Grace Church exists to glorify our Heavenly Father by
 continually making more disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Grace Church
257 Kendall Street
Burlington, WI 53105

(262) 763-3021

The Love that God Hates 1 John 2:15-17 Get Real: A Study of 1 John Sermon #10 One current popular song sadly really hits a nerve. Have you heard  Carrie Underwood’s, Before he cheats? The lyrics go like this:   “Right now he's probably slow dancing with a bleached-blond tramp, and she's probably getting frisky...right now, he's probably buying her some fruity little drink cause she can't shoot whiskey...Right now, he's probably up behind her with a pool-stick, showing her how to shoot a combo...And he don't know... That I dug my key into the side of his pretty little suped up 4 wheel drive, carved my name into his leather seats....I took a Louisville slugger to both head lights, slashed a hole in all 4 tires...Maybe next time he'll think before he cheats.” If a passage of Scripture was put to a tune perhaps 1 John 2:15-17 would be sung to the tune of Before He Cheats. Please turn there with me (p. 862). “Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world—the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does—comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.” As it shatters the heart of a spouse when a mate who has said that they love them, that they are committed and there is no other…and then commits adultery, so it breaks the heart of God when believers have another lover – the world.   Few problems have been more troublesome for believers through the ages than worldliness. The apostle Paul warned of this danger in Romans 12:2, “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” Phillips paraphrases it “Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its own mold.” At the end of his life tragic words flow from the pen of Paul, “For Demas having loved this present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica” (2 Tim. 4:10). Even though Demas had once been a partner in ministry with the great apostle Paul, he succumbed to the lure of the world.   One has to believe that with the pervasive influence of modern media, the tug of the world is greater now than it ever has been. Daily we are bombarded with the beautiful people telling us that we can’t be happy unless we own the product that they are selling or adopt the lifestyle that they are pursuing. We thumb through magazines that lure us with beautiful homes, new cars, luxury items, or expensive vacations that all can be ours, if we just get enough money or go deep into enough debt. It’s this lust for the things of the world that prompts Americans to spend billions on casino gambling and lottery tickets. Just one lucky hit and you can have it all!   And well-meaning Christian attempts to counter worldliness often have swung to the opposite extreme: withdrawal from the world, along with extra rules to reign in the flesh. This is the method of the monastic movement and of isolationist groups, such as the Amish. One extreme example of this ascetic approach was Simon the Stylite who lived in the 4th Century. He chose to live in extreme austerity for thirty-six years on top of a platform on a 60-foot pillar. Thousands of people flocked to see this “unworldly” man and listen to his preaching. But Simon is not a model of what John had in mind when he warned us not to love the world!   I grew up in Fundamentalist circles that had lists of what constituted “worldly” behavior. It usually included the “filthy five”: drinking, smoking, attending movies, playing cards, and dancing. But worldliness is not an action, it’s an attitude. At its core worldliness is a matter of the heart. If your heart is captured by the world, you will love the things of the world, yet if your heart is captured by the love of God, you will be drawn to Him and to the things of God. And the only way that our hearts can be transformed so that we love God is by the supernatural new birth. Once we have been born-again, we belong to God – He loves us and we are to love Him. That’s why a love for the world or worldliness is The Love that God Hates. It’s spiritual adultery. In these three verses John draws a sharp line, with no middle ground: If you love the world, you do not love the Father. If you love the Father, you do not love the world. So John shows us that… 1. You must choose to love God and determine to maintain that choice. Over the years I’ve done quite a bit of marital counseling. Most marital problems fit into “normal” categories. I’ll never forget one woman who came to see me. She’d divorced her first husband who was an alcoholic and would periodically beat her up. She’d remarried but her second husband ran up huge credit card debt, ruined her credit and wouldn’t work. So while still married to the second guy, she moved back in with her first husband to get the credit cards away from the second husband. And now she thought she loved them both and asked me what she should do. It was that old song, “torn between two lovers.”   John says that we must choose. You love either the world or the Father, but you cannot love both. Essentially, he’s saying the same thing Jesus said, “No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.”(Luke 16:13). Jesus did not say, “You should not serve God and Money,” but “you cannot” serve them both. You must make a basic decision in life: Will you live to know God and His eternal love, or will you live for this world and its fleeting pleasures? You can’t take a little of both. And once you’ve made that decision, you must fight to maintain your choice against the strong current of the world.   This phrase “do not love” in the original Greek is a present imperative, indicating that this is an ongoing battle. “Love” is the Greek word agape, indicating that it’s a commitment, not a feeling, that John is commanding. Friend, the only way that you can fight the love of the world is to maintain and grow in your love for the Father. The old Scottish preacher, Thomas Chalmers, has a sermon, “The Expulsive Power of a New Affection,” where he contends that the only thing powerful enough to drive out our love for the world is our new love for the Father.     Critical Question: What is the world or worldliness? Obviously, God placed us in this world and He didn’t intend for us to have some miserable existence. In fact, the last part of 1 Timothy 6:17 says, “God…richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.”   So what is worldliness? The Greek word for “world,” cosmos, occurs 185 times in the New Testament. John uses it 105 of those times (78 in his Gospel, 24 in his epistles, and 3 in Revelation). It originally meant “order” and it came to refer to the universe as the well-ordered ornament of God. (Our word “cosmetics” comes from the word. Applying cosmetics is an attempt to bring order!) It can refer to the physical world “the world was made through Him” (John 1:10) or to the people of the world collectively “For God so loved the world” (John 3:16). That’s the “world” of Lionel Richie’s popular song raising funds for Africa, We Are The World. So in these senses there’s nothing wrong with loving the world. We should enjoy God’s creation. We should love sinful people who need Jesus.     But John also uses the word to refer to the “world” as the evil, organized system under Satan, which operates through unbelieving people who are God’s enemies. 1 John 5:19 “We know that we are of God, and that the whole world lies in the power of the evil one.” Our Lord spoke of the world hating both Him and those who follow Him (John 15:18-19). The world then that John is writing of here operates on the basis of ungodly thoughts, attitudes, motives, values and goals. It doesn’t seek to promote God’s glory or to submit to His sovereign authority. It’s in this sense that you and I must not love the world.   When John adds that we are not to love “the things of the world,” he doesn’t mean that you must hate your house and your car…though sometimes I do hate my car! Rather, he elaborates on those “things” in verse 16 as “the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life.” In other words worldliness is primarily an attitude that is motivated by wrong desires and the wrongful promotion of self.   A poor man who does not have many possessions may be very worldly because he desires those things as the key to happiness, and a wealthy man may not be worldly in that he uses his possessions as a steward of God and as a means of promoting God’s purpose and glory.   The world then that John is speaking of is that way of thinking and living that fails to acknowledge God as central. It’s the world system of living without God. It’s a philosophy of life and a way of thinking. Essentially, it’s an attitude of the heart.   Not every command is found in the Old Testament. Many of the words of Jesus and the Apostles constitute commands. John gives us a vital one here, “Do not love the world or anything in the world.” The question that each of us needs to ask then is, Do I love the world and what it offers? And it’s a question we must constantly be asking ourselves. But one of our problems here is that we really don’t see the world as hostile or as our enemy.   Remember just a few years ago when Ted Turner called staffers who wore ashes on their foreheads for Ash Wednesday "Jesus freaks" and on another occasion said that Christianity is "for losers." That’s the hostile world. In 2000 CBS Early Show host, Bryant Gumbel, interviewed a conservative guest about the Supreme Court's decision to uphold the Boy Scouts' ban on homosexual scoutmasters. The guest, Family Research Council's Robert Knight, was defending the morality behind the decision. Bryant Gumbel was openly hostile to anything Knight had to say. And at the end of the contentious segment, CBS cut away to Mark McEwen who began the weather report, then the camera unexpectedly cut back to Gumbel as he was rising from his seat, unsnapping his mike. And there was the very unsuspecting Gumbel, live on national television, sneering and mouthing the words: "What a blankety-blank idiot!" Imagine for a moment a network journalist interviewing an official from the Gay and Lesbian Alliance and making that same comment on national television. The network would have him fired before the sentence was finished and probably would have a half-dozen apologies to the homosexual movement issued too. That’s the hostile world. Just three years ago Canada’s Senate voted 58-11 to pass legislation that potentially equates portions of the Bible to hate speech. That’s the world John is talking about – a world that is hostile to the things of God.   Some of you may remember the movie Fatal Attraction in which a man finds himself attracted to another woman. He yields to this temptation, no doubt thinking that it will be a brief fling. But instead, he finds himself trapped in an affair that threatens to destroy his entire life. Why is it that we are attracted to the very things which can destroy us? Is it because we like to take risks? Is it because we like dangerous excitement? Is it because we’re just stupid? Whatever it is, it’s a fact that we’re attracted to things that can destroy us. I suppose that we think that the thrill is worth it. How else can you explain bungee jumping or car surfing?     Unfortunately, Christians are attracted to the world and worldliness like a moth to the flame. That’s why we have this command not to love the world. It’s not there to inhibit our adventurous spirit, but to save us from a world of horrible pain and grief. 2. We cannot love both God and the world, we must choose. There’s another great country song title with a story behind it by George Jones. George Jones is a country music icon from the old school. A lot of his songs are the stereotypical country "cheat’n & drink’n" songs. And the fact that George Jones had a drinking problem was no secret. But on March 6, 1999 country music fans were horrified to hear that George Jones was critically injured when he crashed his Lexus into a bridge in Nashville. The investigation showed that he’d been drunk at the wheel. Thankfully he recovered, and two months later his new album called "Cold Hard Truth" came out. On it was a hit song entitled "Choices", and ironically the hook line says, "I’m Living And Dying With The Choices I Made".   John points out that we must make a choice, “If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (v. 15b). If we love the one, we lose the other. This is the implication of not loving the world. It’s an either/or, not a both/and. “The love of the Father” refers to our love for God. John means that the one who loves the world does not love God. Or, conversely, our love for God should be the ruling principle of our lives. The only way that we can overcome the strong desires of the flesh and the world is to be consumed with a passion and love for God.   John uses “Father” to describe God in vss. 15 & 16, the same way that he did in 2:13 where he said that the children had come to know the Father. It focuses us on God’s tender love for us as His children. It’s the Father’s first love for us that motivates us to love Him in response (1 John 4:19). And in light of the Father’s great love for us in sending His own Son to be the propitiation for our sins and adopting us as His children, loving Him should be easy. It should be our great delight and joy.   This commandment challenges us: Choose your love. Either you love the world or you love the Father. You cannot straddle the line. The Father is a jealous lover who both deserves and demands total allegiance. Loving the Father begins at the cross when you receive His supreme gift of love, the Lord Jesus Christ, as the substitute for your sins.   For John everything is black and white. There is no gray. As the Irish would say, “He didn’t shilly-shally around.” He’s very clear that if we love the world, we do not love God. But the objective of the world is to keep us from loving God. The world does everything in its power to cool our love for God. If the world can’t stop us from obeying, it will try to stop us loving; if it is unable to stop us loving, it will make us love the wrong thing. John Wesley was right when he described worldliness as anything that cools our love for God.   A group of first-graders had just completed a tour of a local hospital and the nurse asked if there were any questions. One asked, "How come the people who work here are always washing their hands?" The nurse replied, "They are washing their hands for two reasons. First, they love health; and secondly, they hate germs." As Christians, we must choose. We are to hate the world and love God. We must not let anything quench or cool the love we have for God. 3. The world uses legitimate drives to entice us. “For everything in the world—the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does—comes not from the Father but from the world.”   W. Hersey Davis once defined sin “as an illegitimate expression of a legitimate desire.” God created us and has given us certain drives and desires but Satan tempts us to express them in an evil way. John points out that the world system uses three devices to trap Christians. And this isn’t some new tactic, Genesis 3:6 (p. 2). Satan used these same three devices to assault Eve. First, the cravings of sinful man, “When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food.” Then, the lust of the eyes, she saw it was “pleasing to the eye.” Finally, it was “also desirable for gaining wisdom.” That’s the boasting of what this person has and does, or as the KJV renders it, “the pride of life.”   Satan also tempted Christ at the onset of His ministry through these three devices. He challenged Christ to make stones into bread, the satisfaction of the flesh. He showed Him the kingdoms of the world, the lust of the eyes. He took Him to the pinnacle of the temple and challenged Him to demonstrate His faith, an appeal to the boasting of life. After Jesus repelled his attack with Scripture, Satan gave up and left Christ alone because there were no more channels through which to tempt Him. This demonstrates then…   a) To yield to the cravings of sinful flesh is to love the world. “Man” is a poor translation and is better translated “flesh.” It’s the Greek word sarx. The cravings of the flesh include anything that appeals to man's fallen nature. The flesh is our fallen nature, that part of us that still longs after the things of this world. By our flesh, the world seeks to get us to fulfill the normal desires of the flesh in a wrong way.   Take the matter of thirst. Thirst is a God-given desire. There’s nothing wrong with satisfying our thirst, provided we satisfy it in a way that honors God. But every weekend cops pull over drunk after drunk because that thirst drive had been abused. The same is true of sex. As with thirst, the desire for sex is God-given. I always ask couples in pre-marital counseling if they know how to spell “sex” in marriage? They look at me like I’m from Mars. Then, I say “f-u-n.” There’s nothing wrong with satisfying this desire so long as one satisfies it within the bonds of marriage. James Merritt said it best when he said, "Sex is never intended to be between a man and woman. It is intended to be between a husband and a wife." Pre-marital and extra-marital sex is the abuse of a God-given desire outside of God's plan. There’s nothing wrong with sleeping. Sleep is a gift from God, but laziness is a sin. God gave us a desire to work but workaholism is the abuse of that drive. The world appeals to our normal appetites and tempts us to satisfy them in illicit ways. And we’re surrounded by all kinds of allurements that appeal to our flesh. But a person who lives for the flesh is living a negative life.   b) To yield to the lust of the eyes is to love the world. We sometimes forget that the eyes can have an appetite! Have you ever said, “Feast your eyes on this”? The cravings of the flesh appeal to the lower appetites of our old nature, tempting us to indulge them in sinful ways. The lust of the eyes, however, operates in a more refined way. In view here are pleasures that gratify the sight and the mind—sophisticated and intellectual pleasures. Back in the days of the Apostle John, the Greeks and Romans lived for entertainments and activities that excited the eyes. Times haven’t changed much! The eyes (like the other senses) are a gateway into the mind.     The lust of the eyes is often covetousness. It’s that “keeping up with the Joneses” worldview in regards to the appearance of the house, the car and other material considerations. American materialism and consumerism are fueled by this drive.   c) To yield to boasting of what we have is to love the world. The Greek word for pride was used to describe a braggart who was trying to impress people with his importance. People have always tried to outdo others with their spending and their getting. The boastful pride of life motivates much of what such people do. Why is it that folk buy houses, cars, appliances, or clothes that they really can’t afford? Why do they “name drop”? Why do they succumb to the "charge it now, pay later" advertising and get themselves into hopeless debt purchasing things far beyond their means? Often, because they want to impress others because of the "pride of life" (KJV). They want others to notice how affluent or successful they are.   That’s why big donors want to make certain that their name is on what they donated. They’re what we called in school a “show-off.” Plummer points out while these first two drives can be committed in solitary, this last one requires society. Some even fall into this by getting puffed up about their spirituality. It can be pride of race, place and even grace. It’s still loving the world even when it appears “heavenly.”   Once the world takes over in one of these areas of our lives, a Christian will soon realize it. You lose your enjoyment of the Father's love and your  desire to do the Father's will. The Bible becomes boring, attending church a duty, and prayer a difficult chore. Even Christian fellowship may seem empty and disappointing. It’s not that there is something wrong with others, however—what's wrong is in that Christian's own worldly heart. 4. Who you love determines how long you last. Only a fool knowing what we know today would still set sail on the Titanic. It was a doomed ship. John says this world is doomed with a greater doom than the Titanic. “The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.” Williams renders this, “the world is passing away and with it the evil longings it incites.” The world is headed for eternal destruction. A key reason then to obey God’s commandments is the transitory nature of this world and its lusts, as contrasted with the eternal promise of heaven. If you love the world or the things in the world, you will lose them all at death. All that the worldly person lives for is gone in an instant and means nothing in light of eternity. Friend, even if you’ve attained your worldly desires, what good are they at death? But, if you do God’s will, you will abide with Him in heaven throughout all eternity! Conclusion: Over my decades of ministry I’ve had to do some very difficult things: tell a Mom her son has been murdered, a wife that her husband committed suicide. I’ve been with families as they’ve said good-bye in a hospital room as a loved one goes Home. But by far the toughest thing I’ve had to do in ministry is to be there when a spouse confesses to their mate that they’ve broken their marriage vows, that they’ve committed adultery and been unfaithful. The hurt, the pain and betrayal of that moment is beyond words. And I would rather be anywhere else than there.   But when you and I are seduced by this world’s system, we’re committing a greater unfaithfulness. We’re betraying the Father Who gave His only Son in love to die for us. It’s spiritual adultery. James 4:4 “You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God?” And it breaks our Father’s heart. We are in the world but if we love the Father, we will not the let the world be in us.   Some of you today need to make the basic choice: Will you love the Father, or will you love the world? Many of you have already made that choice, but you need to maintain it. Do not yield to the temptations of the world, but instead do the will of God…and you will abide forever! Friend, who do you love?