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don’t believe in the Lord; ungodly people who persecute
Christians. Is there victory over that? We’re strangers here.
We’re pilgrims here but we have to live in a world of sinners.

There is another use of the word for “world” in Mark 4:18&19,
“And others are the ones on whom seed was sown among the
thorns; these are the ones who have heard the word, and the
worries of the world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the
desire for other things enter in and choke the word, and it
becomes unfruitful.” This is Solomon’s word, “All is vanity in
this world.” It has no value. Abraham was a millionaire but he
never owned anything except that he bought a grave. That’s all
this world has to offer. There is nothing else. There’s victory
over the things of this world.

Then there is James 4:4, “You adulteresses, do you not know
that friendship with the world is hostility toward God?
Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes
himself an enemy of God.” This is the world’s ideas and the
world’s methods. This is humanism and the values of the world
and what they think is important.

Let me give you a summary and it’s in 1 John 2:15-17, “Do not
love the world, nor the things in the world. If anyone loves 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
boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the
world. And the world is passing away, and also its lusts; but
the one who does the will of God abides forever.”

I’m sure you are all familiar with that passage. “All that’s in
the world; the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride
of life.” I don’t know how it is in France but in America,
depending on where you go, they have a different list. They
say, “Don’t be worldly. Don’t’ smoke and don’t drink and
don’t gamble and don’t play contact sports and don’t use dice.”
Anyway, they all have their own standard of holiness. But God
includes more under the word “world” than Christians do. God