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Sermons

June 7/8, 2014

Homecoming and Holiness

Jason Meyer | 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.—2 Corinthians 6:14–7:1

Introduction

A Cautionary Tale

Let me tell you a story. God created not just a person (Adam), but a people (Israel). He gave them different names to try to communicate how special they were to him (son, bride, treasured possession). He called them to be a holy nation. He rescued them from slavery and oppression. And if this were not enough, he even gave them his very own special land. He commanded them to evict the unholy nations that were living there because they were so bad that they had polluted the place that was supposed to be his sanctuary where he would dwell. He warned them repeatedly to keep distinct and stay separate from the nations. “Do not be like them,” he said over and over again. Later, he had to evict them. Some went away to Assyria and some went away to Babylon. Why? What happened?

You can almost guess just by hearing the warnings. They had a strong impulse to be like the nations around them. They did not want to remain distinct, separate, and holy. They became like the unholy nations and so Israel was judged just like those nations and kicked out of God’s land.

But while the people were living in this exile (this state of being away from home in a foreign land), the prophets predicted a coming day when God would work in such a spectacular way that his people would go home again. There would be a new exodus (deliverance from slavery to sin) and a new return from exile. It would all come as part of a new covenant. What warning does God give his new covenant people? Stay distinct as God’s holy people! Don’t become like those around you and sacrifice your unique identity. Doesn’t Paul command make even more sense now? “Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers.” (2 Corinthians 6:16) Let’s look at the new covenant story that this text tells. It tells us of four scenes in the new covenant story. First, it tells of a new covenant promise. Second, it gives a new covenant command. Thirdly, there is a new covenant welcome, and lastly, there is a new covenant walk.

The New Covenant Promise: God’s Presence With His People

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….”—2 Corinthians 6:16

I mentioned last week that Paul is citing Leviticus 26:11–12 in these verses. Leviticus 26 is an old covenant passage in which God is describing the life that is possible for his people in his land. 

In Leviticus 26:3–4, God says, “If you walk in my statutes and observe my commandments and do them, then I will give you your rains in their season, and the land shall yield its increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit.” They must keep the land pure because He will make it His dwelling place. Then he says, “I will make my dwelling among you, and my soul shall not abhor you. And I will walk among you and will be your God, and you shall be my people.” (Leviticus 26:11–12)

But if they break his commandments, he threatens terrible things (Leviticus 26:14–39). The most terrifying is that He will not walk with them, but against them (Leviticus 26:28). If they persist in their impurity, he will exile them from the land. He says, “And I will scatter you among the nations, and I will unsheathe the sword after you, and your land shall be a desolation, and your cities shall be a waste.” (Leviticus 26:33)

After a lengthy, detailed, terrifying depiction of judgment, Leviticus 26:40 and the following verses promise that God will restore them after they are exiled. When will that happen?

Paul’s precise wording in his quotation actually points to the merging of two texts together. I think he is not only using Leviticus but also there is a repetition of the covenant promise found in Ezekiel 37. The pronouns of Paul’s text match the pronouns of the Ezekiel. The context here in Ezekiel is very important: Ezekiel 36 is the promise of the new covenant. Ezekiel 37 testifies to the Spirit’s power to bring life to the dead. Ezekiel 37:21 says that God will bring them back from exile in Babylon. Now listen to verses 26–27.

I will make a covenant of peace with them. It shall be an everlasting covenant with them. And I will set them in their land and multiply them, and will set my sanctuary in their midst forevermore. My dwelling place shall be with them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.—Ezekiel 37:26–27

These promises are so compelling that there is no way that God’s people can stay in exile. They are called home and therefore they must go.

The New Covenant Command: Come Home! 

“Therefore go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing….”—2 Corinthians 6:17a

This passage is quoted from Isaiah 52:11. The call to depart is the call to leave the foreign land of Babylon and return to Jerusalem. They must purify themselves because they have the golden vessels of the Lord for the sanctuary.

Depart, depart, go out from there; touch no unclean thing; go out from the midst of her; purify yourselves, you who bear the vessels of the LORD.—Isaiah 52:11

From where are they departing? They are departing from a place of slavery and subjugation. He uses the language of Exodus 12 (haste and flight) and says this time it will be different. No leaving in the middle of the night in a hurry. The Lord will be the leader and the rear guard.

For you shall not go out in haste, and you shall not go in flight, for the LORD will go before you, and the God of Israel will be your rear guard.—Isaiah 52:12

How will they be set free from slavery? The context matters a lot here. God promises that the people will be redeemed, but not with money (Isaiah 52:3). What payment will God use to purchase them? In Isaiah 52:7, there is a messenger will bring good news of the gospel. This messenger is the suffering servant of Isaiah 52–53; He is the one who will pay the purchase price and redeem the people, not with money, but with his own suffering and death.

Because of this purchase, where do we go when we leave our former slavery? Home. What is the first thing we meet there? A Divine welcome!

The New Covenant Welcome: Welcome Home 

“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.”—2 Corinthians 6:17b–18

Paul now quotes a phrase from Ezekiel 20. Again, the context here is vitally important. God is going to bring the people out of exile and separate them from the nations. Listen to the verses immediately preceding the phrase Paul cites.

“What is in your mind shall never happen—the thought, ‘Let us be like the nations, like the tribes of the countries, and worship wood and stone.’ “As I live, declares the Lord GOD, surely with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm and with wrath poured out I will be king over you. I will bring you out from the peoples and gather [LXX: the verb for “welcome”] you out of the countries where you are scattered, with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, and with wrath poured out.”—Ezekiel 20:32–34

The context here is this: God intends that his people be purged from all the rebels and cleansed of the impurity that they have from their time among their pagan neighbors (Ezekiel 20:35–38).

Paul also quotes from 2 Samuel 7, but with an exciting twist. This promise is the Messianic promise about David’s Son. “I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son.” (2 Samuel 7:14) Here is the exciting twist in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians. He does something startling. He takes the singular “son” and makes it plural to “sons.” Not only that, but Paul expands it to the plural “sons and daughters.”

“And I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me.”—2 Corinthians 6:18

I argued last week that Paul gets the sons and daughters from Isaiah 43:6–7. The larger question here is this: How can Paul take a text about the Messiah and apply it to us? The answer is simple. Paul connects our identity with Christ’s identity. Through Christ, the Son, we become sons and daughters in God’s family. Paul meant what he said in 2 Corinthians 1:20: All the promises of God find their “Yes” of fulfillment in Christ. We are co-heirs with Christ!

Some of you may be saying, “If I am home, why doesn’t it feel like home? If we are home, why is it still so hard? Why do I still struggle so much with sin?” The answer is that we are already home in part, but not yet home in full. We live in the time before the final homecoming, and there is new covenant cleansing that we must pursue while we still live in a polluted world. We still have a journey to make.

The New Covenant Walk 

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.—2 Corinthians 7:1

“We are home already, but not home fully.” We have already come so far. Christ’s death has brought us home to God. He has not left us as orphans. We have the Holy Spirit as the comforter, and we have the promise that Christ is preparing a place for us in His Father’s house. Our journey homeward now means we must “bring holiness to completion.” 

What does it mean to bring holiness to completion? That sounds like a process and a direction––moving toward something. One clue for the completion of holiness is found in the previous phrase, “cleansing of the body and the spirit” (2 Corinthians 7:1). In other words, our completion of holiness will be to seek purity on both the outside (body) and the inside (spirit).

When some people think of sin, they immediately think of external behaviors like drugs and sex or drinking and smoking. Christians do not limit holiness to a mere external issue. The fight for holiness in a Christian moves from the outside to the inside. We start downstream with our actions and move upstream to our thoughts, attitudes, and desires. I want to build on that distinction in the application that follows.

Application

I sent out an email this week to our congregation as a courtesy, a heads-up that I was feeling convicted of the need to address, from the pulpit, some sensitive sexual issues in our society and culture right now. Some parents will need to decide if they want to their children to hear about sensitive issues like this. I will try to be discreet.

We need to know three things. First, we need to know our surroundings. Secondly, we need to know our own sin. Thirdly, we need to know our Savior

We are swimming in a Romans 1 culture, in a downstream current, and we need to know our surroundings…

We are in danger of being desensitized to the downstream current of our culture. Let me explain what I mean by the downstream current of our culture. If rebellion against God can be measured by rebellion against distinctions that God calls good, then our culture is in serious rebellion against God. Basic distinctions our Creator built into his creation are being called into question at an alarming rate. Culture is increasingly calling “bad” the things that God calls “good.”

Let’s take sexuality as an example. It has become a defining issue of cultural freedom. Sexual liberation in our country began by rejecting God’s design in the gift of sexuality. God designed sexuality to be a gift, enjoyed within marriage. It is an amazing gift when we enjoy it where and how God designed it to be enjoyed. Fire is good in a fireplace, but causes a lot of damage when it starts burning outside of the fireplace. It is good when the wood in your fireplace starts on fire, but bad when your house catches on fire or a whole forest catches on fire. Sex is similar; It is great in the confines of marriage, but it will always burn you outside of marriage. It will maim, kill and destroy.

Our culture decided that we knew better and decided to erase God’s design and distinctions with our cultural erasers. We will portray our own cultural idea of sexuality in a certain way through the media––it is good and pleasant. Often we will not let negative consequences be depicted. We will saturate our society with sexuality. We will use it to sell soap, shampoo, and even diapers. A controversy recently erupted over whether a toddler in a diaper commercial was posing too seductively. 

Not only did our culture embrace the idea that sexuality could not be confined to marriage, but it also embraced the idea that marriage could not be confined to the boundaries of a man and a woman. Same sex marriage has become a civil rights issue for many. Do you feel the current? Do you feel how far downstream we, as a culture, are already? 

Now the downstream movement is prepared to drop even further (to some it feels like a waterfall). Our culture is in the throes of eliminating the boundaries of gender altogether. A basic category created by God, that an individual is either man or woman, now becomes a choice. It doesn’t matter what gender God gave you. He doesn’t have the right to decide. You do. No boundary is upheld. No boundary is sacred. A reporter wondered if the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Coalition what the coalition would do now that there has been a widespread win of same sex marriage laws in many states. They are on record as saying that they are going to try to eliminate all gender distinctions altogether. Our culture’s definition of freedom extends to define not just one’s sexuality, but one’s sex (gender) altogether.

I challenge you to read Romans 1 and think on our culture. Do you not see our culture painted red? Paul portrays what a culture in rebellion against its Creator will do. Homosexuality in Romans 1 is a paradigm sin for Paul’s portrayal, not because it is the worst possible sin—it is not; sin is sin—but perhaps because, more clearly than other sins, it points to humanity’s rebellion against the Creator’s right to make distinctions. The Creator’s intent for our sexuality was made clear when he made one man and one woman—not two men or two women. That is why Paul in Romans 1 calls homosexuality “unnatural,” because it does not accord with nature. It does not accord with the way God made the natural world.

Let’s be very clear where Bethlehem stands on these issues, because every church will be forced to choose. There is a Southern Baptist church that is very prominent in the news right now because they are calling themselves a “third way” church on the issue of homosexuality. They want to agree to disagree and not make distinctions with each other about their differences. But agreeing to not make distinctions is making a distinct statement. You are allowing same-sex partners into membership. Those who disagree are being forced to split from the church. That is not a third way. There is no third way, as Al Mohler has recently said, because these two views are so mutually exclusive that they cannot co-exist. There is no way to agree to disagree. Either a pastor will perform a same-sex wedding and in doing so, endorse the homosexual lifestyle or the pastor will refuse to perform the wedding.

We believe God has the right to design, make distinctions, and define the boundaries through the Bible. There are only two options. You are going to put yourself above the clear teaching of Scripture in rebellion, or you are going to put yourself under it in submission. We put ourselves under God’s word in submission.

We welcome people who think differently about these things to come visit anytime. We would never say that people have to agree with us just to visit us and learn about Jesus. We always welcome people to come check out what Jesus has to say to these things. We try to give him the microphone here. We are committed to teach what God says even when it is not popular with our culture. Many people want that and respect that.

How should you interact with people who have radically different views? I will take it a step further and ask: What if they are family members? Here is one thing I have seen that helps. Sometimes family members that have radically different points of view know that we do not endorse their decisions and believe that they are not saved. It can feel like there is always hostility just beneath the surface and sometimes there are outbreaks of hostility. Sometimes it is important to turn the tables to be sure that the roles played by both people are seen. One of my favorite authors once asked his lesbian sister if she loved him and his wife even though she disliked their views on homosexuality. She said, “Of course I love you, even though I disagree strongly with your views.” He then said, “Then can I ask you to charitably believe that we can love you, even though we strongly disagree with your views?” Agreement does not have to be a prerequisite for a loving relationship. We need to try to secure the freedom to disagree and speak our convictions in loving, caring, sensitive ways.

Therefore, our outreach to a fallen world cannot be careless. If we are careless, we may naively get swept downstream thinking that we are stronger than sin. On the other hand, our outreach cannot be merciless so that we look on others, despising them and lacking compassion for them. If you are merciless, you may snidely think they are getting what they deserve. Do you deserve differently? Did you earn salvation? What we need is to be careful and merciful. The biblical way to reach out to our fallen world is to be both careful and merciful.

Two texts seem to hold this balance together really well.

Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted.—Galatians 6:1

And have mercy on those who doubt; save others by snatching them out of the fire; to others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh.—Jude 22–23

Recognize that some people have been chewed up and spit out by the world. They come to the church looking for a place to heal. Let’s not chew them up and spit them out too. Others are going to be evangelists for anti-God agendas. Don’t be naïve and do not be careless. We have to know when we may be personally tempted and when we have impressionable kids. 

What we really want to avoid is being a Romans 2 church in a Romans 1 world. We don’t want to join the unbelieving Jews of Romans 2 in their self-righteousness, finger-pointing, and hypocrisy. I want us to be a church that says, “we take all sin seriously, especially our own sin.” We need to be a Matthew 5 church that takes both the outward, downstream sin (like adultery) seriously and the internal, upstream sin (like lust in the mind and heart) seriously.

We need to know our sin and swim upstream against it…

The Christian has a different struggle than the world. We do not jump into the downstream current and just ride it. We must swim against the cultural current. This is what it means to be a Matthew 5 church. Holiness hurts and it is hard because it is upstream living. Sometimes being in a culture that lives in rebellion against God means that your senses are going to get assaulted by what you see and hear.

One of the things that I do frequently is what I call a spiritual detox. People do a physical detox. You get harmful toxins that build up in the body because of what we eat and so we do a colon cleanse or a detox to flush those toxins out. At regular intervals, I do a spiritual cleanse and ask God to remove the spiritual toxins in me. Let me explain what I do.

Start with your eyes. Repent for the things you have seen that God calls wicked. Next move to your ears. What unholy, dirty things have you heard? The Bible warns us about “course jesting.” Ask God to cleanse you from what you have heard. Next move to your hands. What impure things have you done with your hands? Do you strike out at others in anger? Have you clicked on certain internet sites or changed the channel to certain shows? What about your feet? Have they taken you to impure places? God is powerful and he can detox you from these things. 

Let me dwell for a moment on my eyes and continue with the theme of God’s design for sexuality. I bitterly regret what my eyes saw growing up. I hate pornography with a passion because I am haunted by what I saw. I grew up in the day before the internet was big. It used to be a fight for me to not want to wander over to the magazine aisles. If I would have had an internet connection in my room, I shudder to think how many more images I would have today stored up in my head. I literally would rather be skinned alive than look at pornography and cheat on my wife. 

We will lack moral integrity if we publicly stand against abortion and sex trafficking while at the same time secretly participating in the sex industry of pornography and other forms of sexual impurity.

Let us also be clear on what we think of Christians who struggle with same-sex attraction. You are not second-class Christians. Do not put them in the same category as those in the world who embrace and celebrate homosexuality as a lifestyle. They don’t celebrate it—they have to fight it all the time. The fight is very hard. Can you imagine? They are not jumping into the raging rapids and going for a joy ride. They are valiantly swimming upstream, alongside you. Welcome them and support them in fighting the good fight against sin with you. They are brothers and sisters, not step-brothers and step-sisters. 

We need to know our Savior and be “re-sensitized”…

Know Christ, not a checklist. Know your Savior more than you know anyone else or anything else. Know his voice. Know his heart. Know his holiness. Know his love. How do we seek to know those things? Where can we recover a robust sense of separation? Learn to distinguish his voice from the other voices shouting for your attention. Yia Vang (our Downtown Campus chef extraordinaire) and I were talking about the new Superman movie. He mentioned the scene where young Clark Kent is first overwhelmed and paralyzed by his ability to hear every voice with such acute sensitivity. He locks himself in a closet because he is so afraid and can’t sort it all out. How is he able to come out of it? His mother asks him to just focus on one voice—her voice. Hearing her voice and focusing his attention on it causes all the other voices to be drowned out by the power of her one voice. It is the same with Jesus. When we hear his voice, the other voices fade. As we keep focusing on his voice, we will be re-sensitized instead of de-sensitized. 

Conclusion 

The Final Homecoming and our Present Holiness

Here is why all of this matters. The title of this sermon is Homecoming and Holiness. On the one hand, the homecoming comes before holiness: God saves us by the work of Christ and our souls find their home in him. He justified the ungodly, not the holy. But it is also true, as Hebrews 12:14 says, that there is a “holiness without which no one will see the Lord.” There is no full and final homecoming without holiness. That is not a bit of bad news tacked on at the end of the good news. It is not an afterthought or a footnote to the good news. The doctrine of heaven exists to not only to help us die well tomorrow, but also to help us live well today. I will let Martyn Lloyd-Jones explain the connection between 1 John 3:2 and 3:3.  

Indeed, not only is this verse not an anticlimax, it is not even a contrast to the second verse; the very word and which connects the two verses reminds us that these two things are indissolubly bound together and that verse 3 follows verse 2 very directly and immediately and, indeed, of necessity. There is a sense in which we can say that the whole object of verse 2 is to lead to verse 3, and if we fail to regard the second verse in that light, if we fail to see that its real object and purpose is to prepare the way for this third verse, then we have abused the second verse entirely, and we have failed to appreciate its true message to us.

I emphasize all this because knowing myself I think that such a warning is very essential. We all of us, because of the effect that sin has upon us, rather like reading verses like the second verse. People always like a sermon or an address on a verse like that, and yet, if we do not realize that John wrote the second verse in order to prepare the way for what he says in the third verse, then we have not been using it aright. We have been using it for the time being to forget our trials and problems; we have been enjoying ourselves and having a spiritual feast. Like Peter on the Mount of Transfiguration, we have been rather tending to say, ‘Let us make three tabernacles’ and spend the rest of our lives here in the wonder and enjoyment of the feast of the glory. But we must not do that; we are not meant to; we were taken up by John to the top of the mountain in order that we might descend onto the plain and do this essential work that is waiting there for us – in exactly the same way as our Lord came down from the mountain to deal with the problem which had baffled and defeated his poor disciples. You and I, having had a vision of glory, have to come down and translate it into practice and put it into daily operation, and if it does not lead to that, then we are abusing the Scripture.—Martin Lloyd-Jones, Life in Christ, p. 296.

So here is the Scripture.

Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.—1 John 3:2–3

“And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.” “And” is not an afterthought; it is the climactic application! Jesus was slaughtered as the substitute for our sin! We are not ambivalent about sin. Holiness cannot be an afterthought! There is no final homecoming without holiness. However, as we hope in him, we purify ourselves, knowing that he has already made us pure. Let me end with the glories of our final homecoming in my favorite verse of “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing.”

On that day when free from sinning, I shall see Thy lovely face!
Full arrayed in blood-washed linen, how I’ll sing Thy sovereign grace! 
Come, my Lord! No longer tarry! Bring Thy promises to pass!
For I know Thy power will lead me till I’m home with Thee at last.

Discussion Questions

  • Paul cites six Old Testament texts in this Scripture passage. Did taking the time to examine them in their context help you understand what Paul was saying? In what way?
  • We have the Holy Spirit as the Comforter and we have the promise that Christ is preparing a place for us in his Father’s house. What implications do these provisions have for you personally as you live out each day? Why?
  • Too many think of holiness as merely or mainly an external thing. We can look at clothing and tattoos and movies and music, but never look from the outside to the inside. Why is it that holiness cannot be restricted to an external issue? 
  • According to 1 John 3:3, why is it that holiness cannot be an afterthought?
  • Increasingly, our culture is calling “bad” the things that God calls “good.” What are some examples in your own life where this is true? How do we address these cultural issues in a gospel-centered, Christ-exalting way? 

Application Questions

  • Where is the biggest battle for holiness in your Christian walk? 
  • Name an area in your life in which your battle with sin has gone from the outside to the inside. How has this shift made a difference in the battle? 
  • How could you personally apply the following this week? Know Christ, not a checklist. Know your Savior more than you know anyone else or anything else. Know his voice. Know his heart. Know his holiness. Know his love.