Separate From the World

The word separate is defined in the dictionary as “to set or keep apart; disconnect; sever.”

Have you ever tried to mix oil and water together? Sometimes after a good rainstorm you will have a bunch of puddles on the street and you will be able to see oil from cars floating on top of the puddles. It just doesn’t mix.

Or possibly you may have seen something called a “lava lamp.” I used to have one of these as a child. It was shaped kind of like a cone, and it had some kind of liquid contained inside glass. There was also another kind of colored liquid inside of the glass, and it didn’t mix into the other liquid. In fact, when you plugged in the light and turned it on, that colored liquid would start to float around in colored globs. It would float up to the top, and then fall back down to the bottom, and repeat continuously. But the two liquids never mixed together. They were separate.

Here is another example. In the summertime I would sometimes go and pick some raspberries so we could make some homemade jam. After picking a small bucket full of berries, we would take them home and pick out all of the bad berries that had fallen into the bucket while we were picking them. Sometimes we would find some berries that had a little bit of mold on them, or just looked gross, and we would separate them from the good berries and throw them away.

And that is what is going to happen at Judgement Day. On that day, the entire world will be judged for how they lived their lives. The people who did what was good and right according to the word of God, and believed in His Son Jesus, those people God will grant access into the Kingdom of Heaven. But those who rejected Jesus while on the earth, and lived an unrepentant life filled with wickedness and sin, will be cast into Hell. 

Jesus describes this in one part of scripture as someone casting a net into the sea, and separating the good fish from the bad.

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a net, that was cast into the sea, and gathered of every kind: 

Which, when it was full, they drew to shore, and sat down, and gathered the good into vessels, but cast the bad away. 

So shall it be at the end of the world: the angels shall come forth, and sever the wicked from among the just,

And shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.” Matthew 13:47-50

Which brings me to the next part I want to talk about. If you saw someone in the process of robbing a bank, would you join them? Would you help them? Or would you stay away? If you saw someone doing something sinful, would you join up with them and do the same things? 

In 2 Corinthians, Paul wrote that we shouldn’t be yoked up together with unbelievers, but to be separate.

“Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? 

And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or 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 hath 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.” 2 Corinthians 6:14-17

Now, we need to preach the gospel to unbelievers so that they can be saved, and we obviously need to try to win them to Christ, but if they are doing something that is wrong according to the scriptures, we cannot be a part of that. 

Paul really wrote it well when he said “what communion hath light with darkness.” When you turn a lightbulb on, it is “bright” not “dark.” The “light” representing Jesus and Christianity, and “darkness” being sin. Paul wrote in another book that we “are all the children of the light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness.” (1 Thess 5:5) 

Christians don’t “mix” with the darkness of sin that goes on in the world. We keep ourselves separate. If the world is going to live that way, that is their decision, but we need to keep ourselves separate from sin.

So in closing, we learned that God is going to separate the good from the bad, the sheep from the goats; those who walked in the light of Christ from those who rejected Him. We need to keep ourselves separate from the sin of the world.

In Christ,

Andrew