According to the Scriptures

Damian Kyle: So this is the tightrope every Christian walks in this world: how to be in the world, but how not to be of the world. And so we're surrounded on all sides by man's rebellion against God, by man's rebellion against God's truth, and yet we are still to enjoy life as Christians.

This is our father's world. And so we must not be, despite all of that, be drawn into the world's values, or its goals, or its morality, which represent rebellion against God.

Guest (Male): Life is likened to a vapor in the bible. And the older we get, the more we see just how true that really is, don't we? It sure goes by quick, doesn't it?

Today on According to the Scriptures, we'd like you to consider who you love: the world or God and his will for your life. While many are choosing to live for things that are temporary, Pastor Damian Kyle will encourage us to consider what lasts forever and invest in that. We're in 1 John chapter 2.

Damian Kyle: We pick things up in 1 John chapter 2 verse 12. John writes by the Holy Spirit, "I write to you little children because your sins are forgiven you for his name's sake. I write to you fathers because you have known him who is from the beginning. I write to you young men because you have overcome the wicked one. I write to you little children because you have known the father."

"I write to you fathers because you have known him who is from the beginning. I've written to you young men because you are strong and the word of God abides in you and you have overcome the wicked one. Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the father is not in him."

"For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life is not of the father but is of the world. And the world is passing away and the lust of it. But he who does the will of God abides forever."

This morning we continue our series through 1 John, a series entitled Authentic Fellowship with God. And we're going to make John's commands there in verses 15 through 17 the main focus of ours this morning, but we do want to take a moment to understand what it is that he is writing to us in verses 12 through 14.

It is a very interesting passage. In verses 12 through 14, I don't know if you remember the first time you ever read through the bible and you read those. They just kind of appear and they just seem so jarring and abrupt in their appearance within the letter. They don't seem to make tie well to what John has said before or afterwards, and you'd almost conclude that he went out and got a cup of coffee and came back and started to write the first thing on his mind.

We know that's not the truth, but making sense of these three verses is difficult even for bible scholars. Sometimes they're puzzled with what to do with it. I think it's important for us to go back to John's introduction of this letter in chapter 1 verses 1 through 4 and ask ourselves: who's he writing to? Well, he's writing to Christians. And then why did he write this letter? What's the purpose of the letter?

And he tells us in those first four verses of chapter 1 that we might be able to enjoy the same quality and depth of relationship with Jesus Christ that the apostles did, and then all the accompanying joy that comes with that relationship. And to do so in this letter, John inoculates us against any and all false teaching that might be in vogue or in fashion at any point in time, both then and now, which would threaten such a relationship with God.

Now, in these verses, John addresses his readers with the recognition that in any congregation or any gathering of Christians, including the one that he wrote this letter to, you're going to have different levels of spiritual maturity. And they're going to be in different stages of spiritual growth. What we are experiencing in our relationship with God can be different based upon what stage we might be in.

Spiritually speaking, in verses 12 and 13, some he refers to as little children. And so here you have the Christian who is new in their Christian faith, new in their relationship with God. And he tells us that their Christian life revolves around three wonderful truths. Verse 12: the knowledge that their sins are forgiven. Well, hallelujah, that's a great truth.

And then number two in verse 12: that their sins have been forgiven for his name's sake, that is for Jesus's sake, because of grace. And then third in verse 13: that they've come to know God personally, that they now have a personal relationship with God. So wonderful. There's nothing wrong with those things being the central focus of our relationship with God when we're young Christians.

John then goes on in verses 13 and 14 to speak of young men, speaking also of young women. And here is the Christian who continues to enjoy all of the blessings of the brand-new Christian, of being a little child. All of those things remain in their lives, but they've continued now in their spiritual growth and in their spiritual development beyond a spiritual childhood.

And that brings them to a place where their maturity and their spiritual depth now becomes a threat to Satan, to his kingdom, to his powers, to his dominion, his principalities. They then get noticed by him, and now the Christian life comes to include spiritual warfare against such a Christian and the devil being actively opposing and resisting them through spiritual warfare in their Christian life.

And so John tells us of this group in verse 13: they've overcome the wicked one. And so their Christian life and experience is one now where it's marked by victory in this spiritual warfare. He says in verse 14 they are spiritually strong. Verse 14 tells us why they're spiritually strong: the word of God abides in them.

They not only know the word of God, but the word of God abides in our lives to the degree that we practice it. And as we obey his word and as it becomes the defining thing related to our lives in terms of how we live them in our daily lives and relationships, then those truths have been internalized.

Now, John in verses 13 and 14 also speaks of the fathers whose relationship with God includes everything that the other two groups have. And so they have the knowledge that their sins are forgiven, that their sins have been forgiven for Jesus's name's sake, that is on the basis of grace. They have come to know God personally. They have overcome the wicked one. They are spiritually strong. The word of God abides in them.

No one outgrows those things. Spirituality is never to outgrow any of those things. It is for all those things to remain a part of our lives, but then additional things to be added to our lives. And so the fathers, he said, also know God as the one who is from the beginning. And so here is the Christian who possesses this deep, mature understanding of God, of who he is, of what he is, and they understand it from the vantage point of having a long history with him and from a long experience.

So he writes this portion of the letter to reassure his readers, no matter what their spiritual maturity, that he's not writing this letter because he's upset with them spiritually and in their spiritual condition, but as an encouragement to them. And so to the little children, they, for Jesus's sake, that is on the basis of Jesus's grace, had their sins forgiven.

They're now enjoying a personal relationship with God himself, and he's telling them these false teachers have nothing to add to that. They have nothing to offer someone who is even experiencing and rejoicing in those very new things of the Christian life. Don't be fooled by these people. And then to the young men and young women, he says that they've been successful in growing into spiritual maturity, growing into holiness in the face of the devil's temptations and the devil's warfare.

The beauty of such a life that comes from walking successfully in the face of that, and that these false teachers whose lives were marked by no resistance to the devil but by yielding to every temptation of the devil in life, they had nothing to offer them in this regard either. And then to the fathers, who and what they had known from the beginning, that is Jesus, had brought them to a place of deep spiritual maturity. And so why would they abandon that now for these religious hucksters and what it was that they were selling?

And then in verse 15, John gives us the command as Christians: do not love the world or the things of the world. Now, for any letter that is written in order to have... that has as its subject an authentic relationship with God, then it would be incomplete if it didn't address one of the greatest threats that we will face in our relationship with God and the health of that relationship with God, and that is namely the love of the world and the things of the world.

So in the Gnostics, as we've spoken about them in recent weeks, and then all of the other false teachers like them, you have the teacher who explains away the commands of God, the demands of God, in all their strength from the scriptures. And those demands are healthy. They're needed for us. And why do they explain away God's commandments? It's because they love the world and they love the things of the world more than God.

So they want to have a veneer of spirituality about their life, that they're not just simply about sex, drugs, rock and roll. They want to have some kind of veneer of spirituality, but they want to experience everything that is going on in the world, the world and the things of the world. And they are intent upon expressing their love for that world and for those things, even if it requires the practice of what God clearly defines as sin in order to do so.

And so John exposes this, and he warns them, he warns us, not to follow them in this false teaching and in this heresy. So let's begin with what John isn't saying here in this passage. John is not saying that as Christians, we can't enjoy an ice cream cone in life, or that we can't enjoy a hearty meal in life.

He's not saying that we can't be awed by nature as we see it around us in the sunrise, the sunset, the sun, the moon, the stars, or to marvel at the animal kingdom. And it is a marvel to be awed and marvel at the plant kingdom and the plant life, or anything else that constitutes God's creation. All of these things are there for us to enjoy because as Christians, they speak to us of God's power to create such a thing and his wisdom that is represented in his creation.

And what it does then is it produces a worship in our life toward our wise creative God. Psalm 19 verse 1, the Psalmist declared, "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows his handiwork." Psalm 111, "The works of the Lord are great, studied by all who have pleasure in them." There's no condemnation of any of this.

Psalm 8 verse 3, "When I consider," the Psalmist says to God, "your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have ordained, what is man that you're mindful of him, and the son of man that you visit him?" And it produces that worship within our life when we see how small we are up against an ocean or up against the greatness of the world around us and that he would make us the objects of his love.

So John is not condemning any of that. What John is speaking of here is found in the Greek word that he uses for "world" in verse 15, and it's the word "cosmos." Now, cosmos, that Greek word speaks of an ordered system. It's often used to describe the physical creation around us, but that's not the cosmos that John is talking about here.

Here, John uses it to refer to a different ordered system that exists all around us and is as real and present as the physical cosmos around us. And it is a system that came into existence at the fall of Adam and Eve in the ancient garden of Eden, their sin, when a world system under Satan was lost to them, forfeited to them, and a system came into existence in the world that is under Satan and aligned against God.

It's hostile toward God. It's hostile against his truth and with the supreme purpose of competing with God for his rightful place in the life of every human being in the world. And so it's made up of a demonic realm of evil spirits that's very well-ordered and very well-structured, as well as sad but true, a lot of people who are happy to join Satan in this opposition of God and his truth and anybody that walks with the Lord at all is acutely aware of that.

Supremely, Satan's goal in life is not to amass wealth to himself or to amass power to himself. He has all of the wealth and power that he could possibly want. You remember his declaration to Jesus after Jesus was water baptized to begin his public ministry? He goes out into the wilderness. He's tempted by the devil three times.

And one of those temptations was that the devil came to him, showed him all of the kingdoms of the world in a moment in time, and he declared, "All this authority I will give you and their glory, for this has been delivered to me, and I give it to whoever I wish." And Jesus did not dispute that claim in terms of his ownership of it. So he has it presently, but not permanently. He has all of the wealth and the power he could ever dream of.

So Satan's not into that. That doesn't interest him at all. His great goal is to use the power, to use the wealth that he has, and to use the world to so entertain and occupy and distract and consume a person's life that they live and die without ever having given any thought to the possibility of the existence of God or giving God his rightful place in their life.

And his aim is that they would die unsaved and then join him in his eternal portion, which is Gehenna, an eternity that he knows he cannot escape. He knows that. And so his lone goal now is he's consumed with trying to get as many people that he can to die without Jesus Christ and to join him there.

Paul speaks plainly about this in 2 Corinthians chapter 4 verse 3. He said, "For even if our gospel is veiled, it's veiled to those who are perishing, whose mind the god of this age," speaking of Satan, "has blinded, who do not believe lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God should shine on them."

And thus the present spiritual and moral cosmos of this world is one whose values and whose goals exclude God. And its values and its goals are actively contrary to him, contrary to his truth, his instruction about what life is intended to be and about how life is intended to be lived. And so it's a world system marked by rebellion against God, and you see it all day every day, no matter where you are in the world, the reality of this cosmos.

And a world system that also exalts man. And for us as Christians, there is the clear message from the apostle John to us that this fallen world that we live in is not a morally or a spiritually neutral place. It is a satanic system that hates and opposes the very one that we love most in life, and that is God Almighty himself.

So this is the tightrope every Christian walks in this world: how to be in the world, but how not to be of the world. And so we're surrounded on all sides by man's rebellion against God, by man's rebellion against God's truth, and yet we are still to enjoy life as Christians. This is our father's world. And so we must not be, despite all of that, be drawn into the world's values or its goals or its morality, which represent rebellion against God.

Now, in case this opening sentence of verse 15, commanding us, not suggesting to us, "Do not love the world or the things of the world," in case that didn't get our attention sufficiently enough and we just listened to it and it's just sermon fodder, John then arrests our attention with an alarming statement in the final sentence of verse 15: "If anyone loves the world, the love of," that is toward, "the father is not in him."

That is to possess a love for this cosmos, this world system under Satan that opposes God and his truth, and a love for God the father at the same time is an impossibility, he tells us. The one always exists at the expense of the other. After all, this world system was behind the persecution of Jesus during the three and a half years of his public ministry.

This world system that Jesus is describing here was, in earthly terms, in human terms, behind the crucifixion of his son. And so the passage challenges us: how can I think that God will ever accept my love for the world that persecuted and persecutes his son to this day and was behind his crucifixion?

Jesus declared to his half-brothers in John chapter 7, he said, "The world cannot hate you. You're part of it. The world cannot hate you, but it hates me. And here's why: because I testify of it that its works are evil." Jesus taught us as his disciples, "If the world hates you, you know that it hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you."

And that hatred of Christians and the persecution against Christians all around the world, it has its origin in this cosmos that he speaks of here. You might wonder why in the world do Christians get persecuted in a way that is virtually unique to them and that other religious systems around the world are largely immune from?

Why is it that Christians, individual Christians who mind their own business, just have a relationship with God, have trusted in Jesus for the forgiveness of their sins, and are doing nothing and walking with God except becoming a better and better person, how in the world and where does such a persecution come from? And John lets us know that it has its origin in this very real cosmos that he speaks of here.

Guest (Male): "Do not love the world or the things of the world." That is the big takeaway from 1 John chapter 2 verses 12 to 17. And this is According to the Scriptures with Pastor Damian Kyle. If you're interested in a CD copy of today's message or the Authentic Fellowship with God series, give us a call at 209-545-5530. That's 209-545-5530.

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Well, it never grows old hearing from you, our listeners. And it's an opportunity to thank the Lord for what he's doing on the radio. You can email us at atts@ccmodesto.com. Include your prayer requests as well. That's atts@ccmodesto.com. According to the Scriptures with Damian Kyle is presented by Calvary Chapel Modesto. We'll catch you back here next time when we'll get back to our series Authentic Fellowship with God.