“Worldliness and God’s Will”
1 John 2:15-17
1 John 2:15 Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
16 For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.
17 And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.
I. The Worldliness in Focus
a. It’s Definition
Definition of Worldliness: Worldliness is the lust of the flesh (a passion for sensual satisfaction), the lust of the eyes (an inordinate desire for the finer things of life), and the pride of life (self-satisfaction in who we are, what we have, and what we have done). Worldliness, then, is a preoccupation with ease and affluence. It elevates creature comfort to the point of idolatry; large salaries and comfortable life-styles become necessities of life.
Worldliness is not just about reading certain magazines of people who live hedonistic lives and spend too much money on themselves and but secretly wanting to be like them. But more importantly, worldliness is simply pride and selfishness in disguise. It’s being resentful when someone snubs us or patronizes us or shows off. It means smarting under every slight, challenging every word spoken against us, cringing when another is preferred before us. Worldliness is harboring grudges, nursing grievance, and wallowing in self-pity. These are the some of the ways in which we evidence a love for the world.
Too many people think that worldliness is something limited to external behavior. Worldliness is a wrong attitude of the heart that indicates a lack of a totally consuming love for the Lord God.
It is important to remember that the Lord hates sin and worldliness is sin! God’s wrath is directed toward all forms of the sins of worldliness. Those who fail to commit themselves to the Lord Jesus will not only miss God’s blessings but experience God’s displeasure. There are many ways that worldliness dilutes, distracts and distorts our thinking.
b. It’s Disclosure
Worldliness reveals that we do not love God as we ought. This is what John says in verse 15. If we love the world, “…the love of the Father is not in him.” As a matter of fact, it is impossible to do both at the same time. You cannot love the world and God.
Luke 16:13 No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.
c. It’s Distraction
Worldliness keeps us from our duty. It is a distraction that often has serious consequences.
Ill: That evening, the assassin John Wilkes Booth stopped in a saloon near the Ford Theatre and used alcohol to nerve himself for what was to be his date with history. One drink, two drinks, three drinks and on…
Later that night Lincoln’s bodyguard John F. Parker was distracted while the president and party were comfortably enjoying the performance of “Our American Cousin” in the Ford Theatre. Charles Forbes (Lincoln’s footman) and Francis P. Burke (Lincoln’s coachman) left the Ford theatre with Parker for a drink at presumably the same saloon as John Wilkes Booth had just left. While Parker was distracted in the saloon the door to the presidential box was left unguarded. John Wilkes Booth went on the attack and slipped into the presidential box during the performance and shot Lincoln.
Those two saloon visits just could be the most costly drinks in American history!
It’s just like the enemy to distract us from our duties and then take advantage of the situation.
d. It’s Debilitation
When God speaks we have the option of doing one of two things. We can hear and heed his voice or we can reject his voice and rebel against His will. There are consequences for both decisions!
ILL - WHAT DOES GOD'S VOICE SOUND LIKE?
Erwin McManus, a pastor in Los Angeles, tells a great story about recognizing God's voice.
My son, Aaron, was five or six when he began asking me, "What does God's voice sound like?" I didn't know how to answer.
A few years later, Aaron went off to his first junior high camp. In the middle of the week, I went up with another pastor at Mosaic to see our kids. Aaron, I learned, had started to assault another kid but had been held back by his friends. He was unrepentant, wanted to leave camp, pulled together his stuff, and shoved it into the car.
I asked him for a last talk with me before we drove away. We sat on two large rocks in the middle of the woods. "Aaron," I asked, "is there any voice inside you telling you what you should do?"
"Yes," he nodded.
"What's the voice telling you?"
"That I should stay and work it out."
"Can you identify that voice?"
"Yes," he said immediately. "It's God." It was the moment I'd waited for.
"Aaron," I said, "do you realize what just happened? You heard God's voice. He spoke to you from within your soul. Forget everything else that's happened. God spoke to you, and you were able to recognize Him."
I will never forget Aaron's response: "Well, I'm still not doing what God said."
I explained to him that that was his choice, but this is what would happen. If he rejected the voice of God coming from deep within and chose to disobey His guidance, his heart would become hardened, and his ears would become dull. If he continued on this path, there would be a day when he would never again hear the voice of God. There would come a day when he would deny that God even speaks or has ever spoken to him.
But if he treasures God's voice, however it comeS to him—-through the scriptures, through his conscience-—and responds to Him with obedience, then his heart would be softened, and his ears would always be able to hear the whisper of God into his soul.
Aaron chose to stay, I'm grateful to say. If he had chosen differently, he would have begun the path toward nominal discipleship. Perhaps he never would have rejected the faith overtly. He might have even chosen to be a faithful attendee at a church and been by everyone else's estimation a good man, but he would no longer be a close Jesus-follower.
II. The Will of the Father
a. Find it!
Sometimes it is easy to find the will of God. There are clear cut expressions of His will in Scripture. For instance there is a concise statement of what God wants in;
1 Thessalonians 4:3 For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye should abstain from fornication:
4 That every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour;
At other times we must pray for His will to be revealed. Even Jesus sought to know the will of His Father. Paul prayed three times about a “thorn” and found the answer to the question of what was God’s will for his life.
b. Follow it!
Nehemiah is one of my favorite Bible characters and as you read the first chapter of the book that bears his name you will find his prayer to God for direction and then you will find a single minded determination and dedication to following God’s will for his life in spite of the hurdles and hindrances he faced.
Let me tell about a true story concern four teenage young men who made a decision to serve the Lord at church camp. This is especially important for you dads and moms. These four young men attended church camp together and made a decision to surrender to the ministry. Three of those young men followed thru on their commitment and are still serving God today but it is not their story that I want to focus on. What of the fourth boy? He did not have the support of his parents and went to a secular college on an athletic scholarship to play tennis. As far as I know he has never followed his calling and is not even in church today.
c. Finish it!
ILL - Consider Charles Colson, the aide to Richard Nixon who was sent to jail for Watergate. As as a result of his experience as a convicted felon, Colson founded Prison Fellowship, now the world’s largest Christian outreach to prisoners and their families. Prison Fellowship has more than 50,000 volunteers working in hundreds of prisons in 88 countries around the world. A ministry that has blessed millions of people got started twenty-five years ago because Charles Colson committed a crime. God’s eternal purposes for that man included even the sin that sent him to prison. It was a part of God’s plan from the very beginning.
But the story that matters most to you isn’t Peter’s, or Paul’s, or even Charles Colson’s. It’s yours. And what I want to say to you this morning is that the story of your life has not been ruined, not by your sin or anyone else’s. God’s good plan for your life is not buried under the mistakes of the past. God has a plan for your life, a good plan, a wise plan, a loving plan, a sovereign plan, and that plan is still in effect. You haven’t missed it. He is working out that plan in your life right now, today. Will you believe that? And will you renew your commitment this evening to seeking God, and following Him, and serving Him with your whole heart?
SOURCE: Alan Perkins in "Getting Past Your Past."http://www.sermoncentral.com/sermon.asp?SermonID=34927&ContributorID=5916
