A Yoke-----Joins Together…….

“Don't become partners with those who reject God.  How can you make a partnership out of right and wrong?  That's not partnership; that's war. Is light best friends with dark?  Does Christ go strolling with the Devil?  Do trust and mistrust hold hands?  Who would think of setting up pagan idols in God's holy Temple?  But that is exactly what we are, each of us a temple in whom God lives. God himself put it this way:

"I'll live in them, move into them;
I'll be their God and they'll be my people.
So leave the corruption and compromise;
leave it for good," says God.
"Don't link up with those who will pollute you.
I want you all for myself.
I'll be a Father to you;
you'll be sons and daughters to me."
The Word of the Master, God.”   II Cor. 6:14-18 Message Bible

As we read more about the separated life Paul writes in II Cor. 6:14-16: “Do not be yoked together with the world.

Paul is referring to Deut 22:10; “Do not plow with an ox and a donkey yoked together.” 

It is not speaking to us about the yoking together of two different beasts of burden --- but being bounded together with those who do not share our faith.  If you are, there will be problems, different morals, different agendas, a different world view and a different lifestyle that could cause you to justify, deny, excuse or compromise your relationship with Jesus.

You will find your life becomes like a donkey and oxen tied together.  You will discover that you will be working from different heights, going at different paces and having different dispositions.  If you yoke yourself with someone of no faith or one that pretends to have faith….…. the yoke is on you.

To yoke means - to join together.  A yoke is part of the tack used to harness beasts of burden to a load, like a cart or a plow. The yoke distributes the weight and lightens the load for the animal.  A yoke can connect several animals together, like oxen, or donkeys so they can work together in pulling a burden. The animals are side by side, tied together, where one goes the other goes and they are virtually inseparable.

So Paul once again draws from the Old Testament principle and gives us the application as he says; “have no intimate relationship with someone that does not acknowledge Jesus Christ as Lord.” -------they are marching to the beat of a different drummer.

It is a strong warning because their lives are so opposed that it makes it almost impossible for a Christian to thrive in an intimate partnership with an unbeliever. Paul contrasted it to righteousness and unrighteousness, light and dark, Jesus and the devil. The irony of separation from the world is just like those in Corinth, many of us have once lived lives opposed to the things of God.  

“You have had enough in the past of the evil things that godless people enjoy—their immorality and lust, their feasting and drunkenness and wild parties, and their terrible worship of idols.

 Of course, your former friends are surprised when you no longer plunge into the flood of wild and destructive things they do. So they slander you.  But remember that they will have to face God, who will judge everyone, both the living and the dead.” I Peter 4:3-5 NLT

If God has taken you from the standards of the world, how can you go back and live by those old standards?  

The standards of the world are different then the standards of the Church so others think we are strange ---- strange when we stand up for what the scriptures say is right. The things that the world says is acceptable are not acceptable for followers of Jesus.

When the world pushes for a “tolerance for ungodliness” we should stand up and say “no.”  We have a different world view even though many of us used to be just like the world, when Jesus came into our lives He took away that world view and placed within us the Holy Spirit.

 So how does this yoking thing apply to us today?