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The Bible uses the word “world” in several different
ways. I’ll mention a couple of them and then we’ll look at the
summary. John 15:18&19, “If the world hates you, you know
that it has hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the
world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of
the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world
hates you.” This is the world of sinners. We live in a world of
people that 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,