My little corner of the Blog-o-verse has been rather slow lately.
Not much to say at the moment except for…, you guessed it:
Time for a break.
Who knows how long this time?
Don’t ask me, cause I dunno.
Anyway, sorry that I don’t have anything ’spiritual’ for you today….
Go do something else instead of sitting here in front of this thing.
Peace.
It’s time, once again, to bring this matter of the world back into our consideration with this third and final installment of What is the World?
In part 1, we looked to the words of Jesus where He presents the world as a field where seeds are planted and crops grow up. Among the good crops there are also ‘weeds’ or ‘tares’ which also come up and are eventually gathered up and burned away before the good crops are harvested and stored in the barn.
May we have ears to hear.
In part 2, we took into consideration several scriptures which celebrate the Lords good creation and declare the immovable status of the world. In this post we also pondered over the many definitions which are related to this word ‘Kosmos’, and hopefully took into consideration the fact that it means different things when used in different passages.
In this post, I would like to address a couple of different worlds.
The first involves the world of creation, or ‘the created order’ and is related to the the problem of confusing the creation with the Creator and directing worship and praise to God’s ’stuff’ rather than to God Himself.
Consider Paul’s words to the Romans:
“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.
Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen”.
Pretty straight forward, wouldn’t you say?
As good as creation is, as good as the world is, it is not worthy of our worship.
‘Love not the world…’
Beyond golden calves, wooden men, and stone gods, there are the other kinds of idols which are fashioned out of God’s good creation:
Money.
Food.
Sex.
Sports.
Entertainment.
Religion.
…and the list goes on and on.
No, we are not to worship the created order, but we may look upon it and say,
“His invisible attributes, …his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made”.
Creation itself is a testimony of the One True God.
Idolatry can take many different forms, especially when we take into consideration that God created ALL THINGS; things visible and things invisible.
What are the fruits of ill directed praise and worship (and I mean those last three words in the most classical sense)?
“For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.
And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God’s decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them”.
Whatever else anyone could say about all of that, I think that it is safe to say that wrong worship results in wrong living.
This stood true for Paul and his world nearly 2000 years ago, and it stands true for us today.
The second world that I would like to talk about is the system.
What is the system? Well, according to the Strong’s concordance, it is one definition of the world.
To be a little more to the point, ‘the world’ can certainly mean government and order.
In fact, that is the very first definition given in the Strong’s for World in the Greek:
Kosmos
1) an apt and harmonious arrangement or constitution, order, government
Yes, I am aware that ‘God is a god of order…’.
However, God is a God of HIS order, and in fact, this is what the phrase ‘Kingdom of God’ implies: The government of God.
If you take a moment to consider who it was that crucified the Lord of Glory, you would realize that it was big government (Roman Empire) and big religion (Judaism).
Granted, not everyone involved in those two systems (the two hand in hand, acting as one) had evil intentions, but the fact of the matter is that often times, when man begins to perpetuate something in his own strength, and this by even the most subtle persuasion of the evil one, this ’something’ can kind of take on a life of it’s own and it will seek to crush anything or anyone which would stand opposed to it.
There is so very much that could be said about all of this, but for now I will give you a brief scripture reference which should cue you in to where this is all, ultimately, leading:
Rev. 11:15
And the seventh angel sounded; and there were great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdoms of this world are become [the kingdoms] of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever.
Ultimately, God reclaims what was always His to begin with and shares His reign with His Messiah!
Hallelujah!!!
In closing this series, I would like to simply emphasize three main points:
1) Creation (or matter), itself, is not evil, and to believe that it is, is to drift off into the error of gnosticism.
2) God loved the world enough to send His only Son for us to believe in so that we might be an ‘everliving’ people. If we are to love our neighbors as our selves, and even love our enemies, then they are not the subject at hand when we are warned to ‘not to love’.
3) There is a recreation which has been initiated in the person and work of Jesus the Messiah which is to be furthered along in those and through those who, by the power of the Spirit, name Jesus as Lord. We are to be a Kingdom people who are governed solely by the Spirit of God and who anticipate a change in both resurrection and a reordering of the world in which we find ourselves.
May His will be done ON EARTH as it is in heaven.
I don’t mean to discourage anyone from doing what they are doing by the things that I am about to share here..
If anything, I hope that what I am about to say is, instead somehow an encouragement.
Many people believe that what they are doing is the right thing to be doing.
Otherwise, they would be living contrary to their own conscience (or else, they would be doing something else!).
(There’s another problem, though, in that you could be wrong in doing what you believe is right.)
It seems to me that if you are doing something other than what you believe to be the right thing to do, then you prove yourself to be a ‘wrong’ person. Something wrong about the character there.
This seems to be a universal truth.
Carry this paradigm over to the religious, or even ‘authentic Christian’ realm, and what do you get?
Denominationalism.
Face it.
If you are a Christian, then, chances are you are a part of a denomination. Even if your ‘Pastor’ or ‘elders’ say that it is non-denominational, the fact is that your party believes something which differs enough with some other parties to set you apart from them.
You are part of a ‘party’, governed by a factitious ’spirit’ (as are they).
I believe that there is only one way out of this conundrum.
It is to realize that we do not truly belong to any ‘group’.
We belong to God.
The One True God.
The One who made Himself known in Yeshua the Messiah.
Do not seek to be some kind of ’somebody’. Follow His example. He was who He was, and He is whom He is.
Let’s become God’s servants.
Let us empty ourselves…
Let us realize that we are nobodies, and that God is everything, and discover what true living is all about.
I was hoping to have enough time and energy to compose a third installment of what is the world?, but It looks like it’ll have to wait.
Speaking of time,…and waiting, and things along that line…..
Time and space are not our enemies.
Yes, they have their limitations, but they also have their place and purpose.
Before the fall, God still had the Earth rotating around the sun.
This is the foundation of what we now call time.
It was very good.
Before the fall, there was space between eve’s hand and the fruit of the forbidden tree.
It was very good.
All things were created by Him and for Him.
While we are certainly more than three dimensional entities, we are still, also, three dimensional entities.
That’s all that I have for now….
gotta go do some stuff….and re-cerebrate.
Maybe I should start off with a little background as to why I am exploring this subject of the world.
Over the years I have been exposed to, and in some ways, have adopted, an unhealthy perception of and attitude towards God’s good creation.
I believe that there is much confusion within Christendom when it comes to the difference between the created world and the fallen world and it is just this confusion which causes many unnecessary problems and struggles for those desiring to follow the Lord.
Don’t get me wrong. I am fully aware of the fallen world which permeates the created world, but while these two worlds have obviously been involved in a collision, they are not necessarily one and the same.
Let me try to explain….
In the beginning, all of the creation was confirmed as being ‘good’ by the One True God Himself.
Within this good, created order was a garden and within that garden there were many things.
Even the forbidden tree of knowledge of good and evil had been deemed as ‘good’ by the All Knowing, as the original creation process was already finished and Yahweh had already entered into His rest by the time we get to the garden story.
You see, what I am trying to reinforce here is the fact that creation itself, all of it, was ‘good’ in God’s eyes prior to “the fall of man”.
Consider Psalm 93:1
“The Lord reigns; he is robed in majesty;
the Lord is robed; he has put on strength as his belt.
(Please be reminded that, that passage of scripture is ‘post fall’.)
Please take a few moments and let that last sentence penetrate deep into your mind. After all, it is the word of God.
It is the beauty and wonder of Gods creation, of His world, which speak of His glory and power:
Psalm 95:1‑7
Come, let us sing for joy to the LORD; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation. Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song. For the LORD is the great God, the great King above all gods. In his hand are the depths of the earth, and the mountain peaks belong to him. The sea is his, for he made it, and his hands formed the dry land. Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the LORD our Maker; for he is our God and we are the people of his pasture, the flock under his care.
Psalm 148
Praise the LORD.
Praise the LORD from the heavens, praise him in the heights above.
Praise him, all his angels, praise him, all his heavenly hosts.
Praise him, sun and moon, praise him, all you shining stars.
Praise him, you highest heavens and you waters above the skies.
Let them praise the name of the LORD, for he commanded and they were created.
Praise the LORD from the earth, you great sea creatures and all ocean depths, lightning and hail, snow and clouds, stormy winds that do his bidding, you mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars, wild animals and all cattle, small creatures and flying birds, kings of the earth and all nations, you princes and all rulers on earth, young men and maidens, old men and children.
Let them praise the name of the LORD, for his name alone is exalted; his splendor is above the earth and the heavens. He has raised up for his people a horn, the praise of all his saints, of Israel, the people close to his heart
Praise the LORD!
(Again….‘POST FALL’ scriptures.)
Amen?
I believe that where the confusion comes in is with the actual word; world, itself. It can mean different things, and it does just that when used in different contexts.
The created world around you, the very earth itself, the trees, the rivers and hills, the herbs and vegetables, fruits and plant life, the sun and moon, and the stars of the sky, etc…, it was all made by, through and for Jesus Christ.
This is ‘the world’ in one sense.
Check it alongside your Strong’s concordance (I promise that I’m not leading you astray!!) :
Nature was created by Him and for Him, including mankind. And what to say concerning mankind?
In mankind, we have God’s masterpiece of creation, fashioned after the image of God Himself. It was in His image that He created mankind as male and female.
Observe what the record of Genesis says about all of God’s creation just prior to His Sabbath:
“And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day”.
Now of course I know about the fall and sin and the death which follows behind all of that. In fact that is something that the Christian world knows quite thoroughly (especially if you were raised up Calvinist).
But for the sake of keeping this post more focused on the original subject, I am going to skip all of the details of ‘the fall’. There is much to say about all of that but, for now, let’s just acknowledge the fact that it did indeed happen and that the effects of it can be summed up in this:
Romans 5:12
Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.
Since sin was in Adam and his offspring, and his offspring are within the world, and since they are, in fact a part of the created world, we must conclude, therefore, that the world is corrupted by sin (the sin which is in Adam or ‘mankind’). In other words, the world is corrupt, but only because man is corrupt and man is in the world.
I’ll even go so far as to say that even God’s good creation has been corrupted due to Adams original sin. After all, it was man whom was entrusted, originally by God, to have dominion over the created world.
But enough talk of corruption (for now).
What I hope to be communicating here in my own rather scatterbrained way is that the phrase “the world” doesn’t necessarily always mean what we think it does.
It can, and often does, mean more than simply ‘the reality around us’ (while it does sometimes also mean that).
What I am interested in, at the moment is this question:
For example:
Let’s take two New testament scripture references and decide which ‘world’ the writer (John in both instances) might have in mind in each instance:
John 3:16,17
I John 2:15
Please bear with me now as “I speak as a man”, as I play “devils advocate”:
What does ‘the world’ mean in each of the above scripture references and what difference does it make?
I encourage you to give these questions some thought, take them to the Father in prayer, and then…..
let me know what you think.
Just so that you don’t think all of this stuff is original to me, you should check out these links!
Also, as much as I want to keep posting regularly, I don’t know if I will be able to.
My computer is dead, and I’ve been borrowing a friends laptop for the last month.
At the end of the month, I’ll be returning the laptop and will most likely be without a machine for awhile.
Regardless, I will post and respond to comments whenever I can and in the meantime, I will be looking for a good deal on a decent computer.
May the Love of God flood your hearts through Christ Jesus our Lord!
~Your Brother Johnny
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