The State of The World

And if in the midst of that there is an oasis of beautiful unity, there is an oasis of beautiful oneness, there is a harmony of peacefulness among a body of people, the world is going to look and see what’s that. And that’s when we can say, this is what Jesus Christ can do. And they’re going to say then he must be somebody from somewhere else than this world because nobody in this world could ever do that. I’ll never forget reading a history book one time. It asked the question, do you know many, how many peace treaties have been broken throughout history? And the answer was all of them, all of them.

And the Bible says there’s no peace to the wicked, peace, peace, and there is no peace. There’s no one in the world who’s ever been able to do it. That’s why the world is going to grab onto the coat strings of the Antichrist. He’s going to come along and he’s going to appear to be the greatest peacemaker. But you see, we can manifest to the world that Jesus is the peacemaker if we have a community of peaceful, loving, united people in one mind, right? This is the heart of our testimony, that the world may know that he is sent from God.

He’s not just another man. No man has ever been able to make that kind of peace. No man has ever been able to relate people to each other like that. He’s got to be divine. And that’s the heart of it all. So the worthy walk has as its objective, first of all, unity in the church. That we would walk worthy, the church would be one. Now, how do you get to that? Well, I’ll tell you one thing. If everybody’s proud, you’ll never have unity, right? If everybody’s saying, well, I’m going to get for me what I want.

You get for you what you want. You’ll never have unity. You get everybody doing that, and we’re in a lot of trouble. If everybody’s worried about his own thing, well, I’m not going to take that anymore. You can’t do that to me. Then we’re not going to have unity. Now watch this. Wherever you have humility, you have unity. If you have everybody fighting for their own rights, you have terrible, terrible, terrible discord. From whence come wars? James says they come because you want with your own lusts, and you desire to have, and you’ll do anything to get it.

See, that’s war. On the other hand, where does peace come from? It comes from Ephesians, rather Philippians chapter 2, where Paul says, let each esteem others. What? Better than themselves. You see, you have peace and unity and oneness when we all look on the things of others and not on our own things. When we all esteem others better than ourselves. When we’re all involved in meeting your needs. When everybody cares about everybody else instead of himself, then there’s a harmony and a brotherhood and a peace and a unity that’s inexplicable, humanly.

That’s what God wants. So you say, all right, we’re trying to get to the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace. That’s right. We’re trying to see the one body, one spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God concept of verses 4, 5 and 6. We’re trying to see that oneness really living so the world will know God sent Jesus. He’s got to be supernatural because no man could do that. But the world isn’t going to know that unless we have that unity. We maintain that unity and we’ll never maintain it without following these steps.

Let’s look at one, the first step. With all lowliness. Boy, you know, it’s such a hard thing to preach on some things like this because you look at your own life and you have such a battle with these things. This is very convicting to me. With all lowliness. The word paseis in the Greek means all total. And the word simply means total humility. I mean nothing else. No exception, total humility. Not just lowliness, but all lowliness in everything. In every relationship, in every attitude, in every act, in every deed, you always manifest lowliness. Now, the Greek word comes from two words.

The first one, tapinos, means low. It’s just the word that means low as opposed to high. But it has a metaphorical use. It means it’s used sometimes to speak of poor. We talk about low classes. Well, that’s the way it’s used, poor people. It’s used to speak of unimportant. If something is low priority, we mean it’s unimportant. It’s something ignoble or useless. It was even used by the Greeks to speak of something that was sort of a person who was cowardly, a low person. And we use it today to speak of somebody who acts in a way that’s just not consistent with what should have been done.

That was a low thing to do. It means something base, something unimportant, something poor, something cowardly, ignoble. Now, the second part of the word is froneo, which is a verb that means to think or to judge. The combination then means to think of yourself as lowly, to think of yourself as unimportant, to think of yourself as base, to think of yourself as poor, to think of yourself as ignoble. Now you’ve got it. In everything you do, think of yourself as low. Paul said to the Romans, for goodness sake, a man should not think more highly of himself than he ought to think.

And how ought to think? Lowly. But you know, we’re always told that we ought to think of ourselves as something great. You know, that we ought to take care, we ought to really put it on. The commercials tell us that, man, if you’re not rich and beautiful, you can hardly stand to watch television. You can’t hardly stand it. It frustrates you. And you know, we’re constantly being told that we are to be proud. Well, that’s not what the Bible says. You want to know something interesting? This word never appears in classical Greek because it was coined by Christians because the world didn’t have this concept.

John Wesley said, quote, neither the Romans nor the Greeks had a word for humility. They didn’t have a word for it. And the reason they didn’t have a word for it was because they despised that attitude. They just used a derogatory word. This is a word that is, that was given some character. They had words that meant poor and ignoble and cowardly and so forth. And by the way, even this word, when it was coined by the Christians, came to mean poor, cowardly, unimportant. And the pagans in the first two centuries, every time we find this word in pagan writings, used it in a derogatory way.

Even when the Christians coined a word for a good kind of virtuous humility, they couldn’t fit it into their lifestyle. They despised anybody like that. They looked down on anybody like that. They mocked anybody who was weak and cowardly and faint-hearted and had a servile mind and thought of himself poorly. Well, you know, we need to be humble. And it grieves my heart, you know, to have people standing up and preaching as if it’s the message of God that we got to think we’re great and think we’re greater. And we got to parade ourselves and parade all of the things we’ve done and be honored for everything we’ve done.

That’s just not what the Bible teaches at all. Pagans have done that and they always do it and they always look on humility as a pitiable weakness. We’re going to see more about it next week. And really, I think it’ll change your thinking about this when we get into the concept of meekness a little bit. But in Christ, humility became a beautiful virtue. And without it, you can’t walk worthy. There’s just no way. Total humility. Total humility, a basic essential. Jesus knew it. Jesus. I mean, what did he have? What could he say he was proud of? He never said that.

Paul said, the only thing I ever boast in is the gospel of Jesus Christ. That’s all. Thank you for joining us in this exploration of the state of the world. Until next time, remember to keep the faith. Stay strong and continue to shine your light in the world. To hear these daily devotions of your daily bread, please log on to goddessgovernment.com. Goodbye, and may your faith always lead the way. [tr:trw].