So far we have taken FOUR tests:
I. The Attitude Test
II. The Action Test
III. The Affection Test
IV. The Actuality Test
Today we want to look at this FIFTH test.
V. THE ADULTERY TEST
WHAT KIND OF TEST IS THIS? This is a test that deals with our relationship with the world. That is, as Christians we can have a PROPER or IMPROPER RELATIONSHIP with the world.
Illus: We Christians are like the child that has been placed in the back yard to play. The child can enjoy everything in the back yard, but can not go beyond a certain point or else he would have crossed the line of where he was supposed to stay.
Illus: (Draw an imaginary circle) And explain, “As long as I walk within this circle I am in the will of God. But when I allow the world to seduce me, entice me, lure me out of that circle to the gods of this world, I am committing spiritual adultery.”
Let me show you some things about this ADULTERY TEST. Before you take it you need to consider THREE things. Such as...
A. THE PROOF
Look at verse 15. John said, “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.” John states clearly that we, as Christians, can fall in love with the things which are in this world.
Illus: This something that happened to a co-worker of the apostle Paul. Paul said, 2 Tim. 4:10, “For Demas hath forsaken me, HAVING LOVED THIS PRESENT WORLD...”
We can fall in love with the things of the world. We can allow these things to lure us, entice us, and seduce us from the love of God.
This is why Paul said, Col. 3:2, “Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.”
Also, this is why it is so hard to reach sinners, they are in love. When a person is in love, he is hard to deal with. You can not just walk into his life and say, “Now this love relationship you have with the world is something you need to get out of!” But, this is exactly what the Word of God teaches Christians should do. God has something greater for us to love, HIMSELF! Look at 2 Cor. 6:17. We read, “Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you. However, we all know it is difficult to break a love relationship.
Illus: A pastor was called to a home where a Christian young man was weeping with a broken heart. He was a strong athlete. He excelled in sports. But the pastor was called because he and his girl friend had broken up and his heart was broken. He was contemplating suicide. He felt he did not have a thing to live for.
When we are in love, it breaks our hearts to have to depart from that loved one.
The world can entice us to fall in love with it, thus John gives the warning that we can not love GOD and the WORLD at the same time.
Before we go any farther, we need to qualify what John meant when he said, “LOVE NOT THE WORLD.” He was not saying we were not to enjoy the beauty of this world. Most of us are guilty of not loving the beauty of this world that God created for us to enjoy.
Illus: That is, every day God’s beautiful clouds, trees, oceans, mountains, flowers, water falls, sunsets, and sunrises are there for us to see and enjoy, but we do not even take time to look at them.
The beauty of this marvelous creation of God reveals many wonderful things about Him. Psalm 19:1 tells us, “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handiwork.”
We can look at the handiwork of God and it will reveal many things about this God we KNOW and SERVE. For example, anyone who looks at the handiwork of God can not help but conclude that God loves beauty. We reach this conclusion because He created so many beautiful places, and things for us to enjoy.
John was not teaching that we should not enjoy the beauty of God’s creation when he said, “Love not the world...” He was talking about something entirely different. For example, have you noticed the world’s philosophy is different from the philosophy of Christians?
Illus: That is, when we, God-loving Christians:
• Listen to a television program, like the Larry King show on CNN, it upsets us as we hear those people who are out in left field in sin tell everything they are for. Everything they are for, we are against and everything they are against, we are for! We can not help but observe...THIS IS A STRANGE WORLD IN WHICH WE LIVE!
• Hear about all the rebellion, cursing, and nudity in movies today we can not help but think to ourselves...THIS IS A STRANGE WORLD IN WHICH WE LIVE!
• Hear it reported that the polls show almost 7 out of 10 people claim they do not care if our president (President Bill Clinton) has dishonored the office of the presidency by having his illicit sexual affair in the oval office, at the tax-payers’ expense, and they want him to remain in the highest office of our land, we can not help but think...THIS IS A STRANGE WORLD IN WHICH WE LIVE!
• Hear reports that the majority of women believe it is their constitutional right to murder helpless, unborn children; we can not help but think...”THIS IS A STRANGE WORLD IN WHICH WE LIVE.
• See that there are not enough senators to override partial-birth abortion (The murder of a child by allowing the entire body of a baby to be delivered from the neck down, but while the head is still inside the mother a syringe is driven in the back of the baby’s skull and his brains sucked out); we can not help but think...THIS IS A (MORE THAN) STRANGE WORLD IN WHICH WE LIVE.
• Hear that people have become so perverted that they would rather be intimate with the same sex, instead of opposite sex as God has ordained, we can not help but think...THIS IS A STRANGE WORLD IN WHICH WE LIVE.
• Know this nation is filled with people who not only use six of the days God has given them to take care of jobs, family reunions, recreation, hunting, fishing, and golfing but are so ungrateful they also take God’s day, we can not help but think...THIS IS A STRANGE WORLD IN WHICH WE LIVE.
This is the kind of world system of which God’s Word is speaking when God tells His people, “LOVE NOT THE WORLD.” When we have been born again we feel like fish out of water in this world because this world’s philosophy is different than that of Christ’s.
And, John wrote, “Love not the world...,” and if a person still has a love for the world after he professes to be saved it is because the love OF THE FATHER is not in him. He wrote, “...the love of the Father is not in him.”
Notice, John did not call such a person a liar, but the implication is certainly there. Again, John said of the man who loves the world, “...the love of the father is NOT IN HIM.” THE PROOF that we KNOW and LOVE the Lord is that we always put the Lord first in our lives when we have to choose between the LOVE OF THE WORLD and the LOVE FOR THE LORD.
Also, we have to consider something else...
B. THE PROBLEM
So that everyone will know WHAT THEY ARE NOT TO LOVE, John describes it in more detail in verse 16. We read, “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.”
John lists THREE things OF THE WORLD we are not to love. What are they?
1. “...the lust of the flesh...”
This has to do with feeling, touching, tasting, smelling, hearing, and seeing. The LUST OF THE FLESH is the SEAT of our DESIRES and URGES.
But, we need to clarify something here, of themselves, some DESIRES and URGES are NOT ALWAYS SINFUL.
Illus: Remember, as long as we walk in the circle of God’s will, our desires and urges are not sinful. It is when we allow Satan to entice us, lure us, seduce us, etc., to come out of that circle that we commit spiritual adultery with the gods of this world.
For example, sex within marriage is not wrong, but sex outside of marriage is always wrong. Why? Because God created sex for the intimacy of marriage. When a couple participates in sex before marriage, they have taken a sacred thing and defiled it.
Illus: That is similar to taking these offering plates, vessels that have been set aside for the collecting of God’s tithes and our offerings, and using them to pour slop in to feed the hogs.
When a couple takes something sacred, that God has created for marriage, and misuses it for their own selfish gain, they have sinned against almighty God. God forbids sex before, and outside of, marriage.
Any time God forbids something it is never right to do it.
The lust of the flesh always deals with our DESIRES and URGES. It is a craving for more and more of what this world has to offer. This is a problem we Christians have to deal with daily. Then John speaks of the world that we are not to love in another way.
2. THE LUST OF THE EYES
This has to do with seeing and wanting what one sees that God has forbidden. Now, there is nothing wrong with seeing and wanting some things.
Illus: Again, remember that as long as we walk in the circle of God’s will our desires and urges are not sinful. It is when we allow Satan to entice us, lure us, and seduce us to come out of that circle that we commit spiritual adultery with the gods of this world.
Illus: Most men in church can tell you how it was when they saw their wife for the first time and like Samson, they ran home and told their parents, “I want her!”
We have to make choices based on things we have seen all the time, and there is not anything wrong with that...not a thing!
But something becomes wrong with it when we want something that we see that God forbids us to have.
The Lord gives us an example of this type of the lust of the eyes in Matthew 5:28. We read, “But I say unto you, That whosoever LOOKETH on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.” The Word of God teaches we do not even have to commit the act. We can do it mentally and we have committed sin in God’s sight!
This is the LUST OF THE EYES AND JOHN SAID THAT ONE CAN NOT BE A CHILD OF GOD AND LIVE SUCH A LIFE.
Illus: The reason the love of the Father is not in them is because they are so filled with the love for the things of this earth there is no room in their lives for the things of God.
The lust of the eyes is a terrible thing. Jesus said, Matt. 6:22-24, “The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness! No man 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.” We have to keep our DESIRES and URGES under control, and we have to keep our EYES under control.
Look at these startling words we read in Matt. 5:29, “And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.”
This sounds cruel and painful, but God knows people would be better off to do this than to love those things, and desire that which they should not, and not come to know Him as Lord and Savior.
For those of us who are children of God, as we live in this evil world we have to keep our DESIRES and URGES, and our EYES under control.
There is also something else we have to be concerned about as we live in this evil world.
3. THE PRIDE OF LIFE
The pride of life has to do with two things.
a. SELF-CENTEREDNESS
This is usually the sin of the ungodly person who has focused in on himself and everything that person does is so he will be recognized.
Self-centered people feel that God has placed them here for one purpose and that is so everyone else can focus in on them. HOW PROUD THEY ARE of themselves.
Illus: Self-centered people can not glorify God with their bodies because to do so would be taking the spotlight off of themselves. They use everything they can to get people’s attention. For example,
• They dress to draw attention. Every summer beaches are packed. Let me ask you something: “How many of those people would be there if all the women wore decent dresses and men wore dress slacks?” I’m sure you know the answer. There would not be near as many people there if they could not dress so as to draw attention to themselves.
• They seek fame for the wrong reason. Why? Again, they are so caught up with themselves they want the whole world to focus in on them.
• Many are caught up in material things. Sure they enjoy the luxurious lifestyle, but the main reason they have dedicated their lives to these things is so that people can ride by their gorgeous homes, or see them in their luxurious cars, and say, “Wow! What a man!”
The person full of THE PRIDE OF LIFE is the person whose trust is in his own ability and in earthly stability. But, the pride of life is more than SELF-CENTEREDNESS. It is also...
b. SELF-SUFFICIENCY
This type of person does not feel a need for God. He feels he can operate without God. He is:
• Arrogant.
• Conceited.
• Boastful.
• Feels superior.
He is so proud of himself.
There are all kinds of ways a person can be swollen with pride. There is the pride of position, power, being better or superior, their looks, intelligence, etc., There are all kinds of ways that we can be swollen with pride, but God despises them all.
c. THE PLAN
It has never been the plan of God for man to live his life craving the things of this evil world.
WHY SHOULD WE DO THE WILL OF GOD? The Bible tells us, verse 17, “And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.”
Everything the lost world seeks after will one day vanish. At that time they will realize how foolish they had been to pursue such a foolish life.
Conclusion:
One of the problems that teens have is that most have learned to make immediate decisions without thinking through the consequences. That is, they do not seem to have the ability to see on down the road and where they may be a year, or more, from the time of the decision.
This problem is not an exclusive teen problem. Many adults have the same problem. Many have chosen to love the things of this world, but one day, when they stand before the Lord, will realize the foolishness of having allowed themselves to be enticed into falling in love with the world.
Of course, Christians can also fall into this trap, so must be on guard. Do not let Satan rob you of the joy of your salvation.
I. THE ATTITUDE TEST
II. THE ACTION TEST
III. THE AFFECTION TEST
IV. THE ACTUALITY TEST
V. THE ADULTERY TEST
