Navigating the Tension: Love of God vs. World

The main idea here is very easy to spot, you don't need an advanced degree to see it. What is the big idea in this paragraph? Do not love the world. And the fact that John, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit needed to write this to these congregations, and that we now centuries later God designed for us to read it, suggests that we all have running in us an inclination to do this very thing. [00:10:27]

Listen, no matter where you are in your walk with Jesus, you're in one of these three places because these are not age markers so much as they're maturity markers. You're a child, a newborn Christian just starting out, you're a father, a mother, you've been doing this a long time, you're a young man, a young woman, you're in the thick of the battle. [00:11:50]

The lusts of the flesh. That is the desires, the cravings of our fallen nature. Sexual immortality, impurity, sensuality, revenge, fits of anger, dissension, division. If Christ-likeness is to love your neighbor as yourself then fleshliness is to love yourself so much more than you love your neighbor. You're waking up in the morning thinking what will gratify me, what will make me feel good right now? [00:14:18]

We gratify these desires of the flesh, these lusts from within. John goes onto a second category of things in the world, desires of the flesh, and then he talks about the desires of the eye. So, if the flesh is speaking roughly of the lust from within, these are the lusts from without. The temptations that comes through the eyes: greed, envy, jealously, sexual stimulation. [00:23:14]

Worldliness is whatever makes sin look normal and righteousness look strange. That's what I learned from David Wells, one of my favorite professors at seminary. Worldliness is whatever makes sin look normal and righteousness look strange. Look, I'm not at all an anti-intellectual, I've never been accused of that, I believe in education, I'm working on a degree, I believe in all that, I believe in the importance of understanding the worldviews around us. [00:23:58]

The world says, "If it feels good, do it. If it seems good, take it. If it will make you look good, go after it." Have you ever considered how uncanny it is that these three things in the world John describes match up almost perfectly with the three temptations Christ faced in the wilderness. For 40 days He didn't eat, and the Devil says, "You hungry? Why don't you turn these stones to bread? [00:34:17]

Love for the world and love for the Father are mutually exclusive. You can't say well, I can maybe go halfsies, or I'm a Christian, there's a lot of people who think being a Christian means you give God like 55 percent, world 45 percent, but I still give God 55 percent. No, sort of math exists here. "If you love the world the love of the Father is not in you." [00:36:00]

The answer to worldliness is ultimately not less love, but more love in the right direction. You see, God is not a Buddhist god. In Buddhism, the idea is to sublimate your desires. Desires are bad, cravings are bad, the way to reach some state of bliss is to get rid of your cravings, you shouldn't be having these desires. And some of us, let's be honest, we've sort of adopted this kind of Buddhist mentality, that's not what's in the Bible. [00:47:13]

The Bible is a tale of two loves, and we see it here so clearly in these verses. You have in one corner the love of the world. And it looks good, but it does not deliver, it does not satisfy, it does not last. And then you have in this corner the love of the Father who keeps His Word, keeps you fulfilled, and keeps you going. This is my Father's world. [00:45:36]

The love of the Father is pure, is self-sacrificing, it gives and it expands. It is in every way the opposite of the love of the world. The love of the world is self-serving, it is impure, it takes and it constricts. The more of the world you get, the less of a human you become. The more of God and the Father you get, the more expansive your own soul grows. [00:46:53]

The answer to worldliness is ultimately not less love, but more love in the right direction. You see, God is not a Buddhist god. In Buddhism, the idea is to sublimate your desires. Desires are bad, cravings are bad, the way to reach some state of bliss is to get rid of your cravings, you shouldn't be having these desires. And some of us, let's be honest, we've sort of adopted this kind of Buddhist mentality, that's not what's in the Bible. [00:47:13]

And so you fight desire with desire. Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God. How do you overcome sexual temptation? How do you not watch those things that you're used to watching? It's not enough to just leave here and say, "Man, I feel really bad about myself, I won't do that again." It won't last. But if you believe “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God,” and you believe in your heart that to see God is better than to see all of those other things, then you just have a fighting chance. [00:48:13]