14, 15, and 16.

Okay? Is that clear? If it's not, raise your hand and see me afterwards. Can you hear me all right? We're good? Okay. So today we're going to talk about some really interesting verses To me anyway, and to be honest with you, as I prepared this sermon, it was difficult because it can be intimidating and it can be scolding and it can be... because if I look at the conditions of most contemporary Christian environments, These verses can be pretty strong. So to start with, William Kelly says a couple of things here. The Corinthians were not only needy in their affections, they were careless with their associations with the world.

And that's where the problem is, I see. Had Christ been the object, the new life would have been hindered would not have been hindered in any way. For as he creates, directs, and sustains the affections according to God, so does he guide and guard the feet in the narrow way, his own path outside and above the world. When the Lord Jesus is not before the heart, the world in one form or another will ensue fair excuses which cover holy alliances escape detection, and the Lord's honor somehow is before long is compromised."

So that's kind of the flavor of what these verses are all about. So it's not now the Jews severed from the Gentiles. But it's the Christian separated from the world in every shape and every form and every degree. Its principles, its motives, its interests, its ways are not only different, but they are opposed to everything that's Christian. So the question is, what common ground can you find?

But this is not all. The faith is the life breath of the Christian. We live by faith. And his only avowed power in that enterprise is the Holy Spirit. When the world cannot receive as neither seeing nor knowing the Holy Spirit, and he works to reduce every thought into obedience of Christ, an absolute judgment of the world and its prince."

Another quote from Kelly. So, starting out, he says, do not be bound together with unbelievers, King James says, unequally yoked. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness and what fellowship has light with darkness? The word be here is the word ginomai. which means to come into a new state of being. In other words, what he's saying is don't become or initiate or get yourself into an unequal yokeness with someone who is not a believer.

The verb to cause to be generated. Now, when you first read this, you think, well, he's trying to tell you to come out of a relationship you're already in. No, that's not what he's saying. He's saying don't even get into one. Be aware. It's used with great latitude, literally, figuratively, and intensively. And it's imperative, which means it's a command. Imperative mode means command. It's present tense, right now. And it's middle or passive deponent voice occurring in the passive middle voice, but with active voice meaning. In other words, it means, don't do this. That's really what it says. Just don't do this.

First Corinthians 5.9 tells us, I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with immoral people. Same thing. Ephesians 5-7 tells us, therefore, do not be partakers with them, do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but instead even expose them. In 1 John 1-6, John says, if we say that we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.

The figure, which the paragraph itself is obviously taken from the law, which forbade hooking together on a yoke. You know, a yoke starts out with just a big piece of wood, but I'll show you a picture of one in a minute. It means that you put your head in and you allow yourself to be hooked up to somebody else and you can't get loose. But you decided to go there. There's a lot of application. People want to talk about marriage, but there's a lot more. Next week we'll talk a lot about the applications. We're not going to talk a lot about that today.

So, in Deuteronomy 22.10, starting in 9, some admonitions from the Old Testament.

You shall not sow your vineyard with two kinds of seeds, or all the produce of the seed which you have sown and the increase of the vineyard will become defiled. You shall not plow with an ox and a donkey bound together. You shall not wear material of mixed wool and linen." Today, that's not in our neighborhood with the Hasidic Jews. You won't wear wool mixed with synthetics.

So there's an example right there of an ox being hooked to a donkey. But this word, don't become bound together, is two Greek words put together, heterozygeo. And hetero just means don't be bound to someone of a different kind. Different kind is important. And yoked is just, that word zygous is just a log, I guess you would say it. So when he says, don't plow with an ox or with a donkey, it shows that the reason is, is that they're different. They're a different kind of animal.

So when the Word of God tells us, don't be bound to an unbeliever in Greek, It talks about a believer is a man of faith. Believers have a position of responsibility as sons to the father founded on God's sovereign will and operation. And they have a moral character appearing upon and flowing out of a relationship which provides just ground for God's public acknowledgment of us as sons. William Kelly. So you have a believer and a non-believer. What you really have is someone who walks by faith and someone who doesn't. Their whole value system is different. And it's not that one might be conservative and one might be liberal. That's not it. One might be spiritual and the other one may be totally carnal and doesn't have the capacity to understand spirituality.

And here's the problem with that as a believer. God can't fully and publicly acknowledge those who are unequally yoked together. Why not? For were He to do so, it would be an acknowledgement of an unequal yoke. What I found in my studies is really interesting.

If you have two unequally yoked people, one a believer, one a non-believer, where does that relationship go? Does the believer pull the other one up to Christ? Or does the non-believer pull the believer down into the world? Which one do you think happens mostly? It's the one in where the non-believer pulls the believer down back into the world.

So if I yoke myself with any of the following, I'm morally and publicly identified with them. and not with God at all. I've put myself into a position which God can't own. God doesn't own that position. So he says, for what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Partnership means share or participate in by implication to be together in any sort of an enterprise. And the word righteousness means you become in Christ all that God requires a man to be.

Second Corinthians 5.21, one of my favorite verses, that he made him who knew no sin, the Lord Jesus Christ, was made sin, the thing sin itself, on our behalf, purpose, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him. So every believer can say, not arrogantly, I am the righteousness of God in Christ. And that adds to the whole other idea, if any man be in Christ, he's a new creation. I'm in Christ. It's totally different. Never been that kind of a man before. So here is a man or woman who is righteous.

And the idea is that they are yoked to or bound to, the Greek word is lawless, anomia. It's used in a way which indicates that the meaning is being lawless or wicked, according to Vimes. Like Jim said, the obvious answer to all of these rhetorical questions is That doesn't go together. That doesn't work. But you know what? Think about how many times you and I have been unequally yoked to something or someone in the world in some fashion.

And then he says, don't have fellowship. What does fellowship of light have to do with darkness? The word fellowship here is the word that we use koinonia a lot. Our Bible study groups are really koinonia groups. We all have something in common. We're partners in it. We're involved in it. And we fellowship around it. And believers are called light. We're the sons of light. Luke 16, 8. Not merely because we have received a revelation from God, but because in the new birth, we have received the spiritual capacity for light.

Matthew 6.22 says the eye is the lamp of the body. Then if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light. The contrast to that is darkness. And actually this word just means physical darkness.

Hebrews 12.10 says, For you are not come to a mountain that can be touched, and to a blazing fire, and to the darkness, and gloom, and a whirlwind. We didn't come to that.

We came to light. And you know, when we studied the Gospel of John, and John the Baptist had a specific mission. He was a forerunner of Christ. He was to announce to the world, and especially to the Jews, that the Savior was here. And we're talking about the Son of God, who is light Himself, has come into the world, right?

But if you come into a room, if everybody in this room is blind, and I come in here and I start talking about light, do you know what light is? Maybe you know, I can say to you, well, the lights are on. And you say, oh, because I heard it, I agree with you. Well, that's what John the Baptist did. Light came into the world, and I better tell you about it, otherwise you won't know it. Somebody turned the lights on. So when you and I become a believer, the lights go on. And this says, you should not be in partnership with someone in darkness. What do you have to do with them? What do they have to do with you? Because you're in the light and they're in darkness. So, what's interesting here though, this in no way bars for us to participate in the good of all, or especially seek salvation to anyone. It's quite the opposite.

The truer the separation in Christ, the more forcibly can the grace be preached to the world as being lost, and that Christ is their Savior. If I'm a believer living in darkness, my message isn't effective, not at all. Righteousness was never looked for in a saint. Righteousness was ever looked for in a saint. Light now that Christ has been revealed is characteristic of the Christian. People should see the light in you.

John 3.19 says, And this is the judgment, that light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light, for their deeds were evil. Think about that for a minute. Here you are, a believer who loves the light, and you got yourself hooked up with someone who loves the darkness. I mean, how is that going to survive?

Or in 321, he who doesn't, the truth comes to the light, so that his deeds can be clearly seen, that they have been done in God. We want everyone to see. So he says in verse 15, and what harmony has Christ with Belial? And what has a believer in common with an unbeliever? This word harmony is a really cool word. It's the word we get symphony from.

I was thinking about when John was in a concert band at Denver Christian in middle school. They didn't have a whole lot of synchronization. It was painful to go to those concerts. But by the time that they got to junior and senior high, they were great. probably one of the best bands around, concert bands. They were in sync.

So that's what this word means. So what does the Lord Jesus Christ himself have in common with this Belial? Belial is an interesting word. It originally meant hopeless or hopelessly ruined. It has a meaning of also extreme wickedness and distraction and the latter indicating the destiny of a former person. In the period between the Old and New Testament, it adopted the meaning of Satan. So what does the Lord Jesus Christ have in harmony with Satan?

Nothing. There isn't anything. So it's strange, it's even treasonous, I think, if one has taken Christ as his yoke to accept also that of the world, which is the world that rejected your Savior and crucified Him. But you know, we have a tendency to want to sort of slide over there. If we see an opportunity or we see a benefit to us, one of my favorite sayings is, we'll put a little holy water on it and do it. The problem is that the Word of God tells us we don't have any fellowship there. We don't have any synchronization.

Or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever? It is the prevention of every evil in connection for a Christian. And this calls for a thorough clearance from all, and no wonder since the Christian has Christ as his life. righteousness and hope, even now by the Spirit, able to behold His glory without a veil. So here you are, or here I am. All of this wonderful, gracious news that we read about, especially in Paul and John, about the ability to behold the glory of the Lord, to see things that are not readily available or seen by those who are not spiritually awake, and the grace and the blessings that we have, then we seek Christ.

And here we are in some sort of communion with someone who doesn't have any of that. If you do not seek Christ and you're of the world, what do you seek? You seek the world. We as believers really seek anything but that. Common means to take part in.

Colossians 1.12 tells us, giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us. Or that King James, I like that kind of interesting phrase, has made us meet to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. So we're even called the saints of light. And we share in the inheritance of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And Luke 10, 42, but only one thing is necessary for Mary has chosen the good part. Same word is common. She chose the good part and it won't be taken away from her. You know the story about Mary and Martha. Martha was really busy working, doing stuff for the Lord, hoping that she would please Him. And Mary didn't do anything but sit down and absorb what He had to say. Which one's the best one? Sitting at His feet and learning of Him.

That's the best part. So these two words here probably identify it as easy as anything. A believer is a person of faith. They're a person that trusts and can be trusted. And the Greek word is pistos. If you want to make it a negative word, just put an A in front of us. And now this means a negative participle with faith without Christian faith, a pistos. So it's pretty simple right here that these two people, one of faith and one isn't.

The figure with which the paragraph opens is obviously taken from the law which prohibited yoking together with dissimilar animals, an ox and a donkey. Deuteronomy 22. It is not now the Jew severed from the Gentiles like we talked about before, but is the Christian separate from the world. from the world in every shape and every degree, every principle, every motive, every interest, every way, are not only different, but they're opposed to the things of Christ. What common ground is possible under those circumstances?

There isn't any. Faith is the life breath of a believer, of a Christian. And His only asserted power is the Holy Spirit, whom the world can't receive as neither seeing nor knowing Him. And He works to reduce every thought, as we said, into the obedience of Christ and absolute judgment of the world and its prince. It's hard. I know it's hard because the world is always encroaching on us.

There's always something The bait is being dangled that this is okay to do. Nobody's watching. It's all right to satisfy this desire of the flesh. According to these verses, it's not. How does a believer come to the point where Christ does everything to him? Where He wouldn't want to go to darkness just because he is in the light and loves the light and loves the Lord Jesus and doesn't want to do anything to cause that light to go out. That's what our life is all about, to grow in the knowledge and grace of the Lord Jesus, to have this growing intimacy with Him. He is the one that becomes so attractive to us that these other things are not that important.

And even though we doubt like I have in my life. Well, if I come out and I do what I think the Lord is calling me to do, how am I going to survive? How am I going to feed my family? How am I going to do this and how am I going to do that? Like God isn't going to take care of me? You know, the doubt is amazing. God has promised that he will never leave us or forsake us, no matter what it looks like.

So, in verse 16, he says, what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God. Agreement is what's the disposition or the sentiment in company with or in accord with agreement of what? The temple, which is the innermost part of the temple or shrine, In the Jewish case, it would be the Holy of Holies, and that's where the Shekinah glory dwelled.

And idols. What's an idol? I mean, there's lots of things in idols that we like to look at idols as things from the Old Testament where people had little statues or whatever they did. But you know what we idolize? these little pieces of paper that have pictures of presidents on them. We love those things. We want more of those. Or we idolize warm weather in a sandy beach somewhere. Or we idolize the recognition we get from the worldly system that we live in. All of these subtle things do what?

They're all idols. And the problem with idols, Paul talks about idols. He said they're all dead. They're all made out of wood or clay or something and they have no life in them. And yet we treasure them. You know, I got a car on the driveway. Is it my idol? Might be. I better sell it and get a better one if it's going to be my idol. Point being really kind of simple.

First Corinthians 3.16 says, Do you not know that you are the temple of God?

That the Spirit of God dwells in you? Do we not know that we are the inner sanctuary where God lives and dwells in each one of us? Answer, yeah, we do know that. 619 says, 1 Corinthians 619, or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? In detail we can be stronger. What can be stronger than this rhetoric? If we just by faith accept the fact that we're not our own, we belong to the Lord, and He indwells us. The God of the universe indwells us.

If you look at the points we've been going through, Paul points to the radical difference of principles, whether they're high or low ones, of righteousness and lawlessness, of light and darkness. And then he points to the character of the two heads of these kingdoms, Christ or Belial. And then he contrasts the adherents and the followers, believers or unbelievers. And lastly, he deals with the place of God's temple, contrasted with idols. So in all the forms, The life inward and outward is embraced so as to exclude alliances with the world and claim the saints holy for Christ apart from the world.

Now, I'm going to deal next week with how to be in the world and not of it, because I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, oh, I've got to go quit my job and I better get rid of all these. No, we'll talk about that next week. He says, I will dwell in them and walk among them and I will be their God and they'll be my people. So the first one is from Leviticus 26. I will walk among you. I will be your God and you shall be my people. In Jeremiah 32, he says, they shall be my people and I will be their God. In Ezekiel 37, he says, my tabernacle also shall be with them. Indeed, I will be their God and they will be my people.

What's interesting is that I don't think we realize what an incredible testimony for a believer who is separated from the world. Separation is a witness to the power of God. If believers only remembered what persons we are, who are we? and not what they ought to be, we could not associate or be yoked with unbelievers. We've talked about this a lot, I think, over the years in our classes.

Who am I in Christ? What does it mean to be a son of God? What have I been, Ephesians says, I've been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Do I know what they are? It's something, the power that's involved in just who I am in Christ is overwhelmingly opposing the world. So we should remember as believers and carry about the sense that we are in perfect contrast to the world. We have nothing in common with it morally. The world's joys are not ours. Its interests are not ours. We are in a new relationship.

What do we get to do? We get to behold the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. The world can't do that. So if I make a friend of a non-believer, I get yoked up with them. The things that are so precious to me, the things that are filling my heart, with divine light are actually repulsive to them. I'm beholding the glory of the Lord. What are they doing? They're beholding the glory of man.

If believers go on with an unequal yoke, they've really forgotten who they are and where they are. We are totally different persons from anyone else, and we should always remember that. Amos 3, 3 Old Testament says, can two walk together except they be agreed? So Paul says, again, I will dwell in them, walk among them, and I'll be their God and they shall be my people. Is it right to be courteous to everybody? Yep. Is it right to be kind and ready to serve? Yep. Am I to be repulsive? Nope.

But here it is, the idea of yokeness, not whether I have a good relationship with somebody, somebody in the world. This yoking means that I'm attached. I can't get loose. Charles Coates said, I think we ought to test all of our companionships by whether there is a real desire after Christ. We ought not to make companions otherwise. We are in Christ Jesus and we are new creations. He says, now can you imagine a new creation person being equally yoked with an old creation person? Can you imagine Adam being yoked to Christ with who Adam is? It would be like yoking the ox and the donkey together. The first division amongst believers, if you look in the Old Testament, there was a division between Abraham and Lot. One liked to live in the hilltop with God. The other one wanted to live down in the plains, in the city. Division.

It's better to depart company than to go on with those in the world. Then we should come out with dignity. Let's say you're coming out of a yoked relationship. If you study Exodus 13, when the Jews left Egypt, I know you all saw the movie The Ten Commandments, right? And it looked like a big mob was leaving. But in fact, they left like an army. They marched in rows, they were well organized, and out they went. And that's the way we ought to be out of the world. Well organized. Isaiah 52 says, Depart, depart, and go from there. Touch not the unclean, go out from the midst of her. Be you clean that bear the vessels of Jehovah, for you shall not go out with haste.

Now, this verse says, I will be their God. When we get down to verse 18, he's going to say, and I will be their father. Much different. It is all of the Father's care, all of His care, as we prove in our experience. God has His temple in the saints and has the most tender parental care for us, even the really weak ones.

Sometimes we feel we're in really tough trying circumstances of a kind that no one has had before. I was going to ask for a show of hands there. Is your trial worse than the one the person sitting next to you? What was it? Hal Molloy told me one time that he was going to put two people together that had varied similar circumstances and they thought they could fellowship together and work themselves through it. The problem was that each one of them thought that their trial was worse than the other one. So that's all they talked about.

My trial is worse than yours. Sometimes we feel we are trying circumstances, the kind that when no one has had been in before, well, there's a special parental care. If a saint is in a special need, he gets special care. Paul lost everything when he was converted. His parents were wealthy. They could afford to send him on a long journey to Jerusalem and have him go to school there. If you were a Jew, that's where you went. You went to Jerusalem. And then he studied under Gamaliel, which was the guy. He was the doctor of the law.

And Paul said about all of that, I account of whom I have suffered the loss of all things. he might have said to him, you must have felt that Paul must have hurt a lot when you had to get rid of all those things. And he'd say back to us, I counted them all but filth.

So in closing, we are already yoked to the Lord Jesus Christ. And what a privilege that is for us. And like Paul being, yoked to the Praetorian Guard, they got converted because they were yoked to Paul, because Paul knew who he was yoked to spiritually, who was the resurrected, glorified Christ, and it was his job, it was his passion, it was his life to tell everyone about who Christ was, either by the way he lived and acted, or by what he had to say.

So let's close. Father, how we thank you. We thank you for the grace that we live under. We thank you that you have not only yoked us to the Lord Jesus Christ, but we are indwelt by your spirit. We are the temple. We are so united with you that we have and share the very resurrected life of your dear son, the Lord Jesus. And we pray in his precious name. Amen.