1 John: Futility of Worldliness

Here's a quote that I read this week about this passage.

Theologian F.F.

Bruce said this worldliness does not lie in things we do or in places we frequent.

It lies in the human heart, in the set of human affections and attitudes.

So I did a little online surfing this week.

I found a few advertisements for us to look at to kind of get a feel for worldliness.

Here is a Lexus ad.

It says, be inspired.

You probably can't read the little sentence there.

It says, the car that inspires your creativity is now available at a discount price for designers.

So the first the key part there, they separate, they put on the top sentence, the top line that says, the car that inspires your creativity.

Did you know it?

Some of you may, because maybe you own a Lexus, right?

And you're like you are just creative all the time.

Apparently, this is what happens inside of that particular car.

Here's another quote, maybe more relatable to you.

It says, Change your life with bacon.

You've been wondering, Kara knew that bacon can change your life.

Ron Swanson knows bacon can change your life.

Maybe you didn't know it, but it's true, apparently.

Here's a video ad I found online, and we're gonna take a look at this.

I mean, we're feeling it all the way through it.

You're like, I know the feeling of being robotic.

I know the feeling of like mundane and meaninglessness, and you're watching this, you're like, yeah, okay, I get like I know this feeling, the music's warming you up, and I set you up, so you're waiting for like, oh, is it clothing?

Is it a watch?

Is it a car, right?

The whole time.

There's a little hint where he brushes his fingers across the couch, right?

And then it ends up being IKEA, which is perhaps, you know, you're like, well, I know IKEA, right?

Like I've been there, he bought the bowl that he dropped his keys in, or maybe you just put together a dresser and it took you three weeks, right?

But the ad is brilliant in a way because we're like attaching ourselves to this concept, this idea of being loved, right?

I mean, that's what they're attaching, IKEA's attempting to attach themselves to.

But in the end, it's just IKEA, it's just it's just stuff.

Nothing wrong with IKEA, it's just just passing away.

According to F.F.

Bruce, these ads are worldly because they're attached to just stuff that passes away.

But worldliness primarily resides in the human heart.

This word world can mean different things in the scriptures.

Here it has to do with our heart's affection and attitude and the way it gets pulled into the world or a system of merit or a system of escape in the present life to things that pass away.

But John says, you don't have to live that way.

There's a different way.

Let's reread the text, work our way through it.

1 John 2, 12 through 14.

I'm writing to you little children.

So there's a few different like addresses here.

He's like little children, young men, fathers.

So he has context here.

He's writing to people he knows, okay?

I'm writing to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven for his name's sake.

I'm writing to you fathers because you know him who's from the beginning.

I'm writing to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one.

I'm writing to you, children, because you know the father.

I write to you fathers because you know him who is from the beginning.

I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one.

So, point number one is this in Christ we have perpetual, perfect forgiveness.

That's where John begins this passage and this train of thought in his letter.

I'm writing, little children, because your sins are forgiven.

And that word forgiven is the word afame, which means to let go or sinned away.

So this means all that that weighs you down, that you haven't been able to live up to, or that which you have messed up, and the weight of that guilt, all of that sin has been sinned away.

God doesn't hold it against you, and Christ has already let it go.

He's not the spouse who five months later, after you forgot to pick up your little kid at preschool, and five months later your spouse says, Are you gonna remember to pick up dinner like you like you remembered to pick up little Johnny?

It's not what God does.

He's not holding on to stuff and kind of like putting it in later.

That's not what God does.

It's not even there.

It's not there.

It's gone.

We're the ones who need to grow in our awareness of the wealth, of the forgiveness we already have in Christ.

So John addresses these different groups of people as he addresses these different groups of people.

This word no keeps popping up.

It's there three times in verses 13 through 14.

The word no, as we learned last week, comes from the word gnosko, which means to perceive and understand.

But remember what we learned last week also is this word is also the origination of the Jewish idiom for the word sex.

So this is not like a transactional, religious, moralistic observance, knowing.

This is a loving, relational, and the core of who you are knowing.

And John's saying, you know him.

You know his goodness.

You you know this forgiveness.

He doesn't, he doesn't count any of your sin against you.

He's not angry.

He holds no condemnation, he holds no judgment, he sent it away in Christ.

You know him.

That's that's who you know.

The other day, my friend Kevin, who's a real estate agent, he called me.

It was 8 30 in the morning.

It was an odd time for him to call me.

You know, when you get those odd times a day phone calls, and the first I was like, oh, oh no, that's my feeling.

I don't know if that's your feeling.

He's like, oh no, because I've had enough of those phone calls.

And it's 8 30 in the morning, I'm working at my desk at my house, and so I'm working away.

See his name.

So I answer it because of the odd time.

I answer right away, and he says, Hey, I'm in Midtown Atlanta.

I have a house that's having a is for sale and I'm selling it.

He's a real estate agent, and the final walkthroughs this morning, but there's a storm last night.

Hey, I'm just concerned that like there's stuff all over.

They're about to do a walk through.

I just want to go smoothly.

Can you can you walk down there?

And do you mind taking your backpack blower and can you blow off the yard and the sidewalk and the patios and all of that, right?

This is the emergency.

I felt relieved by it.

Um, and I just said, sure, no problem.

I'm on it.

I said, I'm on it.

When do you need it done by?

He said 10 o'clock.

He said, no problem.

No problem.

Now, what's important to know is that I naturally am not interested in taking a break when I'm working to do manual labor for you.

That is not something I'm naturally interested in.

So don't think I'm a hero here.

It's very important to know.

But I did it, and I didn't even think about it again until I was studying this passage.

Why would we do anything that's against our nature, against our selfishness, because somebody asked us.

You see when the demand changes when you know your love.

And when you know the instruction comes from love.

Everything about it changes.

And so we get the demand in verse 15.

And it's a hammer.

Do not love the world or the things in the world.

How are we doing?

Right?

Like, okay.

If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

Now, this doesn't mean we will never be seduced by the world.

This is instruction out of love, and at the same time, it immediately sends us back into those previous verses about perpetual, perfect forgiveness, that's for sure.

And what this shows us, what this shows us is that we need to be rooted in that perpetual, perfect forgiveness in that love.

We can't root ourselves in the performance even unto this instruction, even though it's good.

And so what John must be saying here is when we give our hearts to the world, we aren't living in the love of God that's already been given to us.

Point number two is this, and it's the demand, it's summarizing in verse 15.

In Christ, we are called to love God, not the world.

In Christ, we are called to love God, not the world.

I lived in Scotland for four months after college.

I lived in a little village on the eastern shore, about 45 minutes north of Edinburgh.

It was wintertime, it was dark, it was cold.

I lived there, I slept there, I worked there in a little church, I made friends there, I bought a lot of scarves there, you buy a lot of scarves in Scotland, I had a lot of scarves, I had, I bought some overpriced leather shoes while I was in Scotland.

I looked the part, I could blend in, I learned the money and I learned the trains that could get around without having to ask people questions.

But if I if I ever spoke up, if I ever spoke, it was very clear that I was not from there.

I was not a citizen of the UK, no matter how much I looked like one.

I was a citizen of the US, particularly the South, if you haven't picked up on it.

Even while living in another country.

So we live here.

We live in this world, this earth.

We live here in a passing world.

It's all gonna pass.

All this that we get so upset about and worked up about.

But our hearts get to live in a kingdom that never passes away.

So John gives us the promise of the perpetual perfect forgiveness.

He gives us that instruction, and now he gives us a reason for the instruction.

So if you're a logical person, you like this part, this part.

Verses 16 through 17.

For all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh, and the desires of the eyes, and the pride of life is not from the Father, but is from the world.

So he sort of fleshes that out.

He sort of breaks it apart.

We're gonna look at that in a second.

And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.

So John just says, hey, logically, it's all passing away.

Do you not get it?

Do you not get that you're gonna die?

Have you forgotten?

And maybe it's coming up in five years, or maybe it's 50 years, but we're all gonna be gone in a few decades.

And that's just a good thing to remember.

It's actually quite helpful.

Point number three is this all of our worldly wants and prideful boasts will pass away.

So John breaks down the world into three parts, three ways of the world that he breaks it down.

He says the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, and the pride of life.

Number one is the desires of the flesh.

Paul helps break this out even further.

He gives us like a just a list of what this is in Galatians 5, 19 through 21.

Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these.

I warn you, as I've warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Now, again, if it's our entire heart's attitude and affection, maybe we don't know the love of the Father.

But if you know the love of the Father and you're seduced by this, doesn't mean that you're not in the kingdom.

All of a sudden you're like booted out of the family.

What it means is that you are not experienced or connected into the love of the Father that's already been given to you in Jesus.

You've been taken hold of by the desires of the flesh.

It's passing away.

All that's gonna pass away.

Desires of the eyes, this is how we lust for things, the next thing, the shiny thing.

The next person.

And this is why we're often so restless, isn't it?

I mean, if you're anything like me, it's just why I'm just so restless most of the time, because I'm just always looking for the next thing.

And of course it doesn't work, because it is the desires of the eyes.

And lastly, the pride of life.

So just when we start to get really arrogant in our faith and spirituality and who we are, you know, just when you start to think, well, I'm not that, and I'm not that, and I'm doing pretty good on that.

You know, John drops this, the pride of life, which is saying the very arrogance that you might be superior, or that your status and spirituality or in life might be better than anybody else's, that's the world.

That is also the world.

So he nails you.

He nails you whether you're an irreligion or whether you're in religion.

He just nails you.

C.S.

Lewis says this in The Weight of Glory.

It was seen that our Lord finds our desires not too strong but too weak.

We are half-hearted creatures, fooling around about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum, because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at sea.

We are far too easily pleased.

I went out in my yard this morning, I cut a few flowers.

That's what these flowers are right here.

This is a petite lime hydrangea.

I love the petite lime hydrangea because it loves the sun and it doesn't require a lot of water, and so you just get to enjoy it and not have to baby it.

I love that.

And they produce these beautiful blooms all the way through the summer.

Here's the deal: as beautiful as they are, they'll pass away.

The whole plant passes away eventually.

And definitely, if you cut it off, it passes away.

A bloom, no matter how beautiful it is, it eventually passes away.

So, this is like all the good things in the world that we love so much, or we try to use them to justify our identity, to feel loved, righteous, justified, forgiven, absolved.

How we use escape?

How we use anything good, even that will fade away.

And then there's some poisonous flowers that are around.

I don't have any in my yard, hopefully.

Uh there's this one flower that I learned about online this week, the Nuium oleander.

It's one of the most toxic, here's a picture of it, one of the most toxic plants in the world.

You wouldn't know it by looking at it.

You're like, what a lovely flower, right?

What a lovely flower.

I'll plant some of those by the mailbox.

That would be wonderful.

And you wouldn't know it by planting it or tasting it or burning it.

You wouldn't know it until you get sick or until you die.

You would never know.

The world is a poisonous passing flower.

Man, doesn't it look attractive most of the time?

We don't even realize it until we're sick, we're restless, or we're filled with anxiety or fear or guilt or shame.

It just holds no lasting love for you.

Or for me.

And here's the crucial point last thing.

As it fits into our call as Christians to go into the world.

We are sent into the world to be people who reveal the kingdom and to redeem evil, but not give our hearts to the worldly values that pass away.

And when we do, because we will, we have a perpetual, perfect forgiveness.

Do not love the world.

It's the instruction out of love.

But you also need to know you're already loved.

You are perpetually, perfectly forgiven.

My brothers and sisters, grace on all of us as we find greater and greater satisfaction in Christ's great work for us.

Your perpetual, perfect forgiveness of all sin and all change.

Amen.

Let's pray together.

God, thank you for your goodness that you love us before.

So we do not have to perform unto an instruction.

But we get to root ourselves into the love you already have for us.

May our hearts be changed by that love.

As to have desire to honor you.

And in our all of our failure, may we always rest back in your love and forgiveness for us.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.