A Church Without Walls

But Paul says something here I would like to focus on… “Are they servants of Christ? I am a better one.” As soon as Paul came to know Jesus as his Lord and Savior…Paul became a servant of Jesus. Were the false teachers’ servants of Jesus? The answer to that question is NO. You cannot serve God and material gain (money) or as the Bible calls it “mammon.” You cannot serve two masters…you cannot serve the world and serve Jesus. These false teachers were self-serving…not others focused….and servants are always others focused. So, the question we must ask ourselves as followers of Jesus…are we servants of Jesus?

Pastor Rodney Harrison teaching on Psalm 62

The prophet sees something amazing here…and he asks who is this? This is something he has never seen before. Isaiah sees him in clothing stained red…and is curious as to who this could be. So, God answers him… “It is I, speaking in righteousness and mighty to save.” We know it is God because He is the only righteous one…and only He is mighty to save. And that is important…because what Isaiah sees is the robes of the Messiah stained with the bold of His enemies. Enemies that could have been saved by His blood…and avoided Him shedding their blood. God offers a way out of the wrath to come…and that is to be washed clean by the blood of Jesus…

In that culture once the bride and groom are betrothed…the groom goes to his father’s house and begins to prepare a place for them to live. After some time (it could take up to a year) the groom returns for his bride and takes her to the place he has prepared for them at his fathers house. Any of this sound familiar? The bride’s responsibility while the groom is away…is to keep herself pure. The friend of the bridegroom would keep a close eye on her to make sure she was pure when her groom returned. The bride…or the church (which BTW are one and the same) cannot be pure and undefiled if they are listening to…and following false teachers. She (the church) cannot be pure and undefiled if she is worshiping, praising, and admiring idols. So, Paul wants to ensure that the church in Corinth remains pure and undefiled from false teachers and idols.

Paul changes gears in these last 4 chapters of 2 Corinthians. Once again, he is dealing with the false teachers that are spreading their lies about him in Corinth. Paul had spent 18 months there teaching the Corinthian saints the Word of God and how to live their lives according to the Word. He spent 18 months of his life establishing the church there…which for Paul…was a labor of love. But when he departed…the false teachers came in and began to assail his authority as an apostle, his character as a Christian, and his reputation as a teacher. And to Paul’s surprise and hurt…many of the Corinthian saints fell for the lies. So, he wrote to them: That is why I wrote to you as I did, so that when I do come, I won’t be grieved by the very ones who ought to give me the greatest joy. Surely you all know that my joy comes from your being joyful. 4 I wrote that letter in great anguish, with a troubled heart and many tears. I didn’t want to grieve you, but I wanted to let you know how much love I have for you. (2 Corinthians 2:3-4 NLT) Paul loved these people…and it had to hurt when they doubted him… But what hurt more…was that they were forgetting the Word of God that he had taught them….

Isaiah had seen the darkness of the Tribulation…he saw the sun and moon do not give their light. Darkness so thick people will grope around like they are blind…they will stumble at noon like it was twilight. But when the Shekinah glory of Jesus enters the earth’s atmosphere His Light will sine bright. Now what we will read in theses next chapters applies to Israel…but it has application for us as well. God says through Isaiah “arise and shine,” darkness is for sleeping…but the Light of Christ has dawned…it’s time to rise-up. His light will shine upon all…like Peter, James, and John saw Him in His glory on the MT. of Transfiguration: And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became white as light. (Matthew 17:2 ESV) And that Light will attract all the nations and kings to its brightness. All will come to Jesus and bow before Him.

God is going to address Israels idolatry…remember that part of the reason they will go into Babylonian captivity is because of their disobedience. They were to give the land rest every seventh year and they did not…so God would send Israel into captivity… And the land would be at rest for 70 years…the exact number of years they failed to give the land rest in disobedience to Gods Word. The other reason they were going into captivity was their idolatry…they would be taken to the capital of idolatry, Babylon… Where they would get their full of idol worship…and it worked because they never had a problem with idolatry as a nation again after their release. God will compare their idol worship to adultery. When you consider that God has always compared the relationship He has with Isarel to a husband and his bride… When they worshiped other gods…it was akin to them spiritually “cheating,” on God. And just as physical adultery in a marriage breaks hearts and hurts relationships…spiritual adultery has the same effect. Israel has broken God’s heart. So, let’s dig in!

Remember, Isarel was lamenting that God had forgotten about them. God said through Isaiah that even if it were possible that a mother could forget her nursing baby…God could never forget Isarel. And God reminds them that His hand is not too short to save them…they are not out of His reach… And that God is not so far away that He cannot hear them. But listen to why they feel as if God is ignoring them…and has forgotten them. Their sin…their sin of idolatry which God compares to adultery…has separated them from God. God says, My hand is not to short…but your hands are defiled with blood. I can hear you just fine…but I do not respond because your lips have spoken lies. Their sins had hidden God’s face from them and that is why God seemed so distant to them.

God is setting the tone…if you will…for giving…we learned in our previous study that we are to give like the woman who gave her two mites. She only gave two mites…which was a very small amount of money compared to what everyone else gave. But she gave according to her ability to give…because she did not have a lot of money to give. But she gave all that she had…she could have kept one mite for herself…but she gave all that she had. She gave…beyond her ability to give…but she gave her all…and she trusted God for her provision. Paul is telling the church in Corinth…I understand that your church has needs as well… So, give according to your ability, but give beyond your ability. Paul is telling them that he isn’t asking them to give so they look at giving…like a burden has been placed upon them. But give with the knowledge that when you are in need…someone else will give of their abundance to you. Listen, we cannot give what we do not have to give…I mean if every nickel you have is going to pay bills and put food on the table a roof over your head…

God says something similar in chapter 49: “Surely your waste and your desolate places and your devastated land—surely now you will be too narrow for your inhabitants. (Isaiah 49:19 ESV) What God was saying that the land they have will not be big enough to contain all who will come to know Him as the one true God. And that certainly is the case now…Isarel only has control of a fraction of the land God gave them…most of their land is occupied by their enemies. But there will come a day when Israel will once again control all the land God had promised them. Here God tells them “Don’t hold back,” lengthen the cords of the tent (in this case it refers to the land). Your land will need to stretch out, for it to contain all the people who will come to know Him as the God of Israel.

One thing you do not hear mentioned a lot here at CCLV…is money. We do not take a collection (unless we are collecting for a special purpose). We have two agape boxes (that look like mailboxes) at the back of the sanctuary for you to deposit your tithes…on your way out. The only time we ever talk about money is when the Bible brings it up…and today is one of those times. Jesus set the president for giving in the NT and the early Christians took His teaching to heart.

Since we have these promises…what promises? The promises outlined in chapter 6 verses 17-18. Promises to all who separate themselves from the world…and become one with God. Promises of a more intimate relationship with God for those who want to draw closer to Him. Promises that God will welcome or receive us, that He will be a father to us…and we will be sons and daughters to Him. So, lets look at each promise:

Their time of judgment as captives in Babylon was over. God tells them to shake the dust of captivity off…now dust indicates the length of their stay…they had been there so long dust had formed… So, God tells them, shake off the dust…prepare to leave Babylon. However, we cannot say that their days of captivity to Gentile invaders are over. Because as the remnant returned to rebuild the city and the temple…they would still be under Persian rule… After the Persians would come the Greeks under Alexander the Great…and the Greeks would eventually fall to the Romans. The Romans would dominate most of the world and they would rule over the city of Jerusalem for some two hundred years… Until…in 70 AD. when the Roman General Titus came against Jerusalem and burned the city and the temple to the ground. And it would stay that way for years… The land would be trampled under foot by Gentiles (mostly Muslims) until Israel regained the land and their nation on May 14,1948.

Corinth was a very carnal city…and as a believer your senses were bombarded daily with the lewdness and addiction that existed there. You saw this sin all around you…you heard the sin all around you…it was hard to escape from it. There was so much of the world…trying to pull those who were separated out…back in! So, Paul reminds them that are separated out…they were washed, sanctified, and justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. (1 Corinthians 6:11 ESV) And they were the temple of the living God. So, let’s dig in and read about what Paul tells them of their position in Christ…and how that separates them from the sin around them!

The reason for the clarification on divorce is because there are several places in Scripture where the relationship between God and Israel has been described as a marriage. Israel has defiled that relationship be committing adultery with the false god Baal. Israel has left the marriage. But what does God do about it…He refuses to divorce Israel…He says if I have divorced her show me the divorce certificate. There is a beautiful picture of God’s love and faithfulness in His relationship to Israel found in the Book of Hosea.

Paul is saying we are working together with Jesus…Paul saw the work of the ministry of reconciliation as working together with Jesus. That is the key here…we work together with Him…not for Him…we are a team…we are all working together toward the same goal… Which is seeing people come to the saving knowledge of Jesus. But that brings up a question we all must answer…are we working with Him…or against Him? Are we working within His will for our lives…or against His will for us? And the answer for most of us is probably yes…there are times we work with Him and times we work against Him… There are times we are in the center of His perfect will for us…and times we are working contrary to His will for us. We tend to kick against the goads…but the Lord has a way of gently correcting us when we stray too far to the left or to the right.

If we are honest with ourselves and God…there are times we don’t feel like reading or praying. And if we do read and pray…it can seem like we are just going through the motions. Our quite time with Him turns into a duty rather than an anticipation of spending time with God. And that is normal…we are after all…human. And we don’t always feel warm and loving in any relationship…love does not always produce that warm and fuzzy feeling. Sometimes, love means doing for another when we don’t “feel” like it.

Isarel has a long history of idol worship…from the golden calf in the wilderness, to Rachel stealing her father's household idols…to the golden calves set up at Dan and Bethel. And they would pray to them…seeking their help…they were crying out to an inanimate object to save them. God is reminding them that an idol made of gold or silver is not capable of saving itself…let alone saving them. He reminds them that He…and He alone can save them. And so, God communicates this to His people through Isaiah.

This language sounds strange to us because motivational speakers will say things like: “Live your best life now,” “live life to its fullest,” “live it up,” “enjoy life.” The world we live in is all about living life to its fullest…living your best life now. And in ancient times they had a similar philosophy…Greece and Rome were very hedonistic societies… Where “eat drink and be merry, for tomorrow you may die,” was their mantra… It was their way of saying “live your best life now.” But not the saints…they were more focused on the eternal…the things they could not see…than the temporal…the things all around them. The first century saints and many that followed lived with the expectation that they could be killed for their faith at any time. So, they set their minds more on the things above than they did earthly things. (Col. 3:2) Instead of “live your best life now,” they wanted to live their life for Christ…in a way that pleased Him.

I know last week’s message can cause us to have doubts about our walk… We begin to question if we are pleasing God with our life…we wonder what Jesus will bring up at the Bema seat judgment. Will wonder if we will hear those words, “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.” (Matthew 25:21 ESV) For those of you that do not make it out on Wednesdays (which is most of you) I want to share a verse we read this Wednesday in Isaiah: “Because you are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you.” (Isaiah 43:4a ESV) God is speaking those words to Isarel…whom He is going to send into captivity in Babylon because of their disobedience and idol worship… Listen to what God says to Isarel…despite all you have done … “you are precious, you are honored, you are loved.” That gives me great hope to know that as messed up as I can be…as often as I fail to please God with my life… That I am still a treasure in the eyes of my Savior. I am precious, honored, and loved by my Creator…what more could I ever ask for. God loved me (you) so much that while I was a sinner, He sent His only Son to die for me…to ransomed me (you) with His blood. You could never feel more loved than that!

Even if a nursing mother could forget her child…even if that were possible… God tells Israel He will never forget them. God has redeemed them…He has called them by name…they are His. We aren’t Israel…but the message is clear for us…Jesus will never leave us or forsake us. Even in our disobedience…even when we put other things before Him…He is there for us. God made a covenant with Israel that He swore to keep and no matter what they did…He would keep it. God has made a covenant with us…He has sealed that covenant with His Holy Spirit… And He will always keep His promises…

Don’t just share the gospel and be a witness for Jesus…but teach others to do what Jesus has taught us to do. And the best way to teach others what Jesus taught us…is by example. So, we all have a ministry…and sometimes we can get weary ministering to people. Because we forget that when we are ministering to others…we should be ministering as unto Jesus…as if we were ministering to Jesus. Jesus would say when asked about ministering to people… “as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.”