Turn with me in the Word of God to the letter of the Apostle Paul to the Galatians, chapter 6, verse 14:
But far be it from me to glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,
through which the world hath been crucified unto me, and I unto the world.
Then turn to the letter of the Apostle Paul to the Ephesians, chapter 2, beginning with verse 1:
And you did He make alive, when ye were dead through your trespasses and sins,
wherein ye once walked according to the course of this world,
according to the prince of the powers of the air,
of the spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience;
among whom we also all once lived in the lusts of our flesh,
doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind,
and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest:
but God, being rich in mercy,
for His great love wherewith He loved us,
even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace have ye been saved.
Then in the first letter of the Apostle John, chapter 2, from verse 15:
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 vain glory of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.
And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof:
but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever.
And then in the letter of the Apostle Paul to the Colossians, chapter 1, from verse 19:
For it was the good pleasure of the Father that in Him should all the fulness dwell;
and through Him to reconcile all things unto Himself,
having made peace through the blood of His cross—through Him, I say, whether things upon the earth, or things in the heavens.
And you, being in time past alienated and enemies in your mind in your evil works,
yet now hath He reconciled in the body of His flesh through death,
to present you holy and without blemish and unreproveable before Him:
if so be that ye continue in the faith, grounded and steadfast,
and not moved away from the hope of the gospel which ye heard,
which was preached in all creation under heaven; whereof I Paul was made a minister.
We will just have a further word of prayer.
Beloved Lord, we are glad that we are found here in Your presence this evening. We want very simply, as we come to the ministry of Your Word, to confess that without You we can do nothing.
Beloved Lord, we need that anointing which alone You can give. You have not left us without provision for such a time as this.
Through the finished work of the Lord Jesus, You have at great cost provided us with a remedy, and made that anointing a glorious reality in the Person of the Holy Spirit.
Therefore, beloved Lord, by faith we stand in that anointing, grace, and power this evening—for both the speaking of Your Word, the translating of it, and the hearing of it.
Pierce our hearts this night, Lord. Somehow meet us, challenge us. Do not let us be the same.
Lord, we are living in incredibly dangerous days. Everything is happening so fast and rapidly deteriorating.
We need You, Lord. Speak to our hearts. We ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
The theme of this conference continues really from last year: the way to the eternal purpose of God—the cross.
There is no alternative to the cross. The only way a human being can be saved is through the work of our Lord Jesus on the cross.
And the only way this world can be redeemed—that is, the physical world—is through the cross of our Lord Jesus.
There is no other way for any child of God to be changed into the likeness of the Lord Jesus. It is simplicity itself. Yet, because it is so simple, we all overlook it.
We get into such theological complexity, when Christ crucified is the only way that God has ordained.
Now, my responsibility in these few days is the cross and the world. I personally find it a very difficult subject because of the complexity of the way the English word world is used.
For instance, if you take the verse we read in Galatians 6:
But far be it from me to glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,
through which the world hath been crucified unto me, and I unto the world.
The Greek word used here is kosmos. There are two words translated into English by the same English word, world.
One is kosmos, and this is the whole material universe: everything within it, all the beauty in the total material universe, and all human beings.
Then you have another word, aion—age. Actually, that has come into English. We speak of the eons of time.
This word is sometimes translated age, ages, or periods. It has the feeling of something continuous.
In Ephesians 2:2, you have both words used:
Wherein ye once walked according to the course of this world.
The word translated in English as course is aion, age: “according to the age of this world.”
Now, that would not mean much in English, and quite rightly it is translated in the 1901 American Standard Version—which I consider a good version—“according to the course of this world.” It is the duration, the course, of this world.
Both these words have acquired, on the whole, an unfavorable meaning in the Bible.
Consider, for instance, Galatians 1:4:
Who gave Himself for our sins, that He might deliver us out of this present evil world, according to the will of God.
And then, of course, as we have already said in Ephesians 2:2:
Wherein ye once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the powers of the air, of the spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience;
among whom we also all once lived in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath.
Then in 1 John 2:15:
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.
The word here is kosmos. Love not the world and the things that are within the world.
What in the world does John mean? When you think of what God Himself said: “For God so loved the world”—kosmos.
I am tying you up in knots. Something has happened to this world.
That is what I mean when I say these two Greek words have, on the whole, acquired a very unfavorable, almost dark, meaning in the Word of God.
Of course, John was always black and white. There were never any shades between the two.
But he explains himself:
For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the vain glory of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.
And the world passeth away.
I am trying to introduce this. We will get down to the more practical side.
James was another very stark person. This is how he put it in James 4:4:
Ye adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God?
Whosoever therefore would be a friend of the world maketh himself an enemy of God.
Those are tough words—exceedingly severe. “Ye adulteresses”: you have broken your marriage covenant with God. You have given yourself to another spirit, a worldly spirit, the spirit that is in this world.
Then he uses the word enmity. I like the American Standard Bible translation better: hostility. It is the same idea—an enemy of God. Rather strong, is it not?
Let me go back a little. What then has happened to this world? This world that God created, of which it is recorded in Genesis 1:31:
And God saw everything that He had made, and, behold, it was very good.
What has happened? Apparently, the world, when it was first created, was pure. It was a work of God.
Well, we have the fall of Satan and a third of the angels, and the fall of man.
This fall, beginning with Satan and the angels and moving into Adam, into the human being, substantially and essentially changed and altered this world.
Something entered into the world that was altogether other than God.
You remember how the Apostle Paul says:
We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.
When God created man, he was the apex of the natural creation. I think of it like a triangle.
At the very bottom are all the creatures that Darwin called “primeval slime.” Then you have the fish, the reptiles, the bugs, and all the other things as you come up.
Then you have the birds. Then you have animals. Then you have mammals, nearest in one sense to the human being. And then you have man. That was one triangle.
But another triangle came down from heaven: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The idea was that the Spirit of God would dwell in the human being, and that the whole world would be governed and supervised by man.
This is not so crazy as it may seem. After all, how in the world did Noah get all those animals into the ark? Have you ever thought about it?
I have three dogs and three cats, and that is enough to get into the house. How did Noah get them in? He was able to communicate.
The fear of man was not in the animal creation until the flood.
Now, when man fell, it was as if the hub of the wheel was torn out—as if the very heart of the practical energizing of the universe was destroyed.
Man, instead of being a God-centered, God-conscious, and God-dependent being, became a self-centered, self-conscious, and self-dependent being.
From that point, you have human history as we know it. Everywhere, it is man: my aggrandizement, my glory, my fulfillment. Everything is always to do with man.
He builds empires for his glory. It is humanism—the last great antichrist philosophy of this world: fallen man, and everything in it centered on fallen man.
God intends to sum up everything in Christ. Satan, in order to take man, wants to sum up everything in man—man in union with spirits and demons.
This is no theory. Something happened when man fell. The world acquired a new character. As I said, it was substantially and essentially altered.
Of course, I must tell you that this world is still very beautiful. But it has essentially and substantially been altered.
It is indwelt by Satan.
Now, some of you will say, “I think you are going a little too far.” Really? Why do you think Satan is called the prince of this world?
John 12:31 speaks of “the prince of this world.” Why do you think all these things we read about happened to the world? Why did it change?
Let me read to you a few verses from Genesis 3, verses 17 to 19. God is speaking to Adam:
Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife,
and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it:
cursed is the ground for thy sake;
in toil shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;
thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee;
and thou shalt eat the herb of the field;
in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread,
till thou return unto the ground;
for out of it wast thou taken:
for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.
Something happened when man fell. Thorns and thistles. How much further shall we take it?
Sometimes people come to me and say, “Were mosquitoes after the Fall? Wasps? Flies? Cockroaches—especially those huge ones?” Where did they all come from?
Of course, if you were to take them out, the whole cycle of nature would be altered. But something happened when man fell.
John, in his first letter, chapter 5, verse 19, says:
The whole world lieth in the evil one.
We can still see such beauty in this world. We worship God sometimes for the beauty of this world when it first makes its impact upon us.
We also know that though man himself has fallen, still he was made in the image of God. There is an imprint deep within the human being. Even when he is depraved, even when he is perverse and perverted, even when he is fallen, still there is the imprint. It is amazing.
This demonic change is most clearly seen in Romans 12:2:
And be not fashioned according to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.
Now, this is not kosmos; this is aion. Do not be fashioned, molded, or formed by this age.
But we all are. We are in the mold. And even when we become Christians, so many find it impossible to get out of the mold. The apostle is speaking to believers.
Get out of the mold. Do not let this age form you—your outlook, your mindset.
If you go on, what does he say?
And be not fashioned according to this age, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.
That means another mindset. “Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.”
Do you know what the biggest problem in the Christian life is? The mold of this world, the fashion of this world. It stunts the Christian life, spoils it, finally corrupts it, and in the end destroys it.
Then you become a monument, a gravestone. Once you were saved. Once you walked with the Lord. But somehow or other, you lost it all.
You do not hear the Lord anymore. You do not see the Lord. You are not alive to the Lord anymore.
It is the same with the church. The greatest destroyer of the church is the mindset of this world.
How many times I have heard it in the gatherings of the church: “What is going on? We must use common sense.”
What do they mean by common sense? They mean the mindset of the world.
I will tell you what common sense is. If God is God, then there is nothing impossible. And if the Lord Jesus has been given to us as Head of the church, genuine common sense means we hear what the Head is saying.
Otherwise, this other mindset destroys the church.
We become affluent. We have the Lord’s Table. We have prayer meeting. We have evangelistic meetings. We have the whole regime—and the Lord Jesus is outside, and nobody knows it.
He is not King.
The most plaintive, moving word of Jesus is this:
If any man hear My voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me.
I am sure if we had members of the church of Laodicea here and asked them, “Do you believe you have overcome?” they would say, “Yes, we know the Lord. We have had wonderful Bible teaching. We are a pretty alive church, you know. I think we have overcome.”
And they do not even know that Jesus is outside. Neither the elders nor the deacons—nobody.
The Lord Jesus never said, “If a whole number of you will open the door.” He came down to one: “If any man.”
The mindset of this world, the mold of this world—it is the paralysis of the church.
It is why every movement of the Spirit of God since Pentecost has died within generations. The mindset of the world has taken over. It is being fashioned according to this world.
Oh, brothers and sisters, I believe this is a very serious matter.
Look at the work of the Lord. Why does it become routine? The fire has gone. The Apostle Paul said to Timothy, “Stir into flame the gift that is in you.” Why? It dies. It becomes powerless.
It is the same problem. Oh, dear friend, it is worth thinking about.
This is the world: the most seductive way Satan can use to destroy the work of God.
Of course, it is absolutely true that there are all kinds of worldly things, and we can separate ourselves from them. Smoking—I do not smoke. “Oh, I am a believer.”
I was in a church once where they never went to a film, never went to a theater, never went to listen to an orchestra, never smoked, and most of them did not know what tobacco smoke smelled like.
They never drank alcohol. Even at the Lord’s Table, it was that dreadful sacramental wine.
I always wonder, how did the church in Corinth get drunk on sacramental wine? That is another matter.
But you see, these people I was amongst really believed they were separated from the world.
But the real world was very much alive: jealousy, an unforgiving spirit, bitterness, faction, division, ambition. All of those things were right in it.
You can separate from outward things of the world, and I am not saying that you should not. If the Lord speaks to you, you must obey Him.
If He says, “Give up your sport, or you will not grow,” then you must obey. And so I could go on.
Listen again:
The lust of the flesh,
the lust of the eyes,
and the pride of life.
The word life here is not the word used for eternal life or spiritual life. It is the word from which we get biology, biological, and so on. It is natural life.
The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride—the vain glory, the boastful pride—of natural life: that is the world.
Well, I think we should begin to close, if you are not all asleep. My subject is the cross and the world.
Do you know—and I sometimes think many Christians are ignorant of it—that when Jesus died, He laid the ground for the redemption of this world, that is, the natural world, the physical world?
Not only did He die for human beings, but He died even for the natural creation: to redeem it from the curse, to redeem it from the emptiness and futility of its existence.
We have no idea what God originally intended with the natural creation. We have to be careful, but it is biblical.
I am not asking you to go and hug trees. I am just saying that the redeeming work of the Lord Jesus extends not only to the human being, but to the whole natural creation.
Listen to Colossians 1:19:
For it was the good pleasure of the Father that in Him should all the fulness dwell;
and through Him to reconcile all things unto Himself,
having made peace through the blood of His cross—through Him, I say, whether things upon the earth, or things in the heavens.
So, in closing this evening, here is the first thing: the cross and this world.
“Oh,” you say, “I do not understand what you are saying.” All right. Romans 8, beginning with verse 18:
For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed to us-ward.
For the earnest expectation of the creation waiteth for the revealing of the sons of God.
For the creation was subjected to vanity, not of its own will, but by reason of Him who subjected it, in hope
that the creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God.
The creation—that is, the natural creation—waits for the revealing of the sons of God. It fell, not of its own will, but because of man. It waits for the fruit of the cross.
When the redeemed come to that place, then the whole natural creation will burst into life and glory.
We often forget something in Revelation 4 and 5. You know where the little Lamb is, as though it had been slain.
You remember that great cry that goes up:
Worthy art Thou, for Thou wast slain,
and didst purchase unto God with Thy blood
men of every tribe, and tongue, and people, and nation.
Then all the angels, myriads of myriads, praise Him.
Then listen to this. Revelation 5:13:
And every created thing which is in the heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and on the sea,
and all things that are in them, heard I saying,
Unto Him that sitteth on the throne, and unto the Lamb,
be the blessing, and the honor, and the glory, and the dominion, forever and ever.
There is the cross.
And the four living creatures—the four living ones—said, “Amen.” So what would you say? Amen.
I do not know how many of you have ever thought about the cherubim. You have them in Ezekiel: wheels within wheels, moving in all directions.
The same living creatures are around the throne in Revelation 4 and 5. They are not angels. Seraphim are angels; cherubim are not.
What are they? I do not want to take you away from what we are talking about, but I always remember Mr. Sparks saying that he thought and puzzled over the cherubim.
He said, “The one thing they are not is those little chubby babies that you see with little wings.”
But he said—I think he followed G. H. Pember in this—it is the whole creation: the animal creation, the bird creation, domestic animals, wild animals, and man as well, redeemed by the grace of God.
So here is something wonderful: a new heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. The demonic principle of sin has gone, and in its place is righteousness.
It is wonderful: the world and the cross.
But before we all go off to sleep—if you have not been enjoying your sleep here—I must say one last thing.
Man has been gloriously saved by the work of Christ crucified. The cross is the way to glory.
Is it not wonderful in Ephesians? It speaks about walking according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now works in the sons of disobedience.
There was no hope for us. But God, being rich in mercy, made us alive together with Christ.
How did He make us alive? Through the work of the cross. He took the old man and crucified him—the old creation, crucified.
Then there is a new creation, a new man. If you read on in Ephesians 2, you will come to it: a new man in the Messiah. It is so wonderful. It is the work of the cross—the cross and redemption.
Now, this new man is Christ-centered, Christ-conscious, and Christ-dependent.
Listen again to the word with which we began in Galatians 6:
But far be it from me to glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,
through which the world hath been crucified unto me, and I unto the world.
This is the only way that you can give the Lord Jesus the preeminence in your life and in your service.
It is the only way that He can be the living, functioning, practical Head of the church.
It is the only way you can serve God: the mindset of the world broken, the mold of this age broken, our minds renewed and thus transformed, that we may prove what is the good, acceptable, and perfect will of God.
Let me finish by asking a question.
You who are the leader, you who are responsible for other lives: is the world crucified to you, and are you crucified to the world?
You dear child of God, you young person: is the world crucified to you, and are you crucified to the world?
You are playing with the wrong kind of fire. If you are playing with the world, it will corrupt you, seduce you, and destroy you.
Shall we pray?
Beloved Lord, touch our hearts. Do not let us be the same people—sermon tasters. Deliver us from academic knowledge.
Lord, face us. Do not let us escape. We want in these days to go on into all Your purpose. We want to see Your eternal purpose fulfilled.
And we want to pray, Lord, let us be involved in the fulfillment.
If it means we must lose our self-life—as it does—may Your Holy Spirit energize us to let go of that self-life.
Hear us, Lord. We ask it in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.