1 JOHN 2:15-17 DO NOT LOVE THE WORLD2020 Teaching by Jerry B Simmons

Teaching Transcript: 1 John 2:15-17 Do Not Love The World

You are listening to FerventWord, an online Bible study ministry with teachings and tools to help you grow deeper in your relationship with God. The following message was taught by Jerry Simmons in 2020. Well, I've titled the message this morning here in 1 John chapter 2, Do Not Love the World. Do not love the world. And perhaps that seems like an obvious statement to make and maybe one that we might think doesn't need to be shared.

But at the same time, John here in 1 John 2 makes it clear that he is writing to Christians who are doing well. The verses leading up to verse 15, 16, and 17, he talks to the different groups of people. I write to you little children. I write to you fathers. And over and over again, he's highlighting things that are good about them. In verse 14 says,

He says, because you are strong and the word of God abides in you and you have overcome the wicked one. He's writing to people who are strong and doing well and then goes on in the very next verse to give this warning, do not love the world.

And so it's important for us to understand that, that we don't count ourselves out of this warning and recognize we need to hear this message. We need to hear this warning and to make sure that we are not involved in loving the world. The world is something that John writes about a lot in this letter. 23 times in this letter, he uses that word. He's talking about the world system, right?

The system that is apart from God, that disregards God and is against God. It's often been said that Christians are to be in the world, but not of the world. And a good illustration of that is a boat in the water. As long as the boat is in the water, it's okay. It can be in the water, but if the water gets in the boat, well, then you have a problem. And in a similar way, we are in the world, but

If the world gets in us, well, we begin to sink. And there is a problem there, and that's what John is warning us against, to make sure that our hearts are not tied to this world, the world system, and this life in a way that would keep us from loving God. Notice the contrast that John presents, and he does this throughout his letter, where

loving the world in contrast to loving God. He says in verse 15, if anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. And so there is this tension between these two. And the more we love the world, the less we love the Father. The more we love God, the less we love the world.

And so we are to be pursuing God and making sure that God is the priority and passion of our hearts. And it's a warning that we need to hear that we do not pursue the love of the world. Pastor Warren Wiersbe says this, anything that robs a Christian of his enjoyment of the Father's love or of his desire to do the Father's will is worldly and must be avoided.

Every believer on the basis of God's word must identify those things for himself. Anything that inhibits us from loving God or desiring God's will, anything that disrupts our desire to fulfill the will of God and to do the plans of God, anything that interrupts our pursuit of God, he says, is worldly. And what I think is important here to take note of is every believer is

must identify those things for himself. That there are things in our lives that we need to identify, that we need to recognize. For other people, this might not be an area of struggle or an area of issue, but for us, this is an issue that disrupts my heart for the Lord, that interrupts my heart in pursuing the Lord or my love for the Lord. And so to help us identify these things, we're gonna spend some time together here in verse 16.

where John says, 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 so in looking at this verse, we're going to look at three points this morning, again, to help us identify some of those things that might be taking the place of our love for God or our desire to do His will. The first thing to consider is

Here in verse 16 is, make your body submit to God. Make your body submit to God. Here, as he lists three things, he summarizes all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. These three things summarize all that is in the world. The first one is the lust of the flesh.

And as we think about the lust of the flesh, we can think about our physical body as well as our fallen nature. They're tied together hand in hand. And so we have a physical body that has desires, that has cravings, that has drives, but we also have a fallen nature. And something about that fallen nature causes us to crave rebellion.

You know, you can put out a wet paint, do not touch sign and sit back and watch people touch it to see if it's wet, right? It's something within us. We see the forbidden sign. We see the thing not to do. And immediately we desire, we crave to violate that, to rebel against that.

And so there's that sinful thirst that we have, that sinful drive that we have, but there's also those things that are good. The food drive or the hunger drive, the thirst drive, the sex drive can all be used in a way and are part of the natural creation of our physical bodies.

But when these become out of proportion or out of the boundaries that God has established, then it becomes the lust of the flesh in a way that is harmful to us. Now, as we look at these three things, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, we see that God is not only

we can see that they correspond with the temptation that Jesus experienced back in Luke chapter 4. And so I'm going to share that throughout our time together this morning. Here's the first temptation that Jesus experienced in Luke chapter 4, verse 3 and 4. The devil said to him,

Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God. And so here in this temptation, the devil presents to the Lord this opportunity to create bread. Jesus had just been fasting for 40 days, and the Bible says that he was hungry, which is easy to understand. And Jesus had the power. He could create bread out of stones if he wanted to.

But the issue here and why it is a temptation is that it would be providing for himself instead of trusting the Father. Now, if the Father instructed Jesus to make the stones into bread, then there would be no issue.

But to take matters into his own hands and make the stones into bread, to do what he wants or to allow his body to dictate how he uses his power and what he does, well, that would be sinful. That would be the lust of the flesh. Now, hunger's not a bad thing. And, you know, desiring to have bread is not wrong or sinful, but it can be used in a way that is sinful sometimes.

if it dominates our life and causes us to disregard the will of God. This is about the love of God. It's also about the will of God. Again, in verse 17, here of 1 John 2, it says, And so it's important to note the will of God in regard to our physical desires.

What is God's will? God knows that I'm hungry. God knows that I have these desires. God knows that I have these cravings. What is God's will for fulfilling those? And anytime we disregard the will of God or go outside of the will of God to fulfill our physical desires, then it's the lust of the flesh and it's something that is destructive to us. It's part of the world system.

And so when you think about the lust of the flesh, you can think about craving rebellion and sin. You can think about craving pleasure and seeking to find pleasure outside of the will of God. Even those good cravings, those good desires that you have outside of the will of God are sinful.

You can also think about any kind of addiction, any kind of thing that your body becomes physically addicted to as part of the lust of the flesh. It's your body craving and seeking out those things that God does not want for you. And so this morning as we consider this, and we consider our hearts to make sure that we do not love the world, we need to make our body submit to God.

We need to make our body be submitted to the will of God, the plan of God. And if we do not do that, it will disrupt our love for God. We will be loving the world if we allow our body to dictate how we fulfill those needs and desires that we have. Well, the second thing to consider here is to cast your fantasies down before God. To not love the world, here's the second thing that we need to do.

We need to cast down our fantasies. Again, here in verse 16, 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 lust of the eyes here, I like to call this fantasies because it's the craving of what you see without considering or without expecting any consequences or downsides.

I think some good illustrations of this are found in the scriptures. For example, like the prodigal son. The son who, you know, went to his father and said, I want my inheritance now. And he went and spent all of his inheritance on prodigal living. He lived it up and had a great time, but then his money ran out. The prodigal son had his eyes fixed on a fantasy.

I can get this early. I can live wastefully and not run out of money. This is going to satisfy me. This is going to make me have the best life I could ever have. And he thought that pursuing this was going to satisfy him in a way that it never could.

It's a fantasy. And there are so many times in our lives that there is something set before our eyes and it causes us to pursue and to chase a fantasy. It's the lust of our eyes. You can also think about Achan back in the book of Joshua chapter seven. There he was a soldier in the Israelite army and God had instructed them at Jericho not to take any of the treasures there in Jericho.

But Achan saw this garment. He saw some money, 200 shekels of silver, and it stirred up this fantasy in his mind.

In Joshua 7, 21, he says, He knew the instruction of God. He knew what God had declared. He knew what God had promised.

there as he saw these treasures, he had this fantasy. I can take these. I can hide them. I won't be found out. I won't have any consequences from this disobedience. And he thought that he could get away with taking these things. It's a fantasy. It's not a reality. It's the pursuit of the lust of the eyes.

Again, we also see this in the temptation of Jesus. In Luke chapter 4, this time verse 5 and 6, it says, This time the devil takes Jesus up to a high place and shows him, sets before his eyes, and says,

And the temptation here, the fantasy is, you can have all of the world without the cross. You don't have to go the hard way. You don't have to go the difficult way. You don't have to be crucified. But instead, just bow down and I will give them to you now. And Jesus, of course, denied that and did not submit to that temptation. But it's this fantasy that was presented here.

I think, you know, for me, most of my adult life was kind of lived in fantasy, especially when it came to finances. I was thinking back to one time when I was, Kim and I were still dating, and we went out to dinner, and after dinner, we went back to the truck at a

♪♪

because I wanted to make sure that my credit card worked for the dinner. So I couldn't afford to put in gas and then have, you know, so I wanted to make sure that the credit card worked and then I would worry about the gas afterward. And I was living in this fantasy that I could, you know, balance, you know,

the credit card things and get home without having to put gas and all of these things that would happen often for me because I was not handling my finances in a way that was good, in a way that was accordance to God's will.

It's not that I didn't have any money. I had a good job. But the way that I handled those things, well, was very poor because I was chasing fantasies and not living in a way that would honor God and fulfill His will. And so the lust of the eyes.

I would ask you to consider what fantasies do you pursue? What is it that you're chasing that you're thinking, you know, you can do this and there won't be consequences, there won't be the fallout. Other people may have had issues with that, but you know, it's not gonna happen to you. Cast your fantasies down before God. That is part of the love of the world and it disrupts and interrupts your ability to love God.

Well, the third thing to do as we seek to not love the world is to humble ourselves before God. Humble yourself before God. Again, verse 16. 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. Humble yourself before God. Here we look at this idea, the pride of

The word pride, it speaks of someone who is trying to impress people with their importance. Something that is full of itself. It's pride. The pride of life. We all have this tendency, this temptation for pride. And being full of ourselves and focused on ourselves and centered around ourselves is a massive disruption to our relationship with God.

When I have to understand before I obey God, it's pride. If I have to understand why, if I have to understand what the path is or the reasons why or all the things that are going to take place, it's pride. If I disregard the word of God because I don't agree with it, it's pride. If I don't listen to what God has to say, it's pride. There is the pride of life that can be a huge issue for us.

Looking again at the temptation of Jesus in Luke chapter 4, this time verse 9 and 10, it tells us, Then he brought him to Jerusalem, set him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to him, If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here. For it is written, He shall give his angels charge over you to keep you.

Here there is this temptation presented before Jesus at the pinnacle of the temple. There would be, you know, this massive crowd of people and for Jesus to jump off and land safely would be quite the spectacle to behold.

As angels, you know, would carry him down is the idea. Then the people would recognize who Jesus is and how important he was, which previously they'd been blind to this, even though Jesus had done so many miracles in their midst. Now, again, this is one of those things where if God told Jesus to jump and it was something that God wanted to do, then there would be no issue here.

But this is outside of the will of God, seeking to get notoriety, get attention, get some type of honor from people is pride. And we are not to be proud in that way. We are to humble ourselves before God. There are times in our lives where God wants us to go forward and take leaps of faith and

and bold steps of faith. And it might even involve being in the spotlight. But the spotlight itself isn't necessarily wrong. It's the motivation of the heart. Think about David and Goliath, right? David took a bold step of faith to meet Goliath in 1 Samuel 17. It was faith and obedience to God that motivated David, that prompted David, right?

But David was also accused by his oldest brother, falsely accused, but he was accused of just being proud. He said, I know the pride and the insolence of your heart, that he was seeking notoriety, seeking, you know, fame. That's what his brother thought.

It can look very similar, but again, the motivation is what counts. David's heart was not filled with pride. It was filled with faith, trusting God that God would protect him and that God wanted him to deal with that enemy, Goliath. And so God may want you to be assertive sometimes.

But again, it comes back to what's the will of God? What is the plan of God? Why are you moving forward in that way? Why are you, you know, taking that step forward? The pride of life will hinder us in our love for God and our pursuit of the things of God. And so humble yourself before the Lord. Well, as we consider these things, I want to

Continue to consider them a little bit further as we kind of think about the idea of loving the world and making your body submit to God and casting your fantasies down before God and humbling yourself before God. Again, verse 17, it says, And so again, there's this contrast between loving the world and loving God.

between the will of God and the temporary pursuit of this world. The will of God is, you know, eternal. It abides forever. But the pursuit of this world is temporary. I like the way that Tom Constable summarizes these three things. It's very similar, but also a little bit different than what we've been looking at already. He says, the lust of the flesh is the desire to do something apart from the will of God.

The lust of the eyes is the desire to have something apart from the will of God. And the pride of life is the desire to be something apart from the will of God. And they're centering around the idea of the will of God. To do something that God doesn't want you to do, that's the lust of the flesh. To have something that God doesn't want you to have...

That's the lust of the eyes. And to be something that God doesn't want you to be is the pride of life. And so these are three things that are very useful for us to help evaluate where we are at and what we are pursuing and to make sure, as John instructs us, to not love the world. Do not love the world, he says. Don't pursue life.

things that God doesn't want you to do. Don't pursue things that God doesn't want you to have. And don't pursue things that God doesn't want you to be. Well, to help us understand just a little bit more how these things affect us, I want to share with you now a few more examples, this time from the parable of the sower. In Matthew chapter 13, Jesus gives this parable about the seed that is cast on different kinds of soil.

And if you're familiar with the parable, you probably are. There's, you know, one good kind of soil and three bad kinds of soil. And I would suggest to you that these three bad kinds of soil really correspond with these three things. The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.

In Matthew chapter 13, as Jesus is explaining the meaning behind the parable, in verse 13, I'm sorry, verse 19 of Matthew 13, he says, when anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, then the wicked one comes and snatches away what was sown in his heart. This is he who received seed by the wayside. Here this soil, the wayside or the path,

is corresponding with the lust of the flesh, the not understanding of the Word of God. Paul tells us that the things of the Spirit cannot be understood by the natural man. And so here's the idea that I would ask you to consider. As we are engaging in the lust of the flesh, as we are pursuing things to fulfill that purpose,

that pleasure, that rebellion, that sinful nature, again, any kind of addiction, any kind of thing that is outside of the will of God, what happens to our hearts is that our hearts begin to harden and we're not able to understand.

And so even though we might try to, you know, open up the scriptures or, you know, we many times try to live both types of lives, right? That we want to still receive from God, but we also want to pursue the lust of the flesh. But what happens is our heart becomes hard, right?

and the enemy snatches away the things that are sown, we're not able to really receive from God. And the more that we pursue the lust of the flesh, the less and less we're able to receive from God because our hearts have become increasingly hard. It's really important that we do not love the world, that we make our bodies submit to God so that we can keep our hearts soft and able to receive from him.

Well, continuing on in verse 20 and 21 from Matthew 13, we get the next kind of soil. It says, Here Jesus talks about the stony soil.

And don't picture dirt with a bunch of rocks in it. The idea here of a stony soil was a large rock with a shallow layer of dirt on top of it. And so the idea is that while the seed lands, the word lands, it begins to grow, but it can't go very deep because it hits that rock and it can't penetrate through the rock. Well, this I would suggest corresponds with the pride of life.

That in a similar way as the seed is sown and it begins to grow, but it cannot go very deep when we are pursuing the pride of life, when we're pursuing things that God doesn't want us to be. Perhaps we've always desired, it's been our lifelong dream to achieve this goal, to be this kind of person, to have this kind of status. And if that's not part of the will of God, the pride of life is not part of the will of God.

will cause us to be shallow. You could think about it this way. We'll be receptive to what God says to the point of God requiring change. And then, well, it gets hard and the seed burns out. It dries out just as Jesus describes here.

that we're only receptive to a point, but where it meets that rock because of our pride, where we have to understand why God says what he says or why God wants what he wants, where we have to, you know, chase after the things that we want. The pride of life will cause us to be shallow and we can only receive to a certain point the things that God says. And so we must make

make sure to humble ourselves before God, to allow our soil to have depth so that the word of God will take root and not just be on the surface where it's easy or convenient, but that we would be humble before the Lord, that the word of God would grow down deep into our hearts and produce abundant fruit. Well, finally, in Matthew 13, verse 22, the third type of bad soil is

Now he who received seed among the thorns is he who hears the word and the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word and he becomes unfruitful. And so here you have the thorny soil and this corresponds with the lust of the eyes. All those things that we see and pursue and chase choke out the things of God, choke out the word of God.

And so here the Lord is instructing us to make sure that we are not pursuing the cares of this life, the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches. Those things, you know, that we see it's all shiny and beautiful and brilliant, and we want to chase it. We want to, you know, go after it. But is it the will of God for us? Again,

As Tom Constable described it, the lust of the eyes is desiring to have things that are not God's will for us. Does God want you to have those things? If you're pursuing things and chasing after things that God doesn't want you to have, those things become thorns that twist around the word of God and choke it out so that you're not able to receive from God what he says. You're not able to receive from God what he has for you.

because your heart is filled with the lust of the eyes. It's filled with these things that are not of God, but that have captivated your mind and your heart. And so do not love the world. Make your body submit to God. Cast your fantasies down before God and humble yourself before God. Make sure that loving God

is the highest priority above all else in your life. Make sure that the will of God, it's not just an occasional thing that we check in once in a while, but that every part of our life is submitted to and subjected to God's will for us, God's plans and purposes, that we would live as his servants. And so this morning, I would encourage you, again, as Warren Wiersbe said, everybody has to kind of evaluate these things for themselves.

There's different ways and different avenues in which these things need to minister to your heart. And so make sure you give God the opportunity to speak to you about where you are battling with the love of the world. Let's pray. Lord, we ask now as we consider your word that you would help us to identify those areas.

Lord, that your word would penetrate deep within our hearts and bring clarity and revelation. Lord, that we might know those areas where we are allowing the love of the world to creep in. And Lord, as we begin to love the world, we start to love you less. We start to disregard your will and your plans. And so help us, God, to catch those things early, to catch them quickly.

Lord, that we might turn from them and put you first once again. Help us, Lord, to love you with all of our heart, with all of our soul, with all of our mind, and with all of our strength. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.