The Unequal Yoke
Friendship With The World
Aim: To show how our relationships with the unsaved must be tempered by our understanding of biblical Salvation.
Text: 2 Corinthians 6:14 & 1 Corinthians 15:33
Introduction: Last Sunday morning we began a new series on the unequal yoke. We looked at what the Bible means when it employs this term, how that it is translated from a composite Gk word, “heterozugeo” meaning “the joining of different sorts”, and we saw how the unequal yoke is an unbalanced relationship, and how that it effects the full spectrum of our relationships. That we are not to be “unequally yoked together with unbelievers.” The unbeliever being the one who is faithless, one who is incredulous of the things of God, one who is unbelieving and untrusting of Christ.
Now we want to think about this more specifically, and I want to think about the area of our friendships. 1Cor 15:33 makes a very insightful remark when Paul writes, “Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners.”
The idea of the word “deceived” here is that of seduction. The Bible says do not be seduced by others; do not allow others to lead you astray. You know what, I don’t care how strong we are, or how strong we think we are, all of us have the potential to be led astray. So Scripture warns us not to be seduced, because evil communications, that is, bad, injurious, harmful companionships corrupt good manners, not “p” and “q”s, but morals. In other words a poor choice of friends, and the keeping of bad company will often result in the ruination of what might otherwise have been a good life.
Over and over again the Bible warns us about the unequal yoke in our companionships. James 4:4 states, “Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? Whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.” Unconverted companions have been the means of leading many believers, young and old, back into the world. How we need to make a clean cut from all our worldly ties and associations if we want to go on with God. You cannot possibly have communion with God and with the world too. If you get into friendship with the world, your friendship with God ceases. You join hands with those who disown His authority; reject His Son, and resist His Spirit; you go over to Satan’s ranks, and take sides against God. See Proverbs 13:20 & 28:7. We see it in the life of Lot who called the unsaved his brethren, and for whom the unequal yoke led to the damnation of his in laws and the destruction of his family. We see it in the life of Samson, as he gave himself to ungodly women and sought the companionship of the Philistines, until at last he was blind and bound and the subject of their mockery. We see it the life of the prodigal who had no sooner arrived in the far off country and made friends with the world than he wasted his substance on riotous living.
You might be tempted now to say, “Well, Pastor, if I did not have my worldly friends I would have no friends at all!” Let me say to you then, “Learn to live and walk with God; then, no matter where you cast your lot; you will never lose in your company.
A lonely heart that leans on God is happy anywhere.
Determine to make friends with God’s children. Take heed to the counsel of Ruth who stated to Naomi, “Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God" (Ruth 1:16), or David who said, “"I am a companion of all them that fear Thee" (Psalm 119:63).
This morning, I am going to introduce you in the Scriptures to the kind of character who will bring a man to shame. Here is a Bible character that I dare say many of you have never heard of before, but he sets out for us the dangers in evil companionship - his name is Hirah, and he was a friend to the fourth son of Jacob, namely Judah through whom the Messianic line would come.
Come with me now to Genesis 38:1-30.
I. Hirah Introduced Judah to the Wrong Kind of People – vs. 1-2
A. In chapter 37 Judah had been instrumental in persuading his brothers to sell Joseph into slavery.
1. As a consequence of that he was party to the lie told to Jacob, that Joseph was dead.
2. No doubt t was difficult for Joseph’s brethren to live with Jacobs’ grief knowing that it was unnecessary, and it would appear that it was particularly difficult for Judah, given that he was the architect behind Joseph’s disappearance.
3. So Judah made a decision – he decided to leave home, to get away from the oppressive house of mourning, to get his own space.
4. He did what many do, before they fall into bad company – he broke through God’s hedge of protection – in this case that hedge is represented by Jacob’s home.
a. Instead of making things right, instead of coming clean and confessing to Jacob about Joseph, instead of remaining under his father’s roof. Subject to his father’s authority, Judah decided to get out and get away.
5. Remember what Solomon wrote: Whoso breaketh an hedge, a serpent shall bite him.”
a. The serpent in Judah’s case came in the form of Hirah – see verse 1.
B. What was about Hirah that attracted Judah to him?
1. Well the answer lies possibly in the meaning of Hirah’s name – Hirah means “nobility”.
2. Judah was won over and enticed by a upwardly mobile social circle.
3. For the moment at least he had broke free from the simple farm life of his father – no more sheep shearing for him, he was walking in the company of high society, meeting interesting and educated people, he was in the company of nobility.
4. Let me tell you something – sometimes those who are lost seem far more interesting and far more exciting than those who are saved.
5. Sometimes we perceive they are living their life on the edge, experiencing all that the world has to offer for good or ill, whilst the Christian is cosseted away in the cloistered world of the church.
6. The life of the lost may seem grittier, it is certainly more sensual and it may seem a lot more thrilling, than the Christian life affords.
a. BTW if you think the Christian life is boring – you’re not living it!!
7. Coming back to Judah – that was how he nop doubt saw Hirah – this man of nobility.
4. And it seems that this new found acquaintance introduced him to others in high society, for it was whilst he was in the company of Hirah that Judah found himself a wife – the daughter of Shua a certain Canaanite.
1. Shua means “wealthy” – so we would say of him, “he married into money.”.
2. If I could bring this up to modern life – here is how I would see it, Judah the boy from the estate meets some posh friends at college, he enjoys their company, he finds them interesting, edgy even at times a little scary, but they are far more engaging than the boring old cronies he grew with down at the local church.
3. In time he meets a girl, she’s a looker, a woman of the world, and her daddy is rich – they marry, without his parent’s blessing, I would add, and buy a really up market home, drive a Chelsea tractor, a 4X4, and hold marvellous dinner parties in their luxury apartment showing off all the latest gadgetry money can afford. In their early 20’s these two have the world by the tail and they don’t mind flaunting it.
(i) No doubt some of the boys from home were mightily impressed with Judah’s progress in the world.
(ii) They probably envied many of his possessions, his fine clothes, his beautiful well-spoken, well-heeled wife.
(iii) But the fact of the matter is that the things, which impress men, are rarely the same things that impress God.
4. So Judah’s worldly friendship with Hirah the Adullamite led him into an unequal yoke in marriage.
5. He married a Canaanite, a member of a sin cursed people who practiced the most depraved form of religion.
6. And where did this begin, it began with an unhealthy friendship, when Judah made the acquaintance of Hirah the Adullamite.
5. Now in Canaanite religion women held fairly powerful positions and important governing and cultic roles, as well as enjoying extensive economic, legal and matrimonial rights.
1. In fact, inheritance rights were denied from sons who would not respect their mother.
2. In other words the women of the home often held the dominant position, and so it was in Judah’s home, in time he and his wife had three sons, the first Judah named after Jewish custom, but the second two were named by their mother, intimating that it was she and not he who was wearing the trousers in that household.
3. We have said already that an unequal yoke involves the coupling of two people who have differing goals and purposes – and we see that to be the case here.
4. Obviously aware that the Messianic line is to come through him, Judah makes iy his business to choose a wife for his firstborn son, Er, and he chooses a beautiful young woman by the name of Tamar.
5. Before Tamar can conceive, Er dies, and according to he ancient levirate law, his brother is now required to produce a child with his brother’s wife in order to sustain the family line.
6. But Er’s younger brother Onan refuses to do this – and in time he too dies.
7. So Judah instructs Tamar to return to her father’s home and wait until his youngest son Shelah is old enough to marry her.
a. Now we don’t have enough time to explain all this, this morning, but understand that what Judah did in returning Tamar to her father was, within the culture of the time and place was a humiliating act.
b. Not only that, but Judah had begun to view Tamar as something of a black widow – having lost two sons in connection with her he was ill prepared to give the blessing to his third to marry her – so he was really dishonest and insincere in his dealing with her.
c. You say, “But this man is in the Messianic line and look at his conduct!”
d. Have you not heard? “Evil communications corrupts good manners!”
6. Now come with me to verse 12 and see what happens next: Read vs. 12
II. Hirah Took Judah along to the Wrong Kind of Parties.
A. Here is an amazing truth, I know you are going to be really shocked by it, are you ready: Worldly people go to worldly places!
1. Shocking isn’t it? Not really, but what is shocking is that sometimes Christian people, who should know better go with them.
B. Here Judah is mourning the loss of his wife.
1. He has already lost two sons, and now he has lost his spouse – maybe he is beginning to really understand how Jacob feels – he has lost Rachel, he has lost Joseph, and Judah is also a loss to him at this point, given he has gone off to fly his kite.
2. No doubt feeling low, with the weight of the world upon his shoulders his old friend and acquaintance Hirah decides to cheer him up.
3. “Hey, it’s sheep shearing time down in Timnath!’ he says, plenty of booze, lots of women, why don’t we go down there, it’ll take your mid off things!”
4. Now to you and me who are city people a ‘Sheep shearing festival” doesn’t exactly sound like a barrel of laughs, but understand that this festival was a riot – it was Mardi Gras, it was Notting Hill, it was carnival time, and every kind of sin, vice and folly was there to be enjoyed!
5. So Judah decided to go.
C. All the while Shelah, his son has grown and there is no sign of him giving him to Tamar as a husband.
1. So that she may be saved from disgrace, and that Judah would do the right thing by her in enabling her to bear a child, Tamar had to contrive a plan in order to obtain justice, even putting at risk her own life.
2. Knowing only too well the kind of man Judah was becoming, and expecting him to make an appearance at Timnath, she disguised herself as a temple prostitute and lay in wait for her father-in-law.
3. Having surrendered now to the morals of the world, Judah passing by his disguised daughter-in-law duly propositioned her – how well she knew him – the price of her service a kid from his flock – a payment he clearly did not have with him.
4. So as a mark of his willingness to pay her deposited with her his signet ring, bracelets and staff.
5. The commentator John Phillips says of this transaction: “The signet was his ring, used for impressing his signature into clay tablets of the time; it represented his person. His ‘bracelets’ were probably a valued chain of gold; they represented his possessions. His staff marked him out as a shepherd. In ancient times many people carried a staff, often carved with some identifying symbol such as an animal, a flower or a bird. The staff represented his position. Judah could this lightly forfeit his person, possessions and position for the sake of a moment of lust.”
6. That is where his worldly friendship had brought him.
III. Hirah Encouraged Judah down the Wrong Kind of Path – vs. 20-23
A. You where Hirah now stands in Judah’s life.
1. In verse 1 he is a mere acquaintance.
2. In verse 12 he is an associate going along along to the carnival at Timnath.
3. But by verse 20 he is an accomplice in his immoral behaviour with Tamar.
a. You see that is the nature of friendship, the Bible says, “Iron sharpeneth iron; so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.” (Prov 27”17)
b. A friend rubs off on you, and he either encourages you to do what’s right or he encourages you to do that which is wrong.
c. Clearly Hirah was the wrong kind of friend, and clearly Judah had bought into an unequal yoke when he teamed up with this worldly associate.
d. Someone put it this way, “In our dealings with those caught in sexual lust, mercy is incomplete unless we do as Jesus did; call it sin. We have winked, giggled, made alibis, or ignored sin all too long. A friend in deed is one who says quietly, but firmly, "What you’re doing friend is sin. It is harmful to you and to others. It is destructive to God’s dream for you.”
e. But there was never the slightest chance of Hirah so correcting Judah, because Hirah was an evil companion, their friendship an unequal yoke.
Conclusion: Well in the course of time Judah’s sin was exposed, and he had the sense to acknowledge his sin, and return back to his father’s home, buthow this whole sordid episode serves to remind us of the importance of choosing our friends and companions wisely. It is not for nothing that the Scripture says, “Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. (Psalm 1:1).
What about your friends? Do you find they are introducing you to the wrong kinds of people, bringing you to the wrong kind of places, encouraging you down the wrong kind of path? Time to severe that tie. “Come out from among them and be ye separate. And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness.” Oh dear Christian avoid worldly friendship and be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers.
