The Cosmic System
Transcript of FLOT Line Episode 638 aired on November 26, 2017
Good morning and welcome to the FLOT Line. I’m your host Rick Hughes and for the next few
minutes we’re going to ask you to stay with us. 30 minutes of motivation, some inspiration, some
education, and obviously we do this without any type of manipulation. That’s right, no appeals
for money, we’re not trying to hustle you. We’re not trying to ask you to join up, fess up, give up,
nothing like this. All we’re trying to do is give you 30 minutes of information, information
designed to help you understand God’s plan for your life. If I can do this, if I can give you this
information, you can orient and adjust to the plan. The FLOT Line show is designed to remind
you of all the Biblical truths we talk about, introduce you to a different way of studying, an in-
depth way of studying and learning God’s Word and it’s all done, as I said, with no manipulation.
Just me here, trying to verify and identify this plan for you and hopefully you will adjust to the
plan if you hear it. It all starts with the best news the world has ever known, the news that Jesus
Christ, the anointed Son of God redeemed us out of the slave market of sin and our debt to God
has been paid. We’re now free of the penalty of death and free of the power of sin. If you receive
Christ as your Savior, you in effect can accept the offering He made on your behalf. That’s the
free gift of God complements of His grace. That’s why the Bible says,
“For by grace are you
saved through faith and that not of yourselves, it’s the gift of God, not of works lest anyone
should brag about it.”
Also in Titus 3:5-7 in the New Testament,
“Not by works of righteousness
which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us by the washing of regeneration and
the renewing of the Holy Spirit which He shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Lord.
And that being justified by His grace we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal
life.”
That’s the best news I could tell you ever. Whether or not you believe it, whether or not you
accept it, that’s the best news you’ll ever hear. Today on the FLOT Line we want to talk about the
cosmic system. I want to identify the cosmic system, tell you what it is, tell you where it came
from, and how to avoid it. Remember the FLOT Line, FLOT stands for forward line of troops.
What we’re trying to do is introduce you to the 10 unique problem-solving devices found in the
Word of God, 10 wonderful problem-solving devices. And if you learn them and use them, they
will act as a defensive perimeter, a forward line of troops, FLOT. It’s a military analogy. These
unique problem-solving devices are nothing new, this is not some new discovery. This is not
some technique we’re trying to sell you, nothing like this. These are age-old Biblical doctrines,
but when you understand them and you use them, you can definitely stop the outside sources of
adversity before they ever become the inside sources of stress. That’s why we always say
adversity is inevitable but stress is optional. With this in mind let’s learn about the cosmic
system. What is the cosmic system? Let me start off with a verse of Scripture that we’re going to
build on. This verse is found in 1 John 2:15-17, here’s what it says,
“Love not the world, neither
the things that are in the world. If any man love 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, the pride of life is not of the
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Father, it’s of the world. But the world passes away and the lust of it as well, but he that doeth
the will of God will abide forever.”
By the way, in John 6:40 Jesus said,
“This is the will of the
One who sent Me, that you believe in Me whom He has sent and you abideth forever.
I John 5:1,
He that believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born again.
John 3:18,
He that believeth in Him shall
not perish but have everlasting life, and he that believeth not, the wrath of God abides on him
already.”
Abiding forever is you having a resurrection body, you living in the new heaven and
on the new earth,
“No more tears, no more sorrow, no more pain, the old things are passed
away.”
It’s a wonderful gift from God complements of the saving work of the Lord Jesus Christ
on the cross as He became our substitute. So there are several ways we can study a Scripture like
this one in 1 John 2:15-17. In this case we’re going to do what’s called an exegetical study. This
means going word by word, exegetical, and try to determine exactly what John’s intent was when
he wrote this. John, one of the original disciples, said,
“Love not the world.”
We start off with
the present active imperative and the morphology of this verb is an imperative mood in the Greek
New Testament and it’s the present tense. So as a believer this is a durative present. There is
never a time you’re suppose to do this. You should not do it today, you should not do it tomorrow,
and you should not do it in the future and the imperative mood is what we call the mood of
command. It’s the commander’s intent. This is a command from God through the apostle John.
“Love not the world.”
The word love is
agapao
, A.G.A.P.A.O. There are a lot of different words
for love in the New Testament. They’re all translated L.O.V.E. but they could be
phileo, agapao,
storgeo, or erao.
Erao
is where we get the English word erotic.
Phileo
is where we get the word
Philadelphia, brotherly love. And
agapao
is God’s love and that’s what we’re talking about.
“Love not the world,”
and we have a negative with it, we have a strong Greek negative with it,
me,
M.E. We have
agapao me, me
means do not, “Do not love the world.” Now in the New
Testament,
agape
and
agapao
are used consistently throughout the New Testament and love is
one of our problem-solving devices. If you’ll remember in problem-solving device number seven
and number eight, we have personal love for God and impersonal love for others. Personal love
for God is motivational virtue.
“If you love Me, you’ll keep My mandates. My mandates are not
grievous,”
the Lord Jesus Christ said and so personal love for God is suppose to motivate us to
be obedient, not arrogant. Then we have impersonal love for others where even in the Old
Testament, they were told to,
“Love their neighbors as they love themselves.”
In the New
Testament, Jesus gave a new commandment in John 13,
“Love one another,”
and so we have to
use a different type of love, impersonal love
and we’ve talked about this before, and I’ll be glad to
send you some information about this. It’s a way to love obnoxious people. Basically what you’re
doing is loving them based on your personality, not theirs. You are loving them based on the
content of your heart and soul, not theirs. This means you can have a relaxed mental attitude
when they are in your periphery, that you don’t vibrate, the hair on the back of your neck doesn’t
stand up, your eyes don’t turn red anytime that “You know who” walks into the room. Sure, there
are people that do this to you, people that just set you off, maybe even family members, maybe
someone you’re associated with at work, some arrogant idiot that you have to work with
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everyday and he just drives you nuts but you have to love them. The only way you can do it is to
love through the love of God. He loved you and you love others the way He loved you with
impersonal love.
God loved you impersonally until you became saved. Once you got into the
royal family of God, He poured out His personal love on you.
The Bible says,
“God so loved
the world that He gave His only begotten Son.”
You were not even saved when He loved you in
eternity past, and thus it was the impersonal love of God loving you. Now that you’re a member
of the royal family of God, hopefully you are, now God loves you and we can describe the
attitude of God toward His Son in John 17:26. His attitude toward the whole human race in John
3:16, I just quoted this. Those who believe in Jesus Christ, in John 14:21,
“He that hath My
commandments and keeps them, he it is that loves Me and he that loves Me
[Jesus speaking]
will
be loved by My Father and I will love him and I will reveal Myself to him.”
You have a choice.
You can love the world, which is the cosmic system, the things that are in the world, which
are the pleasures of life temporary as they may be or you can love the Lord Jesus Christ.
Again John 14:21,
“He that has My commandments and keeps them
[being obedient]
that’s
the one that loves Me and he that loves Me will even be loved by My Father and I will love him
also and reveal Myself to him.”
There is another way we can talk about love and that’s to convey
His will to His children concerning their attitude toward one another. That’s the new
commandment in John 13:34 where Jesus said,
“I’m giving you a new commandment, you love
one another just like I love you.”
You must love one another and then toward all men, we have to
love all men. That’s what the Word of God teaches, that is what the Word of God says. In 1
Thessalonians 3:12,
“The Lord make you to increase and abound in love toward one another and
toward all men, even as we do toward you.”
This is Paul writing, talking to the church at
Thessalonica and he wanted them to love one another just like he loved them. In 1 Corinthians
16:14 the Bible says,
“Let everything be done with love.”
In 2 Peter 1:7,
“Add to godliness,
brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness, love,”
and so love is the unique will of God for
your life. It also sums up the character of God. And if you want to understand the essential nature
of God, 1 John 4:8 says,
“God is love.”
Do you want to know what God’s like? He’s not sitting
up there with the big white beard on a throne, that’s your human idea of what God is like. He is
transitional. He’s omnipresent. He’s omnipotent. He’s omniscient. He is of all things. He is love
and His love is guarded by His justice. What the righteousness of God rejects, the justice of God
must judge, there’s no way around it. God initiated contact with you because He loves you and
He provided His Son for you. This word love or
agapao
is generally used for motivational virtue
for the Christian life, having personal love for God. That’s what gives you the desire to serve
God and obey God but in this case, John’s warning and he’s demanding that we don’t have this
type of love motivating us to worship the things that the world offers, temporary happiness in
people or in circumstances. That’s all the world can offer you.
The cosmic system, what we call
kosmos diabolicus, is the system of evil perpetuated by Satan designed as a strategy to
control believers and unbelievers alike.
John is warning you, don’t fall in love with the world,
this temporary happiness in people and circumstances. All the world can offer you is temporary,
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that’s it, nothing else. It cannot ever give you anything that will provide happiness or joy over the
long run. That’s provided by fulfilling God’s plan in your life. That’s the only way this can ever
be provided. In 1 John 2:15, the things that are in the world, the eye candy, the eye candy that the
world has, stay away from it.
“Do not love the world nor should you love the things that are in
the world.”
That’s the eye candy, the temporary things, the approbation of the world or the
attention of the world. A lot of people like this. Approbation lust is a real thing. It’s a desire for
people to pay attention to you. Sometimes I’ll be speaking and somebody will ask me a question
and say, “What do you think about such and such?” I know they’re not interested in what I think
about it, they’re interested in telling me what they think about it so I’ll usually answer their
question with a question. I usually say, “Well I don’t know, what do you think about it?” And off
they go to tell me their scholarly viewpoint of what they are considering I may be wrong about.
People love approbation and in the church people love approbation. They love the preacher
paying attention to them and if he doesn’t pay enough attention to them, they will fire him. They
will get rid of him. They do not want someone who is going to study and teach the Word of God
consistently over the long haul. They want someone that will be like a shepherd that will love
them and come to their house and have a cup of tea, a cup of coffee and visit with them and hold
their hand when they go to the hospital. Listen, that’s the last thing you need, some preacher
coming up saying, “You’ll make it sister. My mama died with it but you will make it. Hang in
there.” Listen, I’m sorry to be so sarcastic but there are deacons in the church who are designed
to handle these sort of things, not the pastor. The pastor must study. He must apply himself to
teaching the Word of God. If he doesn’t learn it, he can’t teach it and any church that doesn’t give
him the opportunity to teach is doing an injustice to the pastor. When they demand more hand
service, more personal care than they do teaching the Word of God, then they’re never going to
grow spiritually. This word love is the essential nature of God and the word is generally used of
motivational virtue for the Christian life, personal love for God. That’s what gives us the
motivation to obey Him, and in this case John warns us and demands that we don’t have this type
of love for the world. We should not be motivated to worship what the world offers.
All the
world can offer you is a temporary happiness in people and circumstances.
Anything the
world offers you is only temporary.
The world cannot, it will not, ever provide the happiness
and the joy that comes from fulfilling God’s plan for your life.
Don’t love the world, the
things that are in the world, the temporary, the approbation of the world, the attention of the
world. Then 1 John 2:15 says,
“If any man loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.”
We’ll break this down for you,
ean tis agapao, ean is
a third class condition meaning it’s
possible. It is the word
if
and it’s a conditional particle making reference to something in the
future.
If
tis,
the Greek word
tis,
an indefinite pronoun referring to a certain man, certain
individual man or woman.
“If any man loves the world,”
love is a present active subjunctive
verb,
agapao.
So the present tense is any man or woman who continues to love the world, to
pursue the world, active voice, they use their volition to do it and the subjunctive mood is the
mood of potential.
If they love the world, the kosmos diabolicus, the cosmic system, the
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devil’s world, occupation with the cosmic system and it’s nefarious activities which promise
happiness and contentment, it is all a lie. Jesus Christ our Lord said,
“Happiness belongs to
those people who hear My Father’s Word and keep it.”
I can give you illustration after
illustration of people of wealth and means and power that are not happy. They’ve been married
and divorced many times. They’ve squandered fortunes on drugs and alcohol. They’ve sought for
happiness in all the wrong places, even the great Elvis whom we all loved and adored as a great
singer. Someone asked him, “When you first started making music, you said you wanted to be
rich and famous and happy. Elvis, you are rich and you are famous, are you happy?” And Elvis
replied, “No, I’m lonely.” There you go, the world cannot fill this emptiness in your heart.
“If
anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him,”
1 John 2:15.
This is not saying
he’s not saved. What it’s saying is he doesn’t have any motivational virtue. So we have love for
the world,
agapao,
and we have love for the Father. Both of these are motivational situations.
The love for the world is a false motivation. The love for God the Father is the true
motivation.
However, how can you love someone you don’t know? And until you understand the
character of God it’s kind of impossible to love Him. You must know that He is omnipotence,
omniscience, omnipresence, immutability, veracity, that He’s eternal life, that He’s love, that He’s
so many things that you may not even know about. The character of God is unbelievable and it’s
a problem-solving device for us and we look back and see that He doesn’t change, that He loves
us. He’s sovereignty, He’s righteousness, He’s justice, that’s God. So 1 John 5:3 says,
“This is the
love of God, that we keep His mandates and those mandates are not grievous.”
You see, when
there’s no personal love for God, then you as a Christian are easily manipulated by the
well-planned strategy of the devil because you will be lured into the cosmic system.
It’s
called evil. It’s the plan that Satan has. God’s plan is always grace, always has been grace.
Evil is the plan of Satan.
The most evil thing in the world, listen to what I’m about to say, is
organized religion. God is not the author of organized religion. Organized religion is Satan’s tool,
it’s his ace trump. The Bible says,
“Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did I not
prophesy in Your name and in Your name cast out devils, and do many wonderful works?’ And
He said, ‘I’ll tell Him I never knew you.’”
Organized religion will tell you the way to salvation is
to work for God, to be good, to be nice, to be moral, to give some money, to pray, you’ll be
saved. That’s not what the Bible says. These are things that Christians do, obviously yes but
that’s not how you become a Christian. You become a Christian by putting faith alone in the
finished work of Christ alone and you express this faith to God in prayer and the Bible says,
“Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
Organized religion leaves a
big doubt. Organized religion will put a chain around your neck. Organized religion will tell you
that you can’t be a Christian if you drink, you can’t be a Christian if you smoke, you can’t be a
Christian if you do this or do that, and if you do these things organized religion will say, “Well,
you’re probably not a Christian anyhow.” Who is designed to judge people? Only God. Matthew
7 says,
“Don’t judge lest you be judged.”
Ephesians 6:11 is a warning about not knowing the
enemy’s strategy. The cosmic system is the strategy of the devil, the kosmos diabolicus. If you
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want to know what’s going on, here is what the verse says.
“Put on the armor of God so you may
be able to stand against the strategy of the devil.”
Satan’s strategy is simple. It’s to lure you into
the kosmos diabolicus, into this cosmic system, and his strategy as ruler of this world is to
control you and even the unbeliever. It’s his policy because he is the ruler of this world. We don’t
belong here, we’re sojourners the Bible says, we’re passing through. Our home is in heaven,
ouranos
the Greek word and we are pilgrims. This is the devil’s world and this world will be
destroyed by fire. Anything Satan has touched throughout the universe will be burnt up and
destroyed by fire, 2 Peter tells us that.
“There will be a new heaven and a new earth, and this is
our eternal abode.”
So Satan’s strategy is to control your thoughts.
How does he do it? With
arrogance, abnormal preoccupation with self and you get lured into becoming even antagonistic
and intolerant toward the plan, the purpose and the will of God. Y
ou begin to live a life without
the influence of God’s Word.
This life can be devastating due to failure and frustration that you
will face in your life. You know I hear it all the time, the claim today is that anyone who does
this stuff must not really be saved and that’s false. That’s a lie. No one can determine who’s saved
except God but the choice is yours. You can make spiritual living your priority or you can make
cosmic living your priority. You can function under divine viewpoint or human viewpoint. I
assure you of this, if you do not use rebound, problem-solving device number one and allow the
Holy Spirit to consistently control your life as a Christian then you will never advance in the plan
of God and you will never find the happiness God designed for you. You will be lured back into
the cosmic system and you will always be tempted to find happiness in people and
circumstances. So you have to recognize when you sin and deal with the sin and recognize when
the enemy is trying to exploit your human lust pattern and eventually enslave you into following
your own desires contrary to God’s desires. When you do this, this arrogance leads to self-
destruction. 1 John 2:16,
“For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the
pride of life is not of the Father, but of the world.”
The result of any man being involved in the
cosmic system is going to ultimately be chaos personally and even nationally. Any believer who
gets trapped in this cosmic system can actually become a cosmic evangelist for the devil, trying
to lure other believers to go down the same My Way Highway that only ends in death and
destruction. When anybody through their own arrogance and their own power lust gravitates into
the cosmic system using their own volition, they make these decisions from a position of
weakness and this has both personal and national repercussions.
How do you avoid the cosmic
system? You do exactly what Ephesians 6:11-18 says,
“Put on the armor of God,”
strap it on.
Understand the strategy of the devil. Put on the breastplate of righteousness, the helmet of
salvation, the belt of truth, pick up the shield of faith, pick up the sword of the Word of God, it’s
all there. This means you must grow consistently under the filling of the Holy Spirit so that not
only do you recognize who you are, but you recognize what Satan and his plan is and what God’s
plan entails for you. I hope you’re listening. I don’t want you trapped in the cosmic system. I
want you to live in God’s plan and will for your life. Until next week, this is Rick Hughes host of
the FLOT Line saying thank you so much for being with me today