The Exclusivity Of Love - [1 John 2:15-17]

It is wonderful to see you all this evening. I understand there is something competing for our presence here. I do not exactly know what it is, but I've heard rumors there's something else going on. So today's message is very appropriate in light of the competition for our attention.

This morning I had the privilege of preaching God's word at Providence Baptist Church. It is in Norfolk, Massachusetts, an hour, about an hour from here. Very small group of saints, just faithful people meeting in a little library and just rejoicing with the Lord for his goodness and a little beacon of light in that place.

And so tomorrow he said that he is the pastor, his name is Pastor Mark, very active in proclaiming the gospel. They have the public channels through which they get the message out. And then they are meeting with a Catholic Monsignor and then showing that Catholicism and the biblical Christianity are different.

They're not just the same. And the gospel, this is what the gospel is. So he just said, you know, just be for us in prayer that it will be an occasion to showcase the goodness of God. So I said, you know, we here at BBC will do that.

I have never done this before. Preach the same message the same day in two different places. So it also happens to be a message that I have preached here a long time ago. I don't know if any of you, I reworked it a little, but this is from 1 John 2, verses 15 through 17.

I'd been working on another message. Those of you who were here last time when I preached, we were going through John 9, but unfortunately I wasn't able to finish that. So we will look at what God has to tell us from 1 John 2, verses 15 through 17.

The Exclusivity of Love in Marriage and Christian Devotion

As I was preparing for this message, it was very convicting. And I pray to God that he will apply that in your lives as well. The title for today's message is the exclusivity of your love. The exclusivity of your love.

Normally when you think of love, you're thinking, you know, love is universal, right? I mean, even as Christians, God is love. It is a character of God. Everything about God is of love. And when you talk to the world, it's, you know, all you need is love.

You know, love is what makes the world go around. And love seems to be this beautiful thing that should be universal. But there are certain aspects in which love is very exclusive. I'm gonna use one example here this evening, and we will use that throughout this message to remind ourselves how our love must be exclusive also.

And it is the example of marriage. When you have a husband and a wife who commit their lives to one another before God, the husband loves the wife with an exclusive love that he cannot share with any other person.

And likewise, the wife, towards her spouse, has an exclusive love and affection. It does not mean that they cannot love other people. Of course, I love my wife and I love my mother with a motherly love, with a love toward a mother or to other women as sisters in Christ.

But there are certain things that you, it's not just a different kind of love, but you must not love at all. What are some things in marriage that the spouses cannot love at all, that they must hate in order to preserve their marriage?

If anything were to come to destroy the love that comes between the husband and the wife, for example, adultery, those are things that the couple should hate, should not love, should abhor with all of their heart in order that they can preserve the exclusivity of the love they have for one another.

And most of you are already figuring out where I'm going. You, as a redeemed person, you, as one who belongs to the church of Christ, are married to Jesus Christ. And our love is to be exclusive toward God and it cannot be adulterated with love for other things.

And you as an individual person who have been redeemed by the power of God, you who have had God's love poured upon you, you must love God with that same intensity of love that God has poured out in your heart.

So today's message is primarily going to be, what are some of the things that we as Christians cannot love? What are things that we are going to be tempted to love, but we need to keep that way, especially as we start this new year?

Something in terms of a recommitment as we look at our life, examine our lives, and say, you know, here are some areas that I need to watch out for and make sure that my love is exclusively reserved for the Lord.

Assurance, Obedience, Love, and Truth in 1 John

Our text is in 1 John 2, but before we do that, let's just give a quick overview of this section because the message in this text is primarily for believers. It is not meant for unbelievers. It is about how believers can remain pure.

But if you do not understand what John has written thus far, you can probably be confused. So let me just do a quick review of 1 John leading up to here. How many of you know why the apostle John wrote the first letter of John?

Why did he write it? He wrote it to give assurance. In chapter five, you will see that he was writing to believers, believers in a very difficult circumstance, and he wanted them to know that they were saved, that they had a relationship with God.

And in fact, throughout the book, he's going to give a couple of tests for them to examine their lives and say, is my faith genuine? And he's going to say, if your life does match up with these scriptural tests, then your life is genuinely reflective of a saved life.

In the beginning, first four verses of chapter one, he says, here are the reasons you can listen to what I have to say. I have handled Jesus Christ in the person when he was on earth, and it is this apostolic testimony that I'm bringing to you.

First John chapter one, verse five, he says, God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. He's saying God is holy. There is no evil, no sin, nothing that is dark in him. And it is this attribute of God on the basis of which we need to examine our life.

Our own holiness, our own purity, our own need for living a life that is acceptable before him is all in the basis of God's own holiness. And then in chapter two, you have three tests, verses three to six, you have the first test of obedience.

So anyone who calls himself redeemed must display this hot attitude of wanting to follow the Lord. Whatever the Lord says, it gives pleasure to us. And we, with our whole life, we just follow after him.

Verses seven through 11, you have the second test, the test of love. If God has poured out his love upon our lives, then our lives must demonstrate that same love, both toward God and to one another. This love is not just the kind of love that people have for everyone else, but rather it is of the same nature that Jesus Christ had.

The kind of love that is willing to die for his brothers and sisters and is willing to take care of their needs. And then in verses 18 through 27, you have the third test, which is the test of truth. So one who calls himself a Christian must abide by what God has revealed.

He cannot adhere to heresies, which was one of the problems in that church at that time, and then say, I still believe in Jesus Christ. And John says, no, if you are saved, if you are a genuine redeemed person, you will believe the truth that God has revealed.

And this truth will be both objective in the scriptures and subjective as the Holy Spirit will confirm that in your lives. So those are the three tests that he uses them throughout this book to give assurance to believers.

But right here in this middle section between verses 12 and 17 of chapter two in 1 John, John is doing something different. He's actually gonna give, talk only to the believers, to those whom he knows are genuinely saved.

In 12 through 14, he says, some of you are young babes in Christ. You have come to know the Father, just rejoice in this relationship you have with him. And then he talks to young men and women and he says, you have overcome the evil one.

You have persevered, you have received the strength from God and you have withstood the assaults of the enemy, continue to fight the battle. And then he talks to those who are mature, fathers and mothers in the faith, who have, he says, known the Lord with such richness and intimacy.

And these are the ones who need to disciple the rest of the body. And having encouraged the saints in all walks of life, now we come to verse 15, where he has a very specific instruction to the church.

Once again, this is meant specifically for believers about what we must not do, what we must not love. So the message is broken up into two pieces. The first one is, what are you commanded not to love?

And then the second half will be, why? Why are we commanded not to love these things? So let's first examine, what is it that we are not commanded to love? In verse 15, we read, do not love the world or the things in the world.

Let me actually go through the whole section. 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 pride in possessions 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. As with all biblical passages, it's good to understand what those words mean. Especially in this passage, there are many number of words, which have a very unique meaning.

Let's first examine what love means, as John uses it here. John is called the beloved disciple in the gospel of John. And he has a lot to tell us about love. And here he says, do not love. Do not love.

It's a command, which means that you can obey. He's not just talking about some feelings, some emotions, something that you just want to love and you just can't help it, but fall in love. But rather something that you can say yes, or you can say no to.

This is, he is referring to the biblical definition of love, which is a steady devotion of your will. You can commit your affections toward a person or an object, or you can choose to withhold your love toward this person or object.

And we do not minimize feelings. We do not minimize emotions, but those will be the caboose. When you understand what pleases God, and when you set your heart, mind, soul, and strength toward it to love God and to not love the world, then you will find the feeling of goodness and happiness and joy follow on after.

But right here, John commands us, do not love, and this is a command that we must obey. The second aspect of love is its nature. Many a time when we think of love, we always think of the positive side, which is the salvific side.

Here, imagine that you're walking through downtown Worcester, you meet this person who is a drug addict or a drunkard or a prostitute, and you just care for this person because they are in need and sometimes don't even know it.

And what you want to do is, you want to have this holy love of redemption. You want to pluck this person out of the trials that they are in. You want to come alongside and then you want to minister to them.

And you care for the sinner and not for their sin. But there is also another aspect of love, a sinful love of participation, where instead of just wanting to rescue the person or dealing with the sin that is in the life of a person, you can be tempted to participate in the sin that that person is going through.

And finally, with regards to love, the reason why it's not universal is it can have for its object two exclusive things. You can either have God as the object of your love or you can have the world and you cannot have both.

And that's what the Bible says here, do not love the world or the things in the world. Let's see now what the word world means. Before we look at what it means, let's look at what it does not mean. There are two things that come to your mind when you think of the term world.

What are they? The earth, so you think of creation. When you think of world, universe, creation, everything that God made, excellent. That's the first one that I had. And there's another thing you think of when you think of world.

People, excellent. The Andresics got both the answers. So the first thing that comes to mind is world. Acts 17, 24, God who made the world and everything in it, he is the Lord of heaven and earth. And God made this world and there is nothing inherently sinful in creation.

Creation is beautiful. Yes, it is fallen, it is groaning, and yet there is nothing sinful in enjoying the creation. I mean, this morning, if you just drove in with the snow covering the trees and the sunlight, we just thank the Lord for his beautiful creation.

There's nothing wrong there. And people, John 3, 16, God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. He's talking about people that God set his affection upon and wanted to redeem. And you and I must be little Christ in a sense in our desire to love the people who are lost and to bring them into the fold.

And so there is really nothing wrong with creation or people. And that's not the sense in which the term world is used here. So what sense is it used here? The Bible uses the term world in a very, very dangerous sense.

And that's the sense over here. It is not physical, but rather an invisible world. Before we unpack the meaning in this text, an easy example is from the secular world. You think of the world of sports.

Is it football or? Football tonight, right? Okay, we'll use football today. So NFL, right? Okay, you can see how literate I am with sports. But NFL, so it's basically the world of sports or the world of NFL is like an invisible organized system.

You know, there are some ideas, some activities and some purposes in this world of NFL. What do they do? They say, okay, here are the rules how you play football. I don't know all of them, so I don't get to play.

They decide who are the teams that will represent the games. They organize schedules so different people can meet in different venues to play with one another. They sell tickets so lots of people can spend their money and the organizers can get rich and I guess the players too.

So there is a system. This is the world of sports where people have... So now you understand when somebody says NFL, all these things are in the back of your mind. That's this organized system. I'm not saying NFL is evil, but there is a different kind of world that is evil.

And that is the life under Satan. One of the commentators called this life of human society as organized under the power of evil. Life of human society organized under the power of evil. The best definition for world you can find from Ephesians chapter two, one and two.

I'll just quickly read that. Paul says to believers who were here, he says, you were once dead in trespasses and sins in which you once walked following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience.

So here, what Paul said in Ephesians, John is referring to here as this invisible world, the system that governs planet earth, the people, the creation, all under the power of Satan. Satan is called the prince of this world because he is ruling and governing it.

But from the people's standpoint, those who do not know God, their idea is self-rule. It is the order of finite being as regarded apart from God. Fallen man wants to have nothing with God, but rather think that they live life on their own, by their own strength, for their own purposes.

Unaware that in their so-called autonomy, they are actually slaves of Satan. If that looks too far-fetched, all you have to do is just look around. Look around the world today. What is the prevailing theme that we see?

What we see is a world that has rejected God, wants to have nothing to do with God, and in opposition to God. And rather for the believer, you'll find strong temptation to sin in the world. So that's the world.

Do not love the world. But John also says, okay, this is the system, but there are some specifics in the system you ought to watch out for. There are some things in the world that you must not love. And in verse 16, he calls them, I'm going to use the NAS because I think that helps us a little better than the ESV version.

The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and pride of life. And these are all the things that are in the world. For all that is in the world, nothing in this world, nothing in this world system is from God.

So there is no thing on these three elements that we're going to see that you and I can place our love upon. These three things, the lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and pride of life, are taken as the essential marks of the pagan way of life.

This is how the unredeemed live. And you and I, though we were plucked out of that, can no longer set our love upon these. So let's take a few minutes and look at each of these. The lust of the flesh.

ESV is right in translating it desire because there is no separate word for desire and lust. It is the same Greek word. The lust of the flesh talks about those desires that are within us, those things that tempt us from within.

Desires are God-given. God made you and he gave you some desires and those are morally neutral. They are meant to serve a purpose, but they become lust in certain contexts. What is given good by God can become sinful if you do not use it, right?

Some examples. Hunger. So God made your body. It needs to be nourished. And when you need food, it has this desire for food and that's called hunger. And that's a good thing. So that way you don't go for four days without food and then fall faint.

You know, evening mom cooks a good meal, you enjoy the meal and that's a good thing. But on the other hand, you can take that desire for hunger and make it a lust of gluttony. If food is all my life is about, I take what is good and make it evil.

I make it a lust. Same thing for thirst. I can thirst for water and that keeps my body well, but if I go and get drunk, that is the lust of drunkenness. Sex within marriage is good. It can be perverted into adultery and fornication.

Work is good for us to use our God-given abilities to support our family, but you can drown yourself in workaholism. Goods are nothing sinful with that. Things that you have in your homes, nothing wrong unless you buy in to materialism.

So that's how desires become lust. But this lust has its source in what the Bible calls the flesh. It is the lust of the flesh. Flesh obviously is not talking about skin and bones. There are scriptures that talk about flesh in that way, but in this particular passage and also in Romans, it is talking about a sin principle that is in operation within each of us.

And Pastor Mike always likes to call this the sin hangover. When you get redeemed, you are a new creation in Christ. The old has gone away and behold, all things have become new. And yet you and I have been redeemed out of this world and we have this aftertaste, this hangover of sin still clinging to us.

And that's what the Bible calls this flesh, the sin principle that will not be fully done with until you are glorified. So while we are being sanctified, we will need to deal with this flesh. I think Pastor Dave likes to use this illustration a lot and I think that's excellent.

You have the books of Exodus and Leviticus, right? In the books of Exodus, God comes, redeems Israel out of Egypt from the slavery that they were under the Egyptians and takes them out. And in the book of Leviticus, God takes Egypt out of the Israelites.

He purifies them as he gives them the word. And you and I are likewise the same. We were redeemed from under sin and now by the washing of the word, we are purified as the worldliness that is in us is washed away.

And I think that's the term that I want you to keep in mind, worldliness. When you say do not love the world or things in the world, this worldliness is not just things that characterize the world. Like we talked earlier about goods or possessions.

It's rather your heart attitude toward those things. A good example is those who are rich and poor. Now, just because someone is rich doesn't mean they are sinful. Just because someone is poor doesn't mean they are righteous.

You can have a very rich man who is using all his blessings in a godly way and not attached to those things that he is a steward of. And you can have a poor person who is, on the other hand, just craving for those things that he doesn't have and constantly looking and complaining about what he wants to have.

And it is this heart attitude that God is after when he talks about the lust of the flesh. Do not set your hearts on these things. It can find various forms. Pleasure at someone else's pain, luxury at someone else's poverty, or just a godless attitude of just looking at, from the sensual perspective, rather than looking at life as it is under God.

From the 16th and 17th century, the Christians used to call this inordinate affections. Affections of your heart that are not ordained. Things that are placed on the wrong objects or taken to a degree that is not godly.

Instead, what you and I must have is the right kind of love, the right kind of love towards the right objects and to the right degree. When we look at everything as it is under God, we will be able to truly enjoy, enjoy those desires of our hearts without sinning.

The second thing we have here is the lust of the eyes. And this is to be captivated by fluff and not the real value of things. It is to see something as pretty and cute and flashy and looking at these trinkets and then just falling for it, not recognizing that these are just trinkets and baubles, that they have nothing of value underneath them.

I have a couple of examples from the Old Testament for us to remember what this means. The first one is Eve's temptation when she viewed the fruit that she was not to eat. Genesis 3, 6 says, when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took off its fruit and ate and she also gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate.

It's not like she did not know what God had told her about the fruit. God had warned Adam and Eve about the dangers of this one specific tree. You eat this and you die. It was poison. What was beneath that beauty that covered this fruit was deadly to Adam and Eve and to the rest of humanity.

But here, aided by a little temptation from the serpent, Eve chooses to look at what the external was, forgetting willfully what was behind that sheen, that veneer of beauty, and the consequences of that act we are still facing today.

The second example is from Achan's coveting in Joshua 7, 21. All of you know the story of the Israelites. They come with great power. They cross the Jordan and the first big city they have to destroy is Jericho.

So they are coming to Jericho. The people are quaking and God says, just remember, this place is mine. You do not take any booty out of here. We destroy this place and nobody will build this back up again.

And I will give you this land for a possession and you will be blessed with a lot. So they come here, they encircle it and they don't even have to fight. God brings down the city. Then they go to the next city, a little town.

They even send just a few of their soldiers and they get routed. And the reason was, there was one man who sinned in Jericho. When God had said, do not touch, this is to be destroyed. This man said, I'm going to do something different.

We see when Achan is found out in verse 20 of Joshua chapter seven, Achan confesses to Joshua, truly I have sinned against the Lord God of Israel. And this is what I did. When I saw among the spoil, a beautiful cloak from Shinar and 200 shekels of silver and a bar of gold weighing 50 shekels.

Then I coveted them and took them and see they are hidden in the earth inside my tent with the silver underneath. What was Achan thinking? He had seen Jordan stopped by the hand of God. So the Israelites could cross over.

He had seen Jericho fall down with no human instrument by the power of God. And he knew exactly what God had said about the danger of touching anything inside that city. He said, this is mine, this is Harem, do not touch.

And he takes it and hides it under the earth because it was just beautiful. His eyes had stuck to the beauty of these possessions, forgetting the God whom he served, but the righteous God who sees all things.

And the consequences was devastating. Achan and all his family were stoned to death as a punishment for sin. And the last one I have is David and Bathsheba in 2 Samuel 11, 12, 11, two. A late one afternoon when David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of the King's house, he saw from the roof a woman bathing and the woman was very beautiful.

All of you know the story. Tremendously tragic consequences because David let his love of beauty get disconnected and divorced from the love of goodness. He just looked at what was pleasing to his eyes, forgetting that that was not connected to goodness.

He faced the consequence, his family faced the consequences and his nation for many, many generations faced the consequences of his sin. Now, you may say, okay, that's all good. I mean, those are gigantic issues that these people face.

How, what's the consequence for me? What kind of lust of the eyes am I dealing with? These things talk about an aspect of the temptation from without. There's things outside in the world that can draw you in and there is a propensity in your flesh to go back to them.

It is attractive to you. And some of the things are sensuality. The sensuality can be aroused by the visual, whether it is pornography or for especially young people here, we live in this part of the country, which is the intellectual hotbed.

There's a lot of ideas and stuff that come around. And if we choose to follow those pursuits, contrary to God's word, just because they're beautiful, just because everybody who knows these fanciful ideas are famous, you can be led away to sin.

But we can also come down to something that is more down to earth for all of us. Do you find yourself keeping up with the world's ads and fads and allures? There's constant advertisement from the world.

They have one object. They know that in the flesh is greed. They want to advertise it as such. But if they can keep piping enough information to you, there is something within you that will want what they have to sell.

Or if you are shopping, let's say, without restraint, it could be that you find your happiness in possessions rather than being content with what you have. I often say this example, and I will say this again.

I haven't gone to the mall in a little while, so I think I haven't been tempted in this area recently. But every time I go to the mall, I have to watch out. I know that section in the mall which I have to be very careful of.

I walk past the clothes, no temptation. Walk past the shoes, no temptation. Walk past the handbags, no temptation, obviously. But there is one section, I just walk. I try to give it wide berth, but it's like a magnet.

It just pulls me back. And some of you who know me would have guessed it. It's the book section. That's the border shop, and they have the best deals. You know, I don't have to spend a lot of money. And before I know it, there's no place in my house for books anymore.

I mean, each of you know what are those things that you have a propensity for, that you need to watch out for. Because we live in a consumer world. We live in a world that just wants to keep entertaining us.

And if we do not realize that this worldliness, which is prevalent in the world, is something that you and I are strongly tempted to as well, because we have the flesh with us, you could just give in without being careful of it.

So once again, just remember, it is not about what you have, but rather your attitude towards these objects, about wanting to have these. And if they are misplaced, then they will let you down. Remember, our goal is not to love superficial beauty, but rather the genuine beauty and goodness that God has given us in Christ.

The last thing that John mentions here is a pride of life, or the pride in possessions, as the ESV translates. Possessions is better because the word life is bios, which talks about possessions, not about your life in itself.

And these are possessions that you as a believer can use for yourself or for the needy. When you recognize that you're a steward of these things and you need to dispense with them as God has enabled you, then you are doing well.

But the sin that is talked about here is that of a, in the English, the better translation is a bragger, a guy who is pretentious and who's just very ostentatious with all that he has. And I just want to exaggerate everything that's about him.

I've mentioned this example elsewhere. It's like the guy in the ancient Greeks, they had this example, this man who would just borrow a coat from his friend, walk down to the harbor, and then tell everybody about all the ships that are coming into town.

He's just waiting for his ships that are loaded with gold and they're going to come in. And he tells everybody how many ships are coming over. And obviously when the ships don't come, he makes up a story that, oh, those ships sunk, but it's no big deal.

He has much more to take care of it. The idea is he just wants to look good, look grand, look famous in front of all the other people. And he makes up these stories in order to puff himself up. So these are people who are arrogant of their external circumstances, just take a lot of pride in their wealth, their power, their dress.

And their goal is not just to do well, but rather to do better than everybody else. They need to outshine this other person, have a better car, better house, better vacation, better everything. Just, it's about how can I do well in life?

And those of you who know, and this characterizes the world. If you know people, it's very easy to see this. But as Christians, this can subtly come in. Maybe not as ostentatious as the world does, but you need to watch out and guard our hearts that we do not give in to temptation because this worldliness is an attitude that can creep in and the flip side of this.

So what should it look like for a believer? This is the time of the year when you have your annual reviews at work. Maybe you get passed out for a promotion for someone else who is not as good. What would your natural response be?

I think in the flesh, we would probably want to grumble and complain. But if we truly work for Christ our Lord, we know that we can trust him. If God would permit that to happen in my life, I can take great confidence that he will not ignore me.

He is glad for the response I have in those circumstances because our goal is not just for external success. It is not just to show ourselves as good in front of our boss, but rather to show ourselves good before our genuine master, Jesus Christ, that we would work with all of our hearts to excel in everything that is given to us.

But when we are passed over, it doesn't hurt us because there is one person we seek to please. And as long as we do that, he will take care of us. So let's kind of wrap this up back in terms of marriage.

If you are married to Christ, these things that we've spoken about in the last several minutes are those things that you cannot love. You cannot love the world. If you find yourself getting worldly in the sense of being enamored with financial, political, personal successes, you want to watch out for it because that is off the world and it is not of God.

And as we think of the things in the world, if you find that the lust of the flesh is creeping in, examine yourself. Are you craving for sinful thoughts and activities? Are these excesses in certain areas?

Or are you spending time on things that you shouldn't be? When you think of lust of the eyes, is the enticement of the world kind of drawing you in, whether it is just that dress or the car or the job?

Or do you find yourself being just proud, proud of those things that you have or maybe you don't have in order to look good? If those things are competing for your affection, remember, this is what John says, do not love.

Do not love the world or the things in the world. And those of you who, as you're listening to this message, you're saying, you know, I'm so thankful that that's what I used to be and I don't feel those strong tugs at my heart anymore.

Take heed, take heed, lest you fall because we are still in this world and the world is very strong and able to tempt us and we want to stay faithful until the end. And the image we want to leave with is that we are married to Christ and we have no business to flirt with the world or to commit adultery with it.