Do not love the world or 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, the lust of the
eyes, and the pride of life is not
of the Father, but is of the world.
The world is passing away, and the lust
of it, but he who does the will
of God abides forever.
In these morning sessions, I'd like to speak
on the subject, Two Kingdoms, Worlds Apart.
Two Kingdoms, Worlds Apart.
I think it greatly simplifies matters if we
realize that basically there are only two kingdoms.
One kingdom is what the Bible calls the
world.
The other kingdom is the kingdom of our
Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
These two kingdoms are diametrically opposed, and I'd
like to, in these studies, just contrast them
and show you that the world kingdom is
a kingdom of fantasy, whereas the kingdom of
our Lord is a kingdom of reality.
The one is shadow, the other is substance.
I would like it so that at the
end of our studies, we could look with
contempt on the world system, not on the
people, but on the world system, and realize
that it's all glitz, shallow, unreality.
It really is.
Years ago, I was down in the Los
Angeles area, and right across the street from
where I was staying, there was a movie
lot, and I walked across the street and
peered through the cyclone fence one day, and
here was a fascinating little western village.
But then I went around the corner, and
I realized all it was was the front
of buildings.
There were no buildings there, it was just
the front.
And I thought, well, that's the world.
It's all façade, but nothing behind it.
The word of God distinguishes clearly between the
world and the Lord's kingdom, very clearly.
The lines are clearly drawn, and we read
that in the passage that was before us.
If anyone loves the world, the love of
the Father is not in him.
The lusts that we mention, not of the
Father, but of the world.
Unfortunately today, the lines are obscured.
It's not as clear-cut as it used
to be.
Somebody said, I looked for the church and
found it in the world.
I looked for the world and found it
in the church.
It makes it difficult.
What is the world?
Well, I confess to you that most of
my early years, I heard the word.
I heard the word world, and I heard
the word worldliness, but it never created a
clear definition in my mind of what people
were talking about.
For instance, I was brought up by a
strong Presbyterian mother who never allowed us to
go to the show, and we'd say, why
not?
She'd say, because it's worldly.
Well, it didn't say too much to me.
I knew it wasn't good by the tone
of her voice, but if you had asked
me, well, what's your definition of the world?
I wouldn't have been able to give you
any.
First of all, let's eliminate some things.
When the Bible talks about the world in
this sense, it doesn't mean planet earth, which
the Lord has given us as our temporary
dwelling place, and it certainly doesn't mean the
world of nature, which the Lord has given
to us to enjoy and to see his
handiwork in it.
It certainly doesn't mean the world of mankind,
because God loves that world of mankind, John
3, 16, and he wants us to love
it as he does.
The world is the civilization which man has
built up to enjoy himself without God.
That's what it is.
It's man's ordering of things not only without
God, but in opposition to God.
It's not only independent of God, but violently
opposed to him.
This world system is founded on false principles,
and it promotes false values.
It's largely self-centered, and it's concerned mostly
with wealth, sex, and power.
I think when you've said those three things,
you've encapsulated what the world is all about.
Wealth, sex, and power.
These things are central in its culture.
As someone has said, all civilization without God
from the beginning has been stamped with his
curse, and what men call improvement and invention
and progress without God seems simply to be
the erection of a Babel tower, essentially idolatrous
and the center of self-glory.
This system is inspired and energized by Satan.
Just as the kingdom of our Lord has
angelic beings as guardians of God's people, so
demon powers are involved in the affairs of
the world.
Actually, the world is empty.
It's, as I said, a façade.
It's a sick joke.
The world is a sick joke.
All that it offers cannot satisfy the human
heart.
In fact, a whole book of the Bible
is devoted to that subject, isn't it?
The book of Ecclesiastes.
The key of the book of Ecclesiastes is
the expression, under the sun, found 29 times
in that book.
The book was written by the wisest and
richest man who sought meaning in life, in
everything that he could afford.
He came to the end and said, it's
just a chasing after wind.
You know that's true.
Life without the Lord Jesus Christ isn't worth
living, really isn't worth living.
You have to get above the sun to
find real meaning in life.
Malcolm Muggeridge said something quite good.
He said, human life, I have come to
feel, in all its public or collective manifestations,
is only theater and cheap melodrama at that.
I think that's a very incisive comment.
And he was speaking of the world when
he said that.
Human life without God, all it is is
theater and cheap melodrama at that.
Somebody said, I think it was E.
Stanley Jones said, the world's way is make
-believe.
The kingdom is eternal reality.
People of the world are trying to get
more out of it than there is in
it.
And yet it's very attractive to people.
It presents itself as the greatest good in
life.
And people are dazzled by its psychedelic lights
and by its contemporary music and its sensuous
clothes.
And everybody in Marlborough country is good looking
and has a convertible and leans against the
front fender of the convertible and is charmed
by some beauty queen nearby.
It's a never never land.
It's an artificial society.
It's glitz and glitter without any worthwhile substance.
What is worldliness?
Well, worldliness is the love of passing things.
That's what it is.
The love of passing things.
It's anything that pulls the believer away from
the Lord Jesus Christ.
A worldly person is a person all of
whose plans end at the grave.
What a sad thing.
Of a few shovels of dirt thrown over
your body.
That's the end as far as the world's
plans are concerned.
Jowett, one of my favorite authors, I think
said it well.
He said, worldliness is a spirit.
It's a temper.
It's not so much an act as an
attitude.
It's a pose.
It's a posture.
Worldliness is human activity with God left out.
That's very good.
Worldliness is human activity with God left out.
Worldliness is life without heavenly callings, life without
ideals, life without heights.
Worldliness recognizes nothing of the high calling of
God in Christ Jesus.
It has no hill country.
It's horizontal life.
That's good, isn't it?
It has no hill country.
It's horizontal life.
Worldliness has nothing of the vertical in it.
It has ambition.
It has no aspirations.
Its motto is success, not holiness.
It's always saying onward, never saying upward.
A worldly man or woman is a man
or woman who never says I will lift
up my eyes to the hills from whence
come.
Now I know that in some circles worldliness
has been largely confined to going to the
show, to dancing, to smoking, to drinking, to
gambling, to card playing, and similar activities.
But it's more than that.
It's a lot more than that.
Dr. Dale wrote, to be worldly is to
permit the higher law to which we owe
allegiance, the glories and terrors of that invisible
universe which is revealed to faith, our transcendent
relations to the Father of spirits through Christ
Jesus our Lord, to be overborne by inferior
interests.
If a believer goes back to the world,
you have to go back through the grave
of Jesus.
The Lord Jesus died to deliver us from
this present evil world.
To long for that world and to want
to go back to it is to be
a traitor to him.
The world cast him out and we were
buried in Christ by the world that hates
the church.
Those who try to get the best of
both kingdoms are tempting the patience of God.
God draws the lines more clearly than the
average preacher draws them today.
In contrast to that is the kingdom of
our Lord Jesus Christ.
Here I'd just like to pause for a
minute and explain a little about the kingdom,
because somebody here might be thinking, well brother,
don't be talking about the kingdom.
We're not in the kingdom, we're in the
church.
Actually, the kingdom has five different phases in
the word of God, and I think that
any reference to the kingdom in the scriptures
you can put in one of these five
pigeonholes or categories.
First of all, you have the kingdom predicted.
The prophets of the Old Testament were always
looking forward to that glorious era of peace
and prosperity, where animals would be domesticated, where
the desert would rejoice and blossom like the
rose, where a king would reign in righteousness.
The kingdom in prophesying.
Then with the arrival of the Lord Jesus,
you had the kingdom present in the person
of the king.
Both John the Baptist and the Lord Jesus
himself said, the kingdom of God is among
you.
What did he mean?
The kingdom of God is among you.
He meant that in the person of the
king, the kingdom was there.
The Lord Jesus had come to make a
bona fide offer of the kingdom to the
people of Israel.
Of course, you know what happened.
They rejected him.
And then the kingdom passed into the third
phase.
We sometimes call it the mystery aspect of
the kingdom.
And you have that in Matthew chapter 13,
where you have the parables of the kingdom.
In this phase, and this is the phase
that we're in today.
In this phase, the king is absent, but
we own allegiance.
We acknowledge allegiance to him.
I'll come back to that in just a
minute.
The kingdom in mystery form, Matthew 13.
That's where we are today.
That extends from the ministry of the Lord
Jesus here on earth to the end of
the tribulation period.
Then you have the kingdom in manifestation.
That's when the Lord Jesus comes back and
literally reigns upon the earth for a thousand
years.
The kingdom in manifestation, the millennium.
And finally, you have what Peter calls the
everlasting kingdom of our Lord and savior, Jesus
Christ.
And that's the eternal state.
Now I think any reference to the kingdom
in the Bible will fit into one of
those five areas.
The kingdom prophesied, the kingdom present in the
person of the king, the kingdom in mystery
form, the king absent, but acknowledged as king,
the kingdom in manifestation, the literal reign of
Christ on earth, and the everlasting kingdom of
our Lord and savior, Jesus Christ.
Now, let me go back to the third
phase.
We don't have time to take up Matthew
13.
There you'll find that the kingdom has both
an outward aspect and an inward aspect.
You cannot understand the parables of the kingdom
unless you see this.
The kingdom in Matthew 13 has an outward
aspect.
Let me just say a large circle.
And then inside that, a smaller circle, that's
the kingdom in its inward reality.
First of all is evil in the kingdom.
As you see by the parables, you see
four different types of soil and only one
of them produces fruit.
You see the wheat and the tares.
You see the separation of the fish at
the end of the period.
The dragnet.
So the kingdom in its outward aspect includes
everybody today in this age who acknowledges Jesus.
You say to a person, are you a
Christian?
And he says, of course I am.
What do you think, I am Jew?
Well, he's in the kingdom.
In an outward profession, he acknowledges the kingdom.
But then there's that inner circle, and that's
John 3.16. Except a man be born
again, he cannot see, or not John, John
3.5. Except a man be born again,
he cannot see or enter the kingdom of
God.
There's reality there, and there's profession.
That's the kingdom at the present time.
And that's the aspect of it that we'll
be thinking about today.
This is the kingdom that is so opposed
to the world, the kingdom in its inward
reality.
It's in sharp contrast to the world.
In this realm, the spiritual is emphasized over
the soulish, and the eternal is valued over
the temporal.
Completely different set of values based upon completely
different principles.
In this kingdom, pleasure is not despised.
It's just that the people of this kingdom
look for it where it's truly to be
found.
In thy presence is fullness of joy.
At thy right hand there are pleasures forevermore.
William Cooper wrote, I thirst, but not as
once I did, the vain delights of earth
to share.
Thy wounds, Emmanuel, all forbid that I should
seek my pleasure there.
It was the sight of thy dear cross
that weaned my heart from earthly things and
taught me to esteem as dross the mirth
of fools, the pomp of kings.
He saw the difference between these two kingdoms,
and he made his choice.
In Christ's kingdom, wealth is not something to
be coveted.
Spiritual prosperity is the best prosperity, and the
kingdom of heaven is concerned with righteousness and
joy and peace.
Christ, not self, is central.
Self is off the throne.
Christ is the acknowledged king, and everything is
valued only as it appears in the sight
of the Lord Jesus.
Whereas men of the world love money and
hate God, men of this kingdom love God
and hate money.
Jesus taught that, didn't he?
You cannot love God and man, and either
love the one and hate the other, or
else you'll hate the one and love the
other.
You cannot do both.
That's true of everybody in the meeting here
today.
You either love God and hate money, or
you hate God and love money.
How do you hate money?
You hate money by refusing to live for
it and harnessing it for the purposes of
God.
Because there are only two kingdoms, there are
only two rulers, and Satan is the ruler
of this world kingdom, and Christ, of course,
of the other.
The devil is the world's monarch, and is
he ever clever?
He's called the ruler of this world.
He's called the prince of the power of
the air, the spirit that now works in
the children of disobedience.
He's called the God of this age.
John later in the epistle reminds us that
the whole world lies under the sway of
the evil one.
People are held captive by him, and they
need to be awakened from their sleep of
death.
But while the devil is very powerful, he's
not omnipotent.
I think it's good for us to remember
that, and he's still under the dominion of
Christ.
He's on a leash, and sometimes it seems
like a very long leash, but never mind.
He is under the dominion of Christ.
The devil is the worst enemy of Christ
and his followers.
The other two foes, of course, are the
world and the flesh.
Just as the devil is opposed to Christ,
the world is opposed to the Father, you
see that here in the passage we read,
and the flesh is opposed to the spirit.
And this trinity of evil has been described
as follows.
The devil is the enemy against us, and
the world is the enemy around us, and
the flesh is the enemy within us.
And the Bible tells us of some of
the tactics of the king of this world,
and we should know them.
We're not unaware, Paul says.
Deceit.
He's the father of lies.
He's been a liar from the beginning.
He poses as an angel of light, and
he sends his emissaries forth, posing as ministers
of righteousness.
The devil is at his best in a
liberal pulpit, not a skid row, on a
liberal pulpit, where men get up and use
evangelical language to mean something completely different, and
lead scores of people down the broad road
to destruction by preaching salvation by works.
The devil misquotes the word of God, as
you very well know.
He performs miracles and lying wonders, which should
be a word of warning to us in
the day in which we live, and in
the days that may lie ahead.
We can expect to see demonic miracles being
performed.
This is part of his strategy.
He seeks to sow doubts and denials about
the word of God, and he seeks to
divert God's people from pure and sincere devotion
to him, as well as tempting us all
to lie.
Another of his tactics is slander.
Just think of this.
Last night when you were sleeping, he was
before the throne of God accusing the brethren.
Day and night, the scripture says, he's the
accuser of the brethren.
One of his tactics is imitation, too.
He has a counterfeit for everything that's of
God, and that's what makes it so confusing
to people today.
You remember how he empowered the Egyptian magicians
to imitate the miracles of Moses.
The tares of the kingdom look just like
wheat.
It's difficult for people to discern the difference.
The tares in that parable are sons of
the wicked one.
The wheat are sons of the kingdom.
No wonder that Augustine called the devil the
ape of God.
He has his own trinity, the devil himself,
the beast, and the false prophet.
He has his own church, the synagogue of
Satan.
He has his own apostles, ministers of righteousness.
He has his own gospel, which Paul in
Galatians calls another gospel, and that, of course,
is salvation by works.
He has his own theology, the doctrine of
demons, his own sacrifices offered to demons, and
his own table and cup.
He has all of those things, imitating the
things of God.
Another of his strategies is discouragement.
Discouragement really comes from the evil one, and
I'm tempted to be discouraged.
I often think of what Moody said.
He said, I've never known God to use
a discouraged person, and that makes me want
to snap out of it when I think
of that.
I've never known God to use a discouraged
person.
Satan tries to take advantage of Christians by
causing them to be swallowed up with too
much sorrow, and he can oppress the believer
with gloom and despair.
Certainly, as we've heard this morning, we're occupied
with our circumstances, and to get our eyes
off the Lord, we can be plunged into
that.
Of course, persecution is one of his ploys.
He goes about as a roaring lion, seeking
whom he may destroy.
In fact, the invariable strategy of the devil
is to kill and destroy.
The thief cometh not but for to steal
and to destroy.
I am come, Jesus said, that they might
have life, and that they might have it
more abundantly.
I think one of his other strategies is
incomplete commitment.
He tried to dissuade Jesus from going to
the cross, and he seeks to dissuade Christians
today from turning their lives over in utter
abandonment to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Pride is a strategy of the devil.
He knows by experience that pride goes before
destruction, and so he uses this device on
others.
And of course, moral failure.
He tempts people because of their lack of
self-control.
And what a sad chapter it's been in
the history of the evangelical church in the
United States in these last few years.
What's it all about?
All the scandals that have erupted.
The devil working against the forces of God.
False doctrine.
The very dawn of civilization.
He tempted Eve to believe that she could
become like God, which is, of course, new
age in old clothes.
And then bodily affliction.
I don't believe that any sickness, pain, comes
from the Lord.
He permits it, but I don't think it
comes from him.
Paul had a thorn in the flesh.
He called it the messenger of Satan to
buffet me.
That's where it came from.
Why does God allow it?
Because he can glorify himself through it, and
he can witness to others through it, and
he can refine his people through it.
He sifts us, the devil does, by difficult
circumstances.
Hindering of the gospel, he snatches away the
seed from shallow listeners, and he blinds the
minds of unbelievers, lest the light of the
glory of Christ should shine unto them that
they should be saved.
And of course, procrastination.
I'm sure that many of us experienced that
before we were saved.
Not tonight.
Some other time.
Trust Christ.
Put off the time of action and decision,
especially with regard to the gospel.
How wonderful it is to turn from that
to the other king, the Lord Jesus Christ,
no less than the creator and upholder of
the universe.
And he has what no other ruler has,
and I'm so glad for that.
He's all knowledge, all power, and he's in
all places at one and the same time.
Marvelous.
This is the king that we acknowledge today.
Perfect God, and perfect man.
The perfect savior from sin.
I want to tell you, the Lord Jesus
is not an amateur savior.
He's the perfect savior who finished the work
of redemption at the cross.
The Lord Jesus combines in his person every
virtue, every excellence, every beauty, physical or spiritual,
that you could ever think about.
When you go through life, you meet people
and you meet this person and he or
she, well, they have humility in a marvelous
way, but they might not be so strong
in other areas.
It's wonderful to have the Lord Jesus Christ,
and he has every perfection in him.
Wouldn't it be wonderful to see him, to
fall at his feet and to worship him.
He's infinite, unique, and incomparable.
And at the present time, he reigns from
his throne in heaven over us, all of
us who acknowledge him, that soon he'll return
to earth as king of kings and Lord
of lords, with Jerusalem as his capital.
That is after the rapture, after the tribulation.
The citizens of the world.
We want to contract the citizens of the
world, the citizens of the kingdom of our
Lord.
All unconverted people belong to the world, found
in every level of society, from the cream
of society to the dregs of society.
Many of them are outwardly moral, decent people,
the kind of people you like to have
for neighbors, isn't it true?
But they belong to the world.
Others are terrible.
Their lives are given over to sensuality.
Their speech is punctuated with profanity, every other
word they say.
You just don't like to be in their
presence.
But they all have this in common.
They refuse to acknowledge the Lord Jesus Christ
as Lord and Savior.
They walk according to the course of this
world, Paul says, according to the prince of
the power of the air.
And the God of this age has blinded
their eyes, as we've already seen.
What characterizes the citizens of the world is
that they're at home in the world.
They like it and don't want anything else.
They love the world, and the world loves
them.
They're enemies of God, held in the grip
of the devil.
And David describes them as men of this
world who have their portion in this life.
On the other hand, believers are citizens of
the heavenly kingdom, strangers and pilgrims on the
earth.
For citizens of this kingdom, the world is
a very good school, but a very poor
home.
It's a place where God is training us
for reigning time.
And as pilgrims in this world, we're passing
through it.
And the idea is to pass through the
world without taking any of its character upon
ourselves.
It's kind of strange to be saying these
things today.
We're committed not to be taking the character
of the world upon ourselves.
Jesus reminded his disciples they're not of the
world.
They're in the world, but they're not of
the world, as he is not of the
world.
How much is Jesus of the world?
Well, he's not of the world at all.
And so as he is, so are we
in this world.
Paul likens us to ambassadors sent from heaven
to represent the Lord Jesus in this world.
Then having said when Jacob brought all his
family to Egypt at the invitation of Joseph,
they settled in Egypt in the country of
Goshen.
Today, God's people, the church of the kingdom
of heaven live in Egypt as it were
in this world, but not of it.
They're a spiritual colony of heaven, not citizens
of earth going to heaven, but citizens of
heaven making their way through this world, pilgrims
and strangers, exiles and aliens, a holy nation
within the nation, the family.
We used to sing hymns about this.
We don't sing them anymore.
And I'm glad because it would be pharisaical
hypocrisy in many cases to sing some of
them.
J.
G.
Dick said, called from above and heavenly men
by birth who once were but the citizens
of earth.
As pilgrims here, we seek a heavenly home,
our portion in the ages yet to come.
We are but strangers here.
We do not crave a home on earth,
which gave thee but a grave.
Thy cross has severed ties, which bind us
here, thyself, our treasure in a brighter sphere.
That's beautiful.
Let me read that second verse again.
We're but strangers here.
We do not crave a home on earth,
which gave thee but a grave.
Thy cross has severed ties, which bind us
here, thyself, our treasure in a brighter sphere.
As Abraham, we're called to go out of
the world because we're different and yet go
back into the world because we're salt and
light.
I don't know any better way for a
person to understand the world than to turn
on the TV.
Because on TV, and I don't care whether
it's secular TV or Christian TV, you see
the world in living color.
Or I could contrast them this way.
If you take Hollywood in one hand and
look at it and take a godly assembly
of believers in the other hand, that's the
contrast between the world and the kingdom of
our Lord.
Just as clear as that.
I don't know anything that has done more
to blunt the spiritual edge of Christians in
the United States than TV.
It's not a friend of grace, I'll tell
you that.
And you cannot sit couch potato-like and
watch TV, I don't care who you are,
and watch TV hour after hour without it
showing in your spiritual life, without it taking
its toll in your spiritual life.
You can't eat the onions, leeks, and garlic
of Egypt without people being able to tell.
Worst of all, without the Lord himself telling.
Well, we'd like to go on with this
subject.
Our time is up, but we'd like to
go on with this subject and continue this
contrast.
And the purpose, of course, is to make
you hate the world, make you hate the
world system, and just wean you away from
all of the world.
We have a news radio station, KCBS, out
in Oakland, and the theme of it, the
motto of it, bringing you the world every
30 minutes.
That's exactly what it is, bring the world.
Anything to do with gays or lesbians, prime
time on that station.
Prime time.
Bringing you the world every 30 minutes.
And of course you've heard about the man
that ordered TV and the truck drove up
to his door and he looked out and
it said on the side of the truck,
brings the world into your living room.
Shall we pray?
Father, we're reminded today of this great world
system that crucified your lovely son.
We think of the appeal that it has
for people today and we think of how
it gets into the Christian church and into
the lives of your people.
We pray, Lord, that we might see the
evil of it all and separate ourselves from
it, not be isolated from it, but insulated
from it, that we might go forth to
the world with the glorious message that there's
liberty and freedom in the Lord Jesus Christ,
beseeching men and women to be reconciled to
you through the Savior.
Bless these studies to our hearts, we pray
in his name.
Amen.