According to the Scriptures

Guest (Male): Investing in what really matters. That's next here on According to the Scriptures.

Damian Kyle: If you knew a company was going bankrupt, you would not invest your money in it. And you certainly wouldn't invest your life savings in it. That would be completely irrational.

And John is saying it's even more irrational for a Christian to invest their life supremely in a world that is morally bankrupt and is going to pass away one day in God's judgment. It doesn't make any sense.

Guest (Male): Who do you love, and how do you live? A couple of key questions we're going to explore here today on According to the Scriptures as we continue through 1 John. Welcome to the program.

This would be a great time to look into the mirror and examine our affections to see if they need to be realigned with God's will. The fact of the matter is there are a good number of people in love with the world or the things of this world, and that will always pass away one day. But those who do the will of God will live forever. Here's Pastor Damian Kyle with more out of 1 John chapter 2.

Damian Kyle: It's always good to be reminded, at least for me, that God is a jealous God and should not be expected to share our devotion with a world system that hates him and opposes him. He won't participate in that relationship, and in fact, it puts me in opposition to him. It puts me at war with him.

Augustine, he wrote so many centuries ago in this regard: "He loves thee too little who loves anything together with thee which he loves not for thy sake." Sometimes you just have to read the dead people who were so far removed by centuries from the pressures and the indoctrinations that we find ourselves in the middle of.

People that lived their Christian life strong and well and died in that condition in order for us to be able to look at Christianity in the current context with clarity. Because it is the danger always if we compare ourselves among ourselves or based upon a cultural Christianity around us that we would just simply become the proverbial frog that gets boiled in the boiling water because the water is brought to boil so slowly. This is God is a jealous God, and this is the relationship that he deserves and it is the relationship he's given us the capacity to offer to him.

Now, John then goes on to identify three primary ways that the world attempts to draw us away from an undivided love for God. He declares it in verse 16, "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 of the world." Well, we might, in a nutshell, just generally encapsulate them this way: that the lust of the flesh speaks of misguided passion, that the lust of the eyes speaks of possessions, and the pride of life speaks of position.

It's very important to notice that John does not outright condemn anything and everything that appeals to our flesh in the sense of who and what we are as created in the image of God. He does not condemn everything in our lives which elicits passion within our lives as Christians. Otherwise, for example, we would have to condemn the love of a husband for his wife or a wife toward her husband.

We would need to condemn the pleasure found in food. We would need to condemn all art, all music, all architecture, all poetry, all film, all storytelling, all photography, and anything else that would produce this strong physical, mental, emotional response in us. That is not what God is forbidding. John says, and what John is condemning, is the lust of the flesh.

John does not outright condemn anything and everything that appeals to our eyes which brings pleasure and significance to our lives. Otherwise, how could Solomon write under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in Proverbs chapter 20, "The hearing ear and the seeing eye, the Lord has made them both." No, he condemns the lust of the eyes.

And further, John doesn't condemn life. God's the author of life. He does not condemn all ambition in life, all achievement in life, all high position that we achieve in life. What he condemns is the pride of life.

So what is the lust of the flesh? What's he referring to in this? And it refers to sinful cravings and desires of our fallen nature, the desire for sinful sensual pleasure, the perversion of God's intent for our passion. And so it is when I express my passion as the world does, in line with its immoral laws under the influence, under the control of Satan, in a rejection, in a rebellion against God's standard in truth, which is then a revelation that I love the sinful expression of my passions more than I love God.

And as opposed to our passion being not only directed by God but toward God, but directed and governed by God. Jesus taught in Matthew chapter 22. He said, "You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart." That's our passion, that's our emotion. "With all of your heart, with all of your soul, with all of your mind." This is the first and great commandment.

And so we heed John's warning this morning and ask ourselves if our passions this morning are God-directed as God intends them to be directed and expressed in a pure way, in a holy way, or are they being directed presently by this cosmos, the kingdom of this world that lives in rebellion to God and is hostile to God? And if that's the case, then to address it biblically, to recognize it for sin, to confess it as sin to God, and ask for forgiveness and then repent of it and then move forward in obedience in that area of our lives.

What is this lust of the eyes that John is referring to here? It speaks of covetousness, being hungry for everything that our eyes see. So a desire for more materially speaking that's no longer being governed by God and which can then become more important to a person than God. It isn't that we can't own things as Christians. We own things. You have to own things to live in life.

So how do I recognize what John is condemning here, this lust of the eyes? If I begin to neglect my relationship with God for the sake of earning enough money to buy something I want. That is to confess that I want that something, that I love that something presently in my life more than him.

And so as Christians, we can always be sure that anything we want for our lives materially speaking that requires the neglect of our relationship with God, which is what Christianity is and what 1 John is all about, then that is something that God does not intend for our lives presently and is outside of his will for us presently.

And so whatever quest for some material thing, even another person, a relationship, that results in a neglect of prayer in our lives, it ends up resulting in a neglect of our devotional life, communion with God through prayer and reading the Bible on a daily basis. I then it comes at the neglect of church attendance and Christian fellowship with other Christians and Christian service then gets neglected and so forth. Then that quest for some material thing falls into the category of the lust of the eyes.

And John speaks of it with this kind of force in verses 15 through 17 because it's needed. Jesus taught in Luke chapter 12. He said, "Take heed and beware of covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses." Well, there, that'd bring about the collapse of the entire United States economy.

It's always put before us the message every day, every part of the world really, but we're very much in a consumer in the Western world side of things, is that life consists in the abundance of the things that we possess. And to live that way is to join the world in this conviction, contrary to what Jesus taught when he declared in the Sermon on the Mount, "But seek first the kingdom of God and then all of these other things will be added to you."

Keep me, my relationship with you, the priority and then I know how to add to your life what it is that you need. There is no need to resort to the lust of the eyes to have a materially blessed life. And then what is this pride of life John is referring to?

This speaks of the pride of place, of making achievement or the attaining of position or making selfish ambition or the seeking reputation or making a name for myself for the sake of my own self-glorification in the eyes of other people, making these things the driving force, the master passion of my life. There's nothing wrong with achievement in life. There's nothing wrong with ambition in life.

There's nothing wrong with a good reputation in life. But when those things then become the means to a selfish end and they now become rivals to God's rightful place in our hearts as opposed to them representing in a Christian all the achievement, all of the reputation, all of that achieved with the purpose then of loving my neighbor as myself, as blessing those that are around me, and as a means of glorifying God.

Well, as soon as it becomes selfish and now it's for the purpose of exalting myself, then it ceases to be holy and then we become just like the cosmos that John is condemning. Jesus taught us as his disciples, "Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven."

So there's nothing wrong with all of that achievement, all of that ambition, all of the titles that we may gain in this world in order to do God's will when it's used to then bring glory to him. And John said of the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life in verse 16, none of these things are of the Father.

Now, you notice in verse 17 that John gives us an additional reason for not loving the world or the things of the world. He says, "The world is passing away and the lust of it, but he who does the will of God abides forever." And what this means is this: that the world system, complete with its defiance of God's truth, defiance of God, defiance of his commandments, he said it's passing away.

Before our very eyes. It's been passing away for 2,000 years. It's passing away in its fallen state. One day it's going to be completely destroyed. But now it just passes away before our eyes. And if you knew a company was going bankrupt, you would not invest your money in it.

And you certainly wouldn't invest your life savings in it. That would be completely irrational. And John is saying it's even more irrational for a Christian to invest their life supremely in a world that is morally bankrupt and is going to pass away one day in God's judgment.

It doesn't make any sense, and the passage is intended to cause us to stop and to think about that. Verse 17 is the intended cure for verse 16. So you look at the world around you and you see this system, and not the physical world but you see what the world is being made into under this cosmos of the devil as there's an endeavor to lead people worldwide in a rebellion against God who created everything.

And when you look at it, all you can see at least as a Christian is its frailty and its weakness. And you think about you look at the world in its condition and you wonder about the future. Now, we don't wonder in the sense that we don't know because we know from the scriptures. But you look at the proliferation of the weaponry all around the world.

It's astonishing and you and I have no idea what weapons anybody has that nobody else knows about that could be unleashed in a moment if a nation felt it was necessary to do that. Mankind has never created a weapon that he didn't ultimately use. Now, that would be alarming enough on its own, but the one thing you don't want is the kind of advancements that we have in weaponry and AI, all of these things that are moving so quickly, and then at the same time an ebbing, a going backwards of the moral condition of the world.

Because you have all of these things advancing and now they are not being governed by God's commandments, his morality, how he sees life, but how the devil sees life and for the devil's purposes. And then that's a disastrous combination is for the advancements that we are experiencing and then the moving away from God on a worldwide level that we find ourselves in the middle of.

But anybody knows it on an individual level as well, and the frailty and the weakness of this cosmos is revealed in the fact that it can never satisfy. It can never even satisfy temporarily. And that the partaking of its lies and attempting to kind of find the ultimate meaning and the purpose of life in the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life, you can give your entire life to it.

And any thinking person can recognize immediately that one's capacity to enjoy these things diminishes with the using of it. That's why the Bible says, and this can be astonishing for people, that sin is pleasurable. It absolutely is. But the Bible goes on to say sin is pleasurable but only for a season.

There's always a rapidly diminishing return on the practice of the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. And in the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life, there is no eternal ring to it at all. There's a recognition that it doesn't even satisfy in this life. How can it ever live on and be something more in eternity that it couldn't be in this life?

Isaiah 55 verse 2, God spoke to his people, the children of Israel, and he said, "Why do you spend money for what is not bread and your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me and eat what is good and let your soul delight itself in abundance. I'll take care of you. I'm the way. I'm the provider of what life is really intended to be. You'll never pay a price for making that decision."

Jeremiah chapter 2 verse 13, which is one of the saddest laments of God in the entire Bible, when he wrote, "For my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewn themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water." And then Solomon declared in the book of Ecclesiastes, and he didn't have to go very far in the writing of that 12 chapters or so before he got to his point on all of this, in chapter 1 verse 14, he said, "I've seen all the works that are done under the sun and indeed all is vanity and grasping for the wind."

And that is an honest, clear-eyed view of the world and a human life that exists apart from God. And yet in contrast for the Christian, Jesus gets sweeter and sweeter as the day goes by, and that won't just be for this life but it will be for eternity. And so John tells us that the far wiser choice is to invest my life in the will of God for my life because that's what's going to abide forever.

And all of the other rewards of this cosmos of the devil, they will be lost in an instant at death. All of the rewards of the Christian life move forward beyond this life and then into eternity. So Christians, the love of the world represents a great threat to the health and the intimacy of our personal relationship with God. And so it is to be rejected on our part.

And so may John's exhortation here be as influential in terms of exhortation, edification, and comfort this morning as it needs to be to look at life and to look at the Christian life and to look at all of these other things and to deem my relationship with him to be the most important thing in life. And then to look at these things and say, have any of these things now diminishing in any way or harming in any way my relationship with him? And then to be done with it under the weight of God's word and his Holy Spirit.

Guest (Male): With good reasons for not loving the world or things of the world, that is Pastor Damian Kyle here on According to the Scriptures. Damian will be right back. If you'd like to obtain this series called Authentic Fellowship with God on CD, give us a call: 209-545-5530. That's 209-545-5530.

I should also mention Pastor Damian's messages are found at accordingtothescriptures.com as well as oneplace.com and on most of the major podcast platforms. So if you missed one or two messages on the radio, you can always catch up. It'd be an honor to pray for you. Keep those prayer requests coming, would you?

Leave a comment or prayer request at accordingtothescriptures.com or email us at atts@ccmodesto.com. Again, that's atts@ccmodesto.com. Your financial support is greatly appreciated and it helps us bring Pastor Damian's message to the radio on stations like this all across the nation. If you'd like to make a donation to the ministry, please visit accordingtothescriptures.com.

Maybe up until now, you've been living for this world. Question is, would you like that to change? Pastor Damian has a closing word for you to consider.

Damian Kyle: If you're not yet a Christian this morning, I read a story recently and I liked it very much. And here's how the story goes. A crane was wading in a stream and looking for snails to eat when a beautiful swan landed nearby. And the crane had never seen a swan before, so he asked, "What are you?" "I am a swan," came the reply.

"And where'd you come from?" the crane inquired. "Heaven," the swan answered. And he eagerly spoke of a city of pure gold with jasper walls and pearly gates. And at that point, the crane interrupted him. He said, "Tell me, are there snails in heaven?" "No, I'm afraid not," the swan said. "Then I don't care to go there," the crane stated decisively. "I like snails."

And this misguided expression of passion in this life, this accumulation of possessions, and this achieving of power and position in the cosmos of this world's way, all of it is snails in comparison to a relationship with God that we can know now and that we will enjoy forever. It's all snails compared to the glory of heaven that God intends for each and every one of us.

If you've never put your faith in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins and be born again, if you don't even know what that means, that's fine. There're going to be men and women up in front immediately after the service and they'd love to answer your questions and to pray with you to begin the relationship with God that God desires to have with you and that you have been created for.

Guest (Male): That invitation extends to you, my friend. There's a place to contact us at accordingtothescriptures.com. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and leave us an email with your prayer request. And then join us next time for According to the Scriptures when Pastor Damian will present the antidote for false teaching. This program is brought to you by Calvary Chapel Modesto.