Changed into his Likeness 16

By Pastor Samuel Chess

Grace Emmanuel Church

Port St. Lucie, Florida

The Principle of Deliverance

1) Deliverance from this present evil age…. Galatians 1:4

2) Deliverance from the bondage of the Law…..Galatians 2:9

3) Deliverance from self and selfishness…..Galatians 2:20

4) Deliverance from the flesh……Galatians 5:24

5) Deliverance from the world ……_____________________

I. Deliverance from this World…..Galatians 6:14

(Galatians 6:14) May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.

The world has been crucified to me and I have been crucified to the world

What’s that mean? In all the rest of these passages the word crucified meant just what it sounds like…put to death; executed.

Would it make sense to say:

The world has been put to death to me and I have been put to death to the world?

I guess we would first have to figure out what the word world means:

Cosmos- definitions from a Greek lexicon:

1) harmonious arrangement, ornament, decoration, adornment

A) used of the stars adorning the sky and jewels adoring a woman

2) world, the circle of the earth

3) the inhabitants of the earth, the human race

The stars has been crucified to me and I have been crucified to the harmonious arrangement of the universe

The human race has been crucified to me and I have been crucified to the human inhabitants of the earth!

4) The whole mass of mankind alienated from God and therefore hostile to the cause of Christ. This sounds more like it…

5) Worldly affairs, the whole circle of earthly goods, endowments, riches, advantages, pleasures, which although hollow, frail, and fleeting; stir desire, seduce from God, and are obstacles to the cause of Christ.

Does it make sense to say: I have been crucified to mankind who is alienated from God and hostile to the cause of Christ?

The world has been crucified to me and I have been crucified to worldly affairs that stir desire, seduce from God, and are obstacles to the cause of Christ.

The world (cosmos) has been crucified to me….

We live in a cosmos that is filled with every kind of person. We are not to distinguish here the color of one’s skin or their cultural heritage…that is part of what makes our world great. We wouldn’t want for a moment to say. I have been crucified to people who have a different cultural heritage than mine….I am dead to people who’s skin is a different color or who’s features look different than mine.

What we are talking about here are the belief systems that fill our world. Our world is filled with people who have every conceivable type of belief about religion and many who completely dismiss the idea of God altogether. Many of these people are respectable people…good people.

We live in a country that is very tolerant of differing viewpoints, we are proud of that, thankful for that….we are the great melting pot. Here’s the problem…While nationally we respect everyone as our equal, we make no distinction for religion heritage….we treat the atheist exactly like we do the Presbyterian…

On a spiritual level when the Christian opens his/her Bible; the pluralism stops. The framers of our constitution wrote into it the possibility of many people gathering under one flag who believed there were many different paths to God. The Bible leaves no room for that to be true! Though our nation was clearly founded on a Judeo Christian foundation (on the Bible) , our forefathers acknowledged that they were allowing for all religious thought to live side by side.

Over time, that philosophy has so developed in our country that any one who says, or even thinks, that the Bible gives the only path to God, is thought to be an unenlightened, small minded bigot. The twenty first century Christian finds themselves in a place where the inspired, Book of their faith is saying one thing, and much of society around them is saying something radically different.

But now it has gone further. Two years ago, after 9/11 we all dove into churches to renew our relationships with God…for about three months. This last year, just two years later we have been seeing an all out assault on our faith begin to take shape. Legal assaults on our pledge of allegiance, the ten commandments, the statement “in God we trust”…this coming year the Supreme Court of our country will be deciding whether we can continue to use that phrase.

This past Christmas, like no other in my 46 years, there was an all out assault on Christmas. 10 years ago you still saw the term “Merry Christmas” dominating the media, retail stores, politicians. Not this year! Remember the outcry when some atheist put the word X where Christ was supposed to be. This year we had to stop using the word at all…because it might be offensive. I heard a radio commentator say that he had a producer sitting in his office telling him he could not use the words “Merry Christmas.”

He defied him and did it anyway!

You, as a Bible believing Christian need to remember something very clearly. The Bible paints a very clear line in the sand.

On one side are those who are submitted to the Lordship of Jesus Christ

On the other side is: every one else!

An the Bible doesn’t care if the people on the other side of that line are media moguls, or politicians running for office, or movie stars with large followings, or liberal church leaders who have reinterpreted Scripture.

God says:

Those who are submitted to Jesus as Lord and Savior are “not of this world”

They are part of the Kingdom of God!

Those who are not submitted to Jesus as Lord and Savior are “ of this world”

They are not part of the Kingdom of God! You can’t be part of the Kingdom of God without having a right relationship with the King of that Kingdom!

No one can be in the kingdom and reject the king, if you reject the king…you forfeit the kingdom.

I know I am belaboring that point but I’m trying to make a point of my own. When the media attacks Franklin Graham for saying that one who doesn’t know Christ needs to be converted….I hope everyone in this room understands, those reporters or commentators attacking Franklin are hopelessly wrong, they are just parroting the viewpoint of the world system they are a part of. They themselves do not understand God’s kingdom and are not part of God’s kingdom!

The only focal point you and I have to relate life to is the sacrifice of Jesus on a cross on our behalf and the eternal life he offered us by rising from the dead, defeating sin, and satan, and death and hell! That focal point for you moves you away from the focal point of the world around you!

(Galatians 6:14) May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.

It is the dividing line.

Your belief, acceptance, and embracing of that cross will distinguish you from those who do not believe accept, and embrace the cross!

It’s not a constitutional issue with temporal significance….it is a Biblical issue with eternal significance!

In fact…you are instructed…commanded, in scripture to have a different wiew point than the world around you.

III. Deliverance from the World’s Temptations

This is as straight-forward as it gets:

(1 John 2:15-16) Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world-- the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does-- comes not from the Father but from the world. (NIV)

Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. The worlds motivations, attitudes, ambitions, desires standard, or priorities does not tend to line up with the motivations, attitudes, ambitions, desires standard, or priorities of our Heavenly Father.

When I get caught up in the motivations, attitudes, ambitions, desires standard, or priorities of the world I am worldly, not Godly.

Don’t confuse this…I can love the person who lives in the world (unbeliever) without loving the world system that drives him.

What is the world system…what drives the unbeliever that is not supposed to drive the believer?

A. Three basic temptations:

1) Lust of the flesh

2) Lust of the eyes

3) Pride of life

B. Three basic temptations: Adam and Eve

1) Lust of the flesh- tree was good for food

2) Lust of the eyes- attractive to look at

3) Pride of life- could make man like God

C. Three basic temptations: Jesus in the wilderness

1) Lust of the flesh- command these stones to become bread

2) Lust of the eyes- you can have it all if you worship me

3) Pride of life- throw yourself down…show your strength

Adam and Eve lost the battle…Jesus won the battle over all these temptations and all they would represent. Every temptation you are ever going to face falls somewhere in these three categories. Every motivation of the unbeliever comes out of one of these three categories. You are expected as a believer to move away from the motivations of the world…and embrace the motivations of your Heavenly Father.

In fact let me give you four observations; directly from scripture that define your relationship to the world around you. We’ll make it our third point:

III. Observations about the World and your Relationship to it

A) Observation #! The world is in satans hands!

(1 John 5:19) We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one. (NIV)

(1 John 5:19) We know that we are of God, and the whole world lies in the evil one. (ASV)

We sing God’s got the whole world in his hands and that is true if the cosmos as a whole but within that definition we saw:

4) The whole mass of mankind alienated from God and therefore hostile to the cause of Christ. This sounds more like it…

5) Worldly affairs, the whole circle of earthly goods, endowments, riches, advantages, pleasures, which although hollow, frail, and fleeting; stir desire, seduce from God, and are obstacles to the cause of Christ.

Satan’s got the whole world, from this vantage point, in his miserable hands!

If you listen to the news you will hear some try so hard to figure out why some parts of the world seem to hate America. If they don’t like America it must be because we have harmed them in some way. Read your History! There have always been, and will always be people in this world who will despise other people who have any relationship whether past or present with the Heavenly Father. There are many people in this world who are following another father.

The question has been raised as to why the United Nations seems to appear somewhat anti-American. 2/3’s of the countries that make up the United Nations aren’t even democracies, most are dictatorships…of course they don’t like us…they hate everything we stand for!

Within our country, evangelical Christians are:

1) Beginning to have a greater voice and greater impact

2) Becoming more hated, vilified, and openly campaigned against

Don’t be surprised by that… We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one.

B) Observation #2 The World will Hate us!

(John 15:18-19) "If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. (NIV)

But, I want everybody to like me!!!! We’ll if you are a true believer, they aren’t all going to. If you want the world to love you, you have to “belong to the world.” As soon as you tell them that their sinful lives will not earn them a free pass to heaven, they won’t like you any more. Jesus said to his unbelieving brothers:

John 7:2-7) ….. His brothers therefore said to Him, "Depart from here and go into Judea, that Your disciples also may see the works that You are doing. "For no one does anything in secret while he himself seeks to be known openly. If You do these things, show Yourself to the world." For even His brothers did not believe in Him. Then Jesus said to them, … "The world cannot hate you, but it hates Me because I testify of it that its works are evil.

What has become very troubling is the fact that, in many cases, the world does not hate the modern church. The church has worked hard to lessen the differences between the two and now the world accepts the church as part of itself. The church has no spiritual impact on the community around it but at least it is not being rejected by the community.

If a church dares speak out against the sin in it’s community it is quickly branded as ignorant and intolerant and a cancerous tumor on the side of society that needs eliminated.

Adam and Vanessa just returned from Spain and they verified what I have experienced in Europe and in Greece. Christianity has become a symbol of the past. Huge cathedrals have become museums. Few people even attend church and those many who do are identical in every way to the world around them. The morals of many of our European countries have slipped far beyond what already shocks us here. Nudity and sex are everywhere. In France at any hour of the day, I’m told, there are some 500 pornographic movies playing on cable TV. Adams verifies the same in Spain. Yet much of Europe looks on us as “not quite civilized.”

C) Observation #3 We must not be friends with the World!

I love this because it’s written by one of Jesus brother’s who He told earlier that the world hated him but not them; now a few years and one conversion later James says:

(James 4:4) You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. (NIV)

D) Observation #4 The world will not last!

(1 John 2:17) The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever. (NIV)

What an amazing statement! Satan will do everything in his limited power to convince you that the only thing that really matters in this life is to link yourself as close as possible to this world. He is lying!!!! He is telling you the exact opposite of the truth!

The only thing that really matters in this life is to link yourself as close as possible to the will of God for your life…because…This world and its desires will pass away, but the person who does the will of God will live forever!!!