Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / October 18, 2020 | Don't Settle For Christian - What You Love

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October 18, 2020 | Don't Settle For Christian - What You Love · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
0:01
SPEAKER_00: How are you?
0:03
SPEAKER_00: So good to see you today.
0:05
SPEAKER_00: Mulvain building, college building, and online.
0:11
SPEAKER_00: The most important news this month is, of course, political, with a critical election just three weeks away.
0:21
SPEAKER_00: But for sports fans in the Midwest, what's really important, there was also big football news right in the middle of the National Football League season after one-third of the season.
0:38
SPEAKER_00: The Kansas City Chiefs signed a superstar running back this week named Le'Veon Bell.
0:44
SPEAKER_00: Maybe he'll help the Chiefs win a second consecutive title.
0:49
SPEAKER_00: Maybe he won't.
0:51
SPEAKER_00: But the reason I mention it is the perfect timing of that signing for me.
0:59
SPEAKER_00: Because the story behind the signing perfectly illustrates the biblical text that I'd chosen for this morning.
1:07
SPEAKER_00: And it's going to drive the truth of that text into your memory banks, and I'm going to prove that to you in about 15 minutes.
1:15
SPEAKER_00: Alright?
1:16
SPEAKER_00: But uh for right now, we're in a series, as you just saw, called Don't Settle for Christian.
1:20
SPEAKER_00: This is week number two of six weeks.
1:22
SPEAKER_00: Last week uh we talked about where you walk from 1 John chapter 1.
1:26
SPEAKER_00: It's not enough to see the light and come to Christ.
1:30
SPEAKER_00: Don't settle for that.
1:31
SPEAKER_00: Walk in the light, walk in the light.
1:33
SPEAKER_00: So this book's about fellowship and how to have fellowship with God, how to be close to God.
1:37
SPEAKER_00: Today we move from where you walk to what you love.
1:42
SPEAKER_00: If you have a Bible, cell phone, whatever.
1:44
SPEAKER_00: 1 John chapter 2, verses 15 through 17.
1:49
SPEAKER_00: This is from the CSP, Christian Standard Bible.
1:53
SPEAKER_00: Text goes like this.
1:54
SPEAKER_00: You've heard this text before.
1:55
SPEAKER_00: It's a famous text, it goes like this.
1:58
SPEAKER_00: Do not love the world.
2:01
SPEAKER_00: So there's only one command in this three-verse text.
2:05
SPEAKER_00: It's pretty blunt, pretty straightforward, pretty much in your face.
2:09
SPEAKER_00: It's his main emphasis.
2:10
SPEAKER_00: It's a negative command.
2:11
SPEAKER_00: Do not love the world or the things in the world.
2:14
SPEAKER_00: If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
2:17
SPEAKER_00: For everything in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride in one's possessions, or the pride of life, you may have in your text, is from the Father, but is not from the Father, is from the world.
2:30
SPEAKER_00: Verse 17, and the world with its lust is passing away.
2:33
SPEAKER_00: But the one who does the will of God remains forever.
2:38
SPEAKER_00: So I'm going to walk through that.
2:39
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to talk to you about that and show you that this is exactly the text that you and I need for today.
2:47
SPEAKER_00: And it is going to surface.
2:52
SPEAKER_00: One of the main barriers between us and having this kind of closeness with God that he wants.
2:59
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't want to settle for just being in his family.
3:02
SPEAKER_00: He wants us to get out of our room and come in and talk to him and be close to him.
3:08
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
3:09
SPEAKER_00: So let's walk through it.
3:10
SPEAKER_00: 1 John 2, 15 to 17.
3:11
SPEAKER_00: Again, we have this opening command, do not love.
3:13
SPEAKER_00: And notice the word used six times in these three verses, the world or the things in the world, which seems like a little bit of a contradiction, doesn't it?
3:21
SPEAKER_00: Because you know John 3.16, where we read that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.
3:31
SPEAKER_00: So it seems to be at odds with it.
3:33
SPEAKER_00: But so obviously John's using this word here differently than he used it in John chapter 3.
3:40
SPEAKER_00: And in fact, um the word world, which is the word cosmos, you know, K K-O-S-M-O-S in Greek.
3:49
SPEAKER_00: Cosmos just means uh it's a word from which we get cosmetic, where you order your face, and the word cosmos is the ordered universe, right?
3:57
SPEAKER_00: So, anyway, that's the word we're talking about here, the ordered universe.
4:01
SPEAKER_00: So that's the base word.
4:02
SPEAKER_00: Half of the times that it's used in the New Testament, it refers to something, it refers to the people of the world, and the people of the world God loves, and the people of the world you should love, because you'll never lead them to Christ unless you love them, unless you have them over to your house, unless you realize they're just like you in 99% of the ways, just that you happen perhaps to be, I hope, to be forgiven, to be safe.
4:25
SPEAKER_00: So, so you need to love the world of people, but there is another world about half the times it's used, and four out of five times it's used in 1 John.
4:33
SPEAKER_00: It means a world system that is controlled by Satan, that is in utter antipathy to God, that calls light darkness, that calls darkness light, that calls evil good, that calls good evil, that uh hates the word of God, hates what God's word says about heaven and hell and marriage and sex and everything else, okay?
4:53
SPEAKER_00: And that actually, actually is in the Bible uh uh a place of death.
5:00
SPEAKER_00: And you can see that today.
5:01
SPEAKER_00: You have the world which, which, uh, this world system, I'm not talking about people, now I'm talking about a world system which would argue that we should kill little babies up to and even after the point of birth, right?
5:13
SPEAKER_00: And hates people who oppose that, you know, calls them names and ridicules them, and wants those of us who believe that that's a wrong thing to do, wants us to pay for that, okay?
5:24
SPEAKER_00: And that's a culture of death, and that's what this world is, and that's not a kind of a world that we should love.
5:29
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
5:30
SPEAKER_00: In fact, Jesus put it this way: He said, the whole world lies, meaning this world, not people.
5:35
SPEAKER_00: Whole world lies in the clutches of the evil one, and the world hates me because I have come to show that it is evil, and the world will hate you because you're not part of the world.
5:44
SPEAKER_00: In fact, I've called you out of the world.
5:46
SPEAKER_00: You are in the world, but you must not be of the world.
5:48
SPEAKER_00: All of that stuff.
5:49
SPEAKER_00: You're familiar with these verses, right?
5:51
SPEAKER_00: So love the people of the world, even those people holding signs across the street right now, okay?
5:57
SPEAKER_00: There's one shivering, you know.
5:59
SPEAKER_00: I I it wasn't until this morning that I knew that that Phelps is, you know, we're we're going the extra mile of coming before the nine o'clock service.
6:07
SPEAKER_00: I thought it was just between first and second.
6:10
SPEAKER_00: So let's give them credits for that.
6:12
SPEAKER_00: Um what did I even say that for?
6:16
SPEAKER_00: Uh uh you people who are watching in California, we happen to live in a very interesting town, all right?
6:22
SPEAKER_00: And and read a book by Megan Phelps Roper, and you'll understand all about it.
6:26
SPEAKER_00: So um, so we're not supposed to love, and we're not only not supposed to love this world, which is this world system controlled by Satan, that is an absolute antipathy to the word of God and the things, but we're not supposed to love the things in the world either.
6:39
SPEAKER_00: And and of course, by things, he surely means things like sex trafficking and porn and fraud and bitterness and stuff like that.
6:46
SPEAKER_00: But you know what?
6:47
SPEAKER_00: He also means the things of the world that are absolutely innocent and harmless, okay?
6:53
SPEAKER_00: Like money, you know, and like earning an income, and like intimacy, you know, and like our children and our spouses and our cars and our houses and our boats and whatever else we have.
7:05
SPEAKER_00: Those things that are in and of themselves, you know, innocent, but we're not supposed to love them.
7:11
SPEAKER_00: We can delight in them because they're part of the world that God created, but we but they compete with God for the love of our heart, and therefore, when they compete with God for the love of our heart, they are dangerous, and we must be careful.
7:27
SPEAKER_00: We can say I delight in them, but if you start finding yourself continually saying, I love my car, I love my car, then you need to check your heart attitude and decide whether or not you love the things in the world.
7:38
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
7:39
SPEAKER_00: Whether or not you hold them loosely.
7:41
SPEAKER_00: So the point of this verse, by the way, notice, uh, when it goes on to say if anyone loves the world, loves the father, it's not him, is that there are only two alternatives.
7:47
SPEAKER_00: Alternative number one, you love the world.
7:50
SPEAKER_00: Alternative number two, you love the father.
7:52
SPEAKER_00: There's no third alternative, I can love both the world and the father.
7:57
SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's a temptation.
7:58
SPEAKER_00: Can let's just be honest, is there any place in the whole world, any country, where it is more tempting and seemingly easy to love both God and the world?
8:10
SPEAKER_00: And I'm not talking about all those Americans who couldn't care less, or could care less, whatever, about loving God.
8:17
SPEAKER_00: I'm talking about people like you and me.
8:20
SPEAKER_00: I'm talking about Christians.
8:21
SPEAKER_00: I'm talking about people who live in a prosperous country and have stuff and find it easy to love that stuff and then love God at the same time, and yet here God says you can't do it.
8:31
SPEAKER_00: Not really.
8:31
SPEAKER_00: It's like what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount no man can serve two, no woman can serve two masters, for either he'll hate the one and love the other, or he, she will be loyal to one and despise the other.
8:44
SPEAKER_00: Or James put it this way: whoever wants to be the world's friend makes herself, himself, God's enemy and adds that God is like a jealous lover, catching up here.
8:56
SPEAKER_00: What is the world?
8:57
SPEAKER_00: Notice it's not the earth, not the trees, it's not the people on the earth.
9:01
SPEAKER_00: John 3.16, God loves it.
9:03
SPEAKER_00: Uh where we are is we're talking about how you have a choice that's an either or, not a both, and you can't both love the world and love the Father.
9:12
SPEAKER_00: And James says, you adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God.
9:17
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.
9:21
SPEAKER_00: Or do you think Scripture says about reason that he jealously longs for the spirit he's caused to dwell in us?
9:28
SPEAKER_00: I mean, imagine with me a husband who comes home at night and he says, Listen, I need to let you know that I have uh chosen another lover, but I don't want you to get this wrong.
9:38
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna give you both, and both, both of you are gonna have me.
9:41
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
9:42
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna go 50-50, you get me half the time, and and and she'll get me half the time.
9:48
SPEAKER_00: And so that makes everything okay for her, doesn't it?
9:53
SPEAKER_00: No.
9:54
SPEAKER_00: So she lights into him and he says, Well, I see what you mean.
9:56
SPEAKER_00: You had me first, okay, I see.
9:58
SPEAKER_00: So I'll just give her one day a week, and you get the other six.
10:01
SPEAKER_00: And we sympathize with her when she boots him out of the house.
10:05
SPEAKER_00: Because we know how she feels.
10:07
SPEAKER_00: She feels, she feels jealous, rightfully jealous for what is hers.
10:11
SPEAKER_00: And let me say that I have soft-peddled, deliberately soft-peddled both God's feelings and our sin.
10:18
SPEAKER_00: Because first, God's feelings, God is so pure deity, he is not crusted over by sin.
10:24
SPEAKER_00: And so his feelings of love for us and jealousy for us are far more intense than our feelings of jealousy, I can imagine.
10:31
SPEAKER_00: He feels our unfaithfulness to him to an infinite degree.
10:36
SPEAKER_00: And secondly, our sin, because most Christians don't say to God, I'll give you six days a week and I'll give the world one.
10:44
SPEAKER_00: It's just the opposite.
10:45
SPEAKER_00: We go, I'll give six days to the world and I'll give you one morning.
10:52
SPEAKER_00: And God says, you can't do that.
10:54
SPEAKER_00: I'm jealous, and that's spiritual adultery.
10:57
SPEAKER_00: Is it possible to live such a life?
10:59
SPEAKER_00: Of course it is.
11:00
SPEAKER_00: A lot of Christians do.
11:01
SPEAKER_00: Is it possible to live such a life and go to heaven?
11:04
SPEAKER_00: Well, yes, it is, because we do absolutely nothing to earn eternal life, right?
11:10
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely nothing that we have done earns us through the gates of heaven or opens the gates of heaven.
11:16
SPEAKER_00: We could worship God eight days a week and the world not at all.
11:19
SPEAKER_00: And that still would not open the gates of heaven for us.
11:23
SPEAKER_00: But living six days a week for the world and one day a week for God will not certainly move us off of just being a Christian, move us into loving fellowship with Him, which is what 1 John's all about.
11:38
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's like settling for just being in the family, but staying in your room like a teenager with the door closed in love with the world that constantly surfaces on your cell phone and computer, and never coming out to talk with your father.
11:55
SPEAKER_00: And God says, don't settle for Christian, don't settle for being in the family behind your closed door with your computer, love your father, love me, get close to me.
12:04
SPEAKER_00: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, says Jesus.
12:09
SPEAKER_00: And that's why online, you know, as the teaser for the message today, I mentioned Ray Charles's song, not very well known, where he sang the title, Who You Gonna Love?
12:20
SPEAKER_00: And it went, Tell me, I want to know when you're far away, who you're gonna love.
12:24
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's what God asks in this text.
12:27
SPEAKER_00: You're far away, you feel far away from me.
12:30
SPEAKER_00: Who you're gonna love?
12:32
SPEAKER_00: And there's a battle of loves, and there's only two alternatives, two options, love God or love the world, no room for double occupancy in your heart.
12:40
SPEAKER_00: And he gets specific now about the things in the world in verse 16, the things that pull us away.
12:45
SPEAKER_00: For everything in the world, he lists three things: lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, same word used here.
12:52
SPEAKER_00: The word lust here technically could mean just desires, like even for innocent things, but it's almost always used for, you know, an innocent desire like for food or income, you know, or or or intimacy, a normal thing that's just gotten excessive, or it's gotten warped, or it's sort of gotten into it's moved into an addiction.
13:19
SPEAKER_00: And so it's it's like it's become sort of an evil or a dangerous or a self-destructive desire, okay?
13:27
SPEAKER_00: It's become a it's become bad, okay?
13:30
SPEAKER_00: The lust or excessive desire of the flesh and the eyes and the pride of one's other.
13:35
SPEAKER_00: These first two, by the way, are sort of internal, right?
13:38
SPEAKER_00: What we desire but don't have.
13:40
SPEAKER_00: And this third one is really what we do have.
13:43
SPEAKER_00: We have a sort of a boastful pride in what we already have.
13:47
SPEAKER_00: It's pride of life in your Bible, but the word life, B-I-O-S, like biology, is used ten times, especially by John, to mean your livelihood, okay?
14:00
SPEAKER_00: Your money, your car, your house, the things you have.
14:03
SPEAKER_00: Or even if you're in high school, you don't have a car in a house yet.
14:06
SPEAKER_00: It can mean your awards, it can mean your honors, it can mean your IQ, your intelligence, it can mean things like that.
14:12
SPEAKER_00: The stuff that you've got that you use to compare yourself with all those inferior people around you, you know.
14:18
SPEAKER_00: So um, so those are the three things he mentions, the lust of the flesh, and immediately don't you think of, you know, hard not to think of sex, okay?
14:27
SPEAKER_00: Except that then you're thinking of porn, you know, when you think here, see lust of the eyes as well.
14:32
SPEAKER_00: So this is especially the flesh is your human body and the the food and the intimacy, and you know, and the things you basically need naturally to live or want to live, but have gotten excessive.
14:48
SPEAKER_00: And lost the eyes of those things that come especially through your eye gate, you know.
14:52
SPEAKER_00: And have we ever had an eye gate that is so titillated as our eye gate nowadays, you know, with internet being added to television magazines and everything.
15:03
SPEAKER_00: And then and then the pride in one possess one's possessions.
15:06
SPEAKER_00: The world says, how can it be so wrong if it feels, if it desires, it feels so right, and of course, you know it can be wrong because it can get excessive.
15:14
SPEAKER_00: The desire for recognition can turn into sort of a super arrogance, or the desire for income can turn into uh greed to get super wealthy, or desire for food can turn into gluttony, or uh I'll move off that one really quickly.
15:30
SPEAKER_00: But, you know, and and we start off by saying, these are my desires.
15:34
SPEAKER_00: I control them, you know, but when they turn into lusts, they turn around and control me.
15:40
SPEAKER_00: So, and and all through the New Testament you find Paul, right, saying, uh, don't in Romans chapter 6 do not uh give room to the lusts of the flesh.
15:50
SPEAKER_00: And Peter, you know, um, the corruption that is in the world by lust, and on and on and on.
15:55
SPEAKER_00: Put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh.
16:00
SPEAKER_00: By the way, lust of the eyes, doesn't this remind a little bit of Eve, where she saw, she saw the food and she desired it, and it was desirable to the eyes, and so she took it and ate it, or achen in Joshua 7, where he saw the loot that he wasn't supposed to touch, and he took it and stole it.
16:18
SPEAKER_00: Right?
16:18
SPEAKER_00: So, anyway, um let me let me zip on here.
16:23
SPEAKER_00: Uh um lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, pride in one's possession.
16:27
SPEAKER_00: So this seems to represent for John and maybe for the whole Bible, the the different varieties that the world comes at you with.
16:40
SPEAKER_00: In fact, I think of Eve in the garden, where, okay, she saw she saw the food, she, and it was desirable to eat, and then she she took, and then she knew that it would, and here's the pride of life, that it would give her the possession of a certain kind of wisdom, a sort of godlike wisdom, knowledge of good and evil.
17:00
SPEAKER_00: So that the serpent in the garden sort of tempted her with these three things.
17:04
SPEAKER_00: Not exact.
17:05
SPEAKER_00: Or you'll think of Satan tempting Jesus, where again, the first one, lust of the flesh, you can turn these stones into bread.
17:12
SPEAKER_00: Okay, again, we have a sort of a food item here.
17:16
SPEAKER_00: Wow, I wish they'd get off that.
17:18
SPEAKER_00: Um, and and then the second item was the lust of the eyes.
17:22
SPEAKER_00: He shows them all the kingdoms of the world and says that you can own those.
17:27
SPEAKER_00: And the third one, maybe the pride of possessions, is why don't you cast yourself off the pinnacle of the temple to show that you possess uh power, you know, the angels will come.
17:40
SPEAKER_00: So um, so any, you know, struggle with these three, and are they complete?
17:45
SPEAKER_00: Do they represent?
17:46
SPEAKER_00: Clearly, for John, they represent all of the things that come to us and lure us away from the love of God.
17:56
SPEAKER_00: And we will be lured, we are lured by the same things that lured Eve.
18:03
SPEAKER_00: And um and but of course, some people ask, if I'm truly a Christian, can this still be a problem for me?
18:09
SPEAKER_00: How can you be a Christian and still be lured away by these things?
18:13
SPEAKER_00: Won't true Christians and the and the answer is, well, we have all kinds of evidence.
18:18
SPEAKER_00: First of all, the fact that this verse is in a book urging us to walk closer to God, it's addressed to Christians.
18:24
SPEAKER_00: But then you think of some great examples in the Bible.
18:27
SPEAKER_00: Remember Lot?
18:28
SPEAKER_00: If all you had was the Old Testament, wouldn't you think Lot was going to hell that he was non-Christian?
18:33
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, living in Sodom and all that.
18:35
SPEAKER_00: And then you get to the New Testament, and Peter says a couple times that his righteous soul was vexed.
18:42
SPEAKER_00: But but Abraham, remember, takes his nephew Lot or his cousin, whichever it was, and he takes him up on a hill, says, our servants are fighting.
18:52
SPEAKER_00: What land do you want?
18:54
SPEAKER_00: And Lot, and it says that Lot looked down at the great city of Sodom there by the Dead Sea.
19:00
SPEAKER_00: And it reminded him, it says, of Egypt.
19:03
SPEAKER_00: Moses had, I mean, Abraham had gone down to Egypt and plucked, saved Lot from Egypt.
19:09
SPEAKER_00: But Lot, like Israel later, loved how cool Egypt was, like the city of Rome.
19:15
SPEAKER_00: And Lot says, Wow, there's a lot of water there, and it's beautiful, reminds me of Egypt.
19:19
SPEAKER_00: So he goes, says, I'll take that.
19:21
SPEAKER_00: And he goes in and says he first pitched his tent close to Sodom.
19:24
SPEAKER_00: Okay, he wasn't in there, but then later on he moves into Sodom.
19:28
SPEAKER_00: And then he becomes such a part of Sodom that even though God starts a war in a sense, and and and and Lot is stolen away and so forth, but Lot deliberately returns to Sodom because he loves it so much by now.
19:43
SPEAKER_00: He loves the world.
19:45
SPEAKER_00: And finally, an angel has to bodily drag Lot and his wife out of Sodom as God, you know, throws, as God judges Sodom and burns it.
19:55
SPEAKER_00: And got an angel having to physically pull him away because the addiction, the lure, the lust, the desire of the world of Sodom, of Egypt, has so filled Lot.
20:05
SPEAKER_00: And yet, we're told in the New Testament he's a believer, he's a righteous man.
20:09
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna see this man in heaven.
20:12
SPEAKER_00: And notice verse 17 is gonna say, so this perhaps is Sodom today.
20:18
SPEAKER_00: And we have these strange shapes.
20:19
SPEAKER_00: Don't know, you know, if that's some of the, but this down the southern end of the Dead Sea, and that's all we have today.
20:26
SPEAKER_00: It's it's it's gone.
20:28
SPEAKER_00: What really allures us today is as verse 17, the world is passing away along with its lusts, but he who abides, he who does the will of God will last forever.
20:41
SPEAKER_00: Or in the New Testament, here's a guy, here's Demas.
20:44
SPEAKER_00: We think of him negatively, but we read of Demas in a couple books in the Testament that he was an assistant to Paul.
20:50
SPEAKER_00: He was a co-worker and he was a companion.
20:53
SPEAKER_00: But at the end of his life, Paul writes sadly, 1 Timothy 4, Demas loves the things of this world so much that he left me and went to Thessaloniki, Thessalonica, city of 200,000 called the Rome, away from Rome, at the bosom of the Roman Empire.
21:10
SPEAKER_00: It had everything that I that a young man could ever want.
21:15
SPEAKER_00: Does that mean Demas was lost?
21:17
SPEAKER_00: I think not.
21:18
SPEAKER_00: I th I think Demas is like so many young people that we know who've who've grown up in in our homes and who have trusted Christ as our Savior and then lured away when they leave home.
21:30
SPEAKER_00: They're lured away, and and and maybe it's years before they come back and we pray for them.
21:36
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, yeah, it can happen.
21:37
SPEAKER_00: So then we ask, how is it even possible for um for me to fall out of love with the world?
21:46
SPEAKER_00: I mean, how can I resist this incredible world around me?
21:52
SPEAKER_00: And I ask, you know, for myself as well.
21:55
SPEAKER_00: And wow, the answers are only two in the This text, but they are here.
22:02
SPEAKER_00: They are here.
22:03
SPEAKER_00: How to fall out of love with the world, or in other words, how do I get myself to replace love for the world with love for God my Father?
22:12
SPEAKER_00: And there is a motivation or an incentive given us in verse 15 and a second one in verse 17.
22:19
SPEAKER_00: Let me show you what they are and urge you to use these this week, this month, this year, next year, the rest of your life, to use these to help you cut the umbilical cord between yourself and the world.
22:34
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
22:35
SPEAKER_00: First, ask yourself, are you loving God right now?
22:41
SPEAKER_00: Reminding yourself that it's either God love or world love going on.
22:46
SPEAKER_00: Ask yourself now and then, whenever you're curious, when you're involved, when you're so involved in something, am I loving God right now?
22:58
SPEAKER_00: Or am I loving the world?
23:01
SPEAKER_00: Because remember, verse 15 tells us the incentive is that you can't do both.
23:10
SPEAKER_00: You need to choose.
23:12
SPEAKER_00: The love of God will displace the love of the world, or the love of the world will displace the love of God.
23:20
SPEAKER_00: You only have those two options.
23:23
SPEAKER_00: And knowing that scares you a little bit.
23:26
SPEAKER_00: You say, wow, I am trying to love both of them.
23:29
SPEAKER_00: And uh Bible, God tells me there's no room for double occupancy.
23:34
SPEAKER_00: I can't have two lovers.
23:35
SPEAKER_00: I either need to love him, my husband, or I need to leave him and keep another lover.
23:43
SPEAKER_00: And I have here a lot of empathy for people who don't know the Father, right?
23:49
SPEAKER_00: For non-Christians, you can understand why people who've never really had an experience of God's love for them come to Christ.
23:58
SPEAKER_00: You can understand why they would love the world.
24:01
SPEAKER_00: And I don't think they're being criticized here at all because the world is beautiful and the world is alluring, and they never experienced the beauty of God.
24:09
SPEAKER_00: The world is like the city of San Francisco.
24:12
SPEAKER_00: San Francisco is a beautiful city, and because it's the headquarters of Jews for Jesus, I've been there, wow, a hundred times.
24:21
SPEAKER_00: It has a waterfront and it has a uh really cool skyline and it has a golden bridge.
24:30
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes when I am there, someone will say to me, Isn't this the most beautiful city ever?
24:40
SPEAKER_00: And I'll say, It's beautiful, but the most beautiful, no, no, I say definitely not.
24:46
SPEAKER_00: San Francisco is nice, but I've been to Jerusalem.
24:52
SPEAKER_00: Because once you've been to Jerusalem the Golden, once you've stood on the Mount of Olives and looked across the valley, either in sunset or sunrise, at those ancient, ancient walls which have turned gold, then no other city can ever displace it in your heart.
25:14
SPEAKER_00: And once you've met God in the person of his son Jesus Christ, and once you've felt the Father's love for you and seen his hand on your life, and how as a shepherd he cares for you, his little lamb, and rescues you, you delight in him, you adore him, you love him.
25:35
SPEAKER_00: And in fact, by the way, you discover that the best way to stop loving the world and to displace the love of the world with the love for Father is to increase, is not to try to pluck out the love of the world, those things in your life, those addictions, those sins, those whatevers, you know, not even to throw away your computer, your television.
26:03
SPEAKER_00: The best way to displace it is to increase your love for the Father.
26:09
SPEAKER_00: I've told this story before, and I noticed that my son, when he preached at Fellowship Bible last month, used my story as well.
26:19
SPEAKER_00: And I'll repeat it when I grew up, I lived on a farm.
26:22
SPEAKER_00: And one of the jobs I had, as the oldest son, was just to do various things out in the pasture after milking the cows, and one of them was to keep the water in the water trough, which is actually an old white bathtub, to keep that water clean, to keep the bathtub full, because our cows on hot days, summer, would just drink it like crazy.
26:42
SPEAKER_00: And so I would, the water hose went out there and I'd take it and I'd put it in the tub, and I would fill up the tub, but I was also supposed to keep the water clean so that the cows would actually drink it.
26:53
SPEAKER_00: And the problem is by the end of the day, there was a thick film of yuck on top of the water.
26:59
SPEAKER_00: There was straw and there was dirt and there were insects and there was spittle from the cow's mouths, and there was all kinds of stuff.
27:06
SPEAKER_00: And I I remember when I was younger just closing my eyes and putting my hand in and reaching up and just throwing, you know, handsful of stuff onto the ground so that I could clear the water.
27:19
SPEAKER_00: And later on, when I got to be a teenager, uh I learned a better way to do it.
27:26
SPEAKER_00: And that is that I kept the water hose in the tub, and then the water just kept rising, and it kept rising, and eventually all that stuff just washed over the top.
27:38
SPEAKER_00: And I could take the water out when the tub was full and when it was absolutely clean.
27:44
SPEAKER_00: And that I think is the picture that we get in the Bible.
27:47
SPEAKER_00: I think the picture is that David says, I desire the Lord, I long for him with all I have.
27:52
SPEAKER_00: And when our desire and our longing and our love for the Father increase, and they increase, by the way, by reading the Bible and coming to church and talking with him every day and talking with our friends about him, and our love for the Father increases and looking for ways that he works in your life and evidences that he loves you.
28:10
SPEAKER_00: And thinking about the fact that he actually died for you when you were still a sinner, and he can hardly wait to see you and have him forever.
28:16
SPEAKER_00: And thinking about those things just sort of is like the pure water of the word, and it just goes up and up and up, and then the love for the world is like that detritus on top, and it just sort of washes out.
28:28
SPEAKER_00: And the best way, the best way to displace love of the world with love of the father is to fall more and more and more in love with the Father.
28:39
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
28:41
SPEAKER_00: The second motivation and uh incentive and method of uh of replacing love for the world with love for the father, if the first one is is is realizing it's an either-or and displacing the one with the other by loving God more.
28:58
SPEAKER_00: The second is in verse 17, is asking yourself, is what I am involved in, is what I am fixated on, is what I'm giving my life to, is my preoccupation, are my investments involved in what is permanent or what is passing?
29:14
SPEAKER_00: Because verse 17 says, for this world is passing away along with its lusts, but he, she who does the will of my father remains or lasts forever.
29:30
SPEAKER_00: And here we have that choice again.
29:33
SPEAKER_00: What I'm involved in in life, what I spend myself for and what I invest in, is either in the whole permanent or passing.
29:43
SPEAKER_00: It either lasts forever or it doesn't last forever.
29:50
SPEAKER_00: I I um hesitate to use this illustration, but I will.
29:56
SPEAKER_00: Those of you, and I know that even if you haven't been to a casino, you've seen it on television.
30:01
SPEAKER_00: Those of you that have been in a casino, and that's actually a far more realistic experience than seeing it on television.
30:08
SPEAKER_00: If you've been in a casino, you know exactly what I mean when I say that there can be no more perfect picture of the world in its alluring state that John's talking about here.
30:20
SPEAKER_00: No more perfect picture I can think of, a self-enclosed picture than a casino.
30:26
SPEAKER_00: Because this world is um appeals to all five of our senses, right?
30:33
SPEAKER_00: It scratches our desires in all five senses.
30:37
SPEAKER_00: Let's let you know uh uh and and and but in doing so, it's sort of banging a loud drum to keep us from realizing that it's that it's that it's passing away, right?
30:48
SPEAKER_00: So let's take the five senses, sight.
30:51
SPEAKER_00: When you walk into a casino, the first thing you see are bright colors and flashing lights and dancing fountains, perhaps erupting volcanoes and spinning reels and splashing coins.
31:02
SPEAKER_00: And then there's the hearing, the ring of the slot machines, the clang of coins dropping, the siren when there's a, you know, and someone's won the jackpot, and the voices and the laughter and the easy listening music in the background.
31:18
SPEAKER_00: And the smell, what people don't realize is every casino chooses its own unique signature fragrance, and it uses nebulizers to inject precise amounts of that casino's fragrance into the air, citrus or jasmine or um um uh vanilla or cocoa butter or salt sea air, or actually, if if you're in the West Texas, it's country smells, you know, even manure piles, or baked bread.
31:48
SPEAKER_00: You know, all of that, and it pumps that through the ventilation vents to mask what you would smell otherwise, which is this the odor of cigarette smoke and the smells of human bodies in warm places.
32:01
SPEAKER_00: Or then there's taste, whatever titillates your palate today, you can find at a casino, all those great restaurants and bars, Asian, South American, American, whatever, and free soft drinks.
32:13
SPEAKER_00: Or touch, the comforting feel of the lights which are down low and the soft carpet when you walk, and the stools when you sit, and just plant yourself there and push a simple button.
32:23
SPEAKER_00: Everything that you could possibly want in this self-enclosed place, so much like the world, so alluring, everything you could want except for one thing, of course.
32:34
SPEAKER_00: A clock.
32:35
SPEAKER_00: Casinos have no clocks.
32:37
SPEAKER_00: They don't want you to think about the time.
32:40
SPEAKER_00: You either bring your own clock, your own cell phone, your own watch, or you have to ask somebody the time.
32:46
SPEAKER_00: Because casinos don't want you to realize that they're passing.
32:50
SPEAKER_00: They don't want you to even think about the time.
32:52
SPEAKER_00: They don't want you to think about tomorrow or the next day or next year or eternity.
32:56
SPEAKER_00: They don't want you to stop and realize that the people in the casino around you, those people that you kind of avoid, those are the only permanent things there.
33:05
SPEAKER_00: Everything else is gonna soon pass away.
33:11
SPEAKER_00: And some of those people, it's very sad, many of them blue hairs, you know, uh, you know, and you and and you go there and and I have a family member who's a casino gambler, but um, and and you see those people, and I sit and talk to some of them who are elderly, who are just throwing away hundreds of dollars constantly, just pumping it in, the sweet older ladies who are losing all their money.
33:36
SPEAKER_00: And I just chat with them about that and try to get them to think about what they were doing and why, anyway, and yet the and yet this casino's like the world.
33:48
SPEAKER_00: It's passing away, but it doesn't want you to think about that.
33:51
SPEAKER_00: And it sometimes you just hope that people grasp it, and sometimes they do.
33:57
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes they do.
33:58
SPEAKER_00: Le'Veon Bell apparently has.
34:00
SPEAKER_00: He's a 28-year-old superstar a couple years ago, one of the best maybe five players in the entire NFL.
34:05
SPEAKER_00: And he decided that playing for the Pittsburgh Steelers is not enough.
34:08
SPEAKER_00: He needed more money, he needed to be recognized as a really, really great player, and they weren't paying him enough.
34:13
SPEAKER_00: So he went to the worst team possible in the NFL, went to the New York Jets, but they paid him$50-some million dollars a year and a half ago.
34:21
SPEAKER_00: But he found out rather shortly that he was on a team that was poorly coached and poorly run, and they weren't giving him the ball enough, and he realized, wow, there's a lot more than money to life.
34:31
SPEAKER_00: And it just got worse and worse and worse for Le'Veon Bell.
34:36
SPEAKER_00: And Le'Veon Bell let it be known he was not a good character in the New York locker room, and they absolutely cut him.
34:45
SPEAKER_00: They cut him earlier this week, and within 48 hours, he signed with none other than the Kansas City Chiefs.
34:52
SPEAKER_00: Kansas City Chiefs Kingdom, thank you for the opportunity.
34:55
SPEAKER_00: Let's go, he tweets.
35:15
SPEAKER_00: No, that's not a perfect illustration, but no, I'll just make it really clear it's a perfect illustration.
35:20
SPEAKER_00: The world's team is the New York Jets.
35:22
SPEAKER_00: If you set your love there, you have no future.
35:25
SPEAKER_00: God's team is the Chiefs.
35:27
SPEAKER_00: Put your love there and you'll be a winner.
35:29
SPEAKER_00: Okay, that's just basically what I'm saying this morning.
35:31
SPEAKER_00: That's the point of my message.
35:33
SPEAKER_00: No, it's not, but it's close, and that is that sometimes you finally come to your senses and you realize there's a whole lot more out there than just the allurements of the world, the money, the sex, and so forth.
35:48
SPEAKER_00: So you need to ask yourself this question: Am I invested in what's permanent or am I invested in what is passing?
35:56
SPEAKER_00: It's either or.
35:58
SPEAKER_00: It can't be both, right?
36:02
SPEAKER_00: Because anything I'm invested in in the world, no matter how really harmless it is, is passing away.
36:11
SPEAKER_00: We love to make fun of Sam, Sam Reed around our place, but one of the many things we admire Sam for is the fact that he is a remarkable sand sculptor, right?
36:22
SPEAKER_00: So about 10 days ago, he's down uh with Jessica.
36:25
SPEAKER_00: They're on a, I don't know, another one of their late honeymoons.
36:28
SPEAKER_00: They have these things every couple weeks, it seems.
36:31
SPEAKER_00: So anyway, but he loves to do these sculptures.
36:33
SPEAKER_00: And this is anybody recognize that figure?
36:36
SPEAKER_00: Are you too old to recognize Olaf?
36:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
36:39
SPEAKER_00: So it took him about three hours, uh, and this is short because usually he spends like eight hours, and he's got a perfect wife who sits there and cheers him on the whole time, which is just amazing.
36:51
SPEAKER_00: Jessica deserves a lot of kudos for that.
36:56
SPEAKER_00: But I can tell you, I can promise you, in fact, I asked him this morning, do you think it's still there?
37:00
SPEAKER_00: He looked at me like I was crazy.
37:01
SPEAKER_00: Of course it's not still there, because the surf comes in and it washes it all away, and yet so many of us, so many people that we know are building castles in the sand.
37:11
SPEAKER_00: We're investing our life, earning as much money as we possibly can so that we can build what we think is a legacy, but our grandchildren will not even know what we did for a living.
37:24
SPEAKER_00: And it just goes away.
37:26
SPEAKER_00: And that's the second motivation.
37:28
SPEAKER_00: Ask yourself, is what I am doing something that will last, something that's permanent, or is it something that is passing?
37:36
SPEAKER_00: And then that last line, but he who does the will of the uh God abides forever.
37:42
SPEAKER_00: That is, he who doesn't stop at just being a Christian, but moves on, abides or remains forever.
37:49
SPEAKER_00: And what that I think means in parallel is that is that there are two lives here, one invested in what is passing, and when you pass away, and by the way, can I stop and say how backwards we have it?
38:02
SPEAKER_00: You know, when we think of things that when we think of things that pass away, you know what we oftentimes think of?
38:06
SPEAKER_00: We think of people.
38:07
SPEAKER_00: People live a little less than a century and then they're gone.
38:10
SPEAKER_00: What do we think of the last?
38:11
SPEAKER_00: Oh, governments and nations and causes and so forth and all of these big things, because when we came to the earth, here was America, and when we're gonna leave, here's America, here's the government, here's the cause, here's the organization, and so forth.
38:23
SPEAKER_00: We have it exactly backwards, am I right?
38:26
SPEAKER_00: Because governments and societies and organizations and movements, those things all pass away.
38:32
SPEAKER_00: What is it that lasts?
38:34
SPEAKER_00: You, me, people.
38:36
SPEAKER_00: Those are the things that last, we last forever.
38:41
SPEAKER_00: But here we have a point, and that is, if you live your life, the people who live their life for things that are passing, the world's gonna pass away, its lust will pass away, and you just watch that life disintegrate.
38:51
SPEAKER_00: There's absolutely, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 3, sort of gets put in the fire, it all turns to ash.
38:57
SPEAKER_00: There's nothing left but a life invested in what is permanent and what will last.
39:04
SPEAKER_00: That life lasts forever.
39:08
SPEAKER_00: Not that the person will either go to hell or heaven.
39:11
SPEAKER_00: Again, that has nothing to do with your works and how you spend your life.
39:16
SPEAKER_00: But wow, what a joy, isn't it, to know you don't have to be a missionary or thank God a pastor or a priest or a monk or whatever else.
39:25
SPEAKER_00: You just do the will of God, which in this text is that I love God more than the world's instead of the world's.
39:35
SPEAKER_00: I love him so much when I consider what he has done for me.
39:39
SPEAKER_00: I'm absolutely in adoration of him, which is why I sang during the worship this morning.
39:44
SPEAKER_00: I adore him and I love him, and I look at what he's done in my life and what he keeps doing in my life, and the fact that I can ask him, his help for things, and when I'm suffering, he's the one I actually run to.
39:57
SPEAKER_00: Oh my goodness.
40:00
SPEAKER_00: So let me uh close with in a way that I've never closed before.
40:08
SPEAKER_00: And um I would like to encourage you to do something.
40:12
SPEAKER_00: I've never closed this way because I've never had we've never had so many people watching online, and this is especially for you who watch online, because the people who are here I'd like to have do it, but they may forget by the time they get home.
40:26
SPEAKER_00: So if you're watching online, I want you to do something when I finish here in just a minute.
40:32
SPEAKER_00: I want you to go over to YouTube and I want you to type in three words.
40:37
SPEAKER_00: I want you to type in Give Me Jesus.
40:40
SPEAKER_00: It's a great song.
40:42
SPEAKER_00: Song so loved by Billy Graham and his wife Ruth that it's the one thing that was done at both of their services in these last ten years.
40:49
SPEAKER_00: Sung by Fernando Ortega, and as you type in Give Me Jesus, you'll see Fernando Ortega, and you'll see those two services.
40:55
SPEAKER_00: You can watch that, or you can watch Vince Gill sing it, or you can watch a variety, maybe your favorite singer sing Give Me Jesus.
41:03
SPEAKER_00: I would recommend that instead of for Jeremy Camps or Vince Gills, I would recommend that you look up Danny Gokies, which you listen to him sing.
41:14
SPEAKER_00: In the morning when I rise, in the morning when I rise, in the morning when I rise, give me Jesus.
41:22
SPEAKER_00: Give me Jesus, give me Jesus.
41:26
SPEAKER_00: You can have all the world, but give me Jesus.
41:30
SPEAKER_00: And when I am alone, when I am alone, when I am alone, give me Jesus.
41:38
SPEAKER_00: Give me Jesus, give me Jesus.
41:41
SPEAKER_00: You can have all the world, but give me Jesus.
41:44
SPEAKER_00: And when I come to die, when I come to die, when I come to die, give me Jesus.
41:54
SPEAKER_00: Give me Jesus.
41:56
SPEAKER_00: Give me Jesus.
41:58
SPEAKER_00: You can have all the world, but give me Jesus.
42:05
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
42:07
SPEAKER_00: Our Heavenly Father, we are so grateful, a little scared because you make it black and white.
42:16
SPEAKER_00: We like to have both.
42:19
SPEAKER_00: Always we like to have both.
42:22
SPEAKER_00: But you say we can't have both.
42:24
SPEAKER_00: Then this morning at least we realize we don't want to choose what's passing away.
42:29
SPEAKER_00: We we we choose you.
42:31
SPEAKER_00: We choose you.
42:32
SPEAKER_00: We choose you in the person of your dear son Jesus Christ, who loved us enough to come die for us.
42:38
SPEAKER_00: We choose you because you are our shepherd and you care for us even when we're in the dark valley.
42:42
SPEAKER_00: We choose you because we know we get to live with you forever.
42:47
SPEAKER_00: So give us Jesus.
42:49
SPEAKER_00: Give us Jesus, Lord.
42:51
SPEAKER_00: Others can have all this world.
42:54
SPEAKER_00: Just give us Jesus.
42:56
SPEAKER_00: In whose name we pray.
42:58
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
43:00
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for coming.