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Will you turn, please, to 1 John
and chapter 2? You already have marked the first
verse, the sixth verse of the first chapter with a 1, if you'd
follow the suggestion we've made. You've put a 2 after the third
verse of the second chapter. You have put 3 after 2-9, second
chapter, verse 9, third chapter, verse 14, the fourth verse 20. Now I'd
like to suggest you put four after the 15th verse of the second
chapter and that you just put a checkmark by 16 and 17 to remind
yourself in the days to come that these two verses are included
in this fourth evidence of eternal life. I read for you that which
shall engage us this morning. Love not the world, neither the
things that are in the world. If any 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. Here again is that word love. We found in the use of it yesterday
and in reference to Matthew the 22nd chapter, the great commandment,
how shall love the Lord thy God, that used in this way with the
imperative, we are to understand it not as an emotion or a feeling,
a sensibility, but rather as in the form of benevolence, the
committal of the will, the supreme choice of the life. In the case
of God, to seek his highest good and blessing and joy and satisfaction
with us. And in the case of our neighbors,
to seek also their highest good and blessing and joy and fulfillment. and happiness in every way possible. And also thou shalt love thy
neighbor as thyself because of our worth and value. God has
established that we are to seek the highest good, highest good
and blessing and happiness and joy of ourselves consistent with
our love for God and our love for our neighbors. Now, Let's
see if that definition applies here. Thou shalt not love the
world. Apply it. Thou shalt not seek
the highest good and joy and blessing and satisfaction of
the world. Your happiness will not depend
upon the world. You're not living to please the
world. To the contrary, you're living
to please God. And therefore, his commandment,
love not the world, is consistent in terms of the definition. You
will not commit your will and your purpose to please the world,
to seek the approval of the world, or to bring joy and satisfaction
to your heart through the world. The world works. I think we can
accept that. Now the text. Love not the world, neither the
things that are in the world. Do you accept as much authority
for this commandment as you did for the first and great commandment? You ought to. They are given
by the same Holy Spirit. It was the Lord Jesus who said,
thou shalt love the Lord thy God. And it's God the Holy Ghost
speaking through the Apostle John says, in effect, thou shalt
not love the world. Now what does this word world
mean? It has reference to all that
engaged you and held you and attracted you prior to your coming
to Christ. That is what he wants us to understand
by world. Now there's a contract here that
God has drawn up with us and I suggest it's this, you cannot
walk in the light and in darkness at the same time. Do you accept
that? Is that sensible? Is that logical? Is that common sense? You can't
walk in light and darkness at the same time. Now you cannot
love the commandments of God and hate the commandments of
God at the same time. It's impossible. And you can't
commit your entire being to pleasing God and pleasing the world at
the same time. Absolutely impossible. You recognize
that. You realize that. You recognize
that you either love God or you love the world. You either seek
to please God or you seek to please the world. But no one
can love both at the same time. Now there's a rationale for this
commandment. The world passeth away. You'll agree, I'm sure, that
it's folly to sell something that you cannot lose in exchange
for something that you cannot keep. Doesn't make sense, does
it? It's foolishness to trade gold
and silver and precious stones for wood and hay and stubble. Especially when the world tells
us when the word tells us that not only is the trade absurd
and foolish, but more than that, the lust thereof passeth away
so that after a while the very thing that you so intensely desired
and for which you made such a foolish bargain has passed away and you
don't even want it anymore. We found with our children when
they were growing up that they had a great, oh, what a great
number of wants they had. And there were so many books
that showed various things that young teenagers would like. And
they had allowance, and they had some money, and we had some
rules. And one of our rules was this.
Anything they wanted, they could buy. two weeks after they said
they wanted it. It was a family rule. They'd come
in and say, I want to get this dad, I want this. And I'd say,
fine, you got the money? Yeah, here it is. And so we just
put it in the weight lid, in the weight bottle, up behind
the cupboard. You know, never once can I remember
when at the end of two weeks, They wanted what the money was
sitting there for because between then they had three more things
they wanted. The lust thereof passed away. The desire thereof was gone. And that's what God says here. Foolishness. To sell, to trade
something you can't lose for something you can't keep. gold, silver, and precious stones
for wood, hay, and stubble. It's absurd. It's not only absurd,
it's also perilous. And we ought to understand that
peril. In Matthew chapter 16, verse 26, For what has a man
profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own
soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange
for his soul? In Luke chapter 21 verse 34,
And take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts
be overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness, and the cares
of this life, and so that day come upon you unawares. In James
chapter 4 and verse 4, You adulterers and adulteresses, know you not
that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? Whosoever
therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God."
Matthew 24, 38 and 39. For as in the days that were
before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving
in marriage until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and
knew not until the flood came and took them all away. great
peril in loving the world. There are scriptures full of
it, I've just picked two or three verses. In contrast to that,
the foolishness of such a transaction is the permanence of loving God. He that doeth the will of God
abideth forever. Now doing is the evidence of
loving. If you love me, you will do my
commandments. You will keep my commandments. And so it seems to me that we
should be quite prepared to face this person that is sitting across
the table in the cafe and asked us at the beginning of a conversation,
you know, I'm not sure I'm a Christian. I'm really not sure that I'm
born of God. And we've taken them through
one and two and had them read them, three, and now we're down
to four. And we say to them, now what's
your attitude toward the world? You may know it by the way they
live, but don't tell them. Let them discover it for themselves. After all, You're not the x-ray
machine, you're just sort of bringing them to where the x-ray
machine is. The Word of God is that which
divides between soul and spirit. And so you say to the person,
well now what is your attitude toward the world? Whom do you
seek to please? Where does your happiness come from? Does it
come from what the world thinks about you? Do you have to have
its approval and its applause to make you happy? Or is your
happiness from a relationship with God? Now the commandment,
love not the world, is enforced by verses 16 and 17 in this way. All that is in the world. And
then the Spirit of God through John begins to tell us, all that's
in the world is the lust or the desires of the eye. Well, What
does the eye see? It sees things. So all that's
in the world includes things. And then it says, the lust of
the flesh, or the desire and the appetites of the flesh. And
that's experience. Sexual experience, or if it's
just a case of being in the world, social experience with those
that are haters of God. And the third thing is the pride
of life, and that's position. Now, if you ever see a drawing,
a caricature of Satan with a pitchfork, and that fork has more than three
tines, you'll know it's not correct. Because fork he may have, pitchfork
he may have, but there are only three tines on that fork. The
lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life. Mind you, he's devised an enormous
number of variations because he certainly enticed multitude,
millions of men and women with no other tool than just that,
been phenomenally successful many times in our lives when
we look back upon it. But that's all he has. He doesn't
have any more. All that is in the world is the
lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life. Now, these correspond, and some
of you have heard me in the past, have heard me refer to this,
to three types of idolatry, whereas they're not only in the areas
that I'm giving the emphasis, they are in the areas I'm giving
the emphasis. The lust of the eye. The word
Baal is owner. And Baal worship was apparently
for the purpose of acquiring things. You know, when the children
of Israel crossed the Jordan and came in and took the land
and occupied it, They took over the farmsteads and the fields
of the people that had been there, the Canaanites. And God had judged
and sent Israel there for the purpose of judging them for their
iniquities. And they conquered it, and they
took it, and they lived on it. But the children of Israel did
not do as God had told them to do, which was to complete the
judgment that God had pronounced upon the Canaanitish nation.
So, the people that had occupied the area still hung around in
the neighborhood. Can you see an Israelitish farmer
out there trying to till the ground? It was a little bit rocky,
a little bit poor, and God had told him how it was going to
flow with milk and honey and about all they had were some
weeds, poison ivy. So far they hadn't had much blessing
from God because they hadn't obeyed And so, one day the Israelitish
farmer's out there trying to get this ground stirred up to
get a crop in, and now leaning against the stone fence is the
fellow that used to own the farm, the old Canaanitish farmer that's
still in the neighborhood. Don't have much of a crop, do
you? Well, no, it's not so good. Well, if you only knew how to
get a crop, you'd do better than you're doing. What am I doing
wrong? Well, it's not what you're doing wrong, it's not what you're
doing right. That's where the problem is. What do you mean? Well, he said, do you ever notice
that thick part of the wall down there in the corner? Yeah, I
saw that. What was that for? Why'd you
make that so thick? Did you ever notice it's got
those dark streaks running down on it? Yeah. Well, that's where
we sacrifice to Baal. See, he owns this field. And
if you don't give him what he asks for, you're not going to
have a crop. Oh, that's what that is. So that night, when
he gets home, he tells his wife, you know, I had an old farmer
who used to have this place, tell me that down there in the
corner where they got that thick part next to those stones, with
those streaks on it, that's blood, dry blood. They sacrifice to
the evil spirit that owns this piece of ground. Well, I certainly
wish you'd do something because I gotta have a new rug and some
new cooking ware and a new dress. I haven't had a new dress for
three years. I wish you'd do something. Well, I don't know. He can't stand the heat from
the kitchen, so just the funniest thing happens the next day. When
he's down there, a little lamb, jumps up on that wall, and he's
just there wiggling on a stick, and don't you know it? Accidentally,
that lamb runs into that knife and cuts its throat. Runs into
it three times, to tell you the truth. It wasn't done deliberately. It wasn't done as a sacrifice.
It just happened. But you know, stuff began to
grow, and the crops began to flourish, Boy, that's getting
around. That's how you get a good crop.
You sacrifice to the owner, the bale. Well, why? Because, you
see, if you've got more grain you're going to eat that year,
you can trade it for some of the things somebody else has.
You can buy things with it. And so what do we read? And the
children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord and served
Balaam. In Judges 3, 7, and 8, "...And
the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and
forgot the Lord their God, and served Balaam and the groves. Therefore the anger of the Lord
was hot against Israel, and he sold them." That's the lust of
the eye. Things! Compromise with the God
of this world to get things. And there was a second, the lust
of the flesh. Now that carries us back into Genesis where there's
an interesting thing. It says Nimrod was a mighty hunter
before the Lord. But that word hunter is literally
rebel. And just a few generations from
Noah when God had judged the world because of all of its sin
and And now Nimrod has become a mighty rebel against the Lord,
and he leads the people in revolt. And he says, you know, if we
build us a tower that could reach clear up to heaven, we could
take this Jehovah God down out of it, and we could have our
own religion, and we wouldn't have to be restricted in our
pleasure doing the things he wants us to do. We'd decide how
to be happy. And so the Tower of Babel was
built. And we're told by Hislop in his Volume 2 Babylon's that
he got his father's wife, not his
mother, but Semiramis, and he sort of enthroned her as the
goddess of heaven and commanded the people to worship Semiramis. And the worship was associated
with all kinds of lustful sexual indulgence. Later on was Ashtaroth,
the successor to Semiramis. And the worship of Ashtaroth,
Ashtarte, and then in history it's Juno, in Ephesus it was
Diana. But it was just a continuous
succession, different names, but for the same purpose of giving
license to immorality. And in Judges 2.13 we read, And
they, that is Israel, forsook the Lord, and served Baal and
Ashtoreth. And the anger of the Lord was
hot against Israel, and he delivered them into the hands of the spoilers. In 1 Samuel 12.10, And they served
Balaam and Ashtoreth. In Judges 10, verses 6 and 7,
And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD,
and served Balaam and Ashtoreth. And they forsook the LORD, and
served not him. And the anger of the LORD was
hot against Israel, and he sold them into the hands of the Philistines. Well, we've covered two, the
lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, the worship of Balaam,
the worship of Ashtoreth. Now let's come to the third,
the pride of life. All that's in the world are things
and experience in one other. Position, power, influence, authority. That's the worship of Moloch.
Let me read a few scripture verses regarding this and then we will
comment on it. Leviticus chapter 18 and 21,
And thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire
to Moloch, neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God,
I am the Lord. Of King Josiah, who renewed the
covenant, and destroyed idolatry in Judah, it is written in 2
Kings 23 10, and he defiled Topheth, which is in the valley of the
children of Hinnom, that no man might make his son or daughter
pass through the fire to Moloch. And Jeremiah proclaims God's
judgment upon Judah, because they had done evil in my sight,
saith the Lord. They have set their abominations
in the house which is called by my name to pollute it, and
they have built the high places of Tophet, which is on the valley
of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters
in the fire." And again in Jeremiah 32, 35,
"...and they built the high places of Baal, which are in the valley
of the son of Hinnom, to cause their sons and daughters to pass
through the fire unto Moloch." which I commanded them not, neither
came into my mind that they should do this abomination to cause
Judah to sin. Worship of Moloch. Well, what
is, get the picture. Moloch is given to us in archeological
records as being a very large statue of a king on a throne,
often carved out of one solid piece of stone. as was the statue
of Abu Simbel down there in southern Egypt. Picture showed or what
we have depicts Moloch as being this king on a throne with his
thighs together and his hands folded across his knees so that
the forearms and hands created a basin over his lap. Apparently there were tunnels
carved into the stone leading behind the statue and bellows. The bellow would consist of a
skin of a goat and a means of getting air in and then the aperture
would close and they could force the air up the channels, putting
charcoal in the lap of the statue, setting it aflame, getting the
bellows behind there to force the air through it, they could
turn that into a very, very hot, fiery furnace, if you please. The worshipper would come, in
this case the Israelites, who had been called of God to be
a people, to show forth his praise, Mother and father coming, they've
served Baal, gotten the things they wanted, they've served Ashtoreth
and gotten liberty for sexual indulgence, but they're still
not satisfied, they gotta have position. That requires a sacrifice. And so they bring the child down,
a firstborn boy or a girl, because Moloch was made out of stone,
he really couldn't tell the difference between boys and girls, but it
had to be an infant. and the parent father would stand
there, would address the priest telling them what position he
wanted, what he was asking for, why he was making the sacrifice,
and then calculating trajectory as a basketball player would
try to get the ball through the hoop, the father would throw
the little baby into the air so that it would land squarely
on that bed of coals, a living sacrifice to the God of this
world. And that was the sin of Israel. That was the pride of life. You say, oh what a terrible thing.
Indeed, sin is always a terrible thing. And when we find today, with
this revival of Satanism that's rapidly accelerating across America,
The little babies stolen from shopping malls and elsewhere
are ending up as human sacrifices. It's nothing new. It just goes
back to what Israel did back there and why God judged them
so severely. But, you know, with that as crude,
as gross, as horrible, as offensive as it is, there's another type. Strange, when I was pastor in
New York City, I often had the children of outstanding Christian
workers come sometimes from other states and from some distance
to talk with me because they did not want to reflect upon
their fathers. But I've had oh so many of them
say, you know, my father is so busy going around the country
preaching going around the country talking, working with these groups,
doing all these things. I never see him. And I got problems,
and I've got this. Or my father's working in his
business day and night, and he's neglected us. He claims to be
a Christian follower of Christ. What were they doing? Well, would
it be unkind to suggest that maybe the fathers, maybe perhaps
the mothers, with their own personal ambitions, were willing to sacrifice
their children on the altar of their ambitions, not with a knife
and not with blowing coals, but just with neglect and indifference
and unconcern. So what have we here? What we have here is a commandment
by the Holy Ghost that everyone that has been born of God and
made a partaker of the divine nature will not love the world. Because if any man loved the
world, the love of the Father is not in him. Oh, I didn't say
that. I didn't write that. I'm only
reading it. God said it. I'm not trying to be harsh. I'm
only trying to be honest. I'm only trying to say what God's
Word says, that if anyone loves the world, the love of the Father
is not in him. So when people say, I'm not sure
I'm a child of God, fourth evidence is, what's your attitude toward
the world? In 1 Peter chapter 2, verses
9 and 10, we are told we're a royal holy priesthood, royal priest
of the Holy Nation, that we should show forth the praises of Him
who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light. What's
the conclusion? What's the evidence of eternal
life? You cannot love the Father and the world at the same time
because love for the Father is a commitment to please Him. Now
that doesn't mean that a child of God cannot be overtaken in
a fault by temptation, fall into sin, but if he is, if a child
of God does, he's going to deal with it because he's done something
he really doesn't want to do. The purpose of his heart is to
please God and he did something he hates. He did it. But the
evidence that he's a child of God is that he's going to judge
it and forsake it and confess it and know the cleansing of
the precious blood. It's so important for us to understand
this in the light of Titus chapter 2, verses 11 to 14. For the grace
of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared unto all men, teaching
us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts We should live
soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world, looking
for that blessed hope in the glorious appearing of the great
God and our Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us, that
he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify unto himself a purchased
people zealous of good works. Understand this, when you're
talking with this person and dealing with evidence number
four. The grace of God that brings salvation teaches everyone to
whom salvation is brought identically the same things, regardless of
what their culture may have been, their background may have been,
their language may have been, The grace of God that brings
salvation teaches everyone to whom such salvation is brought
identically the same thing. It was my first day at our station
at Malut in the upper Nile province in the sedan, right on the Nile
River, about four, five, six hundred miles south of Khartoum,
depending on whether you went by the river or you had to go
by steamboat and by railroad. We got there, middle of the night,
went out to our station. The next day, the man with whom
we traveled from the States to the Sudan, John Phillips, our
senior missionary and head of the station, came over to our
home where we were having breakfast, said, I want to show you around.
Come with me. And so I went with him. He showed me the various
houses and the outbuildings and then the school. And we ended
up in the building that was the school assembly room classroom
and where the little local church met on Sundays and Lord's Day. The headmaster of the school
was there. His name was Paul. He was a Dinka
man. He'd grown up down in the New
Era district of the Dinkers, so he had the stripes across
the forehead. When he was 17, to prove his
manhood, he had gone to the witch doctor and had said he was ready
for the transition ceremony. He lay down with a little cup
for the back of his head in the soil, nothing else. The witch
doctor came and put this A spear blade had been worn down, only
about six inches of blade, very sharp on stone, and he put it
in Paul's forehead over here, above the eye, and cut clear
through to the scalp, and then he put sort of a cooking pot
in that, and then about a half inch above it, all the way up
his forehead, clear up to the hairline. Paul had that. When
Paul had been a baby about three or four months old, his mother
had taken him to the witch doctor. who had taken another knife and
had cut the lower jawbone and scraped the teeth buds, tooth
buds of the four front lower teeth off of the jawbone so he
had no lower teeth in the front. Here was Paul a denker, but now
local pastor and headmaster of the school who loved Jesus Christ
and faithfully proclaimed the gospel. John Phillips was from
Baltimore He was a graduate of Wheaton College and of Harvard's
Business School. And here was a guy from Minnesota.
And the three of us were standing there, very briefly telling about
how we'd come to know the Lord. And when Paul finished, just standing in the center of
this little grass-thatched roof house, all three of us, were
strangely enveloped by a sense of the presence of the Lord.
And tears were in our eyes without our sobbing. It's just the presence
of God. What was it? The grace of God
that brings salvation had taught us identically the same thing,
regardless of our background or our culture. Grace of God
that brings salvation teaches us to deny ungodliness and worldly
lusts, that's repentance, and to live soberly and righteously
and godly in this present world. Looking with that blessed hope
and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior,
Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us, that he might save us
from hell and take us to heaven when we die. Is that what the
Word says? Not in my book. Not in my book. What it says in this book, and
in yours, is this, "...who gave himself for us, that he might
redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a purchased
people, zealous of good works." In contrast to loving the world,
it's to hate evil, The grace of God has taught us to deny
ungodliness and worldly lusts and to live soberly, righteously,
and godly in this present evil world, not to seek its favor,
not to get our pleasure and joy and happiness from it. How do we illustrate it? How
do we illustrate what it means? Years ago, I read an account
of a young man from Great Britain who had, he was a younger son
of a famous family, had enough money so he could come to America.
He'd gone across America on the river boats and on the Santa
Fe Trail. He worked as a cowboy and he'd
gone into the mountains and he ended up around Sumter or around
there where they had the gold strike and in 49, and he'd put
in a claim, and he'd worked the claim, and he'd gotten quite
a lot of gold, a lot of money, which he had converted into letters
of credit there in California, and he had decided to take the
southern route and go across, he'd come across through the
north, and he wanted to go across now through Texas and Louisiana,
and then by boat from Louisiana to New York and back to England. He was in New Orleans, and he
did like all of us tourists do when we go to New Orleans. He
went down to the slave market. I'm sure if you've been in New
Orleans, you've done it. Or if you, when you go, you will. The
difference was, when he was there, they were still selling human
beings as chattel. He'd never seen it before. It
had been outlawed before his time. He couldn't remember it
in England. And here was the first time he'd ever seen human
beings sold on a block. As he stood there, he heard the
ribald remarks, he saw the cruelty, the viciousness, the iniquity
in the lives, eyes, and voices of the people who were there.
There was one very beautiful young woman standing there with
the slaves to be sold, and he heard Some of them talked about
how they were going to buy her and what they were going to do
with her. One man particularly, who had a reputation that he'd
overheard as being one of the most vicious slave owners in
all of that area, was determined to buy this young woman. She
came to the block, the bidding started, and this man seemed
to be having it his own way for no one wanted to incur his wrath.
And finally, this Britisher put in a bid. And the man bid again. And the Britisher put in another
bid. And the man raised it. And to
stop this nonsense, this man raised his bid by a hundred percent. And there was a gasp that went
through the group. The most money that anyone had
ever paid for a slave in New Orleans. He paid out the gold to the cashier,
he was given the strap that went around the neck of the young
woman. As she came down the steps on
the block where she'd been standing while the transaction had been
completed, she got on the first step from next to the ground,
just face to face with the one who had bought her. She had been
saving up a mouthful of saliva. And when she stood right in front
of him, she spat that saliva full in his face and hissed through
her clenched teeth, I hate you. He said nothing, back of his
hand, he wiped it away, the crowd opened, he walked through it,
he went to someone, he asked some directions, went a little
further, asked further directions, was shown a door, went up some
stairs to an office. The woman had no idea where she
was going. She stood there. She wouldn't
flee because of the price and danger. Notoriety for this sale. He went over. Someone came, brought
someone else out. He paid some money. He insisted. They were saying no. He insisted. And finally, they signed the
paper and handed it to him. And he walked back, he stood in front of her, and
he said, here are your manumission papers.
You are free. And she looked at him and said,
you paid more for me than anyone else has ever been purchased
in New Orleans. I'm told so. And you bought me
to set me free. Yes, that's why I bought you,
to set you free. Tears came to her eyes. She fell
to her knees. She put her face down in his
rude miner's boots and started to sob. He bought me to set me
free. He bought me to set me free. She looked up and said, oh sir,
all I ask is to serve you as long as I live. Oh, it doesn't
illustrate. Maybe it helps. The great God
and Savior who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from
all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar purchased
people, zealous of good works. But is it hard, then, to hear
the Holy Ghost say, Love not the world, neither the things
that are in the world? If any man loves the world, the
love of the Father is not in him. Can we not, as with her,
kiss his nail-pierced feet and say, he bought me to set me free? My love is toward him and not
toward the world. Father in heaven, seal to our
hearts we ask thee this fourth evidence of the new birth. Could
there be those among us who know him in name only? might they
discover it and deal with it. So each of us, Lord, redeemed
by the poured out life of Thy dear Son, realize that He bought
us to set us free. We might glorify Him and walk
back in this world with all of its idolatry, free from being
entangled with it, to bring honor and glory and praise the one
who loved us and washed us in his precious blood, in his name
and for his sake, amen.
Not Loving The World by Paris Reidhead
Series Paris Reidhead Audio fm Videos
Not Loving The World by Paris Reidhead
| Sermon ID | 991193851 |
| Duration | 46:20 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday School |
| Language | English |
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