“A Dangerous Love” Pt 3
(Fatal Attraction)
1 John 2:15-17
Notes supplementary to March 25th Message
Stop loving the World and the things in it
The object of this instruction has to do with “the world and the things in the world”. The term “world” describes a number of different spheres of reality. The base meaning relates to order, adornment, and beauty. We use the world to refer to the environment in which we function.
It can be used narrowly or broadly.
The world of Chico, the educational world, the sports world etc.
The American world, European world, or the whole world or even the universe.
It includes physical environment, systems, ideas, experiences, activities, philosophies, laws, and people. God instructs all believers to stop loving the world and its things. What world are we to stop loving? God made the material world though it has been seriously marred by the introduction of sin. God made the spirit world though at least a third of the angelic beings chose to rebel against His authority. God made world of mankind though they have exchanged the glory of God for the creature. God did not design or endorse the world of ideas, products, systems, activity, experiences designed to exclude and even oppose God as Creator and ultimate object of our devotion. Satan promotes a world designed to divert attention from the Creator.
Satan’s world actively opposes God and His design. Satan tries to pollute or distort anything that reflects God’s nature.
It is this world that God warns us to stop preferring over His ways and purposes. Stop preferring the devil-directed way of life and its stuff designed to keep us from being fully devoted to God.
a) The logic
1 – Satan’s world is incompatible with God’s nature and desires, so you can’t love it and God at the same time.
You cannot devote yourself to something that directly opposes God and promotes life divorced from God and love God at the same time. You cannot be friends with a world hostile to God and be devoted to God at the same time. You cannot engage in activities or entertain thoughts designed to keep God out of your life or distract you from intimate relationship with God and expect your love for God to deepen. Devotion to Satan’s world and its stuff and devotion to God’s world cannot coexist. If love for Satan’s world is “in you”, love for God is not.
You cannot expect that your relationship with your spouse will develop when you spend your time with and are devoted to someone else. We call that adultery. James called it like he saw it. James 4:1-10
God has feelings. God deserves and demands absolute fidelity.
2 – The world and everything in it is not from God but from Satan
Satan designed, directs and energizes a world, environment, culture that encourages pursuit of these desires without limits and most importantly WITHOUT GOD!
Satan and his world promotes…
Pleasure without self-control, suffering or divine direction
Possessions without sacrifice or divine purpose
Prominence without service or divine proclamation
The driving force in Satan’s world is selfish ambition and bitter jealousy when we don’t get it.
God designed us with a capacity and desire for pleasure, possessions, prominence.
They were designed to be the result of our devotion and pursuit of Him not a replacement for our lack of relationship with Him.
Our ultimate pleasure comes in the course of pleasing God rather than self.
Our ultimate enjoyment having something is to give to others than to acquire for self.
Our ultimate prominence comes from serving rather than being served.
The longings instilled by God and stirred by His spirit are ultimately realized through our devotion to Him.
Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all the other things will be added.
John identified the pursuits that are not of God or from God but a selfish bent still lurking in the soul and body that continually wars against our new heart and longings.
Desire of the flesh (Desire for Pleasure)
Satan urges us to fulfill natural desires with godless means.
Self serving pleasure
Self focused possessions.
Self ambitious prominence
When I pursue pleasure apart from God and His ways and His purpose, I come up empty and my capacity to experience pleasure actually decreases. We live in a pleasure obsessed world; food, sex, drugs, sensations or all kinds. Pay attention to the base appeal of commercials today.
Feel something.
Acquire or experience something.
Be something.
Paul wrote about sanctification and abstinence from sexual immorality and the command to posses our own bodies in honor not in lustful passion as those who don’t acknowledge God.
(1 Thess 4)Soon the thing that dictates my life choices are how I perceive it will make me feel.
Pursue the pleasurable; prevent the painful. When I pursue devotion to God first, I discover pleasures from His right hand and even an increase in my capacity to experience pleasure.
Desire of the eyes (Desire for possessions or things or experiences)
The world appeals second to a selfish drive to possessions or visual stimulation in order to fill emptiness that only God can fill. It is a replacement for not a result of my relationship with God. We live in a visually over stimulated culture just as sure as it is overly sexually and sensually stimulated. Without constant visual stimulation, people become agitated and bored.
Proverbs 27:20 1 Timothy 6:6-11
Jesus talked about the pursuit of things.
Then He said to them, "Beware, and be on your guard against every form of greed; for not even when one has an abundance does his life consist of his possessions." Luke 12:15
Only when we surrender all to God…Only when we are committed to let God control everything we have…Only when God is IN it, will the natural desire to enjoy “things” find true fulfillment.
As for me, I shall behold Your face in righteousness; I will be satisfied with Your likeness when I awake. Ps 17:15
Until then, we forever run in pursue and protect mode. We use people to pursue stuff, and abuse people in order to protect our stuff. Failure to acquire stuff or the blockage of my desperate pursuit to fill the void left by the absence of God in the center of my life leaves me again; agitated, angry, frustrated, jealous, bitter, hopeless.
God is not opposed to owning something or the material world but only when He is in it and over it, does it bring ultimate fulfillment.
Pride of Life (Desire for prominence)
Satan encourages the flesh’s desire to be something apart from God. He appeals to the desire for prominence or prestige. He made us to rule over the earth, to administrate, organize, and create.
He gifts us with abilities and capacities as a reflection of His own nature. Everything in the devil’s world system tries to convince people that real satisfaction in life comes from success, power, achievement, self-centered pursuit, adoration, affirmation of others in place of God’s approval and direction. John used the word “vainglory” to boast about personal stuff that really has to eternal value. God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble.
A man's pride will bring him low, but a humble spirit will obtain honor. Proverbs 29:23
As we mentioned before, Satan appealed to these things from the beginning. He urged Eve to be something apart from her relationship with God. (Become wise). He tried to get Jesus to become noticed by jumping down from the temple.
Solomon journaled his feverish yet empty pursuit of all of these things in Ecclesiastes.
He pursued mental, physical, social, visual stimulation to its extreme. (He could afford it!)
He bragged about his exploits, his architecture, his wealth, and his various experimentations.
Ecclesiastes 1:8 . Ecclesiastes 6:712:8 Ecc 12:13-14
God’s ways are the opposite of the world. These desires are contrary to God’s design. We should not love the world because it contradicts God and its desires do not come from God but are stirred up in our sinful flesh by Satan. God promises the fulfillment of these desires through our pursuit of Him.
In His right hand are pleasures evermore.
In Him we have been granted and inheritance imperishable and undefiled reserved in heaven.
In Him we realize our ultimate prominence.
When we pursue these desires rather than Him, they become our god; our object of devotion.
They are desires to be realized through relationship with Him not to be pursued in the absence of relationship with Him.
How do I relate to the world the world of pleasure, possessions and prominence?
1. Is God my primary pursuit? (Prefer the world and its stuff over God?)
2. Are these things a replacement for God’s presence or a result of God’s presence?
3. Is God in it (can we enjoy it together) or agin’ it (does it violate His command or character)?
4. Does this further the Kingdom of God?
3 – The world of Satan and its stuff is temporary
John used the passive voice meaning the world is being made to pass away; by God.
The world passes away, and the lust of it…The verb has durative aspect, referring to a continuing process that will be, but is not yet, completed. It may also be rendered, ‘is ending,’ ‘is coming to its end,’ ‘is on its way to perish,’ ‘will not exist much longer,’ is fading/disappearing.’
Any fulfillment of these desires apart from intimate connection to God is only temporary at best by divine declaration. Any satisfaction we may feel cannot last. Everything is passing away.
All the vanity of this evil world with its devices is passing away. It has already begun to putrefy. It is a corpse, not yet buried. The world and the desires for what it has to offer eventually passes away. Sexual appetites, appetites for food, pursuit of possessions, travel, experiences, eventually, its temporary rush is destined to diminish and fade.
Life pursued without God becomes obsessive because there is no true satisfaction.
Whoever marries the spirit of this age will find himself a widower in the next. W.R. Inge3
Love not the world, for it is a moth in a Christian’s life. John Bunyan 3
Once our first love for Christ; our simple devotion to Christ wanes, the glitter and flash and promise of this world grabs us. The desires of the soul are powerful. God made them a powerful drive. Either we will seek satisfaction through the Spirit or through the flesh.
2 Timothy 4:9-10 Proverbs 14:12
Jesus rebuked church at Ephesus because the deserted their first devotion; their first love. He warned that the privilege of being his effective witness in a dark would be revoked unless they repented and returned to the deeds associated with a “first love”. The fulfillment of our desire for pleasure, possession and prominence must be the result of pursuing God first not a replace for His presence in our life. The pursuit of fulfillment first, will become the rival to our pursuit of God. “Only one life will soon be past, only what’s done for Christ will last.”
4 -- The one following God’s will, discovers lasting life experiences.
Isaiah 55:1-2
In contrast to the one loving the world, the one doing (not just loving) the will of God (thus God Himself) will find a lasting, satisfying experience.
Psalms 63:1-5
A.W. Tozer said: “A whole new generation of Christians has come up believing that it is possible to ‘accept’ Christ without forsaking the world.”
Satan designed this world system to pursue pleasure apart from God and in place of God.
When I seek pleasure in order to fill the emptiness left by my failure to seek God first, it comes up empty and amounts to spiritual adultery. The flesh is never satisfied.
When I seek possessions in order to distract me from the emptiness left by my failure to seek God first, it increases my emptiness and amounts to spiritual adultery.
Someone always has more.
When I pursue prominence to fill some need for recognition due to my failure to understand my worth in Christ and failure to pursue Him first, I become frustrated, angry, unfulfilled.
There is always someone more prominent.
Jesus calls us to hear what he has to say to the churches Revelation 3:14-22
