The Love God Hates
1 John 2:12-17
Just before I preached one Friday morning a seven year old boy asked me a question when he saw the caption in our bulletin, " Does God hate love Pastor? What does this mean?" I just told him to listen to my sermon so that his question will be answered.
Actually, I kept on changing the title of my sermon during the week until I saw the sermon outline of David Owens that captivated my attention. I told myself that if it captivated me it will captivate others also and praise God I was right on my judgment. Everyone was listening to my sermon. Again, this sermon had been developed with helped of the Holy Spirit who inspired me during the week.
Introduction:
A group of first graders who had a tour in the hospital and the nurse who directed them.
A group of grade 1 pupils had a tour in the hospital . One of them asked question
“ How come the people who work here always washing their hands?” After the laughter had subsided:
A wise answer came. “We are washing our hands for 2 reasons.
We love health.
We hate germs.
In some areas of life, love and hate go hand in hand. A husband who love his wife will certainly hate anything that would harm her.
Psalm 97:10 (NIV)
10 Let those who love the Lord hate evil, for he guards the lives of his faithful ones and delivers them from the hand of the wicked.
Romans 12: (NIV)
Love in Action
9 Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil;
cling to what is good.
John has reminded us to exercise love.
The right kind of love.
Now he warns us the wrong kind of love.
The “ Love that God hates.”
This love is what the Bible called love for the World.
"Anything that cools my love for Christ is the world."
-John Wesley
1 John 2:15
Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them.
There are 4 reasons why Christian should not love “the world.”
1 John 5:19 (NLT)
19 We know that we are children of God and that the world around us is under the control of the evil one.
l. BECAUSE OF WHAT THE WORLD IS
The New Testament word world has at least 3 different meanings:
a). It sometimes means the Physical world. The Earth: God that made the world and all the things therein ( Acts 17:24)
John begins this passage with a clear command: “Do not love the world or anything in the world.” Why can’t we love the world? The Bible tells us in John 3:16 that God loved the world, so why can’t we? In order to answer that question one must understand that the word “world” is used with several different meanings in scripture. The word “world” is used in the Bible to refer to the created world, lost people, and the world system under the evil influence of Satan. In John 3:16 “world” is used in the sense of lost people. However, in our text it is used in the latter sense. In 5:19 John writes: “We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one.” This is the world that John commands us not to fall in love with.
Warning:
Love not the world is not about the world of Nature or the world of the men. Christian should appreciate the beauty and usefulness of the Earth God has made, since He gave us richly all things to enjoy. ( 1Tim.6:17)
And certainly we ought to love people- not only friends, but even their enemies.
This world named here as our enemy is an invisible spiritual system opposed to God and Christ.
We use the world in the sense of system in our conversation. The TV announcer says: World of sport. The world of sport is not a different planet. It is the organized system, made up of the set of ideas, people, activities, purposes, etc.
World of politics are likewise system of their own. It is the system that keep things moving.
The world in the Bible, Satan’s system for opposing the work of Christ on earth. And it is very opposite of what is Godly, holy and spiritual. 1 John 2:16
1 John 5:19 (NLT)
19 We know that we are children of God and that the world around us is under the control of the evil one.
Jesus called Satan the Prince of this world
John 12:31.
The Devil has the evil spirits ( Eph 6:11-12) working with him and influencing the affairs of this world.
Just as the Holy Spirit uses people to accomplish His will on Earth, so Satan uses people to fulfill his evil purposes. Unsaved people whether they know it or not, are energized by him Eph.2:1-2
Unsaved people belong to this world.
As christians, we lived in this physical world but we do not belong to this spiritual world.
That is Satan system for opposing God.
John 15:18 "If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first.
Philippians 3:20 (NIV)
20 But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ,
Note:
The scuba divers . The water is not man’s natural habitat, for he not equipped for life under water. He has to take special equipment with him so that he can breathe.
If not for the Holy Spirit’s living within us, and the spiritual resources we have in prayer, Christian fellowship, and the Word, we could never make it here on earth.
We complain about earth pollution- the atmosphere of the World is so polluted spiritually. We can not breathe normally.
ll. BECAUSE OF WHAT THE WORLD DOES TO US
ILL.- Billy Graham is quoted as saying: "Our interests are in ourselves. We are preoccupied with material things. Our supreme god is technology. Our goddess is sex. Most of us are more interested in getting to the moon than getting to heaven. We are more dedicated to material security than to inward purity. We give much more thought to what we wear, what we eat, what we drink, and what we can do than what we are...."
He was right. We all have our worldly side or worldly desires that often capture our attention more than God or Christ.
II Timothy 4:10 "Demas, because he loved this world, has deserted me and has gone to Thessalonica."
If Demas fell in love with his world then we can do it too. In fact, I think it’s a whole lot easier today to fall in love with the things of this world than it was for Demas. WE HAVE SO MUCH MORE TO FALL IN LOVE WITH!
15Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
God said clearly, "Don’t love the world. If you do, my love is not in you." Wow! When and where do we cross the fence from loving God to loving the world? God knows and we all need to find out.
PROP.- What is so bad about the world that we are told not to love it? Why is the world so evil?
1- The lust of the flesh
2- The lust of the eyes
3- The pride of life
I. THE LUST OF THE FLESH
16For 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.
This worldly temptation deals with the fleshly appetites: food, sex, excess in various ways, etc.
ILL.- Jackson Brown Jr. (American author best-known for his Book which was a New York Times bestseller) said: I’ve learned that if you give a pig and a boy everything they want, you’ll get a good pig and a bad boy.
If we got everything we wanted in this world, we’d be in trouble.
Matthew 5:27-28 "You have heard that it was said, ’Do not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart."
The lust of the flesh deals with others things too.
ILL.- Porte Vencer
He justified the 1st and the 2nd look at a woman. It has been said you can not avoid the first look but you can avoid the second look. But Porte said, " there is nothing wrong with the first look you can not avoid it. And he justified second look by saying, " maybe I know her, but be careful of the third look, there is something wrong when you stare at her lustfully."
WE DO LOVE OUR FOOD! We all love some kind of food. In fact, sometimes we love it too much!
Do you eat to live or live to eat? Many people live to eat food and many times a day. And living to eat could well be a part of the lust of flesh, especially, if it controls us.
ILL.- Did you read about that 600 lb. woman who wants to weight 1,000 lbs.? Donna Simpson, 42, of Old Bridge, N.J., already tips the scales at 600 pounds but says she won’t be satisfied until she’s up to 1,000 - to grab the title of world’s fattest woman. She eats 12,000 calories a day!
I Peter 5:5-6 "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble." Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time."
All of us can fall into the sin of pride, desire for fame, desire for praise and accolades.
Philippians 3:18-19 “For, as I have often told you before and now say again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things."
I don’t think we want to be categorized with the enemies of the cross! However, we can become something of an enemy to the Lord if we allow the lust of the flesh to control us!
It is important to note that no Christian becomes worldly all of a sudden. Worldliness creeps up a believer ; it is a gradual process.
1). First the friendship of the world.
James 4:4 (NIV)
4 You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.
2). Spotted by the world
James 1:27 (NIV)
27 Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
When the Christian is spotted by the world, the world is no longer the enemy of Christian but a friend.
As a result the Christian became conformed to the world. Rom. 12 :2
And being conformed to the world can lead a Christian into being condemned with the world. 1 Cor 11: 32. If he confess God will forgive, if not he will be chastened.
Downward steps and their consequences are illustrated in the life of Lot.
1). He looked toward Sodom.
2). Then he fetch his tent near Sodom.
3). He moved into Sodom.
2 Peter 2:6-8 He suffered with sinners of that wicked city. When God destroyed the city, everything Lot lived for went up into the smoke.
He was saved so as by fire and lost his eternal rewards.
lll. BECAUSE OF WHAT A CHRISTIAN IS
Why keep from being worldly?
Because we are all the children of God.
We were born into the family of God and our sins had been forgiven.
James 4:4 (NIV)
4 You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.
Sometimes we use the terminology, “a worldly Christian.” But that’s really a misnomer when you think about it. Billy Sunday, used to make fun of the term “worldly Christian.” He said, “Why to talk about a worldly Christian makes about as much sense as talking about a heavenly Devil.” When you see a person who claims to know Jesus as their Savior, and yet their lifestyle resembles the world more than it resembles the lifestyle of a believer, then you have a reason to question whether of not that person has really had an experience with the Lord Jesus Christ.
1 John 2 shows that John addresses Christians at whatever level of their sanctification. Hence, he addresses children, young men and father. As Matthew Henry explains:
All Christians are not of the same standing and stature; there are babes in Christ, there are grown men, and old disciples. As these have their peculiar states, so they have their peculiar duties; but there are precepts and a correspondent obedience common to them all, as particularly mutual love and contempt of the world.
This is not necessarily as obvious as it seems. In ‘The Stages of Spiritual Growth’, John MacArthur explains that an unlearned layperson can be further along the road to sanctification than a clergyman with multiple degrees, a younger person might be more advanced than an elderly person and so forth. I would also venture that it is gender neutral, in that many women are further along the path than men. So, sanctification has little to do with age, education, social status or sex.
As Christian stay away from the World because that is a Satanic System that hates the Lord.
lV. BECAUSE OF WHERE THE WORLD IS GOING
“And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever.”
The 4th reason for not loving the world is that it is in the process of passing away:
1. We cannot love God and the world simultaneously (2:15)
2. The system of values in the world are contrary to God’s values (2:16)
3. The world’s values are transitory (2:17)
And the world is passing away,
The Greek conveys the idea that the world as in the process of passing away. It has not passed away yet but it is on the way. The world is a temporary system. There are more lasting values that that of the world.
God has designed the world’s system to end. It is already in the process of disintegration by accomplishing its own dissolution. All the lust generated and incited likewise will eventually gut true values. The glittering treasures of yesterday will curve into faded antiquities and oddities of a future day.
This world is fundamentally transient in character. All the evils that characterize this world will one day be gone. Trust in the things of this world will ultimately let us down for it is in the process of perishing.
Some say, “There will always be an England.” Others say, “The United States will always be here.” It will come as a shock to some that the world and its system of values will pass away. The United States will not be the dominant power in the world forever. It will not exist forever.
We deceive ourselves with the so-called permanence of things. There is no stability in a bank account. We need to ascertain the irrelevance of temporal, passing things and the permanent relevance of eternal things.
Mt 24: 35 “Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will by no means pass away.”
Conclusion:
As Christian we must decide, will I live for present only? Or will I live for God. We must bear in
mind that as Christians we ought to love above all else by loving what He loves and hating what He hates.
1 John 2:15
Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them.
Again, I don’t claim originality on this sermon. I just milked all the cows and churned my own butter.
