In this sermon, the speaker emphasizes the importance of not being enticed by worldly entertainment and distractions. He argues that seeking entertainment from the world not only grieves the spirit of God but also forfeits the privilege of fellowship with God. The speaker believes that the world offers nothing of value and that pursuing worldly pleasures ultimately leads to a loss of fellowship with God. Instead, he encourages listeners to focus on knowing, understanding, and loving God, as He loved us even when He knew the worst about us.

So will you turn to 2nd Corinthians chapter 6, and I shall read verses, verse 14 of chapter 6 through verse 1 of chapter 7. We're still speaking about fellowship. We're speaking about this wonderful thing in the Word of God called koinonia, and tonight I would like to approach it from the standpoint of the negative aspect of fellowship. I think this will be helpful to see this scripture from this point of view. Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship, what koinonia, hath righteousness with unrighteousness? And what communion, koinonia, hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? For what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? For ye are the temple of the living God. As God said, I will dwell in them and walk in them, and 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 ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty. Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. Now this portion of scripture has been used, and properly used, unquestionably, as a reason for living a separated life, not going to places of amusement that are going to degrade, defile, soil one's mind and heart, not engaging in business relationships that are going to involve one with moral compromise, ethical compromise, not marrying, where the marriage to the unsaved party is going to involve one with a continuous pressure that will draw them away from the Lord. And this is all true, and it's all scriptural. And the consequences of marriage, of someone that has been saved and knows the Lord, to someone who is unsaved, is almost uniformly tragic, to some degree tragic, if not, in a final sense, certainly in terms of the course, covered with grief and heartache and burden. And so there's a reason for this advice, for taking the verse, what be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers, and using that verse to warn Christian young people not to marry, unchristian young people warning Christian evangelical young people not to go or become involved with Catholic young people. I think this is very important. I believe that many, many homes have been hurt because parents did not warn their children as to the consequences of their becoming involved, even on the beginning level. There ought to be compatibility in every area, and we ought to use this verse. It's a proper verse. It's good, and it's right, and it's true. And, but, this, you see, the consequences, the social consequences, the personal consequences, as important as they are, are not the primary argument of the portion. God is saying, indeed, be not unequally yoked together. Don't get yourself harnessed up with something, some situation, some person, some relationship, that is going to put you under pressure and strain and put you in a place of temptation. This he's saying because of the fact that it's going to cause you such harm and such grief, and we could simply dwell on that and say this is the application of the Scripture. But, you see, we're talking about koinonia, where it says what fellowship, this is the word that's engaging us, what koinonia, what fellowship, what, and then the next sentence has what communion, the same word. Hath light with darkness, hath righteousness with unrighteousness. How can there be sharing? How can there be participation? How can there be fellowship? But this is logical, and it's self-evident. However, in the fifteenth verse, you begin to see the Lord's reason for what he's saying. What concord hath Christ with Belial? And then it's strengthened, what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? But here it reaches its great argument. What agreement hath the temple of God with idols? Now we're beginning to see the force of his purpose. Ye are the temple of the living God. Here we have stated that which is taught elsewhere is implied certainly, and we would infer it as being clearly set forth elsewhere, but here it is stated specifically and directly. You are the temple of the living God. He has no temple made of stones. This building here, as appreciative as we are for it, that it's dry and warm and lighted and available, is not God's dwelling place. He does not dwell with buildings made of stone. You are the temple of God. Now, in the old covenant, he dwelt in a tabernacle, a tent that was the place of meeting. But our Lord's death marked the conclusion of God locating himself in a geographical spot. The veil was rent, and that veil we are told was some, I don't know, several inches thick, very heavy woven veil, and could have only been torn by the most mighty of tractors if they were dragging on it and try splitting it. But God just parted it from the top to the bottom, indicating that it hadn't been done by vandals. It was torn from the top to the bottom, indicating that it was the power of God that had affected this. And thus God was saying that he would no longer relate himself to a geographical place. He would no longer restrict himself to a point in space. That the point of meeting was no longer going to be such as 698th Avenue, 692 8th Avenue, and he wasn't going to be restricted to that point or any point, whether it's the Mosque of Omar or Taj Mahal or just you name it. There is from from that time on a disavowal on the part of God of a geographical location for his meeting with his people. There is thus no sacred place, no sacred building, and in spite of the fact that all of the Christian world has looked toward St. Peter's Basilica for the last several weeks since the Ecumenical Council has been meeting for the first time for several years, as far as we're concerned this is no more significant spiritually. It's simply a building that shelters these representatives from sun and rain, and it is no spiritual significance to anyone that understands the Scripture. And this we're not being derogatory, we're simply stating that God has once and for all disavowed any relationship to geography, that he's not going to meet anyone now on the basis of their geographical place, or we would thus find that he is identifying the place of his dwelling as being the individual, the heart. You are the temple of the living God. And this is the reason why he argues as he does, be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers. You are the temple of the living God. What fellowshipeth righteousness with unrighteousness? You are the temple of the living God. What communioneth light with darkness? Because you are light are the temple of the living God. What conqueredeth Christ with Belial? Because since Christ is in you, you are the temple of the living God. And what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? Because he that believes is now by this become the temple of the living God. And so the whole of this argument for separation is that something has happened to the individual that is so far beyond anything that can be offered by unbelievers and unrighteousness and darkness, Belial or the infidels or idols, that it's not worthy to be compared with it. And so the unthinkable thing is that here in Corinth, as Paul wrote in his first letter, were some people who were the temples of the living God that had lost sight of the importance. They had lost sight of their own destiny, their place, their purpose. They'd forgotten who they were and why they were what they were. And in losing sight of this then they lost their moral bearings, they lost, they became without a rudder, they became without an anchor. They had, they were simply tossed. They'd lost the sense of their destiny. They'd lost the significance of their being. And your significance of your being is not the position you occupy. How easy it is for us to deify our work. How easy it is for us to attach to our position the glory of God and his success is almost equated with ours. If we succeed, God gets glory. If we fail, God doesn't. How easy it is for us to confuse the work we do for God with the God for whom we work. This is constantly happening. It was my experience in missions and talking with mission leaders and executives from all over the country to discover that there was almost a deification of the missionary task. And we'd say about someone, well, for the good of the mission, for the good of the work. And families were neglected for the good of the work. Health was broken by workers for the good of the work. Decisions were made to lop off someone's head for the good of the work. It was a deification of individuals, of the work, rather than a glorification of the Lord. And this is so easy for us to do, not only with Belial, with unbelievers, with unrighteousness, with darkness, with infidels, with idols. But anything that is going to obscure the fact that the genius and the wonder and the glory of Christianity is Christ in you, anything that's going to obscure this, anything that's going to confuse the issue, anything that's going to minimize this glorious point, has the effect of the same thing of separating one from this which is their highest destiny. And anything that succeeds in separating you or me from this thing that he holds out as the paramount reason for our being, is a price too great to pay, and it has the effect of being an idol, or being infidelity, or darkness, or unrighteousness, unbelief, whatever it might be. It has the same effect. Now the reason why we should not have fellow be yoked with unbelievers, and have fellowship with unrighteousness, and communion with darkness, and concord with Belial, is that this separates us from fellowship with God. You see, this separates us from fellowship with God. Now anything that's going to separate you from fellowship with God, is like a drain in your bank account that simply means that you lose everything you put in and get nothing for it. You stand at the window and put it in, and somebody behind the desk is absconding with it, and when you come to draw it out it isn't there. And so it is that anything that's going to separate us from this wonderful destiny of ours, which is to be the temple of God, and have fellowship with God, and communion with God, is an investment with no interest, no protection, no return, and no recovery. A complete waste. And this is his argument. He said, if you go to the world for your entertainment, you've grieved the Spirit of God, and you've forfeited the privilege of fellowship with God, and this is utter folly, because the world gave you nothing, and you've lost the fellowship with God. And so here you lost everything, and gain nothing. And this is the argument of the Holy Ghost. This is the argument for separation. Some people are afraid to go to the movies, because they'll think they'll be caught, and then they would lose face with their Christian friends. They really haven't any scruples about it. If they get in their own room and pull the curtains down, they'll sit and watch from the television thing, from what we call the one-eyed idiot, you know. They sit there and watch that thing, the Cyclops, and stare at it, and see the same thing they would have seen at the movie house, but they see it twenty years later, of course, that means it isn't as, it's more innocuous. But the fact is that their conscience don't particularly bother them then. But the effect is just the same. Oh, they're not going to be, they're not going to be discovered, they're not going to be found out. But the fact is that if it had the effect of grieving the Spirit of God, though they may never be discovered by their friends, and they may never lose face in the community, they've lost out. The only thing that counts in life, which is fellowship with God, being the temple of God. And you see, you've got to have a reason for separation. You've got to have grounds for separation. And what is it? Your approval? Goodness sakes, you and I stood at side the cross, both of us deserving nothing but God's wrath and hell. Why should I care what you think of me? Or why should you care what I think of you? We must both stand before the judgment seat of Christ. If the only reason your moral is because of the opinions of your friend, you don't have morality. All you have is a kind of slavery. A slavery to the customs of your people and to the opinions of your kind. This is no, this isn't morality. Morality is when a person has something so transcendently real, something so gloriously, triumphantly real, that nothing else has meaning, and nothing else has value. And the reason he doesn't do something is not because he's afraid he'll be caught if he does, but because someone has become so precious to him that he wouldn't for anything in the world want to do anything that would grieve that fellowship and injure that relationship. Then there's morality. The morality is not what's going to happen to him, but what's going to happen to the other and his relationship to the other. And if the other is you, then my behavior isn't moral. It isn't, it may be ethical, but it isn't moral in the spiritual sense of morality. Because I, the fellowship I have with you is a very limited, horizontal affair, and it's nebulous, and if you move to Florida you'll find fellowship with other Christians and so on, because this is a passing thing. But the fellowship of God, this is transcendent. This is glorious. This is indispensable. This and this only has meaning. Nothing else has meaning. Nothing else has value. Nothing else has significance. Whereas I could, you can brave your neighbor's opinion, and we find this happening all the time. We find people that have attended church here and elsewhere, and after a little while they say, well fellowship with those people doesn't mean enough to go on in the kind of life that I'm asked to lead. And so this first thing you know they've, they've spread it away, dwindled away, and they're going where it's more congenial, compatible humanly and horizontally. But you see, if you are what you are because of a relationship with him, then it doesn't make any difference where you go, whether you go into the army. Someone said to me about someone going into the army, said, oh my, I feel so bad when these Christian young people have to go into the army. Why? All it'll do is show what they are. It isn't going to change what they are, it'll show what they are. Someone said to me about television, said, down in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, I said, there's a missionary from China. He was 22 years in China, and now he has a television set, and he sits in front of it, and he doesn't go to church on Sunday night at all, because it interferes with his favorite program. I said, television isn't responsible. I said, all this was, was an excuse for him to be what he wanted to be, and gave him a sufficient incentive for him to do what he wanted to do. It didn't make his character, it just revealed it. The army doesn't make people's character, it reveals it. And true character is based upon relationship. Whom do you wish to please? We've talked about young people going away to college and their faith is being destroyed by their agnostic teachers. Ridiculous nonsense. The faith was, wasn't destroyed by agnostic teachers, the faith was destroyed by superficial ministry back home. And the only reason they were separated and Christian was because there was more to be gained by being that way than if they weren't. But when they came to the university, they didn't want to live that kind of a straight-laced life, and so the only way that they could justify themselves with their parents was to write back and say, I'm terribly sorry, but my professors have proved to me the Bible isn't inspired, and it isn't the Word of God, and so I've become an agnostic. But you see, whenever that happens, you know that it isn't the proof that has changed them, because there isn't that much proof. The reason people give up their faith is not because the assault is so airtight and the leverage is so tremendous, the pressure is so great, that they have to do it, because there's some very fine warm evangelicals, probably in the same school, that have endured the same pressure and haven't given it up at all. Why did they give it up? Because they wanted to rationalize their behavior. They wanted to live the kind of life they desired to live, and they wanted to make it acceptable. The convictions they brought from their home did not allow them to do it, and so the thing to do when they get to the university is to develop for themselves a set of convictions that coincide with their conduct. And this is what happened. But if those young people had had a relationship with him, if they had known they were the temple of the living God, and if God was dwelling in them, and God was walking in them, and God, God, had become real to them, then you could put them anywhere. It wouldn't make any difference where they went, because they'd met someone. This is why I'm so utterly opposed to the easy-believerism that's just ruined this generation in this country, because it's hill people that have a head profession of faith that have never met him. And so as long as they live in a congenial atmosphere where everybody has the same profession, then it's all right. But you get them out of it, and the first thing you know, the whole thing's disintegrated. It's been a rope of sand. But if they meet him, then they're separated, not because they were told by mother, you should not do this, you should not do that. Oh, I believe parents should tell their children you shouldn't, and I believe preachers should say that Christians don't. But you know, I believe that if you've ever met him, then it's someone has said, it's so hard to go in the fall of the year and pick all those dead leaves off the branches. So difficult. And I would look at you and say, yes, yes, it's hardly worth the effort to pick the dead leaves off the branches. Just wait a little while, and when the life begins to rise in the heart of the tree, the rise of that new life will force the leaves off. It will force the leaves off. They'll fall because of the presence of a new life. And so what is he saying here? Essentially, it's this. Well, we could argue from it and bring you into a legalistic bondage and say a Christian doesn't do this, and a Christian doesn't do that, and a Christian doesn't do the other, and a Christian shouldn't do that. But you see, if a Christian doesn't do that, and you do it, then there's only one argument. Are you Christian? You see how it comes? If you are in fellowship with God, you don't do this. If you're doing it, you're not in fellowship with God. Let's put the shoe on the feet rather than wearing them on the hands and trying to walk on our hands. Let's put them where they belong. If you are in relationship with him, and if you are in fellowship with him, and if you are the temple of God, and if you want to know him, and if your desire is to glorify him, then. Well, these things fall away because you've tasted, because you've eaten, because you've seen, because you've heard, because you've felt. And in order that that might be fulfilled and enlarged and increased. And so we come then to the matter of fellowship. Separation, yes, but oh, I like the way Paul put it in the letter to the Thessalonians. You have turned to God from idols. You see, they saw God and they lost all interest in the idols. When they saw him, the idols were just blocks of wood and stone. They had no meaning because they'd seen God. When I find people clinging to their little blocks of wood, their blocks of stone, their little pile of sticks, and their little dolls, the only thing you can say is, have they ever seen God? Ever seen God? Because when you've seen God, position means nothing, place means nothing, office means nothing, honors mean nothing. What can it mean if you've seen God? If you've seen him, you're just not fit for anything else. Anything that stands in the way of your relationship with God is far too great a price to pay. I've seen him. William Fetler came to People's Church in Toronto. He told about Eastern Europe. Oswald Smith, the young man with a burning heart, listened to that man preach, a man who could just simply be the vehicle of God and inflaming the hearts of all who heard him. The moody of Russia. And when he'd gone, took the sail from Montreal two days later, Oswald Smith cabled him on the ship saying, wait for me in England, I'm coming. He turned his church over to someone else and spent nine months. But as he was getting ready to leave alone in his study up there in Toronto, Oswald Smith penned a hymn used to the tune of Juanita. I have seen the vision. And for self, I cannot live. Life is less than worthless. Till my all I give. And then the chorus, Russia, dark Russia. I'm coming now to thee, Russia, dark Russia, bringing Christ with me. And Oswald Smith spent nine months of evangelism in Estonia, in Lithuania, in Latvia, in Czechoslovakia, in Poland, with William Fetler translating and hundreds coming to know the Lord. Well, you see, it wasn't hard to leave Toronto. Wasn't hard to leave the church. He'd seen the vision. Have you seen him? Have you seen that God wants to dwell in you and tabernacle in you and walk in you and you can know God and be filled with the fullness of God? If you've done that, nothing else has meant. Take the world, but give to Jesus. All its joys are but a name. You see, I've seen him. That's what this means. Because of fellowship with him, all these other beguiling, enticing, alluring fellowships have no hold in the grass. Have you seen him? This is the question. Are you having fellowship with God? Now, if these other things are important to you, the question is that he isn't. It's quite obvious he isn't. Because when he has filled the horizon of your heart, nothing else has meant. Has this happened? This is what fellowship with God means, and this is the basis for all separation. It's to turn to God, from idols, to serve the living and true God, because you are the temple of God. He says, I'll dwell in them. Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. Having these promises, what are these promises? That we'll be the temple of God, and God will dwell in us. Let's just assiduously, diligently, meticulously cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and of the spirit. Show it, and we're dealt with it. We've already committed the matter. Don't see everything. You may see something in me that's abhorrent to you and obnoxious to me. I want to be what I want to be. If you'll come to me, I assure you that God's brought me to the cross, and I want to be right. I assume the same thing of you, that you've seen this, that you can be the temple of God, and that you're willing to make any adjustments, cleansing yourself from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness. This is what's happened when you've seen him. Nothing else has meaning, and nothing else has value. This is fellowship. First with God, before it can be with anybody else. Well, that's wonderful to me. I don't have to get up here and say, don't go here, and don't go there, and don't do this, and don't do that. Look at him. See him. He wants to fill you. When you understand that, then all these other things are just like little slimy stakes that would wrap around your feet, and you club them away, so that you can press on to him. Isn't it wonderful? God wants to be known by us, and understood by us, and loved by us. And he loved us when he knew the worst about us, and he haven't lost patience with us yet. He's drawing us on, and tonight, some attitude, some disposition, some motive, some purpose, some relationship, and you're going to say, oh, how little that is. Let it go. Let it go. Let it go. Nothing else has meaning but to know God. Shall we? Let's bow our hearts together in prayer. Thank God that he loved us, that he took the initiative, that his wound is to himself. He knew we were yoked with unbelievers. We knew we were unbelievers. He knew we were in unrighteousness. He knew we were in darkness. He knew we were the slaves of Belial. He knew we were worshiping idols, but he's called us to himself. We've turned to him, and he knew the worst about us, and loved us nonetheless. And he died so that all the adjustments can be made, that we can have perfect fellowship with him. I think you ought to just thank him for that tonight. You ought to worship him and praise him, and you ought to express the desire of your heart, the longing of your heart to know him better. You ought to just be willing to leave anything that grieves him. Perfecting holiness in the fear of God, we'll cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and of the spirit, that we may please him and know him as he longs to be known. Let's go to prayer, go to praise, thanksgiving, and let our hearts rejoice and cry out that we who are here may know him thus, and that there may come a people who know him thus, wholly consumed with him.