Delighting in God’s Will

I John 2:15-17 “Delighting in God’s Will”

Our text today says: do not love the world. Christians are commanded to avoid what is often called worldliness. But what is worldliness? It is common, when we hear “do not love the world” to think of a list of things we must not do and a list of things we CAN do. If we avoid things on the “do not” list, we are not worldly. And each person has their list. Whoever has the longest “do not” list must be the best Christian, right?

Fifty years ago, some Christians wouldn’t have been caught dead in a movie theater. Today, some Christians would be embarrassed to admit to their friends that they actually have standards of what they will and will not watch on the big screen.

Certainly, there are things we are commanded to do and not to do in the Bible, and we should obey those commands. This is an expression of our love for God. John has just explained that in the beginning of chapter 2. But John goes beyond lists of what we should and should not do, and gets to the heart of worldliness. As we look at these 3 verses today, my purpose is two-fold:

1. To expose the dangers of loving the world
2. To set forth the delight of doing God’s will

I want you to walk away from this text terrified of loving the world, and delighted to do God’s will forever.

1. Do not love the world
If we are not to love the world, we should first find out what is meant by “the world.” In the Bible, the world can be the physical planet that we live on. It can also mean the people of the world, like John 3:16- “For God so loved the world…” But here, the world refers to the evil world system ruled by Satan. I John 5:19 says- “We know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one.” One definition of “the world” goes like this: “The world is the values and attitudes of the world that are opposed to God.” The world in our passage is opposed to God. God is light; the world is darkness. It makes sense for John to say that we shouldn’t love things opposed to God.

It is easy to say “do not love the world” But what does the love of the world look like? Verse 16 defines it for us.
-The lust/desire of the flesh
-The lust/desire of the eyes
-The pride of life/possessions

The word for lust or desire means “over-desire.” It is inordinate, sinful desire. It is fine to desire to eat a doughnut, but eating two dozen doughnuts is over-desire. It is gluttony. The desires of the flesh are general human desires- desires that are sinful and opposed to God. This general desire is defined by the next two.

The desire of the eyes is wanting what you do not have and should not have. The Bible calls this coveting. The pride of life or pride of possessions is the idea of boasting in the things you do have. To boil it down: loving the world is wanting what you do not and should not have and once you have it, worshipping it and bragging about it.

To get specific:

-You spend most of your waking moments thinking of what you are going to eat, eating it, and talking about what you ate. You love food, not the Father.

-You can’t wait to get home from work so you get to watch T.V. or surf the internet. You’d rather indulge in the mind-numbing relief that technology brings then serve God and others.

-All you think about is sex…you can’t stop looking at pornography. You use your time and resources to worship the god of sex instead of worshipping the God of the universe.

-Your main goal in life is to succeed in your career and make money at your job. Everything comes second in relation to this goal. You boast about your accomplishments and promotions.

-You plan, save, and dream about retirement, so you can spend all day doing whatever YOU want to do.

If you love the things of this world, you do not have the love of the Father in you. In other words, you do not love God.

It is not at all worth it to love things in this world. It is passing away. Today, we think that humanity is progressing in this world. We’re going to end war, cure cancer, and colonize Mars. We think we are going somewhere. Not so. Even though some technology may be progressing, this world has an expiration date. It’s like that bag of lettuce in your fridge. There are a few short days between a side salad and a bag a brown mush. When compared with eternity, we are on this earth only a few seconds, and the earth will only be a here a few short days.

What is the Christian response to all this? Clearly, we need to sell all our stuff, move to a high mountain, read our Bibles, and eat army rations. There was a group of people early on in church history who did things like this. They were called the ascetics. They would remain single and deprive themselves of any physical pleasure imaginable.

The problem with that is you take your sinful desires with you wherever you go. God does not call us to toss out this world. He tells us not to love it, not to follow its values, not to model its attitudes. The problem is not the world, but our hearts. We can leave physical possessions behind, but we still have sin in our hearts. We can throw out our technology, but we cannot rid of ourselves of our sinful desires. They follow us around wherever we go.

Our problem is not that we desire too much out of this world. The problem is that we desire too little. Our desires are misplaced.

“It would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling 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 the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
–C.S. Lewis

God wants you to know that there is something incredibly better than loving this world. It is loving the Father and doing his will. And you can do that forever.

2. Delight in the doing God’s will
The opposite of loving the world is loving the Father. The opposite of desiring the things of this world is desiring to do God’s will. This idea of God’s will goes back to what John has just been talking about: obeying the commands of God.
2:3- “And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments.”
2:5- “whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected.”

Our love for God is best shown by obeying his commands, or doing his will. According to 3:23, his command is to believe in Jesus Christ and love our fellow Christians.

You can only love God or the world. Not both. The Father and the world are in opposition. If your heart loves one, it cannot love the other. Your heart can only point one direction. If it is pointed toward the world, it is not pointed toward God. It’s like a hunter in the woods with a deer 100 yards to the east and one 100 yards to the west. He can only hit one. The other will be gone. Jesus says this in Matthew 6:24- “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.”

Why does John talk about loving the Father? John is writing to Christians, to people who are children of God. People who have God as their Father, desire to do the will of their Father. The context for doing God’s will is the context of a relationship with God as our Father. We don’t do God’s will to establish a relationship with God. We do God’s will because he is already our Father. True Christians have been born into God’s family and do their Father’s will. If you do not do God’s will, you do not belong to God.
I John 3:10- “By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.” If you are not doing God’s will, you are not his child.

If doing God’s will is slavish or boring to you, examine your heart and your life. Ask- am I a child of God? I John 5:3- “For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome.” If you are born again by God you will do God’s will.

We as Christians must understand the things of this world as children who live in submission to the Father. Let’s revisit those examples of loving the world.

-Instead of loving food more than God, we understand that food is God’s good gift to be enjoyed with thanksgiving. It is also given to us as a means of energy so we can do the Father’s will.

-Instead of numbing your mind on TV or the internet, use technology as a means to encourage your family and your fellow Christians. Use the internet for the encouragement of the saints and the spread of the gospel.

-Instead of using sex for self-fulfillment, married couples should use it as a way to serve one another and ward off temptation. The unmarried person should guard themselves from sexual sin in order to please their Father in heaven.

-Instead of using your career for self-advancement and self-fulfillment, use it as a tool to provide for your family, support your local church and foreign missions, and do good for others.

-Instead of viewing retirement as a time to focus on yourself and your pleasure, view it as a reassignment in your service to the King.

When the things of this world are desired for themselves, they make terrible gods. The desires of our hearts weren’t meant to terminate on this world. Our hearts are meant to worship Jesus Christ. Christians take the things of this world, and use them to do God’s will. That marks us off from the world. When we seek the things in this world, our hearts look past them to our Father.

Conclusion

What will you chose? Will you love the things in this world? You’ll get 70 years or maybe even 80 or 90 out of this world, then it’s done. That the best you will get. If you love the Father and not this world, this is the worst you will get. Jesus says in Luke 9:23-25-

23 And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. 24 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. 25 For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?
The Bible is crystal clear: you must give up everything to follow Jesus Christ. If you turn your back on this world, turn from your sins, and follow Jesus Christ, you will live forever.

In Luke 12, Jesus says this:
And he said to them, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” 16 And he told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man produced plentifully, 17 and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ 18 And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. 19 And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.”’
20 But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ 21 So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”

C.S. Lewis puts it this way:
“Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.” –C.S. Lewis

The simple reality is this: if you love the world, you are on path to hell where eternal punishment awaits you. If you love the Father and do his will, you are on the path to eternal joy. You will live forever. Forever. This life might seem long, but it is a blip and you are gone. The one who does God’s will abides forever.