Today’s World Order

All right, let's turn to Galatians and look at five statements of Paul. I think, for some of you, these statements will be somewhat surprising.

We read chapter 1, verses 3 and 4.

“Grace to you and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for our sins.”

Where did He give Himself? On the cross.

“That He might deliver us from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father.”

Now, I believe that's primary.

I believe until we understand that through the cross it is God's purpose that we be delivered from this present evil age, we are not really in line for what God intends to do for us and through us. There are four other deliverances through the cross which follow in Galatians, and we'll look at them. But I think, in a certain sense, the other four are the outworking in various areas of this primary deliverance, which is from this present evil age.

I wonder how many of you have ever actually realized that it's God's purpose to deliver you from this present evil age. Now, there are two words used in the New Testament, Greek words, and they're not always accurately translated. So we need to pause for a moment. One word is kosmos, from which we get such words today as cosmonaut and cosmology, and all sorts of words like that. And that is properly translated ‘world.’

But it doesn't mean the globe in the New Testament. It means the present world order. And the distinctive feature of the present world order is that it is not submitted to the righteous government of God. It is an order that is in rebellion against God. And the church is a group of people called out from the world. That's what the word ‘church’ means: a called-out company.

I think it'd be worthwhile looking for a moment in John 15. Keep your fingers in Galatians, we'll probably get back there sometime before midnight. John 15, verse 19. I chose this verse because the word ‘the world’ occurs five times in this one verse.

And this is what Jesus said to His disciples:

“If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.”

Okay? You understand there's a total line of separation between the world and the church. The world is in rebellion against God.

The church, called out by sovereign choice of Jesus to become the people of God, is submitted to God. And the more the church is submitted to God, the more the world will hate it. Okay. Jesus said to His brothers, “The world can't hate you, because you belong to it. But Me it hates, because I testify of it that its deeds are evil.”

If the world doesn't hate the church in Britain today, you know the reason why? Because the world is half inside the church. Why should the world hate its own? There's a teaching that the church is going to take over the world. I don't believe that. Let me tell you that. At the present moment, it's the other way around. The world has taken over the church. I believe if the church were evicted from the world and the world were evicted from the church, and the church was separated from the world, we would discover how much the world really hates the church.

So that's the church. It's a kind of sociological, geographical entity. The Greek word is kosmos. The other word that's used in Greek is the word aion, which gives us the English word ‘eon,’ and is ‘an age.’ It's a measurement of time. God's time plan consists of ages that follow one another. And the strongest phrase in the Bible for ‘forever and ever’ is ‘to the ages of ages.’ That is, ages, each of which is made up of ages. You understand? The human mind can't even begin to comprehend what's involved.