2 Corinthians 6:14-7:1 “Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, “I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Therefore go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; then I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty.” Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God.”
This last Sunday, Pastor Kyle continued in our church’s sermon series through the second Pauline Epistle to the Corinthian church. Today, farmers used modern tractors to plow fields, but prior to the invention of mechanical engines for framing equipment, beasts of burden were used to prepare the soil for crops. Two draft animals of equal size and strength could work in unison to perform the work of pulling a plow through the earth more quickly and efficiently than one, but they need a device called a yoke in order to join the faunae together to work as a team. A yoke is a wooden bar or frame by which two draft animals (such as oxen) are joined at the heads or necks for this working together.
Matthew 11:28-30 “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
What does it mean in your own heart to be yoked to Jesus, to get through this life pulling more with the Lord than we ever dreamt possible before. Pastor Kyle gave us three godly identity-forming spiritual truth. (1) God is my heavenly Father and we are His children. John 1:12-13 explains, “All who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” We were made in God’s image and our identity is in Him. So, throughout history, God has been calling His children out of something (ungodliness, oppression or wilderness) and into something better (godliness, freedom and the Promised Land). God says, “I will be a father to you,
And you shall be sons and daughters to Me.” That is foundational Theology. And only God is a perfect Father. Grasp what it is to be a child of God every day.
(2) We are temple of the living God. What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, “I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them. Once a person is born-again of the Spirit through confession of sin, repentance and belief in Jesus Christ as Savior and makes Him Lord of their life, they become a temples of God. After the Israelites escaped Egypt, He instructed them to carry and set up a temporary tent tabernacle wherever they when in the Wilderness. In this tabernacle was a curtained off room called the Holy of Hollies God would dwell with them. I will dwell among the sons of Israel and will be their God. When the Temple was built in Jerusalem, it included a curtained area called the Holy of Hollies where God dwelled among His people as the Shekinah glory of the Lord filled the house. Since, Christ’s atoning death, the physical temple and Holy of Hollies was no longer necessary.
1 Corinthians 3:16 asks, “Do you not know that you are a temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?” Jesus Christ, the Lamb without blemish, came to live the sinless life that we were meant to live, he suffers the punishment for sin that every one of us deserved, was the only one eligible to be the perfect sacrifice in our place, then he dies the death that every fallen in sin human being should have died. Upon the death of Jesus on the Cross. the vail in the Jerusalem Temple was torn from top to bottom by the hand of God to symbolize that the presence of God had shifted so that God’s people could be the new temple of the living God. Jesus established that on the Cross. God’s Moral Law carries over, and God wants holiness in His temple, inside of us.
Let's continue Pastor Kyle's message on being yoked to Christ in the next post.
In Christ, Brian
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