Will you please turn to the letter to the Galatians? Galatians, Chapter 1, Verse 4.
Our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for our sins,
that He might deliver us out of this present evil world,
according to the will of our God and Father.
And in the same book, Galatians, Chapter 6, Verse 14.
But far be it from me to glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,
through whom the world hath been crucified unto me,
and I unto the world.
The Gospel according to John, Chapter 17. John, Chapter 17, Verse 6.
I manifested Thy name unto the men whom Thou gavest Me out of the world:
Thine they were, and Thou gavest them to Me;
and they have kept Thy word.
The same chapter, Verse 11.
And I am no more in the world, and these are in the world, and I come to Thee.
Holy Father, keep them in Thy name which Thou hast given Me,
that they may be one, even as We are.
Verse 14.
I have given them Thy word;
and the world hated them, because they are not of the world,
even as I am not of the world.
Verses 18 and 19.
As Thou didst send Me into the world,
even so sent I them into the world.
And for their sakes I sanctify Myself,
that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth.
And finally, 2 Corinthians, Chapter 6, Verses 17 and 18.
Wherefore, come ye out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord,
and touch no unclean thing; and I will receive you,
and will be to you a Father,
and ye shall be to Me sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.
Let us have a word of prayer.
Dear Lord, we want to thank Thee for gathering us before Thy table this morning. Lord, our hearts are forever grateful for what Thou hast done for us. Thou didst give Thy all to us. What can we say, Lord?
We want to hear Thy word. We want to follow Thee. We want to love Thee. We want to give ourselves wholly to Thee. May Thy name be glorified in each one of us.
We commit this time into Thy hands. We trust Thy Holy Spirit to send Thy word into our hearts and bring us into Thy truth. We give Thee all the praise and glory, in the precious name of our dear Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
The Lord seems to impress upon my heart these days this matter of separation—that is, separation from the world.
Now, we know the very word church in Greek is ekklesia, and ekklesia simply means “called-out ones, gathered together.” God has called us out of the world and gathered us together unto the name of our Lord Jesus—that is, unto the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Out of every nation, every tribe, every tongue, God has gathered out a people for Himself. And that is what the church is. That is what we are.
We are a chosen race, a kingly priesthood, a holy nation, a people for His possession, that we may set forth the excellencies of the One who called us out of darkness into His marvellous light.
So that is what we are. We are the called-out ones. God has separated us out from the world that we may be holy.
Yes, we are different. We have a different life from that of the world. We have a different Spirit—even the Spirit of God in us, the Holy Spirit. We have a different manner of life, a way of life that is heavenly, not earthly.
We are sojourners and strangers on this earth because, like Abraham, the father of faith, we are looking forward to a city which hath foundations, whose Builder is God Himself. That is what we are: a separated people.
We remember when God delivered the children of Israel by the Paschal Lamb. The angel of destruction passed over the children of Israel. They were delivered out of death by the blood of the Lamb.
But God did much more than that. When God sent Moses to Pharaoh, God said, “Let My people go, that they may serve Me.”
In other words, God not only saved them from death through the blood of the lamb, but God delivered them out of the land of Egypt, out of the tyranny of Pharaoh. Why? Because if they were saved from death and yet remained in Egypt, they could not serve God.
Pharaoh tried to keep them in Egypt. “Why not worship God in Egypt? Why must you go away?” But Moses said, “We have to go three days’ journey in order to serve our God.”
Our men, our women, our children, our cattle—everything—had to come out of Egypt in order that God might be served.
And thank God, His work is so complete that He not only delivered them out of death in Egypt; He also took them out of Egypt by crossing the Red Sea and left Egypt behind.
Now, brothers and sisters, when God’s mercy comes upon us, He does the same thing. He not only saves us from our sins, as we find in Galatians 1:4. Our Lord Jesus Christ saves us from our sins. But that is not all.
He should deliver us out of this present evil world, according to the will of our God and Father. So it is the will of God not only to save us from our sins, but to deliver us from this evil world according to the will of our God and Father.
You remember on the Day of Pentecost, when Peter delivered that message of salvation. He showed them that the One whom they crucified, God had raised up, and He is now enthroned at the right hand of God. God has anointed Him Lord and Christ.
When he spoke, many hearts were pricked because they were the ones who crucified our Lord. Then Peter said, “Repent, and be baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus, that your sins may be forgiven, and ye may receive the promise of the Holy Spirit.”
After that, with many other words, he exhorted them and said, “Be saved from this crooked generation.” Those who received his word were baptized. Three thousand were baptized on that day.
Now, what is baptism? Why is it, brothers and sisters, that we who believe in the Lord Jesus—why is that not enough? Why must we be baptized?
We are saved by the blood of our Lord Jesus. Only the blood can remit us from our sins. Water cannot cleanse us from our sins. Then why should we be baptized? What is the meaning of baptism? What is meant by being saved through the water?
It is not that our sins may be washed away, because they were washed away by the blood of our Lord Jesus. It is to be saved from the world.
God has already delivered us out of the power of darkness and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love. Now, by baptism, we act out our faith. We believe that we are dead to the world, and we are now made alive unto God. That is the meaning of baptism.
So, brothers and sisters, we who have believed in the Lord Jesus and are baptized, we are a separated people. God has delivered us out of the world unto Himself. That is what we are.
When you look into the history of the children of Israel, you find that when God led them out of Egypt, He did not lead them by the normal route of travel from Egypt to Canaan. There was a land route from Egypt to Canaan—the route of the Philistines—but God did not lead them that way.
Why? Because God said that if, when they came out, they should meet warfare, they might be discouraged and return to Egypt. So, in order to cut off the way back into Egypt, God led them around by way of the wilderness and even through the Red Sea.
After they crossed the Red Sea, Egypt was behind them. They could not go back anymore. So, brothers and sisters, you find how God wanted His people to be out of Egypt and never to return.
But unfortunately, we find that even though they came out of Egypt, when they travelled in the wilderness, again and again their hearts returned to Egypt.
Oh, how they longed for those smelly things in Egypt—the garlic, the onions, and all those things. They forgot the hardship. They forgot that they were under the sentence of death in Egypt. Yet they remembered only the fish and all the smelly things of Egypt.
Not only that, they even tried to choose their own leader to lead them back into Egypt. Thank God He did not allow them to do it. They wandered in the wilderness forty years, and that whole generation passed away. Only with the second generation were they able to enter into the promised land.
I think this should always be a warning to us. We, as those who are redeemed of the Lord, have been separated from the world by God. This is the will of God. But are we a separated people? That is the question.
Maybe first of all, we need to understand what the Bible means by the word world. The word world, kosmos, in Scripture has various meanings.
It can mean the earth—the earth that God has created, and all the things on this earth. In Psalm 24:1 it is said:
The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof;
the world, and they that dwell therein.
You know, in Hebrew this is a poetical way. One poetic expression in Hebrew is to repeat the same thing with different expressions and different words. So here in Psalm 24:1, “the earth is the Lord’s” is repeated as “the world, and they that dwell therein.”
Here you find that the word world means the earth—the earth that God has created and all the things that are upon this earth. God created this earth for our enjoyment, for our sustenance, for our nourishment. God created the earth that we might take care of it, till it, and that it might produce more; that we might rule over it, that God may be glorified. That is our relationship with this earth.
But then you find in the Bible that the word world has another meaning. It means people—the people who are on this earth. John 3:16 is familiar to us:
For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son,
that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish,
but have eternal life.
Here you find that God also loves the world. Not only does God love the earth that He created, but He says, “Whosoever believeth.” So the world here means the people, the people who inhabit this earth. God loves the people of this earth, and He loved them to such an extent as to give His only begotten Son to us, that if we believe in His Son, we shall not perish but have everlasting life.
This is the second meaning of the word world. Yet there is another meaning. Kosmos itself means something organized—a system, an organized system.
The enemy of God, Satan, tries to oppose God. So he has tried to organize the world into a system under his control in order to use it to oppose God’s purpose.
After God created this earth, or recreated it and made it habitable, God gave it to man. God asked man to take care of it. Yet when man sinned, he handed over the world under his dominion to Satan.
Satan actually is not the rightful ruler of this world. He is a usurper. But he is now called the god of this world, the ruler, the prince of this world. He organized this world into a system that opposes God’s purpose.
Whether it is political, economic, educational, social, or even religious, you find that he has organized all these into a system to oppose God. It is from that world that God has separated us.
What is our proper relationship with the world? We find it in the prayer of our Lord Jesus in John 17. Here our Lord Jesus shows us our relationship with the world.
First of all, He said that His Father has given us out of the world to Him. We belonged to this world. Not only were we on this earth, but we belonged to this system. We were all under the dominion of the power of darkness, as you find in Ephesians 2. We were all under the rule of the prince of the power of the air.
But God has delivered us out of this world, out of the system, and given us as His gift to His beloved Son. We thank God that He gave His beloved Son to us as His gift to us. But at the same time, He gave us, redeemed people, as His gift out of the world to His beloved Son.
So we belong to His beloved Son. We are God’s gift to His beloved Son, out of the world.
Then, in the same prayer, our Lord Jesus said, “I am no longer in the world.” That is to say, He was leaving this earth; He was leaving this whole system because He was returning to His Father. But He said, “They are still in the world.”
Out of the world, and yet still in the world. In other words, we are out of this world system that is opposed to God, but we are still on this earth. We are still living on this earth.
Not only are we still living on this earth; to a certain extent, we are still under this environment—an environment that is opposed to God. We are living in a hostile world. We are living in a strange world. We are aliens, strangers, and sojourners in this world. That is our situation today.
Yet again, our Lord Jesus said, “They are out of the world. They are still in the world, but they are not of the world.” Is that not wonderful? God has called us out of the world. We are still in the world, and yet we are not of the world.
Yes, we still live on this earth. Yes, we still live under that hostile environment. Yet we do not belong to it. We are out of the world. We do not belong to this world system because we belong to the kingdom of God’s Son of love.
Just like our Lord Jesus: He came into this world. He was born as a child. He grew up under the dominion of the Roman Empire. He was even under Judaism at that time because He was born a Jew.
Yet while our Lord Jesus was on earth, it was evident that He was not of the world. He was a heavenly Man living upon the earth.
You find that He was under the rule of the heavenly Father, not under the rule of any man—the Romans, the Jews, or any system, whether the Roman system or the Jewish religious system. He did not belong to them. He was different. He lived a heavenly life upon this earth.
When He accomplished the work of redemption, He returned to heaven, to His Father. But one day He is coming back again. That is our Lord Jesus.
The Lord says, in the same way, you should be in the world, but not of the world. You do not belong to this system. You belong to heaven, and you shall live a life of heaven upon earth—separated, different.
But there is another end. The Lord said again, “As Thou, Father, didst send Me into the world, even so sent I them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth.”
Brothers and sisters, what does that mean? It means that He has delivered us out of this world and sanctified us by His word so that He is able to send us into the world.
Go to all the nations—from Jerusalem to Judea, to Samaria, to the uttermost part of the earth—to preach the gospel, to bear testimony to God, to go into the world to the people and bring them into the kingdom of God.
So, brothers and sisters, you find in this very high-priestly prayer of our Lord Jesus that He has shown us our relationship with the world.
Now the question is: Where are we?
Are we like the children of Israel? God delivered them out of Egypt, and yet Egypt was still in their hearts. Or are we even worse than the children of Israel? God has delivered us out of the power of darkness, and yet, after we are saved, we have never left the world.
Where are we? What is our relationship with the world today?
Brothers and sisters, we are a separated people. How separated are we?
The world is a terrible system. The children of Israel came out of Egypt, out of the world. The first generation—their hearts were still in the world—so they fell in the wilderness.
The second generation, by the grace and mercy of God, entered into the promised land. But what happened? After they were in the promised land, they were taken captive into Babylon.
Out of Egypt into Babylon; out of the world as it is into the religious world. They were still captured. How subtle is the world. Brothers and sisters, what is our state?
Have we really come out of the world? Positionally, we are. But experientially, in our daily life, are we a separated people? Are we different from the world?
Are we always longing for the world? Are we imitating the world? The world should imitate us, but instead, we imitate the world. Where do we stand?
So, brothers and sisters, the Lord has recently exercised my heart in this matter: How much have I really been delivered from this world?
The apostle Paul said that he would not boast of anything save Jesus Christ and His cross. He would boast in the cross only. Why? Because, so far as the world was concerned, he was crucified to the world; and so far as he was concerned, the world was crucified to him. The cross stood in between, separating him from the world.
Now, is that our testimony?
Let us go back to the very beginning. Let us retrace our steps to the day when the Lord saved us.
Before we were saved, we belonged to the world. That is the reason why you find people wanting to belong. Young people want to belong. We belonged to the world. We were no different from anybody else.
We were under the power of darkness. We did not see what the world really was. We thought that the world was beautiful, sweet, and precious. We longed for the things of this world. We wanted to get along and get on—more and more of the world. That was what we wanted.
We were like the rest of the people, deeply sunk in this world that is passing away.
But thank God, the Spirit of God worked upon us. Our conscience was touched by the Spirit of God. We saw our sins. We saw that the wages of sin is death. We saw that there was no hope.
We cried. We found that we were under the tyranny of the power of sin. We were not ourselves. We were not free. We cried to God, and thank God, He opened our eyes.
He drew us back to the cross, to Christ our Lord Jesus. There He was crucified. He bore our sins in His body on the tree. His blood was shed for the remission of our sins. We came to Him. We believed in Him. Thank God, we were saved.
We were freed from this heavy burden of sin. But, dear brothers and sisters, is that all? Is that all that happened when you were saved?
Is there no change? Do you not have a new life that is heavenly? Is there any sign that you are not of the world?
Does the Holy Spirit ever convict you afterwards concerning the things of the world for which you long? Is there no dealing in your life?
Can you go on with your old friends, doing the same things as you did before, seeking the same things that the people of this world seek, and the Spirit of God is silent? Can it be? Are you really saved? Brothers and sisters, where are we?
Why is it that we may be saved and yet have no consciousness of the world? We still love the world. We still desire to be conformed to the world. Why?
You remember Romans 12:1–2.
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God,
to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God,
which is your spiritual service.
And be not fashioned according to this world:
but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind,
that ye may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Brothers and sisters, I believe that any believer—anyone who believes in the Lord Jesus, anyone who has His life in him, anyone who has the Spirit of God in him—cannot help but find that, after he is saved, the Lord begins to deal with him in this matter of the world.
Maybe there are certain things that you love, things that you consider as your life. Maybe there are certain people of the world that you love—people that you love more than the Lord Himself.
Maybe there is some habit that you have and will not give up because you love it. Perhaps there is a relationship or friendship concerning which the Spirit of God speaks to you, but you do not listen.
I believe you must have experienced these things. But why is it that, even under the prompting of the Holy Spirit, and deep down in your heart you know there is something wrong, you will not give up? You will not change. You still love the world. Why?
I think it is because there is a basic lack of consecration.
You know, when we are constrained by the love of Christ, when we think of the mercies of God, it should move our hearts to give our whole being to the One who loved us so much, who gave Himself for us. We want to give ourselves to Him.
This consecration—I am afraid, brothers and sisters, that we are lacking in consecration. When we say, “Lord, I give everything to You,” we do not mean it.
There is not the seriousness or the thoroughness of one who has truly been touched by the love of Christ. You cannot live for yourself anymore. You do not belong to yourself. You belong to Him, and His love constrains you to give your whole being to Him.
“Lord, it is Yours. It is not mine. I have no right to use my body. I have no right to use my time. I have no right to use all my relationships. You are the One who decides everything.”
Brothers and sisters, have we consecrated ourselves to the Lord in an absolute way?
Without such consecration, your mind will not be renewed. If your mind is not renewed, you will still be conformed to this world, because you find it lovely, precious, and life to you.
You do not see the subtlety of the enemy, the real face of the world. You love it.
The Bible says, “If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” No one can serve two masters. You will either love the one or hate the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. Friendship with the world is enmity with God.
But we do not see it. We think we can love both. We love the Father, and we love the world. But God says it is impossible. We think we can serve two masters. Are you wiser than God? God says you cannot do that.
The very fact that you befriend the world means that you become an enemy of God. James 4:4. Why do you not see it? Why is it that your view of the world is still the worldly view and not the Christian view?
Why is it that you see the world as a mirage built by the enemy and do not see the world in its reality—the world that crucified the Lord? If the world crucified the Lord, will it not crucify you?
That is what the enemy is trying to bring you into, and you do not see it. Why? Because there is a lack of consecration. Unfortunately, many of God’s people do not have a firm foundation. The Spirit of God is working in your life, but you neglect Him.
Oh, brothers and sisters, to be a separated people, I believe the most important thing is to go to the Lord and ask His love to touch you deeply. Then hand yourself over to the Lord—your whole being—to the Lord, and let Him have absolute rule over your life.
When you do that, things begin to happen. You will find that the Lord, first of all, as it were, begins to touch the outward things of the world.
Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world.
If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes
and the vainglory of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.
And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof.
Brothers and sisters, you will find that the Lord begins to touch you. As I say, there may be something in your life—sometimes it is almost ridiculous because it is such a small thing, a very small thing—yet it is something you love so much that you cannot give it up.
The Lord, by His Spirit, touches you and says, “Now, how about this thing? Will you give it up for Me?” Oh, how you struggle. You cannot.
Maybe it is a little jewel. Maybe it is something else, a little thing.
Oh, I still remember many years ago, in 1936, when I was in Amoy. One day I was preaching on this matter of consecration, and there was a medical doctor there.
He had two hobbies. One hobby was that he raised Leghorn chickens, and the other was that he raised orchids. These were his life. Nobody could touch them. If anybody touched his chickens or his flowers, he would be so angry. That was his life.
After he heard this message of consecration, that night he began to pray and said, “Lord, I want to give everything to You.” He began to hand over one thing after another—not generally, but in detail. He handed over this and that, this and that, until he felt that he had handed over everything to the Lord.
Then he had a good night’s rest. The next morning he woke up, and one of his little chickens had died. In the past, that would have been unbearable. But now, when this happened, he could say, “It is all Yours.”
You know, it is a small thing. But the Lord is touching us in this matter of the world. What is your world?
Or is it some people that you love? Sometimes there are illegitimate things that you should give up, but you will not. Sometimes there are even legitimate things; but when legitimate things pass their boundary, when you love them more than the Lord, they become illegitimate. The Holy Spirit is jealous. He will deal with it.
Oh, He may deal with your friendships. You have some friends who are not believers. You used to do things with them, and now, after you are saved, they want to go somewhere that you know you should not go. But because of friendship, you go.
They want to do certain things that you know you should not do, but because of friendship, you give in and go with them. Brothers and sisters, where are you? Where is your testimony? Where is your death to the world?
That is the reason why, as soon as you are saved, you should tell people that you are the Lord’s. You should make a stand, and you will be saved from many troubles. They will know that you are different, and they will not dare to ask you to do those things. Your friendships have to change.
The things of this world—the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life—the Spirit of God will deal with you in order to deliver you out of this world system, that the love of the Father may be in you.
Then, gradually, as you walk with the Lord, the definition of the world system becomes clearer and clearer. It is not only the things of the world. You discover that the world is a mould, a fashion.
That is why the Bible uses the word age. There is another Greek word, aion. It means a period of time characterized by certain moral characteristics. This is a wicked, evil age. This is an age that is perverse.
Yet it has its fashion. It has its current. The world is like a current that is running on. Whenever a person has a new fashion, immediately the whole world follows it in order to be in fashion.
You do not want to be considered backward. You want to be fashionable. Brothers and sisters, you want to be sociable. “All the world is doing that. Why do you not do it?”
Ah, brothers and sisters, you will find that the world is a mould. There is a fashion there, a current there.
Sometimes we may have dealings with the outward things, but when we come to that mould, we find it difficult. Everybody is doing it. If you do not do it, you are a bit odd. People will look at you and say, “You belong to the last generation, the last century. You are not fashionable, not sociable—backward.”
There you must be different. Why must we imitate the world? The world should imitate us. Why should we come out of Egypt and be captured into Babylon?
If our minds are really renewed, we will look down upon these things, just like the apostle Paul. What was considered precious to him? His status, his achievement in Judaism, his own future. Now he considered these as refuse, as loss, for the excellency of the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.
As you go on with the Lord, you will discover that the world is not only things and not only a mould. It is a spirit.
In 1 Corinthians 2, what we received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit of God. The world has a spirit. It is a spirit of pride, arrogance, self-centeredness, and rebellion. That is the spirit of the world.
Because of this spirit, you find strife, envy, and wars. The spirit of the world has come into the church.
People strive against each other, striving for position, striving for power—arrogant, proud, self-centered, rebellious. Oh, how this world rebels against God, against anything that is authority. The spirit of this world has entered into the church.
May the Lord deliver us. Dear brothers and sisters, may we be a separated people, a people marked with the spirit of the Lamb: humble, meek, and lowly.
Thank God, His Spirit is in us. He is working. But we need to cooperate. We need to submit ourselves to Him.
The word of the Lord is:
Come ye out from among them,
and be ye separate, saith the Lord,
and touch no unclean thing;
and I will receive you,
and will be to you a Father,
and ye shall be to Me sons and daughters,
saith the Lord Almighty.
Oh, my brothers and sisters, do you think the world will love you? It is false. The world hates you because you belong to the Lord. It is only trying to entice you in order to kill you.
It is true that because we do not belong to the world, the world hates us, and we will suffer. But remember: we have a Father. God says, “I will be your Father. I will take care of you, and you will be My sons and daughters.”
Not merely babies, but sons and daughters. You grow up. Saith the Lord Almighty. May God bless us. Let us pray.
Dear Lord, we want to thank Thee for delivering us out of this evil world. Yet, Lord, oftentimes our hearts still linger there. We do not see it as Thou seest it.
At other times, we are afraid to suffer, afraid to be different. Lord, forgive us. We pray that Thy Spirit will deeply convict us and bring us to our knees, that we may confess, that we may repent, and that we may be restored.
O Lord, we pray that Thou wilt build up a wall between us and the world. May the cross separate us from the world. Let the world see us as dead, and may we see the world as dead, to the glory of God.
In the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.