Travels again to 2 Corinthians
chapter 6. 2 Corinthians chapter 6 and tonight
beginning in verse 11 through the end of this chapter. O ye
Corinthians, our mouth is open unto you, our heart is enlarged. You're not straightened in us.
but you are straightened in your own bowels. Now, for a recompense
in the same, I speak as unto my children, be ye also enlarged. Be ye not unequally yoked together
with unbelievers. For what worship hath righteousness
with unrighteousness? And what communion hath light
with darkness? And what concord hath Christ
with Bilal? Or what part hath he that believeth
with an infidel? And what agreement hath 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. I will be their God, and they
shall be my people. Wherefore, come out from among
them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean
thing, and I will receive you, and will be a father unto you,
and you shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty. For the last two Wednesday evenings,
I've begun the message as we've looked at the first 10 verses
in this chapter. With these words, every believer,
every child of God is engaged in the work of the ministry.
In one way or the other, every child of God is engaged in the
work of the ministry, either through preaching, teaching,
praying, giving, and witnessing. We all have the same goal, and
that is the glory of God and the salvation of sinners. But yet I'm convinced, and I've
said this on both occasions, that the first ten verses the
apostle is especially speaking to those who are set apart to
the ministry. Remember the scripture says that
God hath given gifts unto men, and then he names those gifts,
which are apostles and prophets and pastors and teachers, evangelists. Now, We see in verse 1 the word
workers. We. We. It begins with we. This is the reason I said everyone.
Every child of God. We. We are all workers together
with God. This applies especially to ministers,
those who are set apart to the gospel ministry. And we have
seen how that Paul exhorted those not to receive the grace of God
in vain. And I made the point that the
grace of God which brings salvation cannot be received in vain. When God in His grace and mercy
sets out to save a sinner, He saves the sinner. His grace is
effectual. It accomplishes what God has
intended from old eternity to accomplish. But this grace We're
talking about the gifts that God has given unto men for ministry. We should not receive the grace
of God in vain. And I pointed out that scripture
of the parable that our Lord gave of the workers that He called,
the man who was going to take a journey. divided different
talents or minas to three different men, I believe it was. And then
he said, occupy till I come. And these gifts, the grace of
God that God has given men, we are to use, we're to give ourselves
to the work of the ministry. That is our responsibility. And then we saw last week, Paul
gave an example of himself by nine paradoxes. And remember
that last one, he said, as having nothing, verse 10, as having
nothing, yet possessing all things. As a minister, as a preacher
of the gospel, the apostle Paul, like the other apostles, you
remember when Peter and John went up to the temple, and that
man was laying there at the gate, beautiful. And they asked alms
of them, and they said, Silver and gold have I none, but such
as I have, give I unto thee. In the name of Jesus, rise up
and walk. As having nothing, and yet possessing
all things. When a person, when you have
Christ, you have everything. And if you don't have Christ,
it doesn't matter what else a person has. How much or what else a
person has in this world, he has nothing. But in Christ, we
have everything. Now tonight, you see, we begin
a passage of Scripture where no longer is he speaking just
to ministers. Oh, Corinthians. Now he's speaking
to everyone in the church there at Corinth, the congregation. Oh, Corinthians. And we're going
to go through these verses. I could not come up with any
kind of an outline. So we will just look at them
verse by verse. And I think that's best. Verse
number 11. Oh, Corinthians. Our mouth is
opened unto you, our heart is enlarged. Now what does that
mean when the Apostle Paul says, our mouth is opened unto you
and our heart is enlarged? Well, first of all, the phrase
to open the mouth in Scripture means to speak, to speak. For instance, in Matthew chapter
5, beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord Jesus Christ
went up and sat, and the scripture says, and he opened his mouth
and taught them saying. Now here in this context, it's
emphatic. The Apostle Paul speaks openly. Our mouth is open unto you. In other words, I've spoken plainly,
I've spoken clearly unto you. I've spoken freely unto you. Just as he told the church at
Ephesus, or the elders of the church at Ephesus, this is recorded
in Acts chapter 20, he said, I kept back nothing that was
profitable unto you. My mouth was open unto you. I freely, clearly, plainly opened
my mouth and spoke to you the word of God. And in that same
place, he said, I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel
of God. I've spoken freely. My mouth
is open unto you. I have not shunned to declare
anything. I haven't hidden anything from
you. I've spoken freely and openly
and clearly unto you. And then secondly, he said, His
heart was enlarged toward them. Notice that. Our heart is enlarged
toward you. In other words, the love that
he had for them. It was by the enlargement of
his heart, his love and his concern for them caused him to speak
freely. caused him to tell them, he didn't
hide anything from them. Anything that was profitable
for these Corinthians, he spoke it. He didn't, he wasn't like
some of these so-called preachers today, you know, that they claim
they believe in what we call the sovereign grace of God, but
they don't preach it. They don't preach it. They're
afraid it's going to offend someone. Now Paul, this is exactly what
he's saying. Our mouth is open unto you. As
God has delivered unto us, so we have delivered the truth unto
you. And our heart is enlarged toward
you. The reason I've done this is
out of love. Out of love and concern for you. His speaking freely to them,
it included both admonitions and exhortations. And he did
have to admonish them because of some of their practices. He
had an enlarged heart. He had room in his heart, as
it were, to embrace all of them. And he's going to say next about
them being straightened, but if a place is straightened, that
means it's small, it's little, there's not much room to move
around. Paul is saying my heart is enlarged. I have room to embrace
all of you in my arms because I love you. And that's the reason
I have spoken freely to you. I've not kept back anything that
would be profitable unto you. And then in verse 12, he said,
you're not straightened in us, but you are straightened in your
own bowels, or in your own heart, your own feeling. The bottom
line, this verse number 12, the bottom line, as we would say
today is, Paul tells them, the one of love is on your side,
not on mine. The one of love is on your side. It's not on mine. You're straightened
in your heart. And it was from these outside
influences, false teachers that had come among them. And you
know what they tried to do was to discredit the Apostle Paul.
They tried to say, really he's not an apostle. He wasn't one
of the original twelve. They tried to discredit his apostleship,
his office, and his ministry. Plus, it was by you allowing
that person, he would remind them, your heart's straightened
toward us. It's not full of love toward
us. I felt it necessary. because of your actions, to write
to you, and tell you to deal with that man who was guilty
of incest. Now that was offensive, no doubt,
to this church. Look back in 1 Corinthians chapter
five. I know you're familiar with this,
but 1 Corinthians chapter five. Verse 1, It is reported commonly that
there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not
so much as named among the Gentiles, that one should have his father's
wife. Now this is a Christian church.
This is a body of believers, of those who profess to follow
the Lord, to be His disciples, and they were. And yet, Paul
said, it's commonly reported that there's a man in your assembly
that is guilty of such a wicked sin that even the Gentiles would
not allow this, that a man should have his father's wife, and you
are puffed up and have not rather mourned that you have, that hath
done this deed might be taken away from among you. It seemed
as though they were proud of grace. They believed so much
in grace that they could allow this man to continue. Remember,
he was accused of teaching that. He mentions that in the letter
of Romans, that he was teaching, let us sin that grace may abound. For I verily as absent in body,
but present in spirit, have judged already. Now, what he says here
to these people clearly shows him to be an apostle. There's
no pastor, no pastor who has any authority to write to another
church and tell them what they should do with one who is a part
of their assembly. An apostle had that authority
and he exercises this authority. I verily as absent in body but
present in spirit have judged already and so I were present
concerning him that hath done This deed, in the name of our
Lord Jesus Christ, when you are gathered together, and my spirit,
with the power of our Lord Jesus Christ, to deliver such and one
unto Satan, for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit
may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. Your glorying is
not good. They were glorying in this. They
just were so strong in believing in the grace of God. Your glory
is not good. Know you not that a little leaven
leaveneth a whole lump? Now back to our text. As I said,
verse 12, you're not straightened in us. You're not straightened
in us. The bottom line here is the one
of love is not on my side. It's on your side. You're straightened
in your heart. And this is because no doubt
of outside influences, false teachers, that have made you
doubt and question my authority as an apostle of Jesus Christ. Plus, by you allowing that man
to continue with you to live in incest, remain in your fellowship,
that I had to act. Now we've already seen that this
man repented. And that's always the purpose
of what we would call church discipline. Church discipline
is for the good of the person being disciplined for his good. Now this man, we don't know what
they did. We're not told that, but we do
know that this man repented. But then there was this other
problem. After he had repented, some of
them did not want to receive him back into fellowship. And I've run into this over the
years. When people, we all make mistakes, don't we? We all make
mistakes. We all sin. But I don't care
what kind of mistake we make, what kind of a sin we're guilty
of, there has to be, I'm talking about for believers, there has
to be a remedy. And the remedy is repentance
and forgiveness. Now that's just so. Verse 13. Now he says, For a recompense
in the same, I speak as unto my children, Be you also enlarged. He said, I want you to pay me
back in kind. In kind. As a recompense in the
same. Be you enlarged. Your heart is
straightened. My heart is enlarged towards
you. Now, he says, recompense me the
same. My heart is enlarged toward you
in love. Now, recompense me with the same. And that is your heart. It should be enlarged in love
toward me. And Paul gives the example. He
says, I speak to you as children. And isn't it right? Doesn't nature
itself tell us? That parents love their children,
provide for their children, raise their children. Isn't it just
natural? Isn't it just right that those
children recompense their parents with love, with respect, with
honor? Of course it is. And Paul, he
was the spiritual father of these people. He's the one who'd taken
the gospel to Corinth. And as I looked at these verses
and read over the two times we read about the heart being enlarged,
I wanted to tell myself and I wanted to tell all of us here tonight,
we need to pray, all of us, that our hearts would be enlarged.
That's something we need to pray about all the time, that our
hearts would not be straightened, that our hearts would be enlarged,
filled with love toward God, first of all, and love towards
His people, towards one another. Now, verse 14. Be ye not unequally
yoked together with unbelievers, for what fellowship hath righteousness
with unrighteousness, and what communion hath light with darkness?
In this verse, the apostle gives a general principle, and he begins
with a metaphor. The metaphor is, of course, of
animals being yoked together. And they're yoked together for
a job, a work, something that they are to do. And so they must
walk together, they must pull in the same direction. When I
was a young boy, I visited my uncle many summers, and he lived
up in the country around Smithfield, Texas. And back in those days,
this would have been in the early 50s, maybe late 40s, people still
used horses and wagons, I mean, and buggies too, I guess. But
I learned that when you have two horses, hitched to a wagon. There's that tree in the middle
and then those chains. They're both to pull at the same
time. And the only time you use the
rein to maybe tap the back of that horse, one of the horses,
when you realize that one horse is doing all the work, the other
horse is holding back. And so you kind of give them
a slap on the back and they pick up the slack, you know, they
do, they're working together, they're yoked together. That's
the reason you yoke animals together, isn't it? You can't, it cannot
work if one animal is walking and the other animal is not walking. If one animal is pulling in one
direction and the other animal is pulling in another direction.
Well, what Paul is saying here is that God's children and unbelievers
do not walk in the same direction. We do not walk in the same direction
as unbelievers. There can be no harmony. We do
not have the same goals. We do not pull in the same direction. We are not agreed on the same
vital matters. You and I, those of us here tonight
who know Christ, we are agreed on vital matters. We agree that
this is the Word of God, don't we? We agree that there's one
Savior, one Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. We agree in the fact that the
blood of Jesus Christ is the only agent that cleanses from
sin. And we agree that all men by
nature are sinners. There's other vital points. I
can't go through all of them, but we are in agreement, right?
We are agreed. And here's an unbeliever. He
doesn't agree on these things. He says, well, he said, you know,
we're going down different roads, but we're all going to end up
at the same place. We all worship the same God.
Well, sin isn't all that bad. And yet you and I know it was
so bad that nothing but the sacrifice of the Son of God could take
away sin. What fellowship hath righteousness
with unrighteousness? There can be no harmony, be no
harmony between them because We're not agreed with them. In
Amos, there's a verse which says, can two walk together except
they be agreed? Except they be agreed? A believer
and an unbeliever. Now, this is not to be understood
as forbidding believers to have any contact and any interaction
with unbelievers. As Paul said in the first letter
of Corinthians, If he had been teaching that, that would mean
that we would have to go out of this world. You folks here
tonight, many of you, you go to work every day and there's
people that work alongside of you who are unbelievers. You
go to the grocery store, you interact with people, your neighbors,
your friends. He's not forbidding believers
to have any contact with unbelievers. The common activities of life,
such as working, buying, and selling, is not what he means
here. Remember, our Lord said this.
If you look back to Matthew chapter 5, He said this about His disciples. In verse 13, he said, you are
the salt of the earth. Well, if believers are the salt
of the earth, we have to be mixed in, right, with unbelievers.
There's contact, yes, but there's no fellowship. You are the salt
of the earth. And then in verse 14, he says,
you are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill
cannot be hid. So when the Lord tells believers
that we are the salt of the world and the light, we let our light
shine before men that they may see our good works and glorify
our Father which is in heaven. When he says in our text tonight,
be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers, he's not saying
that we have no interaction with unbelievers. The only way that
would be possible would be to go out of the Our Lord in His
prayer said we are in the world but not of the world. What He
does show us here is the impossibility. It's not a maybe. It's not a
maybe. The impossibility of fellowship
or communion between these things that differ. And He especially
speaks of light and darkness. Light and darkness. In the Word
of God, light is an emblem of knowledge, of holiness, and blessedness. While darkness represents error,
sin, and misery. And it is impossible to combine
light and darkness. It's just an impossibility. For
God's children to have intimate fellowship with unbelievers,
it is impossible. There is no fellowship. There
can be no fellowship. Verse 15. You know, this is used
many times in dealing with marriage and going into business. and
things of that nature. And that's rightly so, but that's
not the only two areas that this speaks about. It's everything.
There is no fellowship. There can be no fellowship between
light and darkness. So don't be unequally yoked with
unbelievers. And then verse 15, and what concord
hath Christ with Belal? Or what part hath he that believeth
with an infidel. This is the only time in the
New Testament that we read of Belial. It's found many times
in the Old Testament, and of course it means the devil. What
possible fellowship, the word concord means part, what possible
fellowship can Christ have with the devil? The answer to that is easy, isn't
it? There is no fellowship between
Christ and the devil. You know, the devils, they recognize
this truth. Let me show you that in a couple
of places. You look back to Mark, chapter one. The devils recognize
that there can not be any fellowship between them and Christ. Christ
is holy. Christ is righteous. And they're
everything but that. Mark chapter 1 in verse 21 says, And they went into Capernaum,
and straightway on the sabbath day he entered into the synagogue
and taught. And they were astonished at his
doctrine, for he taught them as one that had authority, and
not as the scribes. And there was in their synagogue
a man with an unclean spirit. And he cried out, saying, Let
us alone. What have we to do with thee,
thou Jesus of Nazareth? Art thou come to destroy us?
I know who thou art, the Holy One of God. Give me no fellowship,
no part, no concord between Satan and Christ. And then look at this, in verse
16, this wonderful truth that we find in other places, but
once again, that believers are temples of the Holy Spirit. And
what agreement hath 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 I will be their God, and they
shall be my people. Now a temple in the scriptures
is not simply a building that's consecrated to God, but it is
one in which God dwells. When they set up the tabernacle,
the Spirit of the Lord filled the tabernacle. When Solomon
dedicated the temple in Jerusalem, the Spirit of God filled the
temple. Heaven is called God's temple
because it is God's dwelling place. The Lord Jesus Christ
spoke of His body, this temple, because in Him dwelt the fullness
of the Godhead bodily. And in John 14, our Lord has
promised His disciples, and thus you and I, those of us who know
Him, that He would come, and the Spirit of God would come,
and the Father would come, and we will make our abode with Thee. our bodies, temples of the Holy
Spirit. And notice in this text, I want
to point this out, Paul quotes a scripture which
shows that individually, individually, verse 16, and ye, individually,
you are the temple, but the temple here is singular. Ye, you Corinthians. The Spirit
of God dwells individually in every believer and in the church
of the Lord Jesus Christ. I believe, yes, even in a local
church. Remember where, Revelation chapter
1, where John saw the Lord Jesus Christ walking? He wasn't walking
out here in the world. He was walking in the midst of
the candlesticks, which represent the church. Where has he promised
to be? Where two or three are gathered
together in my name. This is a temple of God. And then notice in that scripture
at the end, we recognize this as part of the new covenant.
I will be their God and they shall be my people. And God being
our God, in that statement, there's so much there. There's so much
there. The promise, I will be their
God and they shall be my people, contains more than it has ever
entered into our hearts to see. When God promises to be our God,
He promises to be our protector. He promises to be our benefactor. He promises to be our portion. He promises to be the object
of love and confidence. I will be their God and they
shall be my people. That one promise of the new covenant,
if that's the only promise we had, that would be sufficient
to carry us through this world. If God is your God, what more
could you need? What more could anyone need if
God is your God? And yet, that's what he promises
to be. Now, in closing, these last two
verses. Wherefore, come out from among
them, and be you separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean.
And I will receive you, and will be a father unto you, and you
shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty. It seems
here the apostle is doing what he has done in other places.
He's not quoting any verse in particular verbatim, but he is
giving a general meaning of a number of verses put together. The nation
of Israel, in the Old Testament, the nation of Israel was a chosen
people and they were commanded to be a separate people. They were commanded to be a separate
people not to be engaged with the nations around them and the
idolatry around them. And so believers, those of us
tonight who are chosen by God and loved and called to a life
of righteousness, we must separate ourselves from spiritual superstition,
from will worship, and those things that concern the soul.
And he, a believer, will separate himself from the evil manners
and customs of the world, and he will conduct himself becoming
of the gospel of the grace of God. He will, a believer, will
separate himself from wicked and immoral persons, desiring
not to be exposed to wickedness. As the Apostle Paul said in 1
Corinthians 15, Evil companions corrupt good manners. Now, this verse here, he is not
our father. Be sure to recognize this. He is not our father because
we separate ourselves from worldly associates. But we separate ourselves
from them because he is our father. I will be a father unto you. The best earthly father that
this world has ever known cannot compare with him. He has promised
to meet our every need. He has promised never to leave
us, never to forsake us. And the Apostle Peter, he said
this, casting all your care upon him, for he careth for you. I will be a father unto you."
What a blessing, right? To have God Almighty as our Father,
our Heavenly Father. May the Lord bless this word
to all of us here tonight.