Remember those who requested
prayer. Remember the Grabowski family. That's Sam's cousin. He passed away yesterday morning,
right? Yesterday morning, the COVID. So remember him in your
prayers. Seek the Lord's help for his family. Also to continue
to remember Melvin and Perry Schell and the others who've
requested prayer. Deb's out today. She's got a
silence thing going on, so she's feeling like somebody spayed
her with poop and shot her for stinking. She's not feeling well
this morning. I can't believe I said that from
the pulpit, but I did. It's the first thing that comes
to my mind. That's what she used to say to
me when I was in the service. Do remember those who request
some prayers. Sharon's back. She's been tested.
She's had 15 times for COVID and she survived all 15 tests. So we're good for that. And we're
thankful. But do remember these folks in
your prayers. Seek the Lord's help for them. Let's begin our
worship service this morning. Hymn number 62, crown him with
many crowns. Crown him with many crowns. Crowning
with many crowns, the Lamb upon His throne. Hark how the heavenly
anthem drowns all music but its own. Awake my soul and sing of
Him who died for thee, and hail Him as thy matchless King through
all eternity. ? Ground Him the Lord of love
? Behold His hands and side ? Rich wounds yet visible above ? In
beauty glorified ? No angel in the sky ? Can fully bear that
sight ? But downward bends his wandering eye ? And mystery's
so bright ? Crown him the Lord of life ? Who triumphed o'er
the grave rose victorious to the strife for those he came
to save. His glories now we sing who died
and rose on high Eternal life to bring, and this
that death may die. Crown Him the Lord of Heav'n,
one with the Father Lord, one with the Spirit through Him from
yonder glorious throne, to Thee be endless praise, for Thou for
us hast died. Be Thou, O Lord, through endless
days adored and magnified. After Scripture reading and prayer,
we'll sing Hymn Number One, or Worship the King. If you have
your Bibles, turn to 1 John, Chapter 2. I'm going to read
a very familiar portion of Scripture. 1 John, Chapter 2, beginning with
Verse 12. I write unto you, little children,
because your sins are forgiven you for His name's sake. I write unto you fathers because
ye have known him that is from the beginning. I write unto you
young men because ye have overcome the wicked one. I write unto
you little children because ye have known the father. I have
written unto you fathers because ye have known him that is from
the beginning. I have written unto you young
men because ye are strong and the word of God abideth in you
and ye have overcome the wicked one. Love not the world need
of the things that are in the world. For if a man love the
world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is
in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes,
and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the
world. And the world passeth away, and
the lust thereof. But he that doeth the will of
God abideth forever. We pray in the name of Jesus
Christ that you might meet us with your spirit this day to
open up your words and open up our hearts to receive them. Give
us the renewed mind of the spirit that we might understand and
appreciate what the spirit will guide us into in this matter
of truth. That he will take the things
of Christ and reveal them unto us. Let us take to heart those things
that are written and spoken in your word and not pass them off
or try to blame them on someone else. But let us look to ourselves
this hour and then look to Christ to see that these things are
so in our own hearts and minds. Help us, Father, to look to Christ
and trust him completely. We desire in our hearts this
hour to worship you, to honor you, to please you,
and pray you'd give us liberty to do so. Give us a heart to
do so. As David said, fix our minds
upon the Lord. We pray for those who are sick.
Pray for the family of Mr. Grabowski to be with them at
the loss of their loved one comfort their hearts with Jesus
Christ turned their eyes to him this world passes away little
by little we see it every day we feel it in our own bones and
father we know for a child of God there waits a great day a
wondrous day a new day where all things are new and old things
are passed away we don't know what that fully means but our
hearts leap at the thought of it Our minds endeavor to imagine
it, but our frailty is such that we can't. But we know it'll be
great. For as this day and the day in
which we live is full of tears and mourning, there shall be
joy in the morning. Help us, Lord, to worship you
this day. Pray for those of our shut-ins,
you watch over them, Brother Wayne, Sister Ethel, Sister Peggy
Lambert, there is those of our congregation fix our hearts and
minds upon Jesus Christ cause this place to be a hospital for
sinners a place for sinners to come and hear the gospel the
good news of Christ's salvation help us to love you more every
day help us to love each other in a world gone mad help us to
love one another for even you have said by this the world should
know that you belong, that we belong to you because we love
one another. We sure love one another. Help
us, Lord, to do so. We pray in Christ's name. Amen. Hymn number one, O Worship the
King. Oh, worship the King, all glorious
above, and gratefully sing his power and his love, our shield
and defense. ancient of days, pavilion in
splendor and girded with praise. O tell of his might, O sing of
his grace, Chrome is the light whose canopy space, His chariots
of wrath the deep thunderclouds form, And dark is his path on
the wings of the storm. Thy bountiful care, what tongue
can recite? It breathes in the air, it shines
in the light. It streams from the hills, it
descends to the plain, and sweetly this still and the rain, frail
children of dust and feeble as sand. I'm going to stand and steam
to receive the office. Let us pray. Father, again we
approach in the name of Christ, our blessed Savior, that wonderful
name, the only name under heaven, given among men whereby we must
be saved, that name to which every knee shall bow and every
tongue confess that He is Lord to the glory of the Father, that name, that precious name
that is precious to all believers, speaks of one who was sent in
our midst to dwell among sinners, publicans, vile creatures, in
order to die in the room instead of his people, sinners all, and
redeem them back to you. He is indeed the unspeakable
gift And we know that with him you've
freely given us everything. Let us be thankful. We pray in
Christ's name. Amen. I'd like to invite your attention
back to 1 John chapter 2. The title of my message is Of
God or of the World. On occasion, on many occasions,
I have preached from this passage of scripture. I can't remember
how many I was looking up and I found five different times
I've preached from it, at least in the last several years. But
this week has been on my mind all week long for some reason.
and when it's like that with a preacher he preaches on it
or just it irritates him until he does something about it so
I'm going to deal with it one more time today if you're reading along with
me you saw that John was speaking to believers the church the beloved
church the church whom he expressed love for the beloved brethren and this passage scripture has
big shoulders it can carry a lot of weight and it's born a great
deal of preaching over the years I can remember many times here
in my youth and some of that preaching has been true and some
of it has been false especially concerning the concept
of worldliness people have an idea about worldliness I'll never forget one time we
were over in Tennessee, and Larry Pearman, Debbie's brother, was
wearing a real pretty watch. It was actually bought at Walmart,
but it was shiny gold looking and it was fancy. And one of
the men of the church came up and looked at Larry's watch and
said, you're pretty worldly, aren't you? What most people feel about worldliness
has nothing to do with this passage of scripture, though God does
speak of worldliness in other places. This is a profoundly
singular passage of scripture that explains itself within itself,
and it does so succinctly within the context, and we don't have
to go outside it to get it. There is no question as to what
the word world means in this passage. It is not the world
of God so loved in John chapter 3 and verse 16. It is not the
world that our Lord refused to pray for in John 17 and verse
9. Nor is it the world of the ungodly
that we looked at last week in Jude 15. It is the world that fits the context
of 1 John which majors on the concept of light and darkness
and those who walk therein. He says in chapter 1 in verse
6 and 7, If we say, then we have fellowship with Him, that is,
we claim to be a believer and walk in darkness, we lie and
do not the truth. but if you walk in the light
as he is in the light we have fellowship one with another and
the blood of christ his son cleanses us from all sin the meaning of
the word world in this passage is found in the command to love
it not love not the world which places the world referred to
squarely in the realm of darkness according to what we just read
in the first chapter. One does not, according to this
book, love the world while he is walking in the light. If he is walking in the light,
he does not love the world. One loves the world while he
is NOT walking in the light, and this is not addressing God's
unchanging, immutable relationship with His people. That has never
changed and will never change. He said in Malachi chapter 3
and verse 6, I am the Lord, I change not. And because I change not,
therefore you sons of Jacob, you sinners saved by grace, are
not consumed. Why aren't you consumed? Well,
I've been a good person, no? You're not consumed because God
doesn't change. You change like the river changes. You change like the wind changes.
I change like the sun that comes up every morning and goes down
every night. I'm different every day. But God doesn't. And I'm so thankful that salvation
is not left up to me because I'd mess it up. I'd change it. I'd screw it up. It's what I
do. But God doesn't change. So when He talks about love,
it's not talking about His love. It addresses the all too often
changing relationship that we have with Him. His relationship
with us never changes. That still is remarkable to me
because you and I both know sometimes we get in a fix. We wonder how
in the world could God love us? He must be upset with us. He
must be displeased with us. And He's not. And He never has
been. and he never will be. That's
an astounding thing. Because I'm not always pleased
with him. I'm not always happy with what
he does. I'm not always excited about how he's running things. Because I'm a sinner. Weak and frail. In this text, loving the world
is accounted as the same as hating your brother. Though in a general
sense, hating your brother is indicative of being lost, it
is also true that a believer can hate his brother for a time. And in that time, while that
emotion is in play, he loves the world. The context makes this very plain.
The admonition, this warning, is not given to those who are
lost. It is written to believers of every estate, as it says in
verses 12 through 14, I write unto you, little children, because
your sins are forgiven for His name's sake. I write unto you,
fathers, because you have KNOWN Him that is from the beginning.
I write unto you, young men, because you have overcome the
wicked one. I write unto you, little children, because you
have known the Father. I have written unto you, fathers,
because you have known him that was from the beginning. I have
written unto you, young men, because you are strong, and the
word of God abideth in you, and ye have overcome the wicked one.
And it is to these, he says, love, not the world, to those
beloved little children whose sin are forgiven. To young men who are strong,
the word is strong in them. To the old men who have known
the Father, they've overcome the world. To those in whom the word abides.
Now these are found in the previous chapter. In chapter 1 and verse
9. Here is an example of them. If
we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins
and cleanse us of all unrighteousness. However, they do not fit the
description of verses 8 and 10. When it says this, if we say
we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. In
verse 10, if we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar and
his word is not in us. Now those described here that
he's just talking to, they don't talk like that. They admit they're
sinners. They say that because their sins
are forgiven. They admit what they are. That's
what it is to confess our sin, to come clean. These are believers. The elect of God who walk in
the light as He is in the light and know that they ought not
walk in darkness and they ought to walk even as Christ walks
as it says in chapter 2 and verse 6 walk as he walked it is such us believers that
this commandment and warning comes plain and clear love not
the world this clearly declares that believers
can fall prey to the love of the world. Don't think you can't. So God warns us. The admonition is plain. Love
not the world, neither the things that are in the world. There
is not necessarily a prohibition here to apply this to materialism,
but to do so reduces the impact of the warning that materialism
is not really addressed in this passage of Scripture. Materialism
is certainly a part of what we would generally call the love
of the world and the things that are in the world. One philosopher
said that man's existence is defined in one of two categories,
being or having. Being has to do with experience
and being content with what comes your way. Having has to do with
measuring oneself by the things that he possesses. And all you
have to do to see that men in this day fall into the having
category is drive down 74 and look at all the number of the
public storage facilities that permeate the landscape. whose
sole reason for existence is to hoard the things men have
but cannot usefully fit into their daily life. You ever thought
about it? Every time I drive by those storage
places, I think, when I was growing up, nobody had a storage space.
You know, the only place you store, you didn't have much stuff
anyway. If it's a store, it's stored in an attic or in a garage
or something. People actually have to pay for
a place to store stuff that they don't use. So I guess if you wanted to make
an application to worldliness here, to materialism, you could. But this goes much deeper and
addresses a spiritual condition relative to the believer's relationship
with God. The second part of this verse
states that if any man, any believer loves the world, the love of
the Father is not in him. That's love for the Father. Some
would immediately run with this and try to prove that the believer
can lose his salvation. whether the father's love for
the brethren changes when they sin, it doesn't. This is not
referring to the father's love to the believer, but the believer's
love to the father. When a believer is enamored with
the world, the love he has for his father diminishes. Our Lord
said to the church at Ephesus, you have left your first love.
Didn't he? You have left your first love.
He said to the church at Laodicea, you're neither hot nor cold.
I wish you were hot or cold. But because you're lukewarm and
tepid, I spew you out of my mouth. While a believer is enamored
with the world, the love he has for the Father waxes cold. Our
Lord said, A man cannot, cannot serve two masters, else he will
hate the one and love the other. Cannot serve two masters. Speaks
here of the things that are in the world in verse 15. And they
are defined in verse 16, For all that is in the world is the
lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. And it is not of the Father,
but of the world. Now, one thing you can't do with these three
things that are mentioned here is apply them to ANYTHING outside
humanity. You can't apply them to the internet,
nor to TV, nor to the bars, nor to the bordellos. Those things
cannot lust. Those things cannot be proud.
They simply can't. These all fall in the realm of
our lust and our pride. They're ours. One man said this
world would be a wonderful place if it weren't for all these people. I can't remember who the, I think
it was Descartes, the philosopher who said, hell is people. It's people. The things that
are in the world, They're divined as lust or in the realm of lust. They
are not evil or sinful. Paul said nothing is evil of
itself. They are abused and ill-used
by men and it's the lust of men that makes something bad. That's
what it is. Peter said that in 2 Peter chapter
1. Verse 4. He said, Whereby we
are given exceeding great and precious promises, that by these
we might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped
the corruption that is in the world through lust. That's how corruption is in the
world. It's through lust. Through our lust. The lust of
our flesh. The lust of the flesh is synonymous
with our carnality, our old man. The sin that permits everything
we do and are. It is only overcome and subdued
by the grace of God that is given us. Paul dealt with it in Romans
chapter 7. What I would not do, that's what I do. And what I
would do, I do not. This sin in me, this principle,
this law of death in my members. Ephesians chapter 2 makes it
clear that we've walked according to the prince of the power of
the air to the course of this world. James 1 said, when we're tempted,
we're not tempted to the Lord. It comes from us, from our own
lusts. From our own lusts. Our natural
lust is the love for the world. The things that are in the world
have to do with the lust of the eyes, which should immediately
strike us. is that the eyes speak to sight
rather than faith, and that which is not of faith is sin according
to scripture. If a thing can be seen, it is
not of faith, it is not of faith, it is a product of unbelief,
the virulent disease infecting the bosom of every believer.
Unbelief stymies us all. The things that are in the world
have to do with the pride of life. there's a sense in which pride,
natural pride, can be a good thing. If you've accomplished something
of yourself, or your children have done well in a ball game,
it's all right, be proud. The problem of pride that the
Bible speaks of is that when a person takes pride in something
that he had nothing to do with. One man said it's pride of race,
pride of face, pride of place, pride of grace, unfortunately.
If you had nothing to do with it, then to be proud is sinful. If you didn't have anything to
do with it, Pride of life is the ultimate
and natural end of the lust of the flesh and the lust of the
eyes. Pride of life has to do with the perception of human
merit, of self-aggrandizement. It takes credit for something
you had nothing to do with. The only place that the lust
of the flesh and the lust of eyes lead us to is to think more
of ourselves than we ought. All pride is against God. Nothing that God has done for
us or does in us will ever make us proud, and if it does, we
ought to rethink it. Here it says pride of life is
never, ever of God. John makes this very clear. These
are not of the Father, they are of the world, and here we who
know and understand the predestination and power of God over ruling
over all things and the first cause of all things, might have
trouble trying to apply human logic to the fact that something
that happens is not of God, for all things are of God. We say,
well, it's not of God, and it says it's not of the Father.
I would say to you, don't try to press your human logic onto
this. Because God's thoughts are not our thoughts. nor are
his ways our ways as high as the heaven is above the earth
so high as God's thoughts and his ways above ours the fact
is that though we have the mind of Christ and especially as it
relates according to Philippians chapter 2 to our brothers and
sisters in Christ and caring for them we have the mind of
Christ but we don't think like God and he says he's in control
of all things he says he runs the show he brings the rain he
sends the clouds he makes the sun to rise and to set he does
all these things he controls all things by the power of his
own sovereign will and yet he said our lust is not of him this
says it so I reckon you either believe it or you don't God says
he hates pride. One of the seven things he speaks
of in Proverbs that he hates is a proud look. And we don't
much like it either, do we? When you get right down to it,
we see a person with a snooty look, we want to slap them. Straighten
up. And I heard a lady the other
day, I think of old B.B. Caldwell years ago, a lady was
talking to him about he never, she never had touched wine. She had lived a moral existence
all her life and B.B. Caldwell says, well you need
to get drunk puke all over yourself and find out what you really
are. And I've thought about saying that to people sometimes. Pride. God despises it. John makes it very clear, under
the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, these are not of the Father.
These are of the world, and if they are of the world, they are
of our lust. Verse 16 brings the meaning of the world and
love for it to one succinct premise. If it passes away, if it does
not last through time and eternity, it is the world and the things
of the world. If it can be perceived by the
five natural senses it's of the world and not of the Father because
it will pass away. To love it cannot be of God because
it passes away. It passes away. He says he who
does God's will while he's doing God's will,
is not of the world. The will of God here is not his
will of purpose. We can talk about that, and know
something about that, but we have nothing to do with that. This is what Scott Richards called
his will of command and warning. which can be disobeyed. Because
we do it all the time. We can't disobey the will of
purpose because we don't have anything to do with that. God's
purpose is to stay. We can disobey what he's commanded
us to do. I do. So do you. I'm supposed to love
my neighbor as myself. I don't do that. I'm embarrassed
to say. screw I saw out colorado fires spread
across his grassy fields today for started snowing 15 degrees
this morning thousand homes those are my neighbors know the
state I felt sorry for but I didn't
give my house we don't love our neighbors or
self. Peggy said it the best way, whatever you do for yourself,
you do for your neighbor. She said that one time. That's
what it means. Whatever you do for yourself,
you do for your neighbor. That's a command of the Lord. Lust of our flesh, lust of the
eyes, the pride of life. What is it to do God's will be thankful in all things is
one of the things to do God's will this is this is the will
of God concerning you be thankful for all things when being asked what they could
do to do the work of the father our Lord said this is the work
of the father that you believe on him whom he sent God's will
is discussed or declared in his declarations concerning his son
he said if you don't honor the son I won't honor you When our lust of the flesh, eyes,
and pride of life find purchase in the world, our love for the
Father is diminished. And when we believe God, when
we see Christ, when we walk in His light, our love for the Father
is perfected. Esther goes on to say that in
this very book. He that doeth the will of God
abideth forever. He that doeth the will of God.
Do you do the will of God? If you believe on Jesus Christ,
you do the will of God. Do you trust Him? We say we have
fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness we lie, and do not
the truth. But if we walk in the light,
as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another in
the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son cleanses us from all sin. Love not the world, that world, those things in the world are sinful because of our lust. That's why they are. We make
them sinful. That'll mess things up in the
garden. Thank God for the second Adam, the last Adam, who straightened
things out. Father, bless us to understand.
We pray in Christ's name, Amen.