Where are you placing your love?

Intro

We’re going to jump right into what we have for today and the passage that we will be studying is 1 John 2:15-17. I know that it’s been a while since we looked at this book because Erica and I went on vacation and then we had VBS and camp right after that. So, we’ve been out for awhile but that’s okay because we are jumping right back in where we left off. The title of this lesson and the question I want us all to be reflecting on is where are you placing your love? As you think about this question we will read verses 15-17. Read and pray.

You Can’t Love Both

So, what do I mean when I say that you can’t love both? Well if we look at verse 15 what does it say to us? Read. John starts off with a command that says Do Not Love the World, and if you do love the world then you simply cannot love God the Father. That is a lot to say and take in so let’s break down these verses and what is being said here. First we must understand what John means by love before anything else. This love that John is talking about here is in a present verb tense so this tells us that this love that John is talking about is an active thing that a person is engaging in, and with that said John is talking about a devotion to in this case the world so this love that John speaks about is an devotion to the world. The next thing to break down is what John means by world because doesn’t John write in John 3:16 “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son.” If God can love the world why can’t we? The reason being is because the world that John is writing about in John 3:16 is talking about the people of the world. And the world that John is writing about in 1 John is talking about the world as a broken and sinful place that hates God and only looks to fulfill a person with sin and desires from themselves and not God. So, the world that John writes about is the world that is evil and broken. Now that we know what John means by love and the world let’s read this verse again under this new light. Read. John is saying that you can’t live in the world and love the things of the sinful world and live for God as well. You can’t live halfway in and halfway out of Christianity and that is exactly what John is trying to tell the Church that he is writing to that they have to be fully devoted to God because if they are devoted to the world then the Father does not reside with them.

Loving The World Doesn’t Always Seem Sinful

If we look to verse 16 it says. Read. John starts describing what this looks like for a person to live or love the world. John gives us three descriptions and those are. “The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride in ones possessions.” We’re going to start by breaking down the lust of the flesh and what John is talking about because normally when we read the word lust and flesh we would associate those terms with some kind of sexual desire and that is not entirely wrong to think that way about this description of someone that loves the world, but what John is more of talking about of this lust of the flesh is the desire of the flesh and what are some thinks our flesh can desire as people just naturally? Food, Water, Clothes, Shoes, maybe a house so anything that we would need to survive is something that our flesh will naturally desire, but John uses the word lust to describe this type of desire being sinful and outside of God’s will, and just because these natural desires your body has isn’t sinful but over abundance of love to those things can be sinful. Like if you desire food to a point to where it is an addiction that is having a lustful desire of food because when it gets to that point you are finding your comfort and satisfaction in food and not in God, and at that point food becomes an idol in your life and it is taken to far. So that’s what the lust of the flesh can look like and it doesn’t have to be just food, but its whatever you end up putting your trust and comfort into that is not God. Then onto to lust of the eyes. At first glance these two things John writes seem to be very similar when reading, but i assure you that they are very different in their nature. So, we can still read lust as we did before of it being a desire that is sinful and is out of control. But what does the eyes mean? Throughout the Bible we can see places where the eyes are described in a way that looks into a persons heart and what they truly desire, and what John is writing about here is a very complex topic, and one side of it I want to talk about is how desiring things with our eyes can become sinful. It’s easy to get caught up looking at what other people have and begin wishing you had the same things as them. Like the nice cars, bigger house, more followers on instagram or tik tok, a certain brand of clothes, and the list can go on and on about these different things and its not always sinful to recognize how the Lord has blessed others, but it becomes sinful when all you do is look at them and wish you had all of the things that they had, and not thanking God for all the blessings in your life and you get so caught up in looking at their life that you don’t stop to recognize your own blessings. Then the pride in one’s possessions. This seems to break this desire train and go to something totally different, but its not entirely a different thought from the one we’re on right now. Because what this is talking about is when you take so much pride in the things you have that all you talk about is that you have done this or have this and you just spend all of your time boasting about the things that you have and never stop and talk about how those things are a blessing from God and without God you wouldn’t have any of those things. The question we have to ask ourselves is what exactly do all of these have in common with each other? What it is that they all have in common with each other is the fact that in all of those situations you are placing yourself or your desires over that of God and that is why John ends this verse with “it is not from the Father, but is from the world.” because it is from the world and your own lustful desires and boastfulness. It doesn’t always seem sinful, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t devoted to the world and are loving the world and not the Father.

A Person Who Loves the World Cannot Have Eternity with the Father

Let’s read verse 17 so that we can understand this last point. read. I feel like this is pretty straight forward when reading it because God cannot be in the presence of evil and sin, and if you know anything about Jesus coming back you know that God establishes and new heaven and a new earth where He will dwell with us for all eternity. So, in fact the earth we know of is passing away and with the earth passing away goes all of the sin and lustful desires with it because if God is going to be with us for eternity there cannot be sin in His presence, and if you are living for the world this is a time to reflect and turn away from that mindset and turn to Jesus because the end of verse 17 says that the one who does the will of God remains forever. The first part of doing God’s will is submitting to Jesus because God sent His only Son to die for us while we were still sinning and He is the only one that can give us salvation. and if you already have this salvation, but you have been loving the world in this way and living for yourself it is never to late to repent and turn back to Jesus because He is waiting for you and there is nothing you can do or have done that He will not forgive you for. So, turn back to Him while you still can.