What is the World
James says, “love not the world if you are friend with the world you have enmity with God.” Why?
What is the world? The world is basically man living as an orphan as if God is not his provider. When Cain went out from the presence of God, He built cities, developed methods of entertainment, agriculture, weaponry and armor. He learned how to fend for himself, entertain himself and provide for himself. Living together, this all became a system that eventually became like their God. They worked for the things in that system, and the one who held the means of production to make these things and provide them to people became their “daddy” in a negative way, because they had to work for it.
That eventually culminates at Babel – where there is a new development. Here it’s not just they are living as orphans (fending for themselves, providing for themselves, working for their own provision,) but they are now building up an identity in it. So, at Babel they say “let us build a tower and a NAME for ourselves lest we be scattered” – It’s about their name, and about their reputation.
We know that Nimrod was worshipped there so it was about even receiving glory from one another based on their position in the system of things that man was working for to provide for himself because he had been cut off from God. Now man is looking for his own identity and his own righteousness in that system. Because he needs all these things to survive and he’s willing to sell himself to work for these things and he measures his righteousness by his position in this system of things, he is able to be manipulated so that good and evil can be turned upside down. What is “good” is all about how you are positioned in these things and how you are sustaining and building the system. What is “evil” is that which comes against the system. It’s all about the system. That’s the world.
The people on the “line of life” – the line from Seth onward through Abraham, Isaac and Jacob all lived apart from this system and yet were abundantly provided for by God. They had entertainment, ways of sustaining themselves and even weaponry and armor. But even when they protected themselves it was by God’s doing. Abraham went in with 300 trained men to conquer the kings. That was a miraculous feat of God. Melchizidek told him it was God had given him that victory. These Old Testament victories you see are supernatural. The Lord is the Captain of the Host. He’s the one who fights on behalf of His people. So, God is the provider. The difference is that for God’s people, God is the provider vs. the orphans in the system.
Jesus didn’t take us out of the world, but at the same time he doesn’t pray for the world. He prays for those the Father gave to Him that He may give them Eternal Life, which is the knowledge of the Father and the Son. And He declares the name of the Father to us, and that makes us no longer orphans but sons of God because the Spirit comes to us as the comforter. The Spirit comes to us as the knowledge of God, and he ceases being the “unknowable God” or the “consuming fire on the mount of Sinai” to becoming our Father.
As we see that He is our Father, we change from working for the things that the Gentiles do and measuring ourselves body them to believing that God knows what we have need of before we ask. We know that we don’t have to seek those things because if He takes care of the lilies who are more gloriously clothed than Solomon, how much more will He take care of his Children that He loves and knows the numbers of hairs on their heads?
“Sufficient for today are the evils thereof.” I don’t have to worry about tomorrow, I don’t have to live in fear about the future or build up something for myself in the future. Each day is a gift from the Lord and as I live that like, the Father who loves me and gives me all things to enjoy blesses my socks off! I’m blessed! Abraham was blessed. They didn’t live in poverty. You don’t have to live n poverty to not love the world, nor does living in poverty mean you won’t love the world.
Some people build an identity in living in an austere lifestyle (bohemian lifestyle) and they think they’re “cool” and have “repudiated the yuppies and the county people” and they’re not materialistic while they talk on their iPhone made by slaves in China (the hypocrisy is crazy). No, the root of the problem is looking at yourself as an orphan and then depending on the world to meet your needs, wiling to sell yourself to the world to work for those things and then building up an identity, a name, and even a righteousness in the world based on how you sustain the system and contribute to it.
It’s sad that the churches in the social justice movement today are increasingly identifying themselves with the world system and calling what is good that which furthers the “blessing” on the system but it’s not a blessed system!
We make a distinction. We know that God loved the world (the people in it) but we know that the world is under the influence of Satan and His principalities and the Illuminati and they are working to influence opinion and manipulate men to turn good and evil upside down so that increasingly to side with the world and love the things in it makes you a hater of good and hater of God. So, we can’t be friends with the world. This doesn’t doesn’t mean we don’t have the blessing of God which includes material provision!
I used to be under the yoke of feeling like being blessed was a problem and I was always anxious that I was going to be like Job and God was going to take everything. Now I know that all that can happen, yet God will provide for me every day. The more I know that He is providing for me, the more blessed I feel like I am. I used to work in corporate IT, and I would work, and I would have a steady income that I could depend on and I worked for it. There was a direct correlation between my work and that which I received. This was one of the reasons I was always so anxious about money, because if I stopped working the money would stop. Now I do this wedding business playing piano, and sometimes I’ll start a month with zero on the books and I’ll get nervous, and I tell the “Lord I am not supposed to be worried about this. You said let each day take care of itself and let you take care of tomorrow. I’m not supposed to be anxious and caring for these things as the gentiles do, you know what I need.” Sure enough, money comes. Either last minute bookings or inquiries with future events but each one has a deposit that I can live on because it’s non-refundable. Last month I had nothing on the books but had some in saving from the month before and then I got a bunch of deposits, so it worked out where I had everything I need. God gives me blessed months, and then he gives me wisdom on how to stretch it, plus unexpected things come through. A
ll of it is God’s provision, and I always have what I need. He has always provided for me. It’s amazing. It’s not because of what I do, it’s because I’m not an orphan. I live well, and I’m not very good with money (I’m terrible with it) but I try to be generous and try not to worry about it and horde it and live in anxiety about it, and I pray I stay in that condition. I know that He will because He is my Father. The more I see that He is my father providing for me the less I’m worried. That is really what “not loving the world is all about.”
David?
yes?