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Sermon Manuscripts
Do Not Love the World
a sermon in the series:
Worldliness
A sermon delivered
Sunday Morning, March 8, 2009
at Oak Grove Baptist Church, Paducah, KY
by S. Michael Durham
© 2009 Real Truth Matters
1 John 2:15-17
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 lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life--is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever.
What is worldliness? How does it work? How do you recognize it? As stated in our last message, worldliness is a spirit that persuades us to pursue anything in this world, good or bad, by our own power, for our own satisfaction and not for Christ. It is to love yourself, looking to the world and not to Jesus Christ to satisfy you. For this reason, the Bible forbids us to love the world. “Do not love the world or the things in the world.” To be fixated on this present evil age is the very opposite of having a passion and a fascination with Jesus.
How would you say you are doing keeping the command “Do not love the world”? I want to warn you, do not gauge your answer by your financial balance sheet, because worldliness affects the poor, the middle, and the upper classes equally. And don’t gauge your answer based on your morality, because I believe there are two opposite kinds of worldliness: the decadent and the decent; immoral and moral. There is a kind of worldliness that is on the wrong side of the tracks, morally speaking, and there is a kind of worldliness that is proper and looks good. Worldliness is cultured and crude, vulgar and virtuous, as man gauges virtue and vulgarity. You can be unreligious and worldly or you can be very religious and worldly. Being a Christian doesn’t make you immune to worldliness; otherwise John didn’t need to command the Christians not to love the world.
James, writing to a church very dear to his heart says this: “Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God” (James 4:4).
So how are you doing when it comes to not loving the world? Today I want to explore deeper the mechanics of worldliness, to dissect it and get to its very core. To enable you to see your heart is my goal today. I’ve already seen mine in preparation for this teaching; let me warn you, it isn’t pretty. But I want you to know how your heart works so that you can overcome the worldliness that is in it.
Worldliness Contrasted
The first thing we ought to notice in our text is that John is making three related but separate contrasts.
Love for the world vs. love for God
The first is the love for the world versus love for God, verse 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 states that if you love the world, you do not love God. The words “love of God” here do not mean God’s love for you, but rather John is talking about our affections, our loves. In other words, John is saying to you and me, if you love this present evil age, the cosmos (Greek for order and arrangement of this world), God’s love is not in you – you really do not love God. Jesus said it this way: “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.”
The human heart is designed to be ruled by one supreme love with lesser loves in subordination. Jesus is not saying you can’t love many things, because you can. But your heart is so designed by Him that it can only have one love that rules them all. All your other loves will subordinate themselves to the ruling love of your heart. The opposite of the love of the world is to love God; you can’t supremely love both, though we try.
World’s desires vs. the Father’s desires
The second contrast in verse 16, John states it is the world’s desires versus the Father’s desires. “For all that is in the world--the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life--is not of the Father but is of the world.” The desires which John says are worldly desires are not like God’s desires. Again we return to the word “lust,” and hopefully you can see that worldliness is not primarily about your behavior. Our problem has been that we think of worldliness as how we appear or how we act. Worldliness comes from something else called desires. It’s about what you put your hope of longing in: either God or the world.
What is this word lust? It’s more than just wanting something; it’s an intense desire, longing, or craving. To long for this world is manifested in these three ways: desire of the flesh, desire of the eyes, and the pride of life. And all this longing for the world John calls love for the world. And he contrasts that with love for the Father which can also be described as a longing for the heart of God. How do I know I love God? Because your heart cannot rest except in Christ. There is a longing for Him.
The temporality of the world vs. the eternality of God’s will
The third and final contrast is the world is temporal versus the will of God is forever. “And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever.” This contrast doesn’t seem to be a parallel contrast. In the first two we have the love for the world opposed by its opposite, love for God. In the second contrast the desires of the world are opposite of the desires of God. But in verse 17 John says the world is coming to an end whereas the person who does God’s will lives forever. How does the temporality of the world parallel as an opposite to God’s will? It doesn’t seem to fit.
Doing God’s will must be contrasted with something in John’s mind. It must be contrasted with doing the will of the world. God’s will endures and so do those who do God’s will. But those who follow the world’s will or agenda perish. The question is whose will are you going to follow? The world’s will looks and feels like your will because it’s based upon your desires and pleasures. If you follow your natural desires, John is telling you plainly, you are going to come to an end. But if you submit your will to God’s agenda for your life, you will live forever.
Whom will you follow? Are you following the world’s agenda? John would advise us not to answer too quickly. There is a definite contrast between following the world’s agenda and following God’s agenda, and may God help us all see it. The world’s will is so deceptive because it looks just like your will. It feels like your will because it’s based on your desires and your pleasures. That’s what verse 16 tells us. If you follow your natural desires – the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, the pride of life – then John is telling you plainly you are going to come to an end. But if you submit to God’s agenda, you will live forever. That’s why Jesus puts us to it this way: “For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.” You can’t win following the agenda of the desires that come with human nature! Do not let your mind be trapped thinking worldliness is something “out there” and fail to recognize that John is not so much talking about what is “out there” but what is in your own heart. John says that worldliness is simply following the natural inclinations and desires of you!
Paul says “For if you live according to the flesh you will die.” What does that mean? It means if you live according to what makes you feel good, what makes you happy, what makes you comfortable, you’re going to hell. “But if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.” If you live doing whatever seems natural, whatever seems right, whatever seems good – my friend, you are not a Christian, and you’re going to perish!
But you say to me, “That’s mostly the way I live! How else can a man live? I determine what I think is good based upon my moral instruction and I decipher all of that, and my desires are basically good and don’t hurt anybody.” I don’t care if they’re good or bad; it’s irrelevant. That’s not what the Bible says here. It says that if you live by your natural self, the Spirit is not leading you and you do not belong to Christ. Your profession as a Christian doesn’t make any difference. You could be considered the godliest person in the room. But if your godliness is being led by the natural desires of the mind and body and not the Holy Spirit, then you are doomed. So I say again to you, Christianity is a whole much more important than praying a prayer. It’s much more important than getting the penalty of sin removed.
Christianity is also more important than being very religious. The Bible shows us that there are those who can deny themselves of worldliness and pleasures, and yet they are still part of the world that John commands us not to love. They are very religious and can go to unbelievable extremes of self-denial to try and separate themselves of the world, and yet Paul says they’re still part of the world’s system.
Listen carefully to Colossians 2:20-23:
Therefore, if you died with Christ from the basic principles of the world, why, as though living in the world, do you subject yourselves to regulations–‘Do not touch, do not taste, do not handle,’ which all concern things which perish with the using--according to the commandments and doctrines of men? These things indeed have an appearance of wisdom in self-imposed religion, false humility, and neglect of the body, but are of no value against the indulgence of the flesh.
Again, I’m not dealing with your behavior, but your heart, because your heart determines your behavior. Paul says all the rules you can impose on yourself have no value against the indulgences of the flesh! “I won’t do this, I won’t do that, I’ll separate myself, I’ll live as righteous and godly as I know how, I won’t watch TV, I won’t have a radio, I’ll wear simple things, I won’t believe in extravagance” – It does not matter how simple you live; simplicity is not the answer to worldliness. Some in this world live with vows of poverty, silence or celibacy. They go to great lengths to deny their fleshly lusts. Yet Paul says all of that is useless against the flesh. Why? Because it is the flesh!
So many professing Christians are nothing more than religionists who have learned how to deny evil desires and lusts in order to satisfy their ultimate love: themselves. You’ve learned what is expected behavior from a Christian and you do that or don’t do this, but the problem is you do not go to these lengths because you love God; it’s because you love yourself. You’re not doing it for the sake of God; You’re doing it for your own sake. If that is so, then dear sir, for your eternity’s sake you must learn to recognize the worldliness of your own heart; otherwise you are going to perish!
Worldliness Unmasked
Let me direct your attention now to worldliness unmasked. The cosmos is built on three things according to John: the lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. That is what the spirit of this present evil age uses to promote its will and agenda.
So what we need to do is to understand this word lust or desire much better than we do. If this word lust is the basis of worldliness, then we had better know all that we can in order to not let it rule us.
For most of us the word lust means only one thing—sex, perverted sex. But the New Testament writers didn’t reserve the word lust for sexual sins. They used the word to describe all of your natural desires and wants. Paul calls it “the lust of the flesh.” He says that before we became Christians, we conducted ourselves in “the lust of the flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind and were by nature children of wrath” (Ephesians 2:4). What’s he describing? And the answer is, your natural self; the nature you were born with and that still remains with you. Being saved does not remove that nature – yes, the old man is dead, crucified with Christ, but I’m not talking about the old man enslaved to sin. As a believer the Spirit of God is in you, and you have become a new creation, but you also have the fallen human nature that you inherited. That is what we’re dealing with here. Human desires, appetites, passions, preferences, inclinations, dispositions, propensities: they’re all the same thing. The natural desires or cravings of the mind and body are what Paul calls the lust of the flesh.
You must learn to think of the flesh and its desires as being more than fornication, drunkenness, stealing, murder or outbursts of anger. You must also see that it can look very good if not harmless: a good reputation, success, health, beauty, money, companionship and love. In short, it is any natural desire of the mind and body. These lusts of the flesh can even appear in much of what you do in the name of Jesus.
Let’s take a look at the evil triad of verse 16. I don’t want to be guilty of separating them and making them appear independent of each other, for they work hand in hand. All three are the natural afflictions of the human nature we all still carry.
Lust of the Flesh
The lust of the flesh, as we have already defined, are the cravings that come from within my mind and body. These are natural desires such as longing to be happy, comfortable, successful, liked and accepted, or wealthy. Such desires are human nature, but they are worldly. The flesh can also manifest itself as gluttony, immorality, stealing, anger, jealousy, murder and all those things we associate with evil; those indeed stem from lust of the flesh also.
Lust of the Eyes
This would be any desire or longing that is generated by what we see. Anything that would attract me would come under this heading. The lust of the eyes and flesh work together. If I have a tendency or craving to be successful, then I might find myself looking at certain types of cars or massive homes because they give the appearance of success. If you have a desire for beauty, which is often fueled by a desire of praise and acceptance by others, you will see a beautiful dress or shirt or particular hairstyle and want to have it.
Pride of Life
The pride of life means pride in your manner of life; pride of the means or goods of life. Another way to say it is pride in what you possess. In 1 John 3:17 John uses the same word for life, but it is translated goods. “But whoever has this world’s goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him?” Luke uses the same word quoting Jesus in Luke 8:14, “the cares, riches and pleasures of life.” The pride of life then is your satisfaction in the things you own or what you have made of yourself, meaning your reputation.
The Heart of Our Problem: Our Desires
Did you notice that some of the things I listed weren’t necessarily bad? For example, we desire food. Our fleshly appetite is not evil in itself; it can’t be. God made us to get hungry and to eat. Likewise, the drive for sex is not evil for the same reason; it’s a gift from God. To want to be liked and accepted is not sinful, nor is the instinct of self-preservation.
There are some things we should not desire in the least. I should not want any other woman besides my wife. I should not covet my neighbor’s property. But the problem with our desires is not usually what we want, especially for believers. The problem, rather, is that we want good things too much. Because of Adam and Eve’s sin in the Garden of Eden, man’s nature is corrupted. That’s why our bodies grow old and die and do not live forever. But not only are our bodies corrupt; our natural desires and longings are also tainted with imperfection and corruption. None of our desires want to be brought under control. That is the problem. It isn’t what we want but how much we want it, because these wants don’t want to be governed.
God’s original intent with these desires and appetites were for them to be the tools we use to glorify Him. You cannot refuse to see that God gave us the capacity to desire. You could not glorify God if your heart did not desire Him! He made you to want. He made you to crave. But now, these wants and desires have become what the apostle Paul calls inordinate (excessive, out-of-control) affections. That’s why he says in Colossians 3:5, “Therefore put to death your members which are on the earth: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.”
The desire itself may not be sinful, but the degree of that desire is where the problem lies. Our natural longings are uncontrollable and will not be mastered apart from the Spirit of God. Desires don’t go away with salvation; they are still just as powerful as they were before you were saved. The only way you can master them is by the Holy Spirit. Discipline helps as a tool the Holy Spirit can use, but even it alone isn’t enough. That’s why Paul calls evil desires and greed idolatry: you’re serving your passions, appetites, and longings instead of using them to glorify the Lord.
It is right that we want to eat; but when we eat, we don’t eat to the glory of God, we eat to the limits of our pleasure, which is inordinate. It is right to want to have sex, but instead of keeping it within the holy boundaries of marriage we waste it by indulging the desire any way we have opportunity. My, dear brother, that is the trap of Internet pornography: we know we cannot indulge our sexual appetites outside of marriage, but we still have those appetites. The Internet is dangerous because it can give you a satisfaction without having to physically commit sexual immorality. Beware! It is not wrong to desire sex, but how we indulge the desire can be very wrong.
It is right that we don’t want pain and avoid it. Even our Lord Jesus prayed, “Let this cup pass from Me,” because He didn’t want the pain and to suffer the Father’s wrath. It would have been humanly abnormal if He wanted it. But He would not let Himself be controlled by that desire to be comfortable and be submitted to the Father, and thus He prayed, “Nevertheless, not My will, but Thy will be done.”
The desires of the flesh are simply not good. None of them are good because they’re not willing to be submissive to the will of God. They were God-given, but now grossly enlarged and will not be satisfied and refuse submission to the laws of God. That’s why Paul said, “Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be.” He means that most of your waking hours are consumed in satisfying the desires of the mind and the body. We are focused on being comfortable, happy, and free of pain. That’s a mind set on the flesh. You could have wept many tears at the altar and testified of the forgiveness of God, but if your mind is still set on the comfort, the joy, the happiness of your flesh rather than the glory of your God, you are yet lost in your sin.
I hope you can see how your desires are a problem and considered by God to be worldly. I think it should be obvious by now that God-given desires are twisted, corrupted and perverted by sin and untrustworthy.
The Danger of Holy Desires
But what about “holy” desires? Let me show you that even good, holy, spiritual desires, if not submitted to God’s will, can become idols. We have the desire for a loved one to be saved. That is a good and holy desire. But you so long for that person to be converted that you sometimes find yourselves angry with them for not submitting to Christ. This is not a strange thing to anyone with an unsaved loved one. Sometimes you just get this sense of displeasure with them: “Why don’t you hurry up and give your life to Christ? Don’t you see how much better you’d be?” And perhaps one day you find your loved one watching a television program that is not good for human consumption. Your temper rises, and in the name of decency, you sharply rebuke them for their transgression. The more you desire to see them saved, the angrier you get at them and their seeming unconcern for spiritual issues. You become so obsessed with them becoming saved that you find it impossible to love them unconditionally, but you don’t know why your love for them seems cool and distant. It’s because you have allowed a good desire to control you. You can’t love them with the love of Christ, because your desire for them to be saved is ruling your heart, and not God’s love.
Your heart was made for one thing – to “love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, soul, mind and strength.” He will not compete with any lesser desire – no matter how holy or good it is. The difference between a good and an evil desire is whether or not you can submit that desire to the Holy Spirit and His control, or you let that desire control you.
Recently a man asked me, “Shouldn’t we be concerned about our wives and children submitting to our authority, and try to make sure we control our homes because that is what the Bible tells us to do?” The answer is yes, we should be concerned – and we should be trusting God to help us lead our families. We should pray for wives and children that the Lord would help them to follow our leadership. But that concern cannot be the ruling concern or passion of your heart. You cannot let that thing consume you more than your love for God. If God is first in your life, your love of God keeps your life in proper perspective and priority. If anything else becomes your primary desire, you will begin to manifest an ungodly anger and unforgiveness toward the rebellious member of your family. Your focus is getting them to submit and you will be motivated to rely upon manipulation, if need be, to get them to submit to you. A dominating spirit of control will take over. Your desire should be to display God in that situation, that He is glorified in your response to the lack of submission, not trying to manipulate and control their response and attitude.
Oh, how much has been done in the name of Jesus that has been nothing more than worldliness?
Worldliness’s Objective
With these three aspects of worldliness, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, John is getting to the bottom of what motivates the world and all ungodly behavior. It’s the very thing present in the garden when man first rebelled. The agenda of worldliness is that you follow its will rather than God’s will. That’s why John words verse 17 as he does: “And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever.” John is pleading with men to not submit to the world but to God. If I am not careful, God’s will becomes lost in my will. When that happens, I am on the path to failure and sin.
Satan’s temptation of Eve in the garden was to pit Eve against God and make her think she was doing the right thing. Listen to his insane but clever argument: “You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” Observe how the appeal works in Eve. “So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate.”
In this temptation, you see all three things that make up worldliness. You see the lust of the flesh: Eve saw that the fruit of the tree could satisfy her hunger. I wouldn’t be surprised to discover that Eve was hungry about the time Satan approached her; I wouldn’t put it past him a bit. Secondly, the lust of the eyes: she looked at the fruit and saw that it was pleasant to the eyes. Why does Moses, by inspiration of the Holy Spirit, insert those words? Because they are tied to 1 John 2:16. He is telling us how Satan works; how worldliness works. Eve thought the fruit looked beautiful.
And thirdly we see the pride of life. Eve thought the fruit could make her wise like God. The conclusion is that she believed her will was better than God’s will. That is why she felt justified in her actions. Eve did not think she was doing something wrong; that’s why Paul says in his first epistle to Timothy that Eve was deceived. She thought she was doing the best thing for herself and her husband.
Believer, the type of sins we will commit will usually not be those gross things we all know that are associated with the flesh. The cleverness of worldliness is to make you think you’re doing the best thing for you! The goal of this world is to get you to believe that you know better than God how to satisfy your longings and your needs so that you can be happy.
Who will you obey? The answer will decide whom you really believe. Will you believe the devil’s lie that is imbedded in this world in every temptation? Will you believe you can follow your natural wisdom and your desires, or will you put your faith in God and Him alone?
If you are not a Christian, you should know that you would never believe God on your own. It is morally impossible because of love. You can only have one ruling love at a time by God’s design. If you have given yourself to love the world and things of the world, which really means loving yourself and using the world to fulfill your desires, then you cannot change your heart. You cannot reverse its ruling love. Unless God supernaturally changes your heart, you cannot trust Him. Your love is too tied to the world. You need the Lord Jesus Christ to supplant your ruling desires and give you a new heart that will enable you to love Him above all these other things.
What is my hope that He will do that for you? It is in the Word of His promise. Listen: I joyfully point you to His promise – “Whoever exalts himself (lifts himself up, tries the best he can to be Christian and good person), that man will be abased. But whoever humbles himself will be exalted.” If you come before Christ Jesus and say, “God Almighty, I have heard Your Word today. My heart is exposed and You and I know I can’t change; I’ve tried too many times. I know now that my heart is in love with something so much that it can’t love You supremely. Give me a new heart. I humble myself – I give you myself!” I tell you, the promise will not be in vain for you; He will exalt you. He will lift you up. You do not deserve His lovingkindness, but He will show His lovingkindness, and He will forgive you, save you and change you. The Bible says, “And the Lord shall help them and deliver them. He shall deliver them from the wicked and save them because they trust in Him.” May the Lord save you is my prayer. Amen. |
