Warning: Beware of Loving the World
Notes
Transcript
1 John 2:15-17
Warning: Beware of Loving the World
Welcome
Welcome
Good morning, church family and guests, both here in person and online! My name is Joe Vivian, and I am the Children’s and Families Pastor here at Eastern Hills.
Senior Pastor Bill Connors is on a trip for the next week.
If you are a guest today, I’d like the opportunity to meet you at the close of service, so if you would plan on coming down to the front after our benediction, I’d appreciate that, and I’d like to give you a thank you gift for joining us this morning. Also, if you’re visiting in the room this morning, would you just grab the communication card out of the back of the pew in front of you, and fill it out during my message sometime? Then you can bring that down to me when we meet, so the staff can pray for you and send you a card thanking you for your visit today. If you’d rather complete an online card, just text the word WELCOME to 505-339-2004, and you’ll get a text back with a link to our digital communication card. That works if you’re online as well.
I have just one announcement this morning before we get to our next message in 1 John:
Announcements
Announcements
Annie Armstrong Easter Offering
We just watched our opening video for the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering.
This is an offering we take through March and April. Our goal for 2023 is 17K.
The Annie Armstrong Easter Offering supports missions work in the United States and North America.
One hundred percent of gifts given to AAEO go to the field to support more than 2,400 missionary families serving across the United States and Canada.
So we encourage you to give as God leads you over the next two months to this year’s Annie Armstrong Easter Offering.
Opening
Opening
Ok friends, let’s get started.
As a reminder...We are going verse-by-verse through the book of 1 John in this series, which will last for 13 weeks. We’re referring to John’s first epistle as the “Letter of Life, Light & Love,” because these are three of the major themes that show up in this little letter to the churches.
As Pastor Bill has shared, 1 John was likely a circular letter, one that was meant to be shared among many churches, passed along so that the believers throughout the Roman Empire might learn from this apostle whom Jesus loved (a self-designation from his Gospel).
So far, we have looked at all of chapter 1 and the first 14 verses of chapter 2.
We will take time this morning to heed the Warnings in the next 3 verses.
Let’s stand as we are able and read our focal passage, 1 John 2:15-17
15 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.
16 For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride in one’s possessions—is not from the Father, but is from the world.
17 And the world with its lust is passing away, but the one who does the will of God remains forever.
PRAYER “Letter of Life, Light & Love,” (Lindrith Baptist Church…still in need of a pastor)
Message
Message
Many of you are probably aware of my love for weather and meteorology. I am a super weather geek. There, I said it…
I share this with you this morning because we are going to need some weather terminology lessons as we go forward.
The terms Watch and Warning are often interchanged and misunderstood.
Let’s get to better understanding them
[SLIDE]
[SLIDE]
WATCH
WATCH
-Conditions are Favorable for the Development of Severe Changes
-Conditions are Favorable for the Development of Severe Changes
-Be Prepared for Changes in Conditions
-Be Prepared for Changes in Conditions
WARNING
WARNING
-Severe Conditions are Occurring or Imminent
-Severe Conditions are Occurring or Imminent
-Take Action Immediately!
-Take Action Immediately!
So, keep the definitions of a WATCH and a WARNING in the forefront of your minds for this morning’s teaching.
WATCH
-Conditions are Favorable for the Development of Severe Changes
-Be Prepared for Changes in Conditions
WARNING
-Severe Conditions are Occurring or Imminent
-Take Action Immediately!
This is why I titled this morning’s message: Warning: Beware of Loving the World
[SLIDE] 1 John Title Slide
[SLIDE] 1 John Title Slide
John begins in verse 15 in the negative…Do Not love the world.
15 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.
John spends time instructing his listeners not to love the world or the things in the world.
We must understand that this love of the world and the things in it is a selfish love that seeks to satisfy one’s own passions and desires and pander to worldly pleasures.
It is totally different from the kind of love that believers have for the Father and for others within the Christian fellowship.
Love for the Father and love for the world are mutually exclusive.
Any discussion of these verses must begin with the proper term of the word, World, or Kosmos in Greek.
“The world” is a term employed by John more often than by all the other New Testament writers put together—seventy-nine times in the gospel and twenty-three times in this epistle.
It has at least three different significations in his writings:
(1) It is used of the world of nature, the created order, the material universe.
10 He was in the world, and the world was created through him, and yet the world did not recognize him.
(2) It is used of the whole human race thought of as a world fallen into sin and in need of redemption.
This world God loves ;
16 For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.
He feels its burdens and is sensitive to its needs.
2 He himself is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours, but also for those of the whole world.
9 God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his one and only Son into the world so that we might live through him.
(3) It is used of unbelieving, pagan society. One that falls under the control and dominion of the “evil one.” Those that are hostile to God.
19 We know that we are of God, and the whole world is under the sway of the evil one.
30 I will not talk with you much longer, because the ruler of the world is coming. He has no power over me.
18 “If the world hates you, understand that it hated me before it hated you.
27 Pure and undefiled religion before God the Father is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself unstained from the world.
4 You adulterous people! Don’t you know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? So whoever wants to be the friend of the world becomes the enemy of God.
So in our passage today, By “the world” John means all that belongs to this life that is opposed to Christ.
John saw this world arranged in opposition to the people of God and threatening their very existence on the earth. It is this world which the Christian is not to love.
This brings us to our first Warning Sign.
-Opposition to the Will of God
See friends, when we are in love with the world, we have recentered our hearts to a life that is centrally opposed to Christ.
It may be easier to see what it looks like to love the world through the lens of God.
So what does it mean to love the world?
To answer that question, we must remember what has already been said about the significance of the word “world.”
To love the world of men, as God loves it, is to demonstrate benevolent, sacrificial good will toward men lost in sin. Weep over the souls of the lost.
This is the duty of every Christian.
But to love the world as a moral order hostile to God is an altogether different thing.
It is to court the world’s favor, follow its customs, adopt its ideals, covet its prizes, and seek its fellowship.
Loving the world in this sense means setting one’s affection on evil and is synonymous to deserting God.
This the Follower of Jesus Christ must not do.
“The things that are in the world” are its lusts, its ambitions, its pleasures, its controlling principles and motives—in a word, those elements in society which stamp it as evil.
John summarizes these things in verse 16 which we will see shortly.
In developing his appeal John gives two reasons for not loving the world.
One is that love for the world excludes love for God: If any man loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him (verse 15b).
The use of a present tense verb makes clear that John was thinking of love for the world and love for God as ruling principles of life.
As such they are mutually exclusive; where one is the other cannot be.
This Warning: Opposition to the Will of God is real and imminent.
Think of it this way, Anything that dulls our love for spiritual things of God and growing closer to Christ, or anything that makes it easier for us to sin is of the World and must be put away.
23 Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my concerns.
24 See if there is any offensive way in me; lead me in the everlasting way.
Instead, we must set our minds on things above.
2 Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.
Stay connected to God through His Word
11 I have treasured your word in my heart so that I may not sin against you.
Capture our thoughts
5 and every proud thing that is raised up against the knowledge of God, and we take every thought captive to obey Christ.
Commit our life to Christ
3 Commit your activities to the Lord, and your plans will be established.
Are you ignoring that warning or heeding it and taking immediate action?
In verse 16, we now read a three fold definition of what is in the world.
16 For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride in one’s possessions—is not from the Father, but is from the world.
Charles Spurgeon refers to this as the Devil’s Trinity. He’s pretty much spot on.
Some theologians have also shared that they see John alluding to Genesis 3:6
6 The woman saw that the tree was good for food and delightful to look at, and that it was desirable for obtaining wisdom. So she took some of its fruit and ate it; she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.
Eve’s view that the tree was good for food, delightful to look at and desirable for attaining wisdom.
This leads us to our next warning sign:
-Conformity to the World
Friends, we must begin to understand that worldliness does not reside in things, but in our concentration and affection of those things. It’s our conformity and our choice to let them rule our hearts. (Repeat)
Let’s look at the three.
The first is “the lust of the flesh.”
The term “lust” refers to a craving or a passionate desire. This is more than a person who is hungry and desires food. It’s more like an alcoholic who longs for a drink . . . or a drug addict who’ll do anything for another hit.
The term sarx, translated “flesh,” refers most basically to physical things, particularly the material nature of the body.
In that neutral sense, “flesh” is not essentially evil but can be used as a vessel of holiness to glorify God.
11 For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’s sake, so that Jesus’s life may also be displayed in our mortal flesh.
However, the term can also be used in a negative sense, as in 1 John 2:16.
This is similar to the way the apostle Paul often used the term “flesh” in reference to our sinful, rebellious manner of thought and deed that reveres the world system, perverted since the Fall.
Sarx is that part of our fallen state that opposes God and is in conflict with the Spirit’s work of instilling attitudes and promoting actions that counter the world and its values.
The “lust of the flesh,” then, appears to be self-generated.
It’s our internal sinful tendencies taking shape and looking for something to satiate our carnal desires.
-This includes selfish ambitions and self-serving objectives—the selfish all-powerful trinity of me, myself, and I.
-It finds its focus in self: my comfort, my possessions, my money, my future, my career, my hopes.
-The lust of the flesh starts with me, ends with me, and keeps me in the middle of it all.
John next refers to the “lust of the eyes” (2: 16).
This includes sinful cravings triggered by what we see, leading to covetousness and envy.
We may be perfectly content with what we have, but then we see what somebody else has.
Suddenly our own house, car, spouse, family, job, clothes, or church just isn’t enough anymore.
The lust of the eyes can also be our symbols of success: titles, positions, degrees, or added pages to our résumés.
TRUTH! The lust of the eyes suddenly makes us desperately “need” something we never knew we didn’t have!
Finally, John refers to “the boastful pride of life” (2: 16).
The lust of the flesh comes from our sinful hearts.
The lust of the eyes comes from the sinful world around us.
And the boastful pride of life comes from our lips.
The arrogant words.
The prideful claims.
The exaggerated tales that make us look greater than we are, usually at the cost of tearing other people down.
We see this kind of boasting flowing from many sports heroes, politicians, and strutting celebrities.
Those are the things of the world: the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life.
This cocktail of cravings is not a nourishing spiritual drink served up by the Father of Light, but a toxic poison pushed and promoted by the father of lies through the means of a wicked world.
The point of John’s admonition in 2: 15-16 is clear: The object of a Christian’s unconditional devotion and commitment should be God and His people, not the sinful world and all of its delights.
To embrace the wicked world system with the same kind of boundless love we should have for God is to demonstrate that “the love of the Father is not in [us]” (2: 15).
Think on this:
[Slide]
[Slide]
“When we fall in love with the world, we fall out of love with God.”
“When we fall in love with the world, we fall out of love with God.”
(Repeat)
So to continue with our Warnings…
If it has not been made clear and if we didn’t already have enough reason to avoid a love affair with the world, John gives us one more warning in 2: 17:
17 And the world with its lust is passing away, but the one who does the will of God remains forever.
The world with all its lusts “is passing away.”
These sinful delights have no part to play in eternity. Those who embrace the world system embrace what is temporal.
But when you do God’s will—believing in His Son and living by the power of the Spirit—you embrace the eternal.
This is my last point, a promise given to each of us when we heed the warnings God gives us and turn to Christ first:
-Abiding in Faith in Christ is Eternal
God is Love and His Warnings are Clear
Remember the definition of warning
-Severe Conditions are Occurring or Imminent
-Take Action Immediately!
You must take action immediately.
As followers of Jesus Christ, we too must take action for our own hearts, our own souls.
Where is your heart?
Who are you a bondservant to?
God loves you so very much and wants to have a relationship with you through His Son Jesus.
Friends, alignment with the world is temporary. It leads to emptiness, isolation and loneliness. The enemy wants nothing more than to separate you from God.
However, Jesus will give your life in abundance.
10 A thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I have come so that they may have life and have it in abundance.
23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
When you surrender your life to Jesus, the things of the world fade away because He lives in us and through us.
20 I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
16 I pray that he may grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with power in your inner being through his Spirit,
17 and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. I pray that you, being rooted and firmly established in love,
18 may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the length and width, height and depth of God’s love,
19 and to know Christ’s love that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
We each need to come to Jesus today.
We each are broken individuals; however, we are beautiful in God’s eyes.
Let’s not forget to heed the Warning Signs shared here in John’s letter.
Invitation and Prayer
Invitation and Prayer
As the band comes down right now, I ask that you continue to seek God’s Face this morning.
Church membership
If you are here this morning and you've been visiting lately, this morning you may have decided through prayer that Eastern Hills is your church home and this morning you’d like to join our family. Please come down and let’s pray together and set up a time to discuss this further in the wweks to come.
Prayer needs
For those seeking prayer this morning, Kerry, Pastor Trevor, Pastor Rich and I will be down front this morning for prayer, encouragement and to be there to share the love of Christ with you.
If you have chosen to surrender your life to Jesus today, please come down so we can pray with you and rejoice in that decision.
For those online who have made that decision to surrender to Jesus, or in need of prayer and counsel, please email me at joe@ehbc.org.
Offering
Also take this time of worship to give online or you can give as you leave in the new offering boxes we have at each of the exits.
Let’s pray.
PRAYER
Closing Announcements
Closing Announcements
Bible reading
Colossians 1 thru Wednesday and then we will begin in Jeremiah on this Thursday
Pastor’s Study tonight at 5:30 in Miller Hall
Prayer Meeting this Wednesday at 5:45 in 105…maybe.
Instructions for guests and parents pick up your children
Benediction
Benediction
Friends, as we leave here, as we continue to heed the warnings, my prayer is that we stop and allow Jesus in envelope our very selves and with that we are able to speak the truth in love.
Jesus is the answer. He has conquered the world!
Let’s close with John’s Gospel
33 I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace. You will have suffering in this world. Be courageous! I have conquered the world.”