Dennis Tuuri

# Reformation Covenant Church Sermon Transcript
## Pastor Dennis Tuuri

A statement and covenant statement. For the last few weeks, we’ve been considering the first sentence of the covenant statement, which was, I agree with the confessional statement of Reformation Covenant Church, will endeavor to support it in this fellowship of believers. I’m very pleased that having talked for the last week on the necessity of involvement in the life of the church and in service and in being an every-believer ministry as it were coming out of this church that there were so many people yesterday from our church at the pastor’s protest.

That is why the speaker was a little bit late getting set up this morning, the speakers and the sound system. And I’m real pleased that people were there yesterday. I’m also pleased that Friday night at our mailing we had a whole house full of people and so many hands made light work. Many of us remember the days when there’d be three or four or five people sitting around tables till midnight getting out a mailing and we did—I don’t know how many we stuffed.

Over 2,000 I suppose in 2 hours I think, stuff, stamp and all that sort of stuff. So I was very pleased that that’s what we’re really trying to do in this church is put our faith into action to act in obedience to the things we’re being taught from the word of God. This morning we begin a study of several statements in our covenant statement that have specific reference to that kind of application.

The next sentence of the covenant statement is that I pledge not to marry a non-believer. And that is what we’ll be considering this morning as we look at 2 Corinthians 6.

Now, some people might ask, why do we have in the covenant statement of a church specific actions or sins or activities mentioned in the light of a general confessional statement and covenant document? I think we have good precedent for that in the book of Nehemiah in the 10th chapter verses 29-31. In Nehemiah 10, the context of course is the people of God have gone back now. They’ve rebuilt the walls of the city and they’re recasting themselves in their covenant relationship with God, recognizing that they have fallen away from their covenant obligations. And so they have a retaking of the covenant by the nation. Very important precedent for what we’ve seen in the history of the church and has been made specific application of that sort of thing. For instance, by the Scottish reformers at the time of the Reformation and other people as well.

The necessity is for a nation to acknowledge our sinfulness before God and to come back into the covenant relationship with him. And so we have as it were there a good model or type of future covenants or revenanting of God’s people after a time of falling away. In those verses we read the following: They claimed to their brethren, their nobles, and entered into a curse and into an oath to walk in God’s law which was given by Moses, the servant of God, and to observe and do all the commandments of the Lord our Lord and his judgments and his statutes. And that we would not give our daughters unto the people of the land, nor take their daughters for our sons. And if the people of the land bring wares any wares on the Sabbath day to sell, that we would not buy it of them on the Sabbath or on the holy day, and that we would leave the seventh year and the exaction of every debt.

The covenant statement goes on in Nehemiah 10 to include other specifics as well in relationship to the tithe and the provision for the temple and other specific applications of what this revenanting meant in terms of their obedience at that particular point in time.

So I think it is proper as a group to address specific areas in which the nation, the culture we find ourselves in is in specific disobedience to God. Another example of this is—and we’ll talk about this probably after the first of the year I suppose—is, hmm, a little bit? I think it is. Bob, could you—is Bob up here? Yeah. Oh, he’s the one humming. Well, after the first of the year, we’ll probably get into the last portion of this covenant statement, which has to do with education. And that’s a specific area that we want as a church to go on record in the midst of a society that has misapplied education and understands it from an ungodly perspective. We want to go on record as a church saying this is what we believe education is.

It’s important to have those sort of creeds built into our church for a variety of reasons. Gary DeMar from American Vision talks about Sergeant York and how they called the war and Sergeant York didn’t have a creed. He wasn’t Sergeant York at the time, but he went to—he was going to get drafted, went to the draft board and said that he was conscientiously opposed to killing people. He was a pacifist. And they said, “Well, the church you attend, do they have something in their statement that says they’re pacifists?” No. Well, does that church, was it part of another body that has a statement about pacifism and how it’s wrong before God?

No. He had no concrete statement to which he had affirmed a covenant oath before God supporting his contention that’s what he believed. And so there was just cause on the part of the civil magistrate to question whether that was a true religious conviction or not. I mean, after all, a lot of people say a lot of things for a lot of reasons and they wanted some sort of proof from him that he was indeed a pacifist.

Well, he wasn’t. He came under instruction, I guess, from one of the recruiting officers for a time and began to see the necessity of godly conflict at given points in history. And so his life—we now know him as Sergeant York. The point I’m trying to make is that it’s perfectly appropriate in the midst of a covenant statement to address specific issues that will show ourselves, the community around us, and the civil magistrate what we believe about issues that we are likely to come into conflict with that magistrate over. It’s important to spell those things out. It’s also important for ourselves to rethink these issues and rethink how we’ve gotten to such a bad point in our society where we’re killing babies, or we’re forcing children into a public school system that is ungodly.

Now, that would be one reason for including a statement about not marrying an unbeliever. But I think that there’s a larger reason for the inclusion of this specific thing in the context of Nehemiah and in our context today as well.

You have to realize that when God gave Israel the Promised Land, he made them very aware of the fact they weren’t to marry into these other religions. And marriage is basically a covenantal relationship in God’s eyes. And in those days, it was a covenantal relationship with another religion when you married somebody else. Now today, it’s rather unusual in the history of the world that we have a society that is basically areligious—they would tend to say that anyway. There are no established belief systems. We don’t have Canaanites out there, you know, or Ammonites or Perizzites or any of the other enemies of God that identify themselves as such. What we claim to have in a society today is a neutral society, a society where we don’t believe in any religion being preeminent anymore. Yet, we know that isn’t correct either.

It’s important though to keep that context of the society we have and its supposed neutrality in terms of religion in mind as we go through a study of 2 Corinthians 6 now and find out what God is talking about in terms of unequal yoking. I think that it’s important to keep in mind the fact that there is a religious ethic at work in our land and it’s important to identify that and then see the relationship of what we’re talking about today in relationship to that. That’ll become clearer as we go through this study.

Now, I thought one example of this, what I’m trying to say here—Friday night when we were stuffing envelopes, had a knock on the door from a neighbor, and one of our neighbors called me outside and said that she was having a problem with our children. Our children apparently had told their children, or at least they thought they had told them, that anybody who trick-or-treated or went out on Halloween night trick-or-treating was worshiping the devil. And she wasn’t very happy with that. Well, you know, I’m not really very happy with that either. It can be a real misunderstanding on the part of the children what we’re trying to say there and what Halloween is or isn’t about. Certainly, most children who go out knocking on doors aren’t doing some sort of self-conscious religious ritual in which they worship Satan—and that’s what her point was primarily. It was a point well taken.

She went on to say that her children were kind of innocent in these matters. Her older child was I think in kindergarten or first grade or something and she kind of wanted to stay that way and that they had at times, for instance, chided our children about being homeschoolers so they didn’t have a real teacher, didn’t have a real school they went to. And she said that we teach them that people do different things and it’s okay, you should let people do whatever they want to do. And so she was kind of calling us to task for teaching our children that there’s this exclusiveness to what we believe in terms of Christianity versus Satanism.

Well, that kind of talks to some of the specifics in terms of our culture today and the myth of neutrality that exists and the idea that anything is okay as long as everybody does their own thing. But you see, it forced her into some sort of action against us, didn’t it? What our—what we did wasn’t okay by her standards. Even though they may espouse a pluralism, yet certain actions will draw their attention and their retaliation. And so, there really isn’t neutrality.

But let’s keep that illustration in mind as we go through 2 Corinthians 6 and see how it relates. Also, before we get into a specific detail in terms of this passage, I want to say one other thing and that specifically is oriented to—I guess I was going to say first—specifically oriented to the older children in the crowd. There are children we have in our congregation now who are approaching the age of marriage and as people who’ve been parents for any length of time know, they grow up before you know it. And before you know it they’re going to be in a position of being married or being given in marriage or whatever.

It’s very important then that you younger people listen real hard to what I’m saying this morning because this is an extremely important subject. It’s important that the parents listen as well though and take notes and do your own study on this matter to be able to teach your children from the youngest days on what marriage is all about, what’s proper in marriage and what’s improper in marriage. And plus, the context of this passage shows that there’s a much wider application than just specifically marriage. And we’ll talk a little bit about that too.

But I’d really encourage you to listen very hard to what we’re having to say this morning.

We’ve said many times from this pulpit that the family is one of the basic institutions in society. The family is the child’s first church. It’s the first place where worship of God occurs and the best place for that occurrence. It’s the first place where the parents teach their child the consecration of all things to God and to his purposes, which is part of what church is all about. The family is the child’s first and best school. The mother teaches the child the language, after all. The father teaches the child all kinds of things. The family is an important school for the children. The family is the child’s first and best state, where discipline is enacted, restitution is required of wrongs performed, and there is, as it were, punishment that would normally be later on transferred to the civil magistrate.

So the family is the first and best church, school, and state. And it’s important that we understand what God tells us in these scriptures today about a godly basis for that family, a foundation for that family being what it’s supposed to be in relationship to being a church, school, and state.

Now, let’s go to the text specifically. 2 Corinthians 6:14-18. I kind of outline this passage as having first a command, second a set of reasons, third another command, and fourth blessings promised if obedience to the command is performed. So, there’s a command, then there’s reasons for the command, a reiteration of the command, and then blessings and cursings. We’re going to spend most of our time this morning on the reasons for the command. And under those reasons, I have listed several here: there are different actions from the two different people that are being yoked, different environments, different lords, different manifestations.

Now, it would be enough of course if God simply told us, don’t be unequally yoked. We know there are specific scriptures that talk about the necessity of not marrying the unbeliever. For instance, in the Old Testament in Exodus 34:10-16, God says, “Behold, I make a covenant before all thy people. I will do marvels.” He goes on to say, “Then observe thou what I command thee this day. I drive out the Amorite, the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite. Take heed to thyself, lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land where thou goest, lest it be for a snare in the midst of thee. But he shall destroy their altars.”

He’s telling here, don’t covenant into these other nations that I’m going to bring you into. You’re not to do that. You’re not to marry into them. The same reasoning is reiterated in Deuteronomy 7:1-8. Says that God’s going to bring him into the land where all these unbelievers live and God will deliver them before thee. He says, “Make no covenant with him, nor show mercy unto them. Neither shalt thou make marriage with them. Thy daughter shalt not thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take unto thy son. For they will turn away thy son from following me, that they may serve other gods. So will the anger of the Lord be kindled against you, and destroy ye suddenly. But thus shall you deal with them. You shall destroy their altars, and break down their images, and cut down their groves, and burn their graven images with fire. For thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God.”

God gives us specific instructions in Exodus 34, Deuteronomy 7, various other scriptures, 1 Corinthians 7 to not marry unbelievers. And so Paul could have quoted some of those scriptures when he began this discussion of being unequally yoked. I think there’s a couple of reasons why he didn’t. First of all, the commandment to not be unequally yoked together is broader than the simple marriage contract. It talks about all kinds of unequally yoking together one another, and that’s important in the context here.

But there’s a second reason and I think what Paul’s doing here is showing them the basis why they’re not to be unequally yoked. What he’s actually doing is quoting the Old Testament here, making reference to a specific case law, but it’s not the ones we mentioned. The specific case laws that he’s quoting from or making reference to are found in Deuteronomy 22:10 and Leviticus 19:19.

Now, in Deuteronomy 22, I’ll read verses 9-11: “Thou shalt not sow thy vineyard with diverse seeds, lest the fruit of thy seed which thou hast sown and the fruit of thy vineyard be defiled. Thou shalt not plow with an ox and an ass together. Thou shalt not wear a garment of diverse sorts as of wool and linen together.”

Okay. Leviticus 19:19 says, “Ye shall keep my statutes. Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with diverse kind. Thou shalt not sow thy field with mingled seed, neither shall thy garment be mingled of linen and wool and come upon thee.”

God gave certain laws in those two passages, Leviticus 19:19 and Deuteronomy 22:10 and 11 regarding separation—not to mix together things. Hybridization, for instance, is prohibited here by God. The plowing together of an ox and an ass is prohibited, as well as other mixing together, for instance, of wool and linen in a garment. These are laws of separation. Okay.

And it’s interesting that on one side we know that Jesus Christ has broken down the wall of partition between the Jew and the Gentile and he’s made them one body now, hasn’t he? And we know that some of these laws of separation taught separation in terms of the Jews from the Gentiles. But it’s not as if God has totally done away with separation. In fact, Paul takes those specific references to not plowing together with an ox and an ass out of Deuteronomy 22:10 and says those are still in effect today. And here’s what they mean—that’s what he’s saying here.

You know, where he quotes how you shouldn’t muzzle the ox. And he says, “Well, God doesn’t care about ox, does he?” He’s talking about if somebody’s working, you should pay him what you owe—part of what his being productive for you. So Paul could just as well say here, God said, “Don’t unequally yoke together an ox and an ass. Well, he doesn’t really care about oxes and asses. What he’s talking about is something different than that with specific application to you as a people.”

Now, we know though that the principle does not alleviate the necessity to obey the specifics. And if you’re a farmer and if you have an ox in the field, Paul certainly wasn’t saying you don’t have to worry about keeping it muzzled. You certainly shouldn’t muzzle them when he’s tramping out the grain. And the same thing’s true here. You really should not plow with an ox and an ass together. Those things are specific laws of God who shouldn’t be acting in violation of. But he’s saying it’s got a lot more to do with than simply oxes or asses.

It’s important in that context to recognize that what Paul is talking about is a separation of the clean from the unclean. Therefore, an ox was a clean animal and an ass was an unclean animal. And to plow together with them, to have them yoked together, being one force pulling the plow was an unholy mixing of the clean and the unclean animal at that time.

Now, we know that Paul’s reference to cleanness in this verse—verse and relationship to marriage as well by application. He goes on in verse 17 to say touch not the unclean thing. So you got two things you got in verse 14 a specific recitation of the laws of separation from defilement and uncleanness and then the reference to not touching unclean things in verse 17 to reinforce the idea that what he’s talking about here is a separation between the clean and the unclean.

Now this is very important as we look at the ramifications of this passage. Because what it says is there’s a difference. There’s a distinction in the world. There are two kinds of things out there. And specifically in reference to what he’s talking about here, two kinds of people. Two and only two.

Now let’s go to the specific reasons he gives and we’ll see this more clearly. I think, by the way, in this context, these verses also bring to mind some of the things we said a couple of weeks ago in terms of meekness. Remember we talked about meekness being not being rather broken to God’s harness. And Christ said, “Learn from me. Take my yoke upon you. I am meek.” We know that we should be yoked with Christ. And that talks about union with Christ. And it talks about meekness to do God’s will. And this is talking about the same kind of relationship of partnership together and some of the things that we should or shouldn’t do in that relationship.

Now Paul then—I believe after restating the case law, applying it to any covenantal yoking together with other people and specifically by application also marriage—then after he cites that law of this command, he goes on then the next three or four verses to give reasons for the command to help us understand why he’s saying these things so we can apply them better.

First of all, he tells us: what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness. Now fellowship there in this context is not koinonia, which is the normal word for fellowship. It’s a word instead that means a partnership—okay, blood brothers or a partner or some sort of partnership together. That’s the word he’s talking about. What partnership does righteousness have with unrighteousness?

Now these words are very important. The word for righteousness we know we’ve talked about before in this church has application to justice. It means certainly the righteousness of God imputed to our accounts. But it also refers to the necessity for our acting righteously before men. The word used to be spelled righteousness. Okay? And that gives a good example of what it’s talking about. Right actions. It means the application of righteousness to everything that we do. It has reference to our acts.

Notes on Galatians by Hodge and Vine. They say the following about this. Because Abraham accepted—talking about Abraham and Abraham’s righteousness before God. Because Abraham accepted the word of God, making it his own by that act of the mind and spirit which is called faith, as the sequel showed, submitting himself to its control. Therefore, God accepted him as one who fulfilled the whole of his requirements. The faith thus exercised brings the soul into vital union with God in Christ and inevitably produces righteousness of life, that is conformity to the will of God.

Now, it’s proper that in our day and age, since the Reformation, we talk about righteousness by faith and the imputation of God’s righteousness or justice to our account on the basis of Christ’s work. But it’s also very important that we don’t lose that sense of the word which says that there’ll be resulting fruit or righteousness in the life of the believer. Your actions will be governed by justice, conformance to God’s law in its requirements. That is specifically important in the context of this passage because what he says is what partnership does righteousness have with unrighteousness?

The word for unrighteousness is not at all the normal word for unrighteousness. It’s the word anomia, which we know in this church pretty well by now I hope to mean lawlessness. And it is speaking specifically here about the actions of the unbeliever in terms of lawlessness. So he says first of all, for a reason why you shouldn’t be yoked together: What partnership do those who do the right actions that God’s required them on the power of the Holy Spirit given to us on the basis of Christ’s righteousness? What partnership does that person have with the anomian, with the person who is lawless and throws God’s law out the window?

This is talking, I believe, about the different actions that would come forth from such a union. You’ve got two people. One group of people are governed by God’s law. Their actions reflect it. The other group of people reject God’s law. They’re antinomian. They’re lawless and their actions will reflect that. So Paul is telling us first of all, don’t be unequally yoked. Don’t get into—by application of marriage with an unbeliever—because that unbeliever is going to have actions that are not constant with your actions if you’re doing what’s right. He’s talking about a volitional difference between these two entities, the clean and the unclean.

So secondly, he tells us that there is a different environment that the two exist in. What communion hath light with darkness? Now darkness means to be obscured or not to be able to see something correctly, not to understand what it is or what it isn’t. Light has to do with the light that God has shed abroad in our hearts and in our minds and we can understand the things of God. In Ephesians 4:18 it talks about how in the vanity of their mind they have their understandings darkened. Talking about the unbeliever again, the unbeliever’s understanding is darkened.

When Paul says, “What communion hath light with darkness?” He’s saying that you have a different understanding of things around you, a different knowledge of what God has placed us in the middle of. What you see in relationship to things is going to be different. Not only your actions different, your knowledge itself—your epistemology, to use a big word—your understanding of what is truth, what is wrong will be different. So he’s talking there about our minds and understanding of things.

Now specifically in relationship to marriage, this is very clear. What is marriage after all? If you look at it from the believer’s perspective or from the unbeliever’s perspective, it’s two radically different things to the world around us. It is a relationship between two people that may exist for a while or it may not exist for a while. And if it stops existing, you stop being married. They see it in context of just the two people together atomistically, as it were, individually and not in terms of the broader context of what those people are doing or who they’re related to.

Marriage on the part of the unbeliever is one thing. Marriage on the part of the believer is something totally different. What is the purpose of Christian marriage? Something that has to be addressed of course in this kind of consideration.

Now we’ve talked in the past about Malachi 2:14-15. God tells us specifically. He says, “Yet ye say, Wherefore, because the Lord hath been witness between thee and the wife of thy youth, against whom thou hast dealt treacherously—yet is she thy companion and the wife of thy covenant.” We know from that that marriage is covenantal, don’t we? The wife of thy covenant. And did not he make one? Yet had he the residue of the spirit? And wherefore one? Why did God make these people one? He’s saying that he might seek a godly seed. Therefore, take heed to your spirit and let none deal treacherously against the wife of his youth.

Paul—or rather God tells us here in the Old Testament specifically—that marriage has as one of its specific requirements from God, a godly seed. The children of a marriage are important to God. It is one of the specific reasons for marriage. But to say that’s the only reason or that is the only definition of marriage would be incorrect. We know the scriptures give us many examples of childless people and their marriages are certainly godly marriages in many cases.

So what other overarching factor governs the fact that they should have godly seed? Well, it’s quite simple from God telling us the first—wife. First marriage after all, the wife is given the husband as a helpmeet, okay—a helper suited for him, a helper before him is what the words mean in Hebrew. So the wife is to be a helpmeet to her husband for what purpose? To fulfill man’s calling before God, which is to exercise dominion and manifest God and his righteousness in the created order.

Marriage has as its purpose then the assistance of men and women to develop dominion under God in the earth. The purpose of marriage then, the purpose of a wife then is to assist man in that call to dominion. And part of that, of course, is godly children, raising our children in the fear and admonition of the Lord and him putting his mark of baptism upon them.

Now, that is a radically different concept of marriage that it is covenantal, that it is specifically for the purposes of God opposed to the unbeliever who says marriage is individual. And marriage has to do with personal satisfaction and personal relationships apart from God. Your knowledge is different, is what I’m getting at here. One is an understanding of marriage in the light of God’s scripture. The other is an understanding of marriage in the darkness of the world, cut off from God’s true knowledge. I say cut off. Actually rejecting God’s knowledge is what the unbeliever does.

So not only are they volitionally different in terms of action—the two, the clean and the unclean—are different intellectually or in terms of their understanding of things.

It’s interesting that in continuing to talk about marriage here and what the scriptures say about it—and this again a specific application to this verse this morning—apparently the word for bridegroom in the Hebrew has implications of being a circumcised one, has implications to being cut or circumcised. So the bridegroom is one who is circumcised and the Hebrew word for father-in-law means by way of application of some of the Hebrew words there, a circumciser. And the mother-in-law is the feminine form of that word. So the bridegroom, and this helps us to understand something about marriage, is seen as being circumcised by the in-laws. What does that mean? That’s pretty odd, isn’t it?

I mean, after all, the child’s circumcised. He’s 8 days old. Well, you have to understand here, of course, that under godly systems and under God’s law in the Old Testament, the parents would examine the perspective son-in-law, the bridegroom as it were, for their daughter, prior to giving them permission for marriage. I hope that all of us in this church would do the same thing. And that implies of course also screening who our children date because after all, dating is a prelude to marriage.

The parent should inspect, question the prospective bridegroom, the person that would date their daughter on the basis of what? On the basis of how well he is performing his calling before God and exercise dominion. Well, the bride—the parents of the daughter would ask the perspective bridegroom if he had a job, if he could support their daughter. Was he exercising a dominical calling under God? Was he acting in obedience to God in terms of vocational calling? Was he setting aside everything that he did and seeing it in relationship to God? Was he being a true prophet, priest, and king before God? And was that his purpose for marriage—to assist him in that calling?

And if it was, of course, then they would grant him permission to marry their daughter.

What this means is that at that particular point of examination, the man having now grown up, having grown up faithfully to the covenant that he was placed into the covenant community through circumcision, was therefore demonstrating in a correct response to those answers and by winning the daughter’s hand from the parent as it were, that he was indeed a man of God and he was indeed a part of the covenant community of God. That he was circumcised, not just in the flesh, but in his heart, he was demonstrating his inclusion in the covenant and in faithful faithfulness to that covenant by the parent giving their daughter to him. And the parents were doing that as well.

Now what that means again is that marriage is a covenantal action and has to be seen as a continuation of the covenant community and not individualistically.

Now it’s interesting that in this country I have a facsimile copy of the laws of Plymouth Colony or Plymouth Plantation which were very overtly attempting to implement God’s law in a civil regime. And as part of these laws, they established a town clerk to record marriages, birth…