Text: 1 John 2:15-17

Target audience: mainly Christians

Topic: The danger of loving the world.

My purpose for this message: To get Christians to examine themselves and their affections for the world.

Delivered: Feb. 7, 2010

 

 

A World Stripped of its Camouflage

Pray.

Find 1 John 5:19.  This sermon series “Growing for God’s Glory” is pointing us towards the launch of a 3-year capital campaign beginning April 1^st.  Growing, but how?  A twelve-year old boy who puts on 30 pounds in a single year is “growing,” but it’s not healthy growth.

Healthy growth in the church is not just more people showing up, but more and more people radically following Jesus.  So we’ve been talking about things that can make that more likely or less likely.  Last week we talked about how hard Satan works against that, trying to get us to sin, and misplace our affections.

Which…, is today’s topic: a misplaced affection for the world.  The Bible reads that God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son (John 3:16).  And that Son turned around and sent His disciples to the world (John 17:18).  So why is affection for the world “misplaced”?  READ 1 John 5:19.  …the whole world is under the control of the evil one.  Not the material world God created or even what man’s invented or manufactured.  Rather, the world system that opposes God.  

West of Lancaster is a Halloween attraction called Jason’s Woods—and I use the word “attraction” loosely.  In addition to the monsters and horror film stars they boast, are skeletons.  Halloween and skeletons go together because they’re scary.  Which is odd.  The basic structure of a man who was once handsome, or a woman who was once beautiful.  Alive, they would not frighten anyone.

But a skeleton stripped of its camouflage of flesh, is ugly, scary.  Just like the world which Satan has camouflaged so well we don’t notice how ugly it is.  With its sights, its sounds, its smells, its touch, it is seductive, wooing us to itself; it’s easy to love the world. 

Originally God gave the world to Adam and Eve to rule.  …fill the earth and subdue it.  Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.  (Genesis 1:28).  The world was supposed to be ours to run.  Then Adam and Eve sinned and it changed hands.  Under God’s sovereign permission Satan now runs it.  Is it our mission field?  Yes!  Is it attractive?  Yes!  Are there aspects of the world that we may enjoy?  Yes!  Is our first love?  No!  Because Satan has taken this world, and distorted what’s good in it; and what’s bad he just camouflages.  Lets see if we can’t strip away some of that camo away this morning.  READ 1 John 2:15-17. 

 

If I could avoid preaching this sermon I would.  I’m a very black and white person but these verses are a little too black and white—even for my tastes.   But we’ve got to feel their weight: if anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.  One or the other, I can’t have it both ways.  Before we unpack 1 John 2, let’s look at some other Scriptures that point in the same direction.

READ James 4:4; 1:27; 2 Timothy 4:10; 2 Peter 1:4.  I want us to understand that when John claims we can’t love both God and the world, it’s not the claim of a guy who just happens to be narrow-minded or legalistic.  James, Peter, Paul, John all agree that that we either love the Creator, or what’s created (Romans 1:25)—but not both.

 

John describes disloyalty to God in these 3 ways: cravings of sinful man, lust of the eyes, boasting of what we have and do.  Let me abbreviate with “craving sin, craving stuff, craving attention.”

1.      Craving sin

Cravings of sinful man; these would be the desires of a person’s sinful nature.  Let’s look at a sample list.  READ Galatians 5: 19-21.  These are things that are always evil.  And if we hang our heads in shame at something we read a list like that, it’s because we’re clear on one thing: that’s wrong, and my affection for it competes with my affection for God. 

So lets not spend any more time on that, but move on to things that aren’t quite so clear.

2.      Craving stuff

The lust of our eyes.  We hear “lust” and think “sex” but John means anything that we see with our eyes, and want.  Some of the early Christians thought the only way to keep from craving stuff was to flee to the desert to live without anything and without anyone.  They th0ught that all romance competed with their love for God; all possessions competed with their love for God; all wealth, all pleasure of any kind—even  friendship was a threat to spiritual health.

The Bible doesn’t say that.  Listen to God in 1 Timothy 4:4:  Everything I created is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving.  Whether we’re talking about wanting some possession, or a person, or an opportunity, or a career, or someone to agree with me, in most cases the question John is raising has less to do with the rightness or wrongness of what I want, and more to do with how badly I want it.  Do I have to have it—have to have that person…  Will my life lose its meaning if I don’t?  Will I pay any price to get what I want?

A 19 year-old New Zealand girl wants an education so badly that to pay for it she auctioned off her virginity on line.  Auction closed last week: winning bid was nearly $32,000.  Although education is a good thing, apparently it’s something she can’t do without; she craves it more than she craves honoring God.

And then there are those things we crave that in bite-sized doses are no threat to our heavenly love but multiply the dosage times a 100 or a 1000 and...  It’s not the single movie that’s the problem, it’s the dozens and hundreds that consume my time and reshape my thinking; it’s not the iPod itself that’s the threat—or the songs, but it’s that I have music playing in my ears so constantly that I effectively silence the Holy Spirit.   Do massive doses of Hollywood, New York and Nashville take any toll on our affections?  Is it possible Satan has so distorted our pleasure in athletics, our second home, a hobby, travel, making money, that they have effectively trumped our affections for God?

3.      Craving attention

3 John 9: Diotrophes, who loves to be first…  In the early 1900’s a woman approached her new pastor and whispered, “Don’t give so-and-so any spiritual responsibility because she is ‘worldly’”.  The pastor had already been brought up to speed and came to the woman’s defense.

The busybody insisted, “She dances, she drinks cocktails, she smokes, she uses too much makeup.”  [Remember, this is the early 1900’s.] 

The pastor replied, “Well, she may be carnal, but none of what you’ve told me makes me think she’s worldly.  It’s you who are the worldly one.  You want power, and love display.  You delight in show and in position.  All the women’s ministries that once met in different homes have moved their meetings back to the church building because nobody could keep up with you.  When they came to your house you would make a big show of your linen, china and crystal.  You centered the conversations on cloth and napkins you bought in the Azores, the ornament from Germany, and the antique you brought from a little shop in England.  Your supposed coat-of-arms was hung in a prominent place on your wall and when anyone remarked about your heirlooms, you went into detail to explain which ancestor it came from and described all his honors in life.”

Boasting of what we have and do.  I wonder if John might even be warning someone who’s very moral and who doesn’t seem to put on airs.  A man who is scrupulous never to swear, never to get angry, never to look at a woman lustfully, he’s always available to help people…  Praise the Lord for his conduct; but his heart…?  What about his affections?  Why does he do what he does; avoid all that he does?  To please God?  It may be no more than simply to please people.  He loves the impression his goodness makes and how people admire him for it.  Maybe his “filthy rag righteousness” blocks the memory that he’s a sinner loved by God only because of what Jesus Christ did—not because of what he’s doing.  This too can be a boasting of what I have and do.

 

Concl:

For me, this is what competes with my love for God.  It’s not much, but it’s ours: 1300 square feet rancher, half acre lot.  When we moved to Chicago so I could attend seminary, we sold the only home we’d ever had, and for the next 12 years, rented.  I was on cloud nine when we bought this in 2000.  For the first two years, about 3 times every day I thanked God for giving us a home of our own.

Anything sinful about owning a house?  No.  But God was competing with my craving for one for years.  From 1991-2000, some days I wanted a house more than I wanted anything else.  Why?  Well, I wasn’t getting any younger and I had no equity.  And for a man, there’s a personal sense of failure before your family when most of your peers have been able to provide a home for their wives and children, and you can’t.  I wanted a place the kids and Betty could decorate as they liked; Ok, decorate as I liked!  I wanted a property where my children could do as they pleased without having to worry about what a landlord would say.

Anything wrong with any of that?  No, not really.  But to get what I wanted, these are the things I contemplated:

·         Reducing my giving to the work of the Lord.  I believe what we give is an individual matter between the giver and the Lord, but I wasn’t in doubt about what I was to give to the Lord.

·         Having Betty go back to work fulltime.  When I graduated from seminary I had made a voluntary promise to Betty that I would provide for her and she would not need to work again.  I don’t have Bible on this but it’s a commitment we believe is from God for us, for her to be available for family and ministry.  Betty eventually did volunteer to work part time at the school to help save some money toward a down payment.  But what I flirted with as  asking for more; I was desperate to get a house.

·         Considered leaving the ministry and returning to secular employment.  Necessarily wrong?  Not unless God’s will to stay in vocational ministry seems clear.  It did. 

If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.  Because The world and its desires are passing away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever. 

On our walk Thursday evening I was talking with Betty about this message.  In sermons at that little church I grew up in, what worldliness was and how it could be avoided was easy to understand: don’t dress like this, don’t go to movies, don’t drink, don’t hang out with these people, don’t wear makeup, don’t buy a television, don’t join the army.  It was two lists: do this, make sure you don’t do that.

But what John’s talking about is love; a matter of the heart.  What do we love?  And the answer to that should be the answer to this question: Whose are you?   READ Galatians 6:14.