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Love Not the World | 1 John 2:15-17 (1/14/2024: Mark Evans)
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The main idea of this information is that Christians are called to not love the world and instead put on a love for God. The world refers to all that is opposed to God and animated by the powers of darkness. John gives this command because he knows that indwelling sin is constantly working against believers. Loving the world and loving the Father are mutually exclusive, and God will not be rivaled by anyone or anything. It is God's love in us that compels our love back to Him. We'll make our way to the letter of 1 John as we continue our series through this wonderful epistle. And we find ourselves this morning in 1 John chapter 2 and we'll be in a short section, just verses 15 through 17 of 1 John chapter 2. Kids, as I read, see if you can pick out the three things, three things that John describes as a love of the world. And let us hear now the words of our God, 1 John 15 through 17. 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 desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, and the pride of life is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires. But whoever does, the will of God abides forever. When the grass withers and the flower fades, let us pray. Our gracious God and heavenly Father, we do praise You that Your Word endures forever. And in contrast, as we just read, the world and all of its desires are passing away. And so here we are, Father, desirous to do Your will as those who are in Jesus Christ, bought by His precious blood, possessing the Spirit. And so we do pray that You would give us eyes to hear, give us ears. Lord, help us to see once again the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ, that we might behold the King in His beauty. In Christ's name we pray, amen. Well, it is said of men that men are particularly poor at multitasking. Now I know many men who would claim otherwise, boasting that they can, in fact, walk and chew gum at the same time. They can, in fact, run a conference call. They can be responding to e-mails and all doing this while driving. There are, of course, more than a few car collisions out there that would say otherwise. Well, what then about women? The stereotype is that women are far superior in multitasking. My wife continues to amaze me in this area, and so I would readily concede defeat in a multitasking contest. But the more and more that neuroscientists study the human brain and study multitasking, they conclude that there really is no such thing, male or female, that our brains are simply not capable of multitasking, that what we're actually doing is switch-tasking. We're just bouncing back and forth between tasks and not doing them simultaneously. We're just switching from, drafting that e-mail and switching to a conversation and then back to the e-mail once again. It seems that our minds demand devotion to a single task and only one task. Well, this morning John says, how much more so for your Christian life? How much more so when it comes to what we love? Love is, of course, a consistent theme throughout all of Scripture, but especially so in 1 John. The word love occurs some nearly 50 times in this very short letter, but what's unique in our section this morning is that this is the only time in 1 John that John says, here's what you are to not love. Indeed, if we cannot multitask, it seems we most certainly cannot multi-love. Our great God will not have a divided devotion, a splitting of our love between God above and the things below. And so we'll see this morning what is particularly tempting us towards a false love is the world, more simply put, worldliness. So we'll walk through these three verses with three parts. John's going to walk us through his command. He follows that up with his explanation of the command. And then lastly, he gives us this great reward. But the main point is very simple. It's that Christians are to unlove the world and instead put on a love for God. Christians are to not love the world, but of course we don't just remain in neutral, we also put on a love for Jesus Christ. But the emphasis in this section is much more on what not to love. You can see it right away. Look at this command in verse 15. John says, Do not love the world or the things in the world. It's very simple, very straightforward. Don't love these two things, the world and the things, the stuff that's in the world. So let's explore these two things. These two things are very much open to misinterpretation, right? If we're to not love something as big and broad as the world, that's a pretty large bucket. It's going to encompass nearly everything. So we need to ask, okay, what does John mean when he says don't love the world? This concept of world is used in various ways throughout Scripture. Of course, in the most basic primary sense, the world is God's good creation. God creates, He speaks the world into existence, He upholds the world by the word of His power and He is redeeming the world. You need only think of John 3, 16. God so loved the world that He gave His only Son. So you can see a possible point of confusion in verse 15. Is John saying, don't love God's good creation? Does this mean I'm not supposed to love beautiful sunsets and mountain peaks and newborn babies and good food from a good harvest? And above all, aren't I supposed to love the people who dwell in God's world? That's clearly not John's intended use of the word world. So we can rule that understanding out. But another way that Scripture uses the term world is to denote the domain of darkness, of all that is fallen and in rebellion towards God. Everything that is animated in a sinful revolt against God. We recall that Satan himself is described as the ruler of this world, even the God of this world. As we just read from Romans 12, do not be conformed to this world. That is the world's way of doing things. As Paul says in Ephesians, to keep going, he says that you were once dead in your trespasses and sins following the course of this world. That's most clear of all. Jesus told His disciples that just as the world hates me, it's also going to hate you. So you can just bundle up all those descriptions and understand that when John says, don't love the world, he means all that is opposed to God and animated by the powers of darkness. You see that brief comment there in verse 16, John says, these things of the world are not from the Father. Since God is not the author of sin, this worldliness is not authored by Him or from Him. Therefore, Christian, do not love the world. Now let's just ask, why would John even need to give this command? What Christian walks around saying, man, I'd really love to go over to the dark side. Nothing pleases me more than joining forces with the powers of darkness that are opposed to Christ. Is John just making a kind of moot point here? Well, not so fast. John knows what is in the heart of man. A very basic truth of our Christian life is that we do have indwelling sin that is perpetually working against us. Now to be clear, when you become a Christian, when God gives you a new heart by the power of the Holy Spirit, let's be clear, the dominion of sin, the reign and rule of sin that one once dominated your life is defeated and canceled. We just heard it last week. John said, you have overcome the evil one. Satan has no claim on a Christian. We've been delivered out of a domain of darkness and transferred to the kingdom of his beloved son. It's as done as done gets. Yet, while the dominion of sin has been defeated, the pollution of sin very much still remains. Perhaps you could put it as we have won the war or better said, Christ has won the war as our head. And yet there are still battles to be fought, battles that we will fight till our dying day and some of those battles we win and some of those battles we lose. And we will be engaged in that good fight till our final breath. Just recall those words of Paul in Romans 7 where he agonizingly says, ah, I do the things that I don't want to do and I'm not doing the very things that I want to do. He's got this spiritual schizophrenia that we all experience. And no doubt for you, just this past week alone, you were tempted with temptations unto worldliness, temptations that cried out for your affections, that presented themselves as pleasurable to you, worthy of your love in contrast to the love of God. This is just what John says in one of his familiar if statements in verse 15. He says it right there. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. As students, you might know the term mutually exclusive, right? That term mutually exclusive used to describe two or more events that cannot happen at the same time. It's used in math, it's used in probabilities. Simple example would be, say you're tossing a coin, the event of getting a heads and the event of getting a tails are mutually exclusive, right? You can get a heads or you can get a tails, but you cannot get both. So John says here, the love of the world and the love of the Father are mutually exclusive. You can love the world or you can love the Father, but you cannot love both. As our Lord Jesus so plainly said, you can love God or you can serve mammon, but you cannot love God and love mammon. As the prophet Elijah posed to the people of God, how long will you go limping between these two options? Choose this day whom you will serve, serve Yahweh, serve Jehovah or serve the false God Baal? Because friends before this verse has something to say to us or for us, this verse has much to say of our great God. This truth trumpets the jealousy and the supremacy of our God, that he will not be rivaled by anyone or anything, that he sits enthroned above the cherubim and he is to sit enthroned above our hearts, that God's greatest glory is himself and so he will not have an adulterous people who split their love between God and the world. And the encouraging news is that it is his love in us that compels our love back to him. It is his grace that God first loved us. Friends, just think of that, that God loved you in eternity past before the ages began, that God loves you in this present moment, that God will love you and shall love you always and forever and he is covenanted to work and perfect his love in you. That is your great confidence. With that, we do need to sit under John's test of assurance. So you ought to ask yourself, do I love the world? You might say, I'm fine to follow Christ, but when it comes time to choose between Christ and my personal happiness or fulfillment, I just might choose the latter. Do I consider my material prosperity greater value than eternal wealth? Do I take subtle steps to make sure I don't face ridicule or mocking for the faith? Do I crave the esteem, the applause of those around me? And we'll soon see these are all just various ways of asking the one question, do I love the world? If you're here this morning and not a Christian, this is one of the ways the Bible describes being a non-Christian, that because you don't have the love of God at work in you, you cave inwards into a love of the world and a love of yourself that in the end is destructive. That we humans don't have the option to not love. We will always be setting our loves and our affections on something, namely either God of love or the passing world below. And if you're not a Christian, the good news is that the love of the Father is greater, stronger, more glorious, more wonderful and preached to you right now in the gospel of Jesus Christ, to all who would repent and have simple faith and trust in Him alone for forgiveness of sins. So we've heard the clear command, do not love the world. But next, John so helpfully gives us far more clarity in verse 16 as to exactly what this love of the world is with this threefold description, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life. So if you ask John, you know, John, what is this love of the world? He would say these three things in fold encompass a love of the world. And this part might be particularly helpful if you grew up in a kind of a fundamentalist background. And by that I just mean, maybe you grew up with worldliness being defined in very black and white concrete terms, as in dancing is worldly, alcohol is worldly, rated R movies are worldly, makeup is worldly and so on and so forth. I remember when I was a kid, there was this expression, which was don't drink, smoke or chew nor go with girls who do. That's probably good advice to avoid a lady who has a spittoon. That seems like good advice. Nonetheless, that was taken to be the full definition of worldliness. Because we are very good at imposing our own standards, out pops these simplistic checklists of worldliness. And if only it was that easy, all right? If only it was as simple as stay away from these things and you have avoided worldliness. But we'll soon see. John does not list a single thing out there. Rather, the battle is in here. John does not give us a single exterior or outward thing when he defines the love of the world. No, instead, this threefold description is thoroughly an inward matter of the desires of the heart. And so John would press us and he would say, OK, are your desires in accord with the spirit or with the flesh? Are you walking humbly before your God or are you puffed up in pride? Do you love what God loves or do you love what man loves? And oh, that's much harder. Option A is much more appealing where all I have to do is stay within some man-made boundaries and I'm good to go. But John will not have us settle for some superficial definition of worldliness. So let's explore these one by one. Firstly, verse 16, the first mark of worldliness is the lust of the flesh. ESV has the word desire, it's a Greek word more often translated as lust. But desire is helpful because what is lust but a sinful desire arising from our flesh? That said, what does flesh mean? If we go and look up the word flesh in Miriam and Webster's dictionary, probably not going to help us much. We can understand that our skin, our epidermis is somehow sinful. Well, no, and this is a good helpful reminder, practical reminder of how Scripture interprets Scripture. Right? Quick tangent, if you're ever confused, what is this word, what is this concept, what does this term mean in your Bible? You can go to other parts of your Bible to get clarity. And we can do that here. We've got this word flesh. And we can get help from John's gospel, mainly John chapter 3. You might know that chapter well because of John 3.16. Jesus is speaking there about what it is to be born from above, what it is to be born again. And John writes this, he says, these are the words of Christ, that which is born of the flesh is flesh, that which is born of the spirit is spirit. You must be born again. So you've got this contrast between spirit and flesh. It's a fairly simple idea in that dogs give birth to dogs, cats give birth to cats, flesh gives birth to flesh, and the spirit gives birth to spirit. And that's how John wants you to think of yourself. You are a spiritual creature. You must be born again. We must have a new heart. We must have the Holy Spirit at work in us and through us because the spirit alone will give us holy desires. The spirit alone will reshape and refine our loves in a God-word direction. If not, all you are left with is the desires of the sinful, fallen flesh, flesh that wars against the spirit, flesh that is contrary to the spirit. This is why Paul says in Romans, make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires. Don't even give your flesh the time of day. Don't even give your flesh a single opportunity. Instead, walk by the spirit. And that becomes very practical, very quickly. A man is tempted in sexual lust. A woman is tempted to gossip with her friends. Children, you are tempted to disobey your parents and to do what you want to do in that moment. We're tempted with sloth, self-gratification, envious comparisons, unrighteous anger, idolatry in our hearts. And the challenging thing about the desires of the flesh is that they are the friendliest voice in the room. They are the smartest guy in the room. They are the best attorney in the room. And so Scripture says, don't try and reason with your sinful desires. Don't try to negotiate with your flesh. Instead, put them to death. There's this great moment in 1 Samuel where King Saul has captured King Agag and his marching orders are to put King Agag to death. God said, devote him to destruction. But it seems King Agag was a good talker. He has the gift of gab, it seems. And so King Agag talks Saul out of it. Well, then Samuel shows up on the scene and King Agag tries the same tactic. He starts to try and reason with Samuel. You know, hey Samuel, can't we be friends? Put down that sword. Let's live and let live. Come on, let's get along together. And Samuel walks up to him and hacks him to pieces. And friends, that is to be us. All right, the desires of the flesh will say, come on, can't we be friends? Put that sword down and live a little. The heart wants what it wants. If you want it this badly, it can't be all that bad. God's wisdom says, do not even attempt to coddle your lust. Instead, put them to death. And if you think Samuel was fierce, he's got nothing on the Spirit because the Spirit has declared all-out war against the flesh in a constant, holy, mortal combat. So much so that if we walk by the Spirit, Scripture says we will not, cannot gratify the desires of the flesh. So put off those desires. Worldliness number two, verse 16, the desires of our eyes. This is, too, an interesting way to talk, maybe a little confusing at first. Does this mean we go to our optometrist, I need a new eyeglass prescription because the wants of my eyes are all out of whack. Well, no. But even modern man recognizes how our eyes can get us into trouble. We have phrases like, your eyes are bigger than your stomach. You see eight bean burritos and you think, that's a good idea. It's only far too late that you realize, no, that's a bad idea. That's, of course, only the start. You go shopping for a modest cash car and soon the glitz and glamour of a new car catches your eye and you're driving off the lot now with five years of debt. Gets worse still. Your eyes start to gaze at your friend's house and then back to your house. That decorating is not like my decorating. Those clothes are not like my clothes. Your eyes may start to gaze at another's body or appearance to size it up to your appearance. Your eyes start to feast. How many followers? How many likes do I have online? Your eyes may even enjoy that other eyes are gazing at you. Even a word to our young people. You may see a group of people and think, ah, I'd love to be in that group of people. I'd do anything to see myself in that crowd. And so we must guard our eyes. Kids, imagine a knight. He's in shining armor. He's got on the breastplate. He's got armor on his arms and on his legs. He's even got on the helmet and yet, kids, you probably know this, he's got this crevice right here over his eyes so that he can see out. That also means what? That area is unprotected and unguarded. May that not be you. Now, this sin is as old as Eden. We just read earlier from Genesis. How did Eve fall into a love of the world? It was how disobeying God in that moment seemed like a, quote, delight to her eyes. That moment of perception was actually a moment of deception. You think, too, of King David walking upon that rooftop and he saw Bathsheba with his eyes. By contrast, you can think of Job who made a covenant with his eyes. Above all, think of the words of the Lord Jesus Christ. Better to have one eye, having gouged out your other eye, and to go into heaven than to have both eyes and be cast into hell. Indeed, this is an ever-present danger. We flee, even as we flee the images that are on our screens and our devices. We wander out into a sexualized world full of seductive images, whether driving by and seeing a billboard, simply going through the store. We face enticing images, and so we must retrain our eyes. Now, I personally, as a child, I had fairly poor eyesight in one of my eyes, and so the optometrist did indeed gave me a number of eye exercises. Here's how you can strengthen. Here's how you can retrain your eyes. And friends, that is to be us with the eyes of faith, to put to death the lust of the eyes and to put on a love for purity, an increase of self-control and discipline, this sanctified instinct to not take a second look, to not believe the lie, to just dip my toe into the water a little bit, and to, above all, have the eyes of faith, to see more and more of the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ, to see the King in His beauty. That is the destiny of our eyes, and training starts now. So we've seen how the world encompasses this lust of the flesh, secondly, this lust of the eyes, but thirdly, let's look at the pride of life, or you could say the arrogance, the boasting of life. Pride is often rightly said to be the father of sins. Pride comes before the fall. God opposes the proud. He gives grace to the humble. It's interesting, the only other time this particular word for pride occurs is in James 4. You might remember that section where these men are boasting, hey, guess what I'm going to do tomorrow? I'm going to go to such and such a town. I'm going to do some business there. I'm going to conduct some commerce, and we're going to make it rain. We're going to turn a quick profit. Right? It's the American dream, if there ever was, and James says, what is your life? You are just a mist. You are here today. You are gone tomorrow, and as it is, you boast in your arrogance. Same word found in verse 16, and we know this pride well, don't we? It's not hard to see it out there in the world, man's celebration. Here's what I've done, and here's what I'm going to do. Here's my current success, and I'm just getting warmed up, and sadly, as much as you see it out there, it's not all that hard to see it in your own heart. How vainly we boast in our accomplishments, our possessions, our marks of status and prestige, even our forthcoming plans, and James certainly was not against prudent planning, but he was entirely against boasting, and so he concludes by saying, all such boasting is evil. Now, would we agree? Evil seems like a strong word, and I like to reserve the word evil for really bad things, right? So, boasting is evil. Abortion is evil, but James says, such pretentious boasting is evil, and 1 John says, such boasting is not from your father. You can probably better sense why such boasting is so evil in light of Paul's questions of the Corinthians when he asked them, what do you have that you have not received? Name one single thing that you have that has not been gifted to you. How about your possessions? A warm house on a cold day, roof over your head with a warm bed, a pantry full of food. These have been given to you from the Father of lights. How about your health? That we sit here today in relative health is nothing less than God's gracious gift to us. By our sins, we have earned not ill health, but eternal death, and yet God has graciously given to all of us a measure of relative health to the body. How about, then, your relative wealth? Oh, you might say, okay, no, that I earned. I put in the work for that. But to paraphrase Deuteronomy 8, who is it that gave you the strength, the opportunity, the ingenuity, the conditions to create wealth? This is not your own doing, it is the gift of God. It's most hilarious of all if we should boast in our appearance. Name one thing you did to put the blue in your eyes, to carve your cheekbones, to indent your dimples. Not one thing. You were fearfully and wonderfully made by God above. What do you have that you have not received? Short answer, nothing. And, of course, it comes to its fullest when we think of receiving the Lord Jesus Christ, when we have done all things not to receive Christ, to demerit Christ and merit our damnation, our God says, here is my beloved Son, my gracious gift to you in a covenant of peace. And so John says, renew your mind. Pride is the world modus operandi. That's the way the world approaches life, but you know the Father. You have the Spirit put on Jesus Christ and make no room for pride in your heart. Now, that said, as we put off these bad desires, this does not mean that we are to be desire-less. We are not made as empty bottles of Stoicism. Let's just take, for example, boasting. Let us boast. We should be boasting, but boasting in nothing less than the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. Because through the cross, you have been crucified to the world and the world crucified to you. That means you're no longer a slave to the world. You're no longer a citizen of the world. You no longer play by and drown in its rules. You are alive to God and the love of the Father is in you. Well, if you're not yet convinced, in the final section, the final verse, John persuades us just how foolish it would be to love the world. Verse 17, he says so clearly, the world is passing away along with its desires. Remember by world, he more so means worldliness, like one author's definition of worldliness, which is simply anything that makes sin seem normal, anything that normalizes sin. Just last week, a friend and I, we were discussing an extremely popular sitcom from the 80s and 90s, and we were just commenting on how so much of the show, in very subtle, very clever ways, denigrated marriage. The message was kind of a, why would any man in his right mind ever get married? But the message was always cloaked in a kind of humor and lightheartedness. It was never a direct frontal attack. It was always this subtle subversion. That's a fine instance of worldliness. The world desires to carve grooves in your mind that would make a sinful attitude seem normal. It happened in the 80s, and it happens today. And so, to bring a balance to my earlier comment on fundamentalism, discernment does summon us to not imbibe certain entertainments, to not go certain places, to not keep certain company. We might to be asking, is this telling the right story? Would God agree with this story? Or is this accentuating the world's wisdom? And just hear the personification John uses in verse 17, that the world has its own desires, its wants, its wishes. The world will not go quietly. And while we all not fear the world, we most certainly should not underestimate it. I'm sure if you were there at the building of the Tower of Babel, it would have been tempting to think, man, this is really something. Like, this is truly impressive. This must be the new world order. I should at least lay one brick, just to participate a little bit in it. Do not discount worldliness. There's an attractiveness to it, otherwise it would not be tempting. Recall our Lord Jesus was tempted in exactly this way, that Satan showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and all their glory. The world has a glory. And our temptation is using not to give ourselves over to it entirely. Let's just dip our toes into its water a little bit, thinking, will this make me happy short term? Will this further my career, or will it ostracize me? Maybe I should adopt more fashionable views, or soften my stance with more culturally acceptable ideas that might spare me some embarrassment. Maybe a little friendship with the world won't kill me. Friends, such friendship with the world is enmity against God. And just as God came down and scattered the proud in their thoughts at Babel, God has come down in the person of Jesus Christ. And He has cast out the ruler of this world, and He has given to God's people an unshakable kingdom. And so stand your ground on the truth that the world and all its pathetic, parasitic, vapid, empty desires are passing away. Worldliness is fading to black. The sexual revolution will come and go. Wokeism and leftism will come and go. Corrupt courts and governments will come and go. The fads of the flesh and popular perversions will all come and go. Maybe not in our lifetime, but their ultimate end is destruction. As Ecclesiastes says, vanity of vanities. It will all be blown away by the wind. What investor would invest in a stock if he knew it was going to plummet? And yet the temptation is to invest our hearts in the world which passes away. Let us remember Moses. He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than all the treasures of Egypt. Moses could have had the lap of luxury of full comfort and pleasure offered to him, but instead he was looking to that eternal reward that lasts forever. And friends, John tells you, enter into that very same thing. You face the same challenge, but here is the same reward in verse 17. John says, but notice that contrast. The world fades to black, but whoever does the will of God abides forever. And what is God's will? But simply this, to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and to keep his commandments by the power of the Spirit. That is what overcomes the world. Faith in Jesus Christ, being united to the living Christ. What did our Lord Jesus say when he was faced with the world, the kingdoms, and all of their glory? He simply responded and said, you shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, and him only shall you serve. It was true of him. And may it be true of God's people who are in Jesus Christ. Let us pray. Our gracious God and heavenly Father, we praise you for what you have first done, that you have delivered us from the domain of darkness. You have transferred us to the kingdom of your beloved Son. It is out of that truth of your redemptive work in our life and who Jesus Christ is that you call us to not love the world. We praise you that what you have given us is far more glorious and eternal, that you have given us the love of God in the person of Jesus Christ. And so, Father, we pray, teach us to put to death the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life, to make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires. And instead, we pray, teach us to put on the Lord Jesus Christ, to love you with all of our heart, mind, and soul, and him only shall we serve. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.
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