The New Testament lesson for the morning is 2 Corinthians 6, beginning at verse 11 reading through verse 4 of chapter 7. Oh, Corinthians, we have spoken openly to you. Our heart is wide open. You are not restricted by us, but you are restricted by your own affections. Now in return for the same, I speak as to children, you also be open. Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness and what communion has light with darkness, and what accord has Christ with Belial, or what part has a believer with an unbeliever, and 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 among them. I will be their God and they shall be my people. Therefore come out from among them and be separate, says the Lord, do not touch what is unclean, and I will receive you. I will be a father to you, and you shall be my sons and daughters," says the Lord Almighty. Therefore having these promises beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. Open your hearts to us. We have wronged no one, we have corrupted no one, we have cheated no one. I do not say this to condemn, for I have said before that you are in our hearts to die together and to live together. It is my boldness of speech toward you, great is my boasting on your behalf. I am filled with comfort. I am exceedingly joyful in all our tribulation. The word of the Lord, thanks be to the God. Let us pray together. Father, we thank you for your grace and mercy. We thank you for how it finds expression throughout the whole of Scripture and in the life of the Apostle Paul, and we thank you for his commitment to these Corinthian believers and for his tenderness with them. O Lord, give us grace to see in him the Lord Jesus and to see that this is how you deal with your people. Kindly, mercifully, Lord, seal to our hearts by your spirit this your word for your glory and for our good. We ask in Jesus' name, amen, you may be seated. In the earlier service, because we did not have a baptism, we had a reading from the Gospel of Matthew, the 20th chapter, and the passage that we read is the parable of the vineyard, and you may remember the parable which involves the owner of a vineyard, and he has a need to have some work done in his vineyard, so he begins recruiting people to come to work in his vineyard, and he does that at the beginning of the day, and at the beginning of the day, he says to those who would come, I'll pay you a denarius or a day's wages if you'll work in my vineyard, do my work for me. And so, a bunch of folks agree, and then a few hours later, he goes back into the marketplace or into the street and he sees a bunch of folks standing around, and he grabs a bunch more and he says, come to work in my vineyard and at the end of the day, I'll pay you. And this goes on throughout the day until the 11th hour, right at the end of the work day, and even at the end of the work day, there are still some people standing around, and he goes to him, and he says, what are you standing around for? And they said, well, nobody's hired us, and he says, we'll come work in my vineyard. And at the end of the work day, I'll pay you. So an hour later, at the end of the work day, he gathers all of his laborers together, and he begins with the ones who began in the morning, and he pays them a day's wages just as he promised he would. And then he works his way through the rest of the crowd, and he gets to the ones who worked one hour, and he pays those people the same amount of money that he paid the folks who had worked from the earliest hours of the day. And the guys who worked from the earliest hours of the day think it isn't fair. It's not right, and they complain about it, and he says in effect, it's my vineyard, they're my workers, and I'll pay him what I want to pay him. I made an agreement with you at the beginning of the day, that you'd work for me for a day, and I'd pay you a day's wages. Don't accuse me of doing evil when I have done good to you. And that's kind of where you're left, you know, you're sort of left hanging with this impression that the grace of God, the kingdom of heaven, isn't fair. It isn't equitable, that it works somehow according to a different kind of a calculus that God and his relationship to sinners has different equations, and it doesn't seem to be fair. That's the point of the parable. The point of the parable is the grace is far larger, far greater, far more surprising than we dared imagine, than we could possibly conceive. And the benefits of the kingdom don't have to do with your labor, they don't have to do with how long you were in the vineyard, they don't have to do with whether you labored into the vineyard under the hot sun, or if you came to the vineyard at the end of the day, you still, regardless of when you came, you still came and you enjoyed the benefits of the kingdom in the same way that those who labored in the vineyard from the beginning of the day. Folks of grace isn't equitable, it doesn't function according to a calculus of merit. And as you read through the scriptures, whether it's the gospels in Jesus, dealing with the people in his city, his town, his country, or the Apostle Paul, minor in planning churches and trying to encourage those churches and trying to stir people up and summon them to holy living and righteousness and everything else, what you see over and over and over again, etched, etched across the pages of scripture is mercy and kindness and forbearance and compassion. Think about this Corinthian correspondence. This is very important stuff for us. Think about this Corinthian correspondence. Think about the kind of folk that we're worshiping together in these churches. Think about some of the problems that Paul was addressing in these churches, in the city of Corinth. They weren't small infractions, they weren't little pecadelos. In the first letter there was a man who was having an incestuous adulterous relationship with his father's wife. They were denying the resurrection, the future resurrection of believers saying that it had already come. There was favoritism in the church, there was spiritual pride, there were divisions, there were all kinds of problems in the Corinthian churches. But how does Paul speak to these people? Don't you find some great comfort in this? Do you think about your own life and you sort of look around and you see a couple hundred, three hundred great big sinners? How does God think about us? How does He think about you? How do we think about one another? How does Paul speak to these Corinthian believers? He calls them saints. Those set apart by God, those precious in God's sight, those who are the objects of his affection, those whom he loves. It's interesting, look at the life of Jesus, look at the life of the Apostle Paul. Who are the ones who receive the most stinging rebukes? Who are the ones who come under the lamps? If you will, of the Apostle Paul. It's not the average run of the mill, ordinary, great big sinner trying to figure things out. It's the Pharisees, it's the religious elite, it's the theologians, sorry guys. In this particular case, it's the super Apostles. It's those who have filled this vacuum in Corinth because of Paul's absence. Those who have come in with great gifts and with great resumes and who are putting themselves over as super Apostles, they are the ones who experience the stinging rebukes of the Apostle Paul. Just as the Pharisees, the scribes receive the stinging rebukes of the Lord Jesus, but the believers, the ones who have been gathered into these churches. In Corinth, Paul speaks to with great affection and great tenderness, and he does, in the beginning, call them saints, in both of the letters he calls them saints. And here, in this particular passage, he pours out his heart to them as those whom he loves and he says he speaks to them in the same way that a father would speak to his children. You see, there is affection all over this correspondence as Paul writes to these people. I've often said, you know, as we, as we drive around, I've said this on Sunday mornings before, as we drive around and we see these bumper stickers that say, smile God loves you, you know, these sort of indiscriminating communications to the world, these kind of thoughtless communications to the world, that we make a great mistake with those bumper stickers. And there's this tendency, it seems, in the church for us to communicate the wonderful and limitless love of God for people indiscriminately out in the world, giving many people a false sense of assurance about what God really thinks about them. And the thing that ought to be on our bumper stickers is this, to those of you who know and love the Lord Jesus, smile because he loves you, but to those of you who have not embraced the Lord Jesus, don't smile, because you don't have anything to smile about. You're exposed, you're uncovered, you're under the wrath and judgment of God and that wrath and judgment might fall at a moment. That's out there in the world. We should communicate the serious situation in which people find themselves, but when we come in here, when we are gathered together as the people of God, rather than communicating threats and intimidations and fear, the thing that ought to be pregnantly present, overwhelmingly present is this abiding sense of the love of God for His people. Smile, folks. We ought to pull those bumper stickers up here. Smile, folks. You are the people of God and God loves you. That's what you see in the Apostle Paul. This tenderness, this affection is that of a father for his children when Paul writes to the Thessalonians, first Thessalonians, the second chapter. He says we were as a nursing mother among you and then a little bit later we were as a father exhorting you, encouraging you, cheering you on. Paul is the incarnation of the relationship which God has with those whom he has summoned to himself. And Paul in his practice gives expression to what is in his heart. There are a couple of things that the Apostle summons these people to because of his love for them, because of his interest in them, his compassion for them, verses 11 through 13 and then in verses 2 through 4 of chapter 7, the Apostle is pleading with the Corinthians that they be reconciled to him, that they be restored in their relationship to him, the Apostle Paul. Oh, Corinthians, we've opened our hearts to you. In the earlier part of this chapter there is a demonstration of how the Apostle has opened his heart to these Corinthian believers. There is for their benefit a litany of those things which the Apostle has done for them beginning in verse 4, in all things we commend ourselves as ministers of God, in much patience, in tribulations, in needs, in distresses, in stripes, in imprisonments, in tumultes, in labors, in sleeplessness, in fastings, by purity, by knowledge, by long suffering, in on and on, the Apostle in a very short and abbreviated way describes what his manner of life has been toward these Corinthians. The conversation with Dan Manchi, the other day, some of you know Dan, I wish more of you did. Dan works with Good News, jail, and prison ministry. We were talking about what he does in the prison and the jails and then we got to talking about the cults and how the cults just don't show up in the prisons. They just don't show up in the jails, at least they don't stick around. They're not the ones to be the bearers of bad news to inmates, the news of the death of a loved one or something like that. How come? How come, Dan? Why don't they do that? He said because they don't really care. They just have an agenda to prosecute. They just have converts to try and win over but they don't really care about people. We do. We're there all the time because we love Christ and we love them. The Apostle is endured all of these things because of this affection for these people but they've been estranged from him. He's been absent and these super Apostles have come in and they've called into question Paul's integrity. If you look at verse two of chapter seven, Paul's responding to these accusations. These super Apostles have come in and have said that Paul has wronged them, that he's corrupted them and that he's cheated them. We don't know exactly what these folks have in mind. We don't know what Paul has in mind. It could be that Paul who has been gathering this offering from the Macedonian churches to take it back to Jerusalem to meet the needs of the saints there. It could be that they have accused Paul of stealing, of being a hawkster, a charlatan. We don't know but Paul has been estranged from these people by these super Apostles and he's pleading with them. Corinthians, we've poured out our hearts to you. You've seen how we've lived our lives. Now you in return be open to us. Let's be reconciled. Let's be reconciled. In that, in Paul's appeal to them, that they be reconciled to him, that the relationship we put back together, Paul's not concerned ultimately with what happens here at this horizontal level. He's concerned about them in their relationship to God. He's concerned about ultimate things. He knows, as the one who has been sent apart by Christ, the one who has been entrusted with the gospel of Christ. He knows that if someone is estranged from him as a person, he is estranged from that gospel as well. And the Apostle pleads with the Corinthians, not just so he can have a nice homecoming when he comes back to Corinth, not so that he can have everybody sign his yearbook at the end of the school year, not so he can be some hero riding into town and give autographs which people can frame and put on their walls. That's not what it's about. The Apostle is concerned about their souls. He knows that if they are estranged from him, they are cut off from the gospel. He doesn't want them cut off from the gospel. He loves them. He wants them to know the fullness of the grace of God in Jesus Christ. And he appeals to them, that they be reconciled to him. To the gospel, he preaches a little bit later on when you get to chapter 10, the Apostle really, really takes a hard line toward these super Apostles. And always his motivation is these precious believers, these children of his and the faith for whom he would die, that they might be wed to the Lord Jesus Christ. Any pastor worth his salt will give his life, his life blood, his energies, in pleading with people that they not abandon the gospel of Christ, and that is what the Apostle does. I remember seeing a videotape of John Gerstner talking about the Apostle Paul and he used the name of Paul to describe the life and ministry of Paul. And I can't remember the P, and I can't remember the A. That's a carrot, dangling a carrot out there for you to go buy the tape and listen to it yourself. I get a percentage. I don't remember the P, and I don't remember the A, but I remember the U, and I remember the L, the U stands for uncompromising. Uncompromising people are often seen as hard, cold, and belligerent. The Apostle was uncompromising, not because he was cold, not because he was belligerent, but he was uncompromising, he was unyielding, and he was L, he was loving, and he was uncompromising, and he did draw the line in the sand precisely because he was loving. He knew what was at stake, and he wanted the best for these people. He, through no merit of his own, has the medicine, and he wants these people to get well, and so he calls them to be reconciled to him, that they might be reconciled to the gospel which Christ has entrusted to him. And he calls them not only to reconciliation with him in a restoration of the relationship, but he calls them to recognize their distinctiveness as well. And in calling them to recognize their distinctiveness, he's expressing his love for them. He's calling them to consistency, not only in what they think, but consistency in what they practice and how they live, because he knows that righteousness is life. He knows that allegiance with Christ is life. He knows that allegiance with light is life, and he knows that allegiance with Belial with darkness is death. It isn't that he has a point he needs to prove. It isn't that he's invested himself in something, and in order to feel good about himself in his theology, he needs to have allies. No, he knows that this is true. He knows that it makes a difference, and he knows that life is at stake. So he calls them to recognize who they are. The context here, of course, geographically, is the city of Corinth, but the context culturally is this notorious city which was engaged in all manner of ungodly religious practice. I'm not going to bore you with the details now. You've got some time coming up this week. Go find a good Bible dictionary, and read about the city of Corinth and the Temple of Diana.
The kinds of things that went on in Ephesus, just across the ocean, just across the sea, are the kinds of things that went on in Corinth, and the Apostle is calling these Corinthians who continue to be involved in some of those practices to separate themselves from those practices. He has a very specific thing in mind here. He has in mind their participation in cult practices, practices which have to do with Belial with the devil of hell, with darkness, and not with Christ, and light, and life. The Apostle says, don't be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. He's not calling these people to an isolation. He's not calling them to remove themselves from society and develop a little Christian ghetto in the midst of Corinth. I don't mean to be unkind, I really don't. I illustrate it with this particular illustration because it illustrates the point. The Apostle is not saying, develop a Christian yellow pages. The Apostle is not saying that a mechanic who is a Christian is going to do a better job on your car than a mechanic who is not a Christian necessarily. Throughout the scriptures, there is this recognition of the fact that we are in the world, in the midst of the world, though not of it, that we're to be salt in the world, that we're to be light in the world, we're not being encouraged here to remove ourselves entirely from involvement in the world. We can't. It's impossible. That's not what the Apostle was calling us to. There are too many examples in the scriptures of true believers who were engaged in the affairs and activities of the world and who manifested the righteousness of the kingdom in the midst of those affairs and activities. Joseph in Pharaoh's court, Daniel in Nebuchadnezzar's court, who attended the Babylonian schools, who spoke the Babylonian's language, who did the Babylonian's work, who adopted many of the customs even to the point where he took a Babylonian name to himself. But when it came to dietary laws and matters of conscience which before God he could not violate, he was willing to die. When it came to bowing before an image, when Shadrach, Mishak and Abednego, who themselves took Babylonian names, were required to bow before the image they refused because that was participation in the cultic practices of a pagan culture, and there is one true God, and that is the God of heaven and earth, and before images and statues or any other God, we will not bow. And be aware of this, O Nebuchadnezzar, be aware of this. Our God is able to save us from the fires you threaten us with. So Shadrach, Mishak and Abednego, then they went on to say, even if he doesn't save us, we'll not bow before your image, we'll carry your water buckets, we'll clean your toilets, we'll be good accountants, but we'll not bow before your gods. That's what the Apostle is calling these people to. He's calling them to separate themselves from the religious cultic practices in Corinth, and by that manifest their distinctiveness, and by that as well enjoy the blessing of God upon them. The lines aren't always easy, folks, I understand that. What the Apostle is calling these people to is life in the midst of the world which gives evidence of the righteousness of the kingdom of Jesus, life in the midst of the world which gives evidence of the righteousness of the kingdom of Jesus. He calls them to faithfulness to the gospel. He calls them to be reconciled to Him as the Apostle of that gospel, and He calls them to faithful living in the midst of the world. And He does, Paul does, what the Scriptures always do. He holds out the promise of reward. He holds out the promise of blessing. I've learned a great deal from John Piper in this regard, and I'd encourage you to pick up just about anything that John Piper has written. John Piper has been very helpful to me in understanding that the gospel does promise blessing, reward to the people of God. Now, I'm not going to begin to define what that might be or look like. At that point, I'll separate myself from a whole lot of other folks, but look at what the Apostle says, as God has said Himself, verse 16, I will dwell in them. I will walk among them. I will be their God, and they will be my people. And then, verse 18, I will be a Father to you, and you shall be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty. The Apostle holds out to these people, these Corinthians, the prospect that the blessing of Almighty God would rest upon them and would be among them, and he understands that blessing to mean precisely this, that God will be in their midst, and he will be in their midst as a Father with his sons and his daughters. Read the Gospels, read Paul's letters, the promise of the presence of God, the benediction of God, the encouragement of God, the peace of God, the comfort of God, the assurances of God, the promises of God. Those are the things that are conferred upon those who will heed the summons, the summons to faithfulness to the gospel, the summons to faithfulness in practice. Folks, the summons is always, the summons to faithfulness is always for God's glory and for your gladness, the summons is for God's glory. And for our gladness, God give us grace, sinners, though we be, for given as we are, cleansed by the blood of Christ, robed in his righteousness, may the God of that grace give us grace daily to live in the midst of the world, giving expression to the righteousness of the kingdom of King Jesus and for our good and joy. Let us pray together, Father, thank you for the apostle Paul, thank you for this very evident affection which he knew for these Corinthian believers, what he called them to was costly and it was hard. And what you call us to, O Lord, is costly and it is hard. Please give us grace to respond to that summons and O Lord, would you pour out upon us the fullness of the blessing and benediction of heaven, Lord dwell in our midst, be among us as a father in the midst of his children, loving us, caring for us, sustaining us, comforting us, assuring us, leading us forward. We ask in the name of Jesus, your Son, our Savior, Amen.