1 John 2:15-17 | Do Not Love the World

1 John 2:15-17 and the Call Not to Love the World

Amen, it's so good to see everyone here this morning. Please open your Bibles to 1 John, chapter 2. We'll be looking at verses 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 pride of life, it is not from the Father,.

But it is from the world.

And the world is passing away along with its desires. But whoever does the will of God abides forever.

Let's pray.

Father, I thank you so much for this morning, for this word, Father, we're about to read from. I pray that your Spirit will open our ears, Father, to the things that you have to say to us through this passage, that things that used to be clear or things that we thought were clear, that you'd just bring more clarity to this, Father,.

And that you would loosen my tongue to speak, and pray these things in your Son's name, amen.

Amen.

So I wanna start by telling you a story, a story that's not original to me, one I've heard a couple of years ago, and I think it fits really well in helping us understand what we're about to go through and talk about this morning.

I wanna tell you about a man. A man who sought to resist worldliness. A man who has gone to great lengths of discipline. He sought to carry out traditions and principles he's been taught, handed down from generation to generation.

He's a man who has principally sought to keep himself unstained from the world. His desires to keep himself unstained from the world and from worldliness have caused him to decide to live outside of the borders of the city, outside the borders of mass civilization.

He wanted to be away from all the evils and temptations that plague big cities. He doesn't interact with the outside world at all costs, unless it's absolutely necessary. He lives life and maintains a simple life, segregated and isolated from the world at large.

He lives off the land using simple and natural means.

So as to not commingle with the godless world.

He is disciplined in good works and he seeks a good life. In a desire to not be influenced by the world's ways,.

He shuns many minor conveniences,.

Such as computers and internet and phones and radio and even cars. All of this to prevent from being stained.

From the simple ways of the world.

Out of fear he can fall into pride, he even refuses to ever have his picture taken as it could lead to vanity. He doesn't wear the clothes of the modern world so as to not promote individuality and that might lead to pride and arrogance.

To prevent pretension being drawn to him, all of his clothes and his family's clothes are homemade and designed for meekness, humility and just pure function. He instructs his wife and daughters to only wear dresses as that is the greatest form of modesty.

They do not wear makeup or even cut their hair for that matter to avoid any appearance of vanity. Though he is simple, he still enjoys music but he doesn't tolerate music being played by any string instrument as it has too many ties to the world in its evil ways.

So great strides are taken in this man's life as well as for his family to ensure that they keep unstained by the world. All of this man's way of life has been passed down as a matter of history, tradition and principle.

With all these steps taken to keep unstained by the world, he's failed miserably. Someone who lives in this way, a way you might assume is the total opposite of worldliness is in fact just as worldly as anybody else.

While there may be some bits of good to perceive from this lifestyle, I didn't describe it to you for the purpose of showing you ideas on how to fight worldliness but to show you an example of worldliness.

Much of that lifestyle is based on worldly thinking. If you are confused by this and don't see how this quite possibly could be worldliness, then maybe you don't know what true worldliness is. The thing that has made this way of life worldly is not necessarily the actions but that God's definitions and values are rejected and instead substituted for tradition.

This way of life finds tradition and man-made morality to be much more valuable than the truth of God. This way of life is not explicitly biblical. It is in fact far more based on tradition, opinion, and the wisdom of men.

Do Not Love the World by Conforming to Its Values

That is foolishness according to 1 Corinthians. So this morning I'm going to break a rule, a Baptist sermon rule that only requires three points. I'm gonna have four today, all right? I'm off to a great start, all right?

All right, so point number one is do not love the world. Point two, the things of the world. Point three, the world is passing away. And our final point is called the will of the Father. So point number one, do not love the world.

So let's go back and read what our text says today,.

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. So our response to this text today in 1 John should not be to form an isolated community where we hide ourselves from the evils outside the world.

This sort of thinking is worldly.

Why?

Because it contradicts God's word. 1 Corinthians 5 .10 tells us that if we try to isolate ourselves from the moral people in the world, we would have to leave the planet, right? Obviously Paul is using hyperbole because that would be impossible.

As well as that in Matthew 28, it was Jesus that commissioned all his disciples to go out into the world and preach the gospel. These two scriptures have already dismantled this whole way of life. The problem in this thinking goes even further due to the fact that evil is just an outside source that we have to protect ourselves from.

So let's think back to Jesus' words regarding what defiles and stains a man in Matthew 15 .11. So Jesus says it's not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth.

This defiles the person.

So it's clear that we can't just leave the world and isolate ourselves to keep from being stained.

By the world.

To do that would be to neglect the evils that are inside you, your own flesh and simple desires. To think that cars, TVs, and computers defile a man is to neglect the truth of God that we're defiled from within.

Our text today tells us where worldliness comes from in verse 16. For all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, and pride of life is not from the Father,.

But it is from the world.

So it comes from within man. That's what John is telling us. Do you have the power to kill your own desires and sinful nature?

You can't.

To believe you can is to follow worldly principles. Worldly principles that tell you you can defeat sin and gain righteousness by the works of your own hands. This sort of thinking is an affront to the word of God and to God himself.

Worldly principles tell you to formulate rules, norms, and practices that are outside of what the scriptures teach. It is not my intention to preach against this way of life, but I'm just using it as an example.

So that lifestyle probably seemed good to many of you. You saw lots of good things in it. It seems noble and upright. But I wanna ask you, why did it seem noble and upright? What about this simple life seemed noble and upright and actually able to keep you unstained from the world?

What are you basing your definitions on? That's the question you need to ask yourself. What are you using to define what is noble and upright?

What is noble and upright and good?

Again, I'll ask you, do we really understand what worldliness is? Because worldliness, I don't think, is necessarily what we often make it out to be. Because a great problem that I find is that at the hearing of this text and the proclamation of do not love the world, we're so quick to try to figure out what we need to do.

To not love the world.

We're so quick to run the rules, laws, do's and don'ts, that we miss the heart of what this means. Because today, I'm not interested in drawing up a list of activities and labeling them worldly. I'm not interested in coming up with a list.

Of forbidden activities.

Because John's not even doing this. As we'll see shortly, John's warnings have less to do with activities and more to do with attitudes. So before we go further, again, what is the definition of worldliness?

How do we define what it is? What is worldliness? We can consider that it is the rejection of God's standard and wisdom. Worldliness is the acceptance of the world's definitions and values and the rejection of God's definition and truth.

Let's filter this down even more. What is the world? What is John trying to get here with the world? Well, the Greek word that John is using here is the word cosmos. So John's use of this world literally means something that's put together, a system, an order, a design.

So if it helps, the opposite of cosmos would be chaos. So chaos we know as disorder, cosmos, order. Make sense? So when you hear the term the world, think about an organized system. The world refers to the system of belief that is at odds with God.

An organized belief system that is hostile to God. That is what the world is. John is talking about the world, written in the time period of the first New Testament church. If he is talking about worldliness, it's not that we've become more worldly.

There's a world, a system of belief that is hostile to God. Now that leaves us to point number two, things of the world.

The Desires of the Flesh, the Eyes, and Pride of Life

What are the things of the world?

So we need to redefine how we're looking at worldliness. In fact, our text today defines the very things that make up the world and the things that the world values. And it tells us in verse 16, for all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh, and the desires of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not from the Father, but it is from the world.

So John is telling us that the world follows its feelings and its passions as a barometer for truth. That there is a system of belief that follows the flesh rather than God because it is opposed to God.

Where did this belief system come from? I think a great answer for us to consider is that it comes from man. We need to understand what this origin of the worldly belief system is. So let's go ahead and turn to Genesis 3.

We're gonna start from verse one.

And remember, we're going here to look at what is the origin of the world? What is this organized system of belief that is opposed to God?

Genesis chapter three, starting in verse one.

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, did God actually say, you shall not eat of the tree in the garden? And the woman said to the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said you should not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it lest you die.

But the serpent said to the woman, you shall surely not die, for God knows that what you eat of it will your eyes will be open, that when you eat of it, your eyes will be open and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

So 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 of his fruit and ate. And she also gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate.

So what happened here? What was the breakdown? Adam and Eve were in the face of the truth of God.

They were not ignorant to the truth of God.

They did what was in the face of the truth of God. They chose to rest in the desire of their flesh, desire of their eyes, and the boastful pride of life told them what was worth believing. They heard the temptation of the devil and saw that it lined up with their desire of the flesh and eyes and pride and then acted upon those desires.

They trusted in themselves over and above God. So what are we to learn about this account? What was it in the garden that was so worldly? Was it the snake? Is it that we shouldn't trust snakes because they're evil?

Should we avoid talking to snakes? Is that what we're learning here today?

Was it the fruit?

Is the fruit a demonic fruit that we shouldn't eat?

No.

This is a perfect example for us to see because the actual object is not something inherently evil or sinful. It was a fruit that God had made and it was good. It was not the eating of the object that was sinful.

Eating fruit isn't sinful, right? It was the belief that God is a liar. It was eating the fruit that God had clearly forbidden to do so. It was a belief that God is a liar and that pleasing yourself is superior to pleasing God.

So when we look at our text, we see the list of these three things that define the world, the desire of flesh and the eyes and the pride of life, we can see that John was not focusing primarily on anything material.

The main thing that John focuses on is that he does not want us to fall in love with the world's beliefs and attitudes, their beliefs and attitudes towards God. I want you to remember this. Worldliness is something that attacks your mind.

Worldliness is something that attacks your mind. Remember that.

What does Romans 12 to say?

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the, what? Renewal of your mind. That by testing you may discern what is the will of God. So worldliness attacks our mind. Do you see that? These desires and pride are attitudes and mindsets and ambitions, aspirations and appetites.

That happen in silence.

Ways we think, ways we process things. That's what John's talking about. Because John wrote this letter to churches that were being infected and confused by false teachers and heretics. What is a false teacher and heretic attacking?

Your mind and what you believe.

They were in danger of being overcome by worldliness. These false teachers claimed to have enlightenment, but John says that they were still in darkness. They tried to draw people into their inner circle of knowledge, but the doctrine and practice revealed that they truly didn't know God.

So John wasn't so much concerned about the things people were doing,.

But what they were believing and why they were believing.

Remember what we are talking about here. In our age system, in mankind that is opposed to the will of God, this is worldliness. Attitudes and mindsets, how the world thinks.

And how the world believes.

So think about this. Desires have to do with what we believe is most desirable,.

Most valuable, most beautiful.

You don't have desires that are based off of anything. I don't think it would be a good use of our time for me to come up with a list of things that are worldly. It could actually become quite damaging on my behalf.

It would be like firing a gun blindfolded,.

Hoping that I would hit a bullseye.

Instead, there are some questions I wanna ask and pray that through the conviction of the Spirit that you would examine your own hearts, because how would you define what is good and acceptable in your life?

We need to ask ourselves, how would we define, not how we were doing, but how would we define what is good and acceptable? This is the real question. What do you follow as a guide day to day? What informs your decisions, your actions, how you speak, how you think?

You should ask yourself, what is most desirable to you? You see, because desire is two thirds of what is laid out here in the text. Desire of the flesh and eyes. What is most desirable to you? I'll tell you what was most desirable to the Psalmist David.

He says, as a deer pants for water, so my soul pants for you. Do we have desire like that? What gives you most satisfaction in your day to day life?

Ask yourself these questions.

What do you most desire and what gives you most satisfaction in your day to day life? What is it that you most look forward to every day? Again, the Psalmist tells us in Psalm 16 and 11, he tells us the source of all satisfaction and pleasure is in God.

So where do you find fullness of joy? Again, you should ask yourself, what gives you the fullness of joy in your day to day life? And I'm not asking just this morning because Christ is laid out before us today, but in our day to day lives.

Can we say what the Psalmist has said so far? Can we say that for ourselves? When you are bored or lacking in joy, where do you go? You go to the fridge. It sounds funny, but maybe that's something we do.

Do we turn on TV when we're bored, lacking in joy? Do we go to the internet, social media? You see, I don't bring these things up because these objects are inherently simple in themselves. There's nothing wrong with any of those things.

If we rejected food, we'd die, right? These objects are not simple in themselves, but our motivations of going to them are what makes them worldly. Are we understanding that? It is worldly when we seek to see our soul's belongings be satisfied with such things.

I'd ask you this, what gives you comfort in this life? Second Corinthians says, blessed be the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of the mercies and of all comfort. Do you find that your comfort is in the Lord?

Do you feel this comfort every day?

Yes.

Do you feel this comfort every, you do feel this comfort every day, and if you do not realize that, this message is probably gonna be really helpful for you, because it might be that we're far more worldly.

Than we think.

Do we find that all of our comfort is found in the Lord? Or do we find a satisfying comfort in the type of things that will pass away? Many of you struggle with anxiety, so you must ask yourself, who has instructed you to be anxious?

Why should you be anxious?

Who has instructed you to believe that you must have control over everything?

Where does that belief come from?

God instructs us in Matthew 6 to let go and be free from anxiety, because he is good and in control of all things, and yet, in light of this, you still feel the need to resist and fight for control for your own life and destiny.

Where have you gotten that definition? What has informed you to think and believe that way? You see, that's worldly. If you thought that we were just gonna talk about sexually immoral things and greed and murder, you were thinking about a very small spectrum, a very unique spectrum of what worldliness is, yet there may be some of you here that have not found themselves.

To be weak to the world's ways.

You've heard some of these things that we've discussed, and you find you still live an upright life. It's a dangerous thought to entertain, because you have fallen prey.

To the boastful pride of life.

You see, you've looked at your life, and you've found many things to be satisfied in. You're a well-valued employee who works hard. You are disciplined in your study, and you find you have much biblical knowledge to be satisfied in.

You are quiet and meek in comparison to the surrounding world. You have all that you want and are satisfied in these things, yet I would instruct you this morning to cast aside this worldly system of belief.

That you've bought into,.

A system that tells you that righteousness is a feat to be accomplished, and that discipline is a sign of godliness. Self-righteousness is a worldly disposition that rebels against God's approved means of righteousness.

The Apostle Paul responds to the boastful pride of life, saying, what do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you boast as though it were not a gift? He says earlier in 1 Corinthians,.

Let him who boasts boast in the Lord.

So look at your lives.

What is instructing you how you live? Where have you drawn your definitions on how to live this life? What is acceptable and what is forbidden? What is permissible and what is permitted? Are you just following your feelings?

Oh my goodness, what a horrible,.

What a terrible kind of feelings would be. What a terrible guy we are. How often do you find that you make countless decisions based solely on how you feel? Following your feelings declares to God that truth is insufficient and that our feelings are the absolute truth.

You make God out to be a fool when you rest your feelings above his truth.

You are telling him, you don't know.

I'm just gonna trust my volition and whatever comes.

Seems crazy.

What has instructed the common things in your life? Your definition of beauty. Your definition of how we should present ourselves. The clothes you wear.

Whether you wear makeup or not.

Whether you buy brand name clothes or not. I'm not listing these choices because one is righteous and one is worldly. I think it was very telling of your view of beauty or how we are to dress or any of these things based on how you responded to the list I just gave you.

If you went, oh, that's worldly.

Or, oh, that's righteous. Where are we getting these definitions? Because there's nothing wrong.

In doing any of these things.

The question is, where did we get the definition of such things?

That's the real question.

Did you weigh it against what you do and how you live?

Or did you weigh it against scripture?

Did you weigh it against those that you have seen before that seem to live a righteous life? And you've just modeled it after them? Or did you weigh it against scripture? Because you are not the barometer of truth.

When we use our own wisdom and logic, we act just like the world does. Just because we use different parameters doesn't make it less worldly. Have we consulted the truth of God? Two people can wear the same outfit and one be meek and the other worldly.

Have we thought that that could be a reality?

How?

When one is done for the love of God and his truth, and the other is done to show off the appearance of being righteous. That's how one can be worldly and one can actually truly be done of the love of God.

This applies to so many other scenarios. Whether we side with having nice things or living in complete simplicity. Whether we approve of dating or courtship. Whether we watch TV versus not watching TV.

How we view marriage, singleness, love, beauty, success, comfort, entertainment, good works, and sin. Where have we gotten these definitions? Where do we go when we find no good in ourselves? What is it that we're laboring to show other people about ourselves?

And where have we gotten the definitions from? Do you even care enough to know about what God says about everything in your life? I think it might be one of the hardest truths to consider. Is have we even thought about the fact that we should analyze everything through the lens of scripture?

Everything.

We claim that we love him above all. Yet sometimes we think it's not important to consider God's word accordingly. So here's a simple question to ask yourself regarding worldliness that I really hope causes.

All of us to think about our definitions and what we do.

If the unbelieving world watched your life, would they think your life seemed familiar.

Or peculiar to them?

Would the things you do, the ways you think, the things you say seem common or peculiar to them? I would hope that you're feeling very conflicted right now because you're seeing two different things, two opposing things.

In all these scriptures you've heard, definitions from God and how you are to view a variety of things, whether it be pleasure or joy or desire, you've heard all these definitions and it's clear to you that you have many definitions of truth that you follow that are not based.

On the truth of God,.

But follow after the desire of your flesh, the desire of your eyes and the boastful part of life. You've tried to follow two different guides at the same time. This is really the issue, is that we're trying to follow two different guides,.

Two different systems of belief,.

Two different truths.

Yes, some truth of God,.

But also, yes, some truth of the world as well.

We may not openly go and embrace the world system, but it has made its way to how you live and think, that there are two threads running, two different systems. So again, I'll ask you, what is your guide?

You make decisions and choices every day, you follow impulses and respond to situations all the time, and do you ever stop to think about what is defined and how you practically live your life? There are things in all our lives we take pleasure in that are actually in opposition to God.

I'm not talking about the things that we think are extreme, but common things in our lives that we do that have nothing to do with God. That may be tradition, may be culture, comfort, how you grew up.

That's how we grew up. So that's how we do things that way, or that's what my parents did. Things that are small and that simple, it could even be a good thing, but if you base it upon that's why I do it, that's worldly, that's not off of God's truth.

That is literally just because you were born into a family and you say, yeah, that's how we do it, so it's good.

That's no way to live, the world lives that way.

There are things that own our affections that are based off of a system that hates Christ. There are things that own our affections that are based off of a system that hates Christ, and this is what gets down to the base form of worldliness, and this is why it's so awful.

Maybe you're thinking right now,.

Why should we care about worldliness?

What is all this fuss about? John writes, if anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not new. That's why we care about worldliness.

You see, this is serious stuff.

John says that if we love the world, we demonstrate that we are not God's, that we are not His. Let's be honest, that this is something we struggle with. I hope that all of us would confess that this is something that we're guilty of, too.

What does it mean for a Christian to commit the sin of loving the world? If loving the world is evidence of not being a Christian, then it follows that when Christians demonstrate a love for the things of this world, they are acting like unbelievers.

At worst, we show ourselves to be unbelievers to the world.

When we love the world,.

And at best, we act like unbelievers.

When we act like the world.

John leaves very room for mixing the two. For John, loving God and loving the world are mutually exclusive. Now, before you question the legitimacy of John's word, keep in mind that this is precisely what Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount.

Jesus taught that no one can serve two masters, for either you'll hate one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God as well. That's what it says in Matthew 6, 24.

For as awful as it is to feed these worldly desires, what is even more terrible is giving into a system of belief of what it says about us and what it says about God. You've bought into a system that is in opposition to God, a system that says it'd be better to gain the desires of the flesh and die in hell than gain God.

You align yourself with a system that has declared that God's your enemy. Binding to worldly thinking says that Christ is not worth knowing. To follow after worldliness is to say that you don't belong to God and that there is a better kingdom to dwell in than his.

You have partnered with a belief whose design is to see God removed and forgotten. You have given your affections over to a system of belief that hates you and is condemned. If all this wasn't bad enough, we have done all this thinking that we can still serve God and serve ourselves.

This is the great form of worldliness that we fall into, that we can believe that we can serve two masters. You see, Adam and Eve didn't take up the fruit completely, acknowledging the fact that they would have.

To trade the goodness of God to receive the world's goods.

We don't see that. Without stepping too far into speculation, they probably thought that they could get the fruit and still maintain the blessing of God. I think this is pretty clear because based on the fact.

That they took and ate of the fruit.

Because they didn't believe God's word that they would die. The serpent told them that they could eat the fruit and be like God, so they did. They thought they could disobey the word of God and still have fellowship with him.

They thought they could serve two masters, both God and themselves. You see, there's a system of belief that is in opposition of God to God that we claim to love. We've claimed to love him over and above all things and yet we've come to side with a system that thought it wouldn't conflict much.

With your love for Christ.

Why is it that you believe that you can walk hand in hand with God and hold hands with the devil as well? What would you do?

You're walking hand in hand with your spouse.

You're talking and enjoying each other's company. Then all of a sudden, your spouse doesn't seem like.

They're paying attention to you anymore.

Someone else has caught their eye.

Then they start straining,.

Reaching to hold their hand as well as yours, almost ignorant to the fact this is so incredibly rude.

And loveless.

They then grasp the hand of the stranger with such satisfaction and relief. And your spouse then turns to you and says,.

You don't mind, do you?