Sermon Transcript
Well, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but San Francisco 49ers, they’re really doing good this year. Did you notice that? They are 8-0. That’s like 8 wins, no losses. They’ve played 8 games.
They won all 8 games. So those who have an interest in this, we’re really excited about this first half of the season. Now it’s moving toward the second half of the season, and there’s a lot of hope that what’s happened in the first half of the season would move also. To the second half of the season. Whether or not that’s going to happen, it’s going to depend on a number of things.
Like, you know, if you’re thinking about what is it that helps teams win, well, the players and the coaches and their ability to work together and, you know, get along and put together good game plans and executing game plans and resolve and all of that stuff’s involved. What we do know is that every team that’s going to come along right now is going to try to knock the 49ers down, right? They’re going to try to beat them up. They’re gonna try to destroy their winning ways and ultimately perhaps push them out of the Super Bowl running and all the rest of that kind of stuff. Well, as I was thinking about that, I thought, you know, what Steve talked about last week, Pastor Steve, as he took us into the stages of spiritual growth.
And if you were with us, you heard about how God, once you become a member of his family, you begin as a child and he wants you to grow up and become a youth, and then he wants you to grow up and become an adult. And so there’s this maturation process that the Lord has for us. And as we listened last week to this account in verses 12 to 14 of 1 John chapter 2, as we listened to that account, we heard that there are some definite marks of people that are growing in Christ, and especially a youth. A youth is somebody who has overcome the evil one, which is another way of saying they’re not overcome by the evil one. And I got to thinking about that in light of the San Francisco 49ers.
These guys are really doing good. They’re on a winning, you know, streak right now. And those that care about them, they want to see them continue to win and that sort of thing. Well, in a sense, when you look at this passage we’re looking at this morning, basically what we have is a strategy for continuing in winning ways, in ways where we are moving in this positive direction in the Lord. We’re growing in Christ and we’re growing up to become the people that he wants us to be.
We’re defeating evil. We’re overcoming evil. We’re not being overcome by evil. So, the passage we look at this morning, it was already read, is focused on strategy. It’s focused on resolve.
It’s focused on becoming the people that God wants us to be. But it’s gonna need to be intentional. So, let me read these words again and we’ll just kind of dig into this text. I hope it’s really helpful to all of us. I think it’s one of the most relevant texts you’re gonna find in the book of 1 John and perhaps the whole Bible, but this is what it says, don’t love the world or anything in the world.
If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world, the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes, the boasting of what he has and does, comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever. Now, like it or not, what this passage is presenting is the need to make a choice. And the choice, do you see, is between loving the world and loving God.
So you have to choose. You may not want to choose, but the passage is saying we’ve got to choose because these 2 options that we have are mutually exclusive. It’s not going to be a both-and choice. It’s going to be an either/or choice. You’re either going to love God or you’re going to love the world.
You’re not going to be able to love both at the same time. Now, for some of us, that’s a problem because we’re trying to love both at the same time. Now, I like how The Message translation translates verse 15, 1 John 2:15, in The Message Bible, which is written by Eugene Peterson, or translated. He wrote this with regard to verse 15. He said, don’t love the world’s ways.
Don’t love the world’s goods. Love of the world squeezes out love of the Father. Now, would you agree with that? If we love the world’s ways and we love the world’s goods, then it’s going to squeeze out our love for the Father. That’s what John’s trying to communicate here.
He’s essentially saying, so what’s it going to be? And you say, well, I think you can love the world. In fact, the Bible says in that most popular passage, John 3:16, for God so loved the world. So there it is. If God can love the world, why can’t I love the world?
If God loves the world, doesn’t it make sense that I therefore would come along and love the world? And the answer to that would be, yeah, well, that would make sense if that’s the world that God loved. But God doesn’t love the world of sin. The world that’s described in John 3:16 is people, that world, it’s humankind. So, it’s people that live on planet Earth and He loves those people.
That’s what John 3:16 is saying. But 1 John 2:15 is targeting, as The Message translation says, the world’s goods, or the world’s ways. And we’re talking here about that which is in opposition to God’s will or God’s ways. And so now we’re talking about the world of evil, the world of sin, of sinful practices, of beliefs that are apart from God’s truth, worldly amusements or lusts, things that we might try to find satisfaction in that are apart from God and His ways, maybe looking to the world for security and value in the place of God showing us our security and value. Things that are contrary to God’s life-giving ways and His life-giving commands.
So, that’s the world John’s talking about here. That’s the world we’re not to love. We’re not to love, as we’ve already talked about in the series, we’re not to love the kingdom of darkness, but we are to love the kingdom of light. And by the way, the word love here means to take pleasure in something or derive pleasure from something. So, don’t prize, don’t esteem, don’t value or fall in love with worldly ways.
And worldly stuff. Now, that is easier said than done, isn’t it? So we just said it, okay? Don’t love the world, uh, but love God instead. But it’s easier said than done.
It’s easier to say, yeah, sure, I get that, but actually choosing to love God instead of loving the world, it isn’t always done. Do you ever watch The Price Is Right? You ever watch that show? It’s been on now like since 1972, so about 47 years this show has been on. It’s now hosted by Drew Carey.
It was hosted by Bob Barker. If you’ve seen the show, you know, they, they, uh, these people are clamoring to be, uh, up in front and bidding on these different prizes and all this stuff. And anyway, it all comes down to the end where the person that has had the highest winnings, uh, from that particular show, this person is going to be brought up, and the second highest winnings person will be brought up for the showcase round. And on the showcase round, essentially what they get to do, and the one with the highest winnings goes first, he can choose or she can choose door number 1 or door number 2. You’ve seen this before.
And the person, if they don’t want to choose door number 1, could pass, and then the second winning person gets to choose or has to take that door. And they basically got to put a bid in. The bid is how much is the showcase or how much is what’s on the stage worth? What is it worth? And they can’t overbid because if they overbid, then they lose.
So they try to get, you know, just right under whatever it might be worth and all that sort of thing. The point is, is that ultimately this winning guy is going to have to choose one or the other. Is it going to be door number 1 or is it going to be door number 2? You cannot— you’re not going to get both of them. So which one are you going to choose?
Well, that’s the picture that you have here. In 1 John chapter 2 and verse 15, we gotta choose. Is it gonna be door number 1? Is it gonna be door number 2? We’re gonna choose God?
Are we gonna choose the world? Now that’s not kind of a, you know, out of ordinary choice. In our family right now, one of our family members just went through a choice with regard, do I stay at my current job or do I go to another possible opportunity that’s been presented to me? I can’t do both of them. Which is it going to be?
Am I gonna choose this one? Or am I gonna choose this one? You’re dating somebody, you’re thinking about getting married, are you ultimately going to get married? Or are you gonna say, well, you know, I think I’m just gonna kinda wait around and see if another person comes along, maybe next week, next month, next year, or something like that? But you gotta choose.
Or maybe you’re choosing, are you gonna go to college? Am I gonna go to college and put all the effort in and, you know, work my tail off? Or am I just gonna go over to Hawaii and do nothing? Am I just gonna sit around over there and, you know, watch the beach or whatever it is? Am I going to spend time on the job, more time than I’m spending right now, and then continue to take away from my family?
How am I going to balance these kinds of things? How does this all work out? So you get the idea. There’s always choice that we have before us that oftentimes we’re working with. We’re trying to figure out, what am I going to live for?
Bernice and I love to take a Lyft ride every now and then. Recently took one up in Washington State, and this guy that picked us up, we got into an interesting conversation, but we got digging into some of his spiritual beliefs and found out that in his spiritual beliefs that they endorse polygamy. And so I had never really had a conversation with somebody who’s into polygamy, and I thought, well, this is a chance for me to ask, you know, if this thing actually really works. You know, I said, how many wives do you have? He said, 2.
I said, okay, so, you know, what is that really like, you know? And he kind of described it and stuff, and I said, well, how do they feel about it? And he said, well, they live in 2 different homes. And I thought, well, that explains it right there, okay? They don’t want to live under the same roof.
They don’t want to sort of be in love with this guy or not, you know? He’s thinking that it’s working okay for him. Of course, he is having to pay for 2 homes. You know, cost them a little bit more or whatever it is. But the Phil, you know, Dr. Phil’s question, how’s that working for you?
Well, it’s obvious it’s not working all that well for you because they don’t feel completely loved unless they’re loved in their own home. And the picture here, what God is looking for from us is he’s looking for undivided loyalty. He’s looking for undivided love for us, from us. He wants us to love Him not with some of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. He wants us to love Him with all, all of our heart, all of our mind, all of our soul, and all of our strength.
It’s just like a wife or a husband wants the same from their spouse. They wanna be loved by their spouse with undivided love. They wanna be loved by their spouse with unadulterated love. So that’s where John begins, 1 John 2:15. You got to choose.
You got to choose between loving God or is it going to be love the world? And what he then does is he contrasts the worst choice with the best choice. And the worst choice he details for us, verse 16, everything in the world, the cravings of sinful man, the lust of the eyes, and the boasting of what he has and does comes not from the Father but from the world. Now, some of us, when we read that passage, we actually are familiar with the passage, but we haven’t read the passage in light of those words. We’re more used to the New American Standard Bible or the King James Version of the Bible, where it translates this verse this way: All that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father but is from the world.
So what John does is he says, now listen, you’re going to have to choose, and you’re going to choose between worldly desires or worldly cravings or worldly perks or whatever you want to call it that could potentially build you up in your self-worth. So you’ve got to decide, are you going to say yes to that life? Are you going to say yes to a different life? And to say yes to the lust of the flesh is to say yes to satisfying fleshly cravings, to satisfying fleshly cravings. So this lust of the flesh is focused on these insatiable cravings, and we all have them.
These insatiable cravings or lusts that can be fleshly, that crave something that is sinful, that will sinfully pull us away from loving God and into worldly pleasures or sinful pleasures. Well, let’s think about that. Do you think that eating a doughnut could be sinful? Now, I don’t know if you were out at our break and we had any doughnuts. I have no idea what was going on out there right now, so it may be wrong of me to be talking about doughnuts right now.
But do you think that you— if you ate a doughnut, that could be sinful? That could be a sinful, fleshly pleasure that you are, you know, craving, and then you gave in to that craving? How about that? Wednesday I was over at the club, YMCA, and I was working out. This woman who I know there whose name is Helen, she asked me out of the blue, she said, hey Dave, have you ever eaten at the Holy Donut?
And I said, well— she said, you know, the one in Portland, Maine, in Portland, Maine. And I said, well, I, you know— she knows that Bernice and I have been there before. We’ve talked about it. And she just was there a couple weeks ago, she told me. And so she’s asking about this place.
And I said, well, why are you asking? She said, why, I was just there and, and I can’t get it off my mind. I just, I’m thinking about it like all the time. And she’s doing her workout, right? I mean, she’s pushing these, she’s pushing these weights.
And so she’s thinking about this place. They have 3 of these locations. They’re very popular in Portland, Maine. They have 80-some employees. And they make 2 million doughnuts a year.
But to me, the question related to this morning is, can a doughnut be holy? You know, I mean, think about that. Can a doughnut be holy? Or said differently, if you’re indulging your sinful fleshly doughnut habit, if in fact that’s what it is, and I’m not saying it is, but I’m just saying that if you’re indulging your sinful fleshly doughnut habit, if you— holy habit. Fleshly doughnut habits, get it right.
Anyway, but if you’re indulging that and you change it to say, well, this is a Holy Doughnut, does it make it holy? You know, am I okay right now? It’s fascinating because if you go to the website, they talk about where the Holy Doughnut came from. And this person that wrote, the founder said, the idea for the Holy Doughnut grew very organically out of a craving I was experiencing for some deeply satisfying yet healthy comfort food, specifically a donut. I knew a chain version would not cut it.
I wanted a donut made from fresh ingredients that I could feel good about eating. Since I couldn’t find what I was looking for, I decided to create it myself. I knew I wanted to make donuts from scratch using as many local ingredients as possible, so I started experimenting with donut recipes in my kitchen in 2011, and after some trial and error, I came up with a winner. The not-so-secret ingredient: fresh Maine potatoes. And so I started adding mashed potatoes to my doughnuts, and it gave a delicious, moist texture that makes them just melt in your mouth.
Now, doesn’t that make you want to just get on the airplane today and go to Maine, you know, get a Holy Doughnut? But I think it’s interesting because, you know, this person basically is saying, yeah, it’s okay. Doughnuts are okay. Eat as much as you want, or whatever it is. So when this person in the gym asked me about this, I thought, you got it, you’re kidding me, right?
You’re focused on holy donuts instead of your beloved weight training? I mean, come on, get your focus where it needs to be right now. Now I think it’s interesting because one of the things that we can do is we could sort of justify whatever it is that we’re doing by renaming it or, you know, whatever we want to do to it. But this specifically says that there are sins, and there are sins of the flesh that we can be derailed by. I’m not saying that that donut’s going to derail you.
It could, but hopefully not. But these sins can derail you. They can undo our love for God. Our fleshly appetites— think of that— our fleshly appetites can undo our love for God. And let me just mention 2, 2 fleshly appetites: sex All I got to do is mention those 2, and many of us in the building know exactly how challenging these 2 areas can be for us— sex and alcohol.
Now, the kingpin behind fleshly cravings— let’s talk about the fleshly cravings, because sex and alcohol can be okay in the right context. But sex and alcohol as a fleshly craving is sinful. It’s, it’s an overindulgence, perhaps in alcohol, or it’s sexual immorality outside of the relationship that God intended for sex to be a part of a relationship, marriage. And what Satan can do is he can take those cravings that we have, those desires And he can pervert them. He can pervert them so that they become overindulgences in sex outside of marriage or alcohol or whatever it is, so that it’s all about self-gratification, satisfying my pleasures.
And we satisfy it at the expense of our love for God, at the expense of holiness. So, instead of living in the light, we’ve now moved to live in the darkness. And we keep thinking that if I just continue to chase this, that ultimately what my heart is craving for is going to be satisfied. But tragically, it just doesn’t happen. What can happen is it can result in disillusionment in your life, broken hearts, broken dreams.
It can result in guilt and shame. It can continue to fill you up with those cravings and ultimately trap you. And it can decimate your relationship with God. It can take control of your life. So, John is saying when it comes to loving God, this means that you’re gonna have to deal with fleshly cravings.
You’re gonna have to say— instead of saying yes to fleshly cravings, that would be the worst choice, you’re gonna need to say no. Secondly, he talks about satisfying eye-catching wants. Now, what’s that? That’s to have something that we want, something that we see with our eyes. Now, you’ve probably noticed this, but our eyes can get us into a lot of trouble.
Would you agree with that? We see it, we want it, we charge it, we use it, then we toss it, you know, and we get something else to replace it or whatever it is. We just can’t get enough of what we oftentimes see. I still remember the time that a couple in our neighborhood wanted some of my help from a pastoral perspective They weren’t necessarily spiritual people, but they thought that maybe I could help them with their financial problem. So they asked me if I might come over.
We set up a time, went over on an evening to their home, and we sat down at the kitchen table and they pulled out all these bills, a stack of bills, and they put them right there in the middle of the kitchen table. And I said, what do you got? And they said, these are bills that are all due or overdue, about $10,000. Worth of bills for toys and clothes and, you know, all these other things. And they said, we don’t have the money to pay for these.
I said, well, how did you get in this mess? She said, the wife said, well, when I get sad, depressed, lonely, anxious, worried, upset, I go shopping. And even though I tell myself when I go to the mall that I won’t buy anything, when I see it, I want to buy it, and I do. And, of course, whatever it was you bought last week isn’t enough, so you buy a little bit more this week and that sort of thing. And this picture here, these fleshly cravings, these cravings that we have oftentimes are triggered by what it is that we see.
You been to Costco? Do I need to say anything more? Costco? Have you gone to Costco where, you know, you had one thing in mind, I’m going to brave the crowds, and we’re going to go to Costco, and I’m going to get a package of paper towels. That’s it.
Just a package of paper towels. Have you ever had that? Ever? Come on. Yeah, we’ve had that, right?
I’m just going to go in. I’m just going to— Were you successful? I mean, like, successful in just coming out with a package of paper towels? Probably not. Because it’s impossible to walk through that store and get out of there with just one thing, I think.
I mean, if nothing else, you got a bunch of free food. I know. Whatever it was for you. You ever been to the Bass Pro Shop, guys or women who fish or whatever it is, and you went in and you said, I’m only going to get that one teeny little bitty lure that I just got to have right now. I just got to have the lure.
And so you go in and you buy it. And of course, there were a couple more down the, you know, the line there and all the rest of that stuff. It’s so impossible to just Do the one thing. What’s our problem? Why has Bernice forbidden me to watch infomercials?
Well, our problem is, is that we see it. We see it and then we want it, right? If you see the problem anywhere in Scripture, well, do you remember Eve? She saw something that was pleasing to her eyes and she just had to have it, so she ate the forbidden fruit. You remember Achan?
Achan saw this Babylonian robe and the silver and he saw the gold and he just had to have it and so he took it. And boy did that result in a problem among the Israelites as you read about in the book of Joshua. What about King David and how King David saw a beautiful woman who was bathing and he wanted her so he took her and it messed up his his life and it messed up her life and it messed up the family and it messed up the kingdom and it messed up his future. Just all kinds of things came out of something that he saw. Take your finger with me and bring it up to your eyes because this is the problem, right?
It’s our eyes. And what’s interesting is the scripture actually comes down to the point of saying sometimes we just got to make a new commitment and regarding our eyes. Maybe you’ve seen Job 31:1, I made a covenant with my eyes not to look lustfully at a girl. That’s a decision. That’s a choice to say, I’m going to love God more, and I’m going to love this world less.
I don’t even want to love the world. I’m going to make a decision to not look lustfully at a girl. It starts with a decision. Or Psalm 101:3, I will set before my eyes no vile thing. Or David’s prayer in Psalm 119:37, Turn my eyes away from worthless things; preserve my life according to your word.
Now, Jesus said if that kind of pledge won’t do it for you, this is what he said, Matthew 5:27-29, You’ve heard that it was said, Do not commit adultery. But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It’s better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. Now, that’s what Jesus said you gotta do.
If you’ve got a problem with your eyes, get rid of it. Now, what’s he saying? Is he saying literally gouge it out? He’s not saying that. He’s saying take drastic action.
What’s the drastic action you gotta take? Is the computer the problem? Put the computer in a place where other people are going to see it so it’s no longer a problem, so that every time you’re on the computer and the only time you’re on the computer is when some other people are around. Take drastic action. You got to do something about this eye problem.
That’s what the Scripture is saying. Randy Alcorn said it this way, materialism dresses the corpse and puts makeup on it, but it’s still dead.
Materialism makes us think that that thing that I see that I all of a sudden got to have, that that thing is something I must have. I got to have it, and so I’m going to get it. I’m going to get it some way, one way or another. I’m going to get it. But what ultimately this is, is it’s a dead-end street.
It’s not going to satisfy. It’s not going to fulfill what it is that your heart is looking for. An abundance of stuff is not going to produce an abundant life. If anything, it will sabotage your spiritual life.
So he says, don’t give in to the lust of the eyes, don’t give in to the lust of the flesh. And then you get this, and the boasting of what he has and does. And this is a worldly craving that’s built around our ego, egotistical bragging on yourself, the pride of life. This is fascinating. What is it that makes us want to brag about what we’ve done or what we have, like, you know, our education, our successes, the accomplishments that we have in life, the awards that are sitting on our shelf?
Why do we want people to know about all of that? Why do we want them to know about what we do and the car that we drive and the books that we write and on and on and on? Well, it’s really connected again to who we’re living for. Am I living for me or am I living for thee? Am I more in love with me or am I more in love with thee?
Is God the center of my world or am I the center of my world? You may be familiar with the story about a king, a king who was into himself. He was into himself to the point where he was boasting about his great accomplishments. He stood before his thriving metropolis in Babylon And he said this, is this or is not this the great Babylon, he said, I have built as the royal residence by my mighty power and for the glory of my majesty? Isn’t this just all wonderful?
What kind of perspective is that, me or thee? That’s pretty obvious, right? This is my baby. I did this. Can you imagine standing before others bragging on what you have done But in this case, bragging even before the God of heaven, as this king was.
The scripture says, Proverbs 8:13, to fear the Lord, as we heard earlier in the service, is to hate evil. To fear the Lord is to hate evil. I hate pride and arrogance. That’s how God feels about pride and arrogance. He hates it.
So how do you think he reacted to this king who’s boasting about all this stuff that I’ve done, all this stuff that I’ve made, all this stuff that I have? Well, Daniel chapter 4 tells us. The words were still on his lips, verse 31 and 32, when a voice came from heaven. This is what is decreed for you. Your royal authority has been taken from you.
You will be driven away from people and will live with the wild animals. You will eat grass like cattle. 7 times will pass by for you until you acknowledge that the Most High is sovereign over the kingdoms of men and gives them to anyone he wishes. Now, what does that sound like to you? Is that a promotion?
I don’t think so. That’s like a demotion. I mean, you’re going from the palace to the prairie here. No way is God saying, hey, you’re right. You know, I should have caught that all along.
You’re a pretty great guy, and so I’m just going to, you know, hey, I totally get where you’re coming from. No, God says, listen, I’m going to give you some time, 7 years. I’m going to give you some time to shrink your head and to clear your mind and to straighten out your thinking because what you have and what you’re enjoying right now isn’t because of you’re such a great person. It all came from me. Who, by the way, is this king?
Do you know? It’s Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar. But really, I hate to say this, but I think this is true. I think that we could become like this king in the culture that we live in.
Especially here in Silicon Valley, where we’re into accomplishments. There’s nothing wrong with accomplishments. We’re into education. We’re into success. We’re into driving and driving and trying to do better and better.
And what this is saying is, no, listen, what you have is not because you’re so great. It’s because God’s in control. You’re not the CEO of your life. God’s the CEO of your life, and don’t start thinking otherwise. Start bragging about all that you’ve done.
You need to clear your mind on that whole thing. God is the one who gives life, and he gives breath, and he gives skill, and he gives the mind that you have and the ideas and the energy and the success. And all the rest of it, it’s all a gift from God. And the next time we fall into this braggadocio narcissistic lifestyle, we’ve got to come back and say, what in the world is going on in me? What’s taken me over into loving myself over the love of God?
God’s the one that needs the credit, not me. Back in the early 2000s, there was no bigger comedy star than Owen Wilson. Wilson. In fact, People magazine did an entire feature cover story on Owen Wilson. It was September 10th, 2007.
And the reason that they did it was because he was a funny man. This is their words: he was a funny man who had it all. And by having it all, it meant he had money, fame, cars, sex, a second house on the shores of Maui, and the whole celebrity happiness package. He had all of that. He had what they claimed to be the good life, or we would say the worldly life.
But what it didn’t give him was what it was that he was craving. He didn’t find satisfaction and happiness for his cravings, which is why— and this is why they did the feature on him— which is why he ultimately tried to commit suicide. He was unsuccessful in that attempt to commit suicide, but he couldn’t find it in what he was living for. And quite frankly, throughout the world, we’re still chasing the same stuff: the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life. C.S.
Lewis, some years ago in Mere Christianity, said it this way: If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.
Think of that.
If it’s not happening through the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life, that’s like a big clue. I was made for another world. Thus, John’s perspective makes complete sense. 1 John 2:17, the world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever. There it is in contrast again.
The worst choice is to give in to the temporal worldly desires that are fed by our flesh, that are fed by our eyes and our wants, and that are fed by our pride or our ego. The worst choice is to give in to that. The best choice is to love God and to seek to please him. That’s what he’s saying. It’s to say yes to God’s plans and God’s way.
It’s to love him. It’s to love him enough to do what it is he asks us to do. And that, that direction of life brings life. It brings life now, and it brings life forever. And so John is saying, so come back to that.
Don’t fall in love with the world. Come back to God and, and love God the one who gives life more. You remember Jesus Christ claimed to give life over and over. Remember he said, I am the bread of— what? The bread of life.
And, I am the light of life. I’m the light of life. I’m the resurrection and the life. I am the way, the truth, and the life. I have come that you might have life and have it more abundantly.
So it was all about life. And if we’re looking for life, if we’re looking for satisfaction for what our body and our soul and our spirit is craving, the Bible says— and what John’s trying to get across here— is it’s found in Jesus Christ. It’s found in loving the Lord with everything and everything that we’ve got within our being. C.S. Lewis again said it this way: Man’s spiritual health is exactly proportional to his love for God.
So how— what we’re doing in this spiritual journey, where we are in this journey, is directly connected to our love for God. We will not get there by loving worldly things. We’re going to get there by loving God more and more than we do even right now. I was reading the book Fill These Hearts by Christopher West, and in it he tells this— the story of the time that he and his wife were out enjoying a dinner together and they were talking about their marriage. And at one point as they were eating dinner and talking, she said to him, you know, it seems like our marriage is better recently.
And I was just thinking about why. And she said to Chris, her husband, Wendy was her name, and she said, what, you know, do you have any reason why you think our marriage is better? Because it sure seems to be different. Any insight into that? Chris said, well, you know, I think that I’ve been realizing deep in my heart that you don’t satisfy me, that you can’t satisfy me.
This is what Chris said to her. Now, can you imagine in that moment? You can’t satisfy me. Wendy, with the perspective she had, she looked right at him and she got a big smile on her face and she said, you know, I’ve been realizing the same thing. You can’t satisfy me either.
Now, quite frankly, their response to each other is profound because they’re able to say that life and the satisfaction that we seek is not found in another person. It’s not even found in your spouse. Because that which ultimately is going to bring life, which is going to bring the joy and happiness that we want, it’s rooted in God. It’s rooted in the satisfaction that he can give to us and the life that he can give to us because he is the source of life and he’s the source of love. And so we gotta get back to him.
Now, our days are filled with temptations of potential lures that can get us thinking that this is the way to happiness in life, is to, you know, like, go this way. You remember, even Jesus, after the 40 days of temptation, was potentially lured into various temptations by the evil one. He could have at that point been overcome by evil Or he could, as he did, overcome evil. And how did he overcome evil? When the evil one said to him, if you’re the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.
At that moment in time, Jesus was hungry. His flesh was craving something to satisfy his 40-day fast, and yet Jesus said no to that. The devil then took him and showed him all the kingdoms of the world, and it says as far as his eyes could see, and tempted him with the, the kingdoms that were all there for his taking. And yet Jesus said, no, no, you shall worship God and serve him only. And then the devil took him to the pinnacle of the temple And he tempted Jesus with the accolades and the applause of this world by saying to him, if you will just throw yourself down from the pinnacle of the temple and then call on God, then God will keep you from injury or death, and thereby you will gain notoriety as the guy that didn’t die when you jumped from the temple.
But Jesus said, no, we’re not going there either, because you shall not put the Lord your God to the test. What Jesus did was he, in his response, he demonstrated that he loved God more than he loved the world. And that’s, that’s the big issue, isn’t it? That’s what John’s digging into here. There’s a choice.
There’s the best choice and there’s the worst choice, and it stands before us every day. This is going to be a continual struggle of our lives. And if we’re going to continue our winning ways, if we’re going to continue to overcome the evil one and move on to maturity in Jesus Christ, we got to make the right choice. And we’re not going to be able to do this alone. It’s got to be God working in us and through us over and over again.
And as he works in and through us and we depend upon him, progress can be made. So that our love for God becomes greater than our love for God is even this day. This week I had a birthday, and while I was journaling that morning of my birthday, which is something I usually practice in the mornings as I usually do a little bit of journaling, I wrote down just some thoughts about my age. And I wrote down this. I’m going to read it to you.
I’m part of it. I said, I’m glad to still be living. That’s why I started this entry. And I’d say really living, I wrote. I have more joy, peace, fulfillment, purpose, meaning, love, ideas, opportunities, passion, compassion, pleasure, and even energy more than I could have imagined at this age.
I wake up excited and eager to get going, to hopefully make a difference, to live my life to the fullest in the strength, plan, places, and opportunities that God gives me until the day I die, hopefully all for his glory. Now, when I wrote those words down, those are the words of a guy who wants to make a decision every day to love God more. I really do. I long that for you too. And what I have found in these years of making that decision again and again and again, sometimes in better ways than others— obviously I’m not perfect— but what I have found is life.
That’s what I found. I found life. I found life in Jesus’ name. And what I found is that that life doesn’t come through a love of the world. That life comes through a growing love of God through Jesus Christ.
My hope for you is the same. I don’t know where you are on that spiritual journey, but for some of us this morning, this means we need to make some radical decisions. That would be okay.
Let’s pray.
Lord, we could just go through the motions, come to a service like this and sing together and look at the scriptures and say, boy, I sure hope this is short, and move past it on to something else. But I, I just hope that you would help each one of us not just move past this, that we would truly embrace what it is that you want to do in our hearts. And whatever that means, then Lord, I pray that we could open our hands up and just say, God, here am I. Do whatever it is you want to do in me, but I want to love you more than I love you right now.
And if that’s the desire of your heart, just tell God that. Just tell him it this morning. Wherever you are in your spiritual journey, ask him to help you love him more than you love him right now. Now. He will answer that prayer.
And Lord, help us live with strategy. Help us live with resolve to not love the world and the things in the world— the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life.
God, give us new hearts. Give us new practices. When we fail you, thank you, Lord, that you promise that if we will confess our sins, you’ll be faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us. So we ask for your cleansing. We thank you, Lord, there are fresh starts, that we could pick up the pieces and begin again.
So help us do that.
Thank you for speaking to us today. Thank you for this time of worship. Thank you, Lord, for what you’re going to do in the week ahead. In Jesus’ name, amen.
