In the sermon titled 'The World Is Passing Away' by Scott Brown, the speaker reflects on 1 John 2:15-17, urging believers to avoid loving the world and its transient pleasures. He unpacks the meaning of 'the world,' not as the physical realm but as an invisible system of thoughts and ideologies that lure people away from God. The sermon emphasizes the test of true salvation—whether one loves the world or the Father. Brown distinguishes worldliness through the 'lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life,' which he calls the gateways of idolatry into our souls. He warns that worldliness is deeply rooted and pervasive, requiring the power of the gospel and the love of God to overcome. The sermon concludes with a call for believers to embrace godliness, reject the allure of the world, and live in obedience to God, highlighting that only those who do the will of God will abide forever.

Reading from 1 John chapter 2 verses 15 to 17. Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world is passing away, and the lust of it, that he who does the will of God abides forever.

Lord thank you for bringing us this morning to this text in your sovereign hand is what you have ordained for us today Lord. Do pray God you bring conviction where conviction is needed and you bring great encouragement God that we whoever does the will of God will abide forever. Lead us and guide us and speak through you, Mr. Brown, Holy Spirit. Do mighty work in our souls this morning.

Amen. The Lord has us in a place now in this passage of scripture to help us to consider worldliness, to examine our hearts, to see what kind of incursions the world has made in our lives. And the significance and the applicability of this passage is enormous. And it presents various things to us. And I think for me, one of the greatest propositions of this passage really is in the form of a question, the answer to a question.

And it's why would anyone want to be separated from the love of God? Why would anyone not have the fullness of the love of the Father in his soul? Why would anyone want to spend their lives loving something of the world that will be taken away and destroyed why why would anyone not want the things of of their father to fill their hearts even in this passage that was read just before the sermon here in second Corinthians 6 where the Apostle says come out from among them What fellowship do you have with darkness? He says, I will be a father to you, and you shall be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty. So this is the whole proposition.

Why would you want something that would be taken away and destroyed that would harm you on the one hand and why would you want any aspect of the love of the Father be deprived from you or edged out as a result of worldliness. And this is really John's message in these three verses. Now the context of it all is really the answer to the question, what does it mean to be a Christian? And there are subjects that John is dealing with here. What does it mean to be regenerated?

What does it mean to be a Christian? And there are subjects that John is dealing with here. What does it mean to be regenerated? What does it mean to be sanctified? What is the power of the gospel in a person's life?

And he's answering all these questions. But what John is saying is really, it's not what you say, but it's who you are. It's what do you love. You might say you know him, but if you walk in darkness That's a lie you can say that you know him and If you don't walk in the light, then you're proving that you're not really a child of God. If you say that you love God but don't keep His commandments, then you're a liar.

So he's saying that the Christian life isn't just something that you talk about. It's something that you are. And it has to do with this whole matter of worldliness. And So he's speaking of this power of the world working on a Christian. Now, he opens these verses with do not love the world.

And so it's a negative. He has just been speaking about how God has given people power to overcome the world in the previous verses. That the power of the gospel breaks the power of sin. And it gives you an ability to overcome the world like you never had before. And so he's been speaking very positively of what God does in you.

And now he turns and issues a warning with a do not. And so it's a very sharp contrast that he brings here. And this is just another test of salvation. By this we know that we love the children of God when we love God and keep his commandments. And so it's about how whether you know the love of God or not.

And the test of salvation here is the matter of worldliness. And do you love the world? Because if you love the world, the love of the Father is not in you. So John is trying to help the church to understand whether they really have true salvation or not. This is always the biggest problem in people who are gathered as the gathered church.

You have people who are deceiving themselves. They still do love the world and yet they claim to be Christians and maybe they have had nice feelings about God or they might have raised their hands or gone forward at a revival or something but they really they don't really love God. Their lives have never changed. That's the whole proposition that John is bringing to us here. So if you can see the outline in front of you, there's six matters that I would like to try to cover this morning in this passage.

And the First is the call to love not the world in verse 15. Do not love the world or the things in the world. So John is bringing a command which is also a test of salvation. Now what is the world? What is he talking about?

He's obviously not talking about the physical world. God has already declared that all that he has made was good. He declared that when he made the world. He's not talking about the people of the world exclusively because God does love people in the world with some qualifications. So John is not saying that you can't have appreciation for a river or a rock or an ocean or a mountain.

He's not saying that you can't look at the stars and say, oh, that's amazing. He's not talking about that kind of thing unless it turns into a replacement somehow of the worship of nature of the Sun and the moon and the stars and having your heart only gripped by nature he could be speaking about that as well But he's not talking particularly about the physical world. He's talking about something deeper than that. He's not talking about your relationships with the world unless your relationships with the world cause you to set aside the commands of God. You may love your family more than you love God, and you may love a friend more than you love God and compromise as a result of your love for your family.

And Jesus says that if you love your family more than you love God, then you cannot enter in the kingdom of heaven. So he's not talking about necessarily relationships. So we have to define what he means when he says, do not love the world, what is the love of the world and what is the world? And I want to give you 10 handles to understand what the love of the world is, because the world is an invisible system, number one. It's an invisible system of allurements away from God.

And he's speaking of a life that is independent of God, a desire to escape God's authority and so this invisible system includes ideologies that are contrary to the wisdom of God. Paul calls these speculations, which are raised up against the knowledge of God in 2 Corinthians 10, verses three, four through five, he calls them strongholds. And secondly, the world is a way of thinking. John uses it here in this context as a way of thinking. It's a system of beliefs that oppose the revealed will of God.

And when you love the world, when you love this way of thinking, your thinking prefers the thinking of the world. Number three, it's a world with a ruler, and that is Satan. It's a kingdom and its ruler who is at war with the kingdom of God, and It's a departure from God. Ian Murray defines it like this, it's a man-centered way of thinking. It proposes objectives which demand no radical breach with man's fallen nature.

It judges the importance of things by their present and material results. It weighs success by numbers. It covets human esteem and wants no unpopularity. It knows no truth for which it is worth suffering. It declines to be a fool for Christ's sake.

And so the pressure of the ruler of this world to cause us to desire the favor and the pleasure of man above the pleasure of God is what it means to serve the kingdom of darkness. You're always either serving the kingdom of light or the kingdom of darkness. You cannot understand the world unless you understand that this kingdom, that is a kingdom with a ruler, and this is why the flesh lusts against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh. This is the tug of war between the kingdom of darkness and its king and the kingdom of light and its king. It's also a visible world.

It's not only an invisible world of thoughts and kingdoms, but it's also a very visible world. You can see the world in graphic terms in the institutions of the world, in the governments of the world. John says later on that the whole world lies in the power of the evil one and and he's speaking of this this visible world that you see It's characterized by by many things. It's it's characterized by churches that are not revolutionizing the world but are being revolutionized by the world. It's also a deceiving world, number five.

It's a crafty system. It's an alluring system. And Because it's so deceiving, it makes it even more compelling and dangerous. Back in the days when the Roman persecutions were raging against the church in the third century AD, Cyprian, the bishop of Carthage, who was experiencing the fury of the Roman emperors in He lived from 200 to 258 BC But during during the Roman persecutions, he said that it wasn't the persecution that the church should fear so much. He said that it's the more subtle warfare that the enemy shows himself as an angel of light.

He said, fear the angel of light, not the angel of darkness that comes in with a sword to chop your head off. He says this enemy shows itself in peaceful things. He sneaks around through worldly entrapments that ensnare. The modern theologian David Wells says it like this, the evangelical soul is now damned by a worldliness that many fail to recognize as worldliness because of the cultural innocence with which it presents himself. And he says it's because the Christian church has made so many easy alliances with the culture in the past few decades that it's living like in a fool's paradise.

And as a result, the soul of the church is being destroyed. And so it's a deceiving world. It's a crafty, alluring system that presents itself as an angel of light. And then number six, it's a world that creates you by squeezing you into its mold. The world, as Paul says of it in Romans 12, verses one and two, he talks about the world that you become conformed to.

He says, do not be conformed to this world. In other words, do not let the world squeeze you into its mold. The world has a mold to squeeze you in. And if you look anything different than that mold, then you'll look weird. You'll be so odd.

And this is why true Christians are weird. They're odd. Because the world wants to squeeze you into a mold. But the Lord says, don't be conformed, don't be squeezed into that mold, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, because it begins in your mind. Christianity always works from the inside out.

It's no help to just change your outward behavior or your outward appearance. It does no good at all. It's totally unprofitable because it's not true Christianity. True Christianity begins in the mind and the heart. God changes your mind and your heart so that you're not inclined toward those things.

And he transforms you. He breaks the mold and then he makes you different. And you always have to ask, you know, what is molding you? What in the world is molding you? We have so many ways of being molded by this world.

We could make a huge, huge list. Even good things in this world can somehow mold you into its own image. And just think of the different opportunities that exist on the internet, the things that you can look at, all the different websites that will get you to think a certain way. While I've been the beneficiary of so many delicious meals that have been gotten off of Pinterest, you have to recognize that everything that Pinterest will do to you isn't good, right? Because it can just mold you into someone else's image.

Number seven, it's a world to be delivered from. The apostle Paul in Galatians chapter one says that the whole purpose of salvation is that he might deliver us from this present evil age according to the will of God our Father, to whom be glory forever and ever. So this this world, this this deliverance from the world is something that a Christian must always have his eye on. And Paul said the same thing to the Ephesian church. Paul says the same thing to almost every church that he writes to in the Bible.

To the Ephesians He said he said he made you alive and Because you are dead in trespasses and you were walking according to the course of this world According to the prince of the power of the air the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience. So he's talking about breaking free from walking in the way of the world. Not only does the world squeeze you into its mold, it makes you walk a certain way. And so worldliness is something that we must be delivered from. Now there are so many places in the New Testament where we hear this appeal.

In James chapter 4 he says adulterers and adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. You can't play patty cake with the world. This is a gigantic issue And please raise this issue in your mind to recognize any incursion of the world. If you make friendship with the world, you make yourself an enemy with God.

In Revelation chapter 18, verse four, you know, a voice from heaven cries out, come out from her my people, lest you share in her sins, and lest you receive her plagues. And This appeal is all over the Bible. It failed me to even recognize which passages of Scripture I should quote in the midst of so many. But it's a world to be delivered from, and the Bible makes that so clear. Number eight, it's a world for which love begins very early.

Worldliness begins very early. Some of you are holding little children. And worldliness is revealed when a child grabs, you know, tightly to a thing that it desires and will not let it go. Worldliness starts at the very beginning. Worldliness starts when a child arches his back and wants to do his own thing and resist you.

Worldliness is something that starts young. In fact, in the womb itself, the Bible says. Now, number nine, the world is presented through many different delivery systems. Now John is speaking about things about the world that's one category and the things in the world. Now, the world and the things of the world are being delivered to us through two primary means.

First of all, our own inclination of our hearts, because our hearts are wicked. But it is delivered through the entire culture that we live in. We live in a world where the world delivers itself through culture and This is the most difficult part of the whole question of do not love the world of why we should not love the world there are There are so many things that we experience just by virtue of the fact of being born into this world and seeing the things that are here that arise out of worldliness, which is life apart or thinking apart from God. And a Christian must be very sensitive to the origins of things. Where did that come from?

Should always be your question. You must ask that question, lest you become a friend of the world. You do not want to become a friend of the things that came from darkness. To me, this is the most pivotal matter in discerning worldliness and holiness. And we can't dismiss or underestimate how important this is.

The Lord says without holiness you will not see the Lord. So you have to understand where these things come from. Everything in this world comes from somewhere. And a Christian has to learn how to think differently about the world in that sense. And so to love the world can include loving the things that the world has served up, which are representations of what God has rejected.

And there are philosophies that are delivered to us through different delivery systems that are apart from God. There are the ways of the world that are observed in almost every part of life. Every place you look, you can see some manifestation of the worldliness of the world. And very often those things exist alongside of good gifts of God. I'll take clothing for example.

There are ways of dressing that have their origin in this world system of morality. That it glorifies nakedness, it glorifies ostentation. You know, the whole fashion industry has been shaped by thinking that's apart from God. The fashion industry which jerks women around in every generation, multiple times in a generation, in multiple ways because it changes so often. But the fashion industry is not based on, let everything that has breath praise the Lord.

You know, the fashion industry is not based on fulfilling the biblical purpose of clothing. The fashion industry is not based on fulfilling a biblical purpose for clothing. God has given clothing as a gift. God clothed Adam and Eve as a gift to cover their nakedness. This forms the very beginning of our understanding of what clothing is all about.

And then we learn later that Jesus Christ came to clothe you with his righteousness. He covers your nakedness, your shame, with his clothing, with his robes of righteousness. This is the meaning of clothing. But the fashion industry doesn't think that clothing is for that. The fashion industry thinks that clothing is to glorify your body and to make you popular in the world.

So the world has many, many delivery systems. That's just one example. The entertainments of this world deliver worldliness through their medium. The songs and the genres of songs in this world are delivery systems of the world. And sometimes they exist alongside of each other.

And the question is, do you love the world? And what John is saying is that the love of the world is the most dangerous thing that you can can experience and now When you love something that carries worldliness in it, you have to ask yourself, am I loving the world? And this is how Satan entraps. He comes as an angel of light. He comes along with culture that isn't all that bad You know the devil lures us with things that just are not overtly dangerous You know every every Every person who's ever had a mouse in their house knows how allurement works.

Every once in a while we see a mouse. And so I have to do something, I have to set a trap. But I don't just set a bear trap out there. I have to put something nourishing in that trap. I've tried different things, you know.

I've tried cheese, you know, some people, I tried honey. You know, to me the best thing to lure at least the mice in our house is peanut butter. I don't know, the mice in our house like peanut butter. So I don't want to just set a bare trap out there. I have to set something along the trap that is so compelling and this is how the world works.

The world isn't all that bad. You know, it's almost, it's a little bit like something that I see at my house from time to time. We have a lake and their osprey that look for fish and osprey are fish eating birds there's really remarkable birds and when they they're flying around the ponds and they see a bird and they'll flap their wings like this just before they're getting ready to dive. And then they start to, they go into their dive and their claws go out like this. It's really remarkable.

And they go down and The fish normally are not right on top of the water. They have to go in the water, and often they'll go, it seems like they might go this deep in the water. And God gave them really unusual wings, different than the wings of an eagle, that propel them out of the water as they flap it pushes them out of the water faster so that when they get out they can they can take this fish and sometimes they're big fish that they take out and sometimes it's really hard for them to fly because they bitten off a little bit more than they can chew but when when when the osprey is getting what it wants for food, it often gets very, very wet and often has a very hard time getting out of that water. The lust of the flesh is like that. The world is like that.

You go and you get that thing, but getting out is hard. You get wet and you may not be able to get out if you have taken too much of it. This is the danger of the world. And that's because the world is delivered through many different delivery systems. All of them are designed to entrap you.

And here's the tenth element of the world. It's deeper than dos and don'ts. It's much deeper than do's and don'ts. If you if you reduce worldliness down to a few you know do's and don'ts you will not you will not escape the love of this world. Like if you if you just If you reduce worldliness to don't dance, don't chew, and don't go out with girls that do.

If you reduce worldliness to that, and you avoid a dance, you avoid movies, you avoid smoking, you avoid gambling, you avoid tax evasion, and you say, well, I am not worldly. You have completely missed the entire instruction of the Bible on worldliness. And There's this idea is if you just avoid a few things then you're not worldly now now it it It's probably true that if you avoid things like that you you you've put a hedge against Worldliness, But you know worldliness is not just simply refraining from the outward breach of the Ten Commandments. It's deeper than that. That's the problem with worldliness.

You know somebody once asked Augustine, what is time? And he said something like, well, if you had... I thought I knew what time was until you asked me. But worldliness is like that. What is worldliness?

Well, can you describe it? Well, the Apostle John is going to describe it here in detail in a moment, but, you know, I was crying out to God this week in dealing with this passage, and I was asking the Lord to reveal to me how I love the world and And during that time It just occurred to me that That almost Everything I am almost everything I've ever done almost everything I've ever said Has somehow been tainted by this world The world is so deeply embedded that you can't escape it by some means of outward conformity because it is in you, because your heart is inclined, because you have a fallen nature. And worldliness is a graver problem than you can even imagine. And this is why the only hope for worldliness is the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ that cleanses from all unrighteousness. The unrighteousness that you can't even see, that you're not even aware of.

Jesus Christ comes and he cleanses you from all unrighteousness. You know, the true and only hope for escape from the world is the blood of Jesus Christ. And your final induction into heaven when he sets all things right, that is your only hope for the complete escape of worldliness. First of all, God in his love through his Son Jesus Christ has atoned for all of your sins, all of your unintentional sins, all of the ones that you're inebriated to knowledge of. He has taken care of your sins by His righteousness because He's closed you with His righteousness.

But worldliness is deeper than you can imagine because the whole world lies in the power of the evil one all of its institutions all of its entertainments and you you can't you can't do anything without having some Some fight with the world you can't You can't put on a piece of clothing, you can't buy a car, you can't build a house, you can't get a job, you can't comb your hair without being affected by the world somehow. But we have to recognize that worldliness is this. It's Satan's hatred toward mankind. Worldliness is Satan's strategic and malicious plan to destroy your life. He desires to wrap you up in whatever will slow you down and it will finally mow you down.

He wants to wrap you up in unprofitable things. He wants to deprive you of the love of your father. He doesn't want you to be able to say, I have a father. He is with me. I am his son I'm being made in his image.

He he hates the image of God and so he wants to deliver you from the image of the heavenly man to to conform you into the image of the worldly man that has the favors and the honor and the praise of this world but will really lose everything. He is a liar and the accuser of the brethren and a murderer in his heart. He is the spirit that now works in the sons of disobedience as the apostle Paul says. They are deceiving spirits as Paul says to Timothy in 2 Timothy 2.17. That's why James says keep yourself unspotted from the world You cannot you cannot take this world lightly Jesus said to his disciples You are not of this world, but I have chosen you out of the world And so, you know the question that keeps ringing in my mind in this passage is why would anyone want to be separated?

From the love of God. Why would anyone want to spend their lives loving something that will be taken away from them? Why would anyone not want the love of the Father and everything that the kingdom of the Father of lights presents to be gone from him. Okay, so the call not to love the world. Then in the second part of this verse, what love of the world tells about you.

If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. He's saying that worldliness indicates that the love of God is not in you, that you do not love the Father. He's saying that you are not a Christian if you love the things of this world. Now, I believe he's speaking about the desire to make friends with the world, to spend time with the things of this world, to invest your mind in the things of this world, to be moved emotionally by those things that set their face against Christ, to love the things that Jesus Christ died to atone for, to love those people who spit in the face of Jesus Christ. He's talking about loving those kinds of things.

He says, if you love the world, the love of the Father is not in you Somebody said it like this godliness will separate you from the world or Worldliness will separate you from God That's the entire point that he's making it people fail to grasp that the offensiveness of the world to God and to employ matters of the world. And there's so many examples in Scripture of this. And then there's this threefold definition of worldliness in verse 16. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life is not of the Father, but is of the world. So John is defining the world in these three categories and so he he brings these these general categories the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and and the pride of life.

And these three things are a picture of the devil's work. These three things. You know, it's interesting if you see pictures that are drawn of the devil, He's always holding a pitchfork. And what is that pitchfork like? There are usually three prongs to the devil's pitchfork.

And here they are, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. These are three types of idolatry. These are three gateways of the world into our souls. And so let's take these three types of idolatry, these three ways of the world one by one. First of all, the lust of the flesh.

The lust of the flesh specifically has to do with the body, the experiences that you have in your body. This is a craving that has to do with your body, and they arise out of inward desires of your body. And now there are two words here, there's lust and flesh. Lust is an affection for something that has to do with your body. And they are literally sins that you commit in your body and the trouble with this is that is that these lusts of the flesh almost always include something good like food you need food And there are various things that you need.

But these are things that the devil uses. He twists them and he makes something out of them that they were never intended to be. And he's speaking here of using this world for sensual gratification. It could involve eating or drinking or sexual gratification. It could have to do with the way that we pamper ourselves.

I've been thinking of the different ways I pamper my body unnecessarily, you know, in this world. For some, it ends up with being entrapped by drugs or alcohol, being controlled by what you put in your mouth. You know, nobody goes up and just puts things in your mouth, do they? You do that on your own volition, but you do that because of your lusts. Or you do that just because of a proper care of your body Because you are hungry and you need food and it's a good thing to have your eyes brightened, you know You know any of these things like food can be used for good or they can just be tools of the devil to enslave you to the lusts of your own body.

It could include the stirring up of your emotions. Some people are so desperately unhappy that they need something to make them laugh or something to make them cry or something to make them indignant or something to make them excited and so they go to the music of this world or they go to the films of this world to jack them up to get them out of their dull, drab, guilty world, unhappy world that they found themselves in. They need something else. They don't need God. They want something else to pull them out of their tailspin that they've gotten themselves into.

This is stirring up of the emotions, you know, to To make something of your life, you know when you think of the music of this world and the films of this world You should always be asking, you know, is it is it true? Is it lovely? Is it a good repute? Is God pleased with it? You know, Am I able to use this song as a prayer to God?

Or is it actually a hymn of those who have spit in the face of Jesus Christ? And are they trying to incite things in me that have caused Jesus Christ to go to the cross to suffer for my sins. And this is why Romans 13, 14 says, put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh. Make no provision for the flesh. The big question for us is, are we making any provisions for the flesh?

Think about that. Just pause for a second. Are you making any provision for the flesh? Paul says make no provision for the flesh. Why?

Because as Paul said to the Corinthians, your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. And we have to recognize that there are those whose God is their belly, whose glory is their shame. There are people who are so worried about what they eat and what they put on that they're just worried about life. Jesus spoke about this in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6. He said, do not worry for your life, what you shall eat, or for your body, what you shall wear.

Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Do you not know that your father knows your father He knows that you need these things So don't worry about them. So this this is the whole matter of the lust of the flesh And then there's the lust of the eyes. This is lust that arises when I see things. Seeing the things of this world and then craving for the things that I see.

And the truth about life is that you have to be very careful with what you allow your eyes to lay on. Because what you allow your eyes to lay on is what you will lay your life upon. This is how we're wired. No one can beat this system. And We always crave what we see.

And this is why it's so important that we guard our eyes. Because we see and then we desire. We lay our eyes on something and then we covet it. And this is a sin of the breaking of the 10th commandment. You shall not covet your neighbor's house, you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor's.

You know, the Lord lists things that you see a house another woman a wife a an ox someone's mode of transportation someone's working tools you know and you and you covet them This is the lust of the eyes. And So he's talking about what happens to you when you live your life out of what you see, your attraction to outward appearance. And the lust of the flesh works and is fed through so many gateways in this world that the eyes can see, and they're obvious around us. You know, Solomon said that the eyes of man are never satisfied. Job said, why does your heart carry you away and what do your eyes wink at?

You know, our eyes are so important to us because what you see is often what you become. And what you see is what you get. And so he speaks of the lust of the eyes. In Proverbs 23, verse 5, he speaks of the fool. You will set your eyes on that which is not.

For riches certainly make themselves wings. They fly away like an eagle toward heaven. He's talking about when your eyes get fixed on riches, you want to get rich like the Apostle Paul said, he who desires to be rich will fall into temptation. When you set your eyes on that which is not riches, that's what he's talking about. And so there are so many ways that this happens.

Anxiety in your life because of what you see. But the truth is that you you tend to go in the direction of what you see. You know one means of exercise that I've been doing is I've been walking on on the railroad tracks on the you know on the track itself like a like a bounce beam and What I what I found there are two things About about not falling off that railroad track. And I found now that I can walk quite a distance without falling off that track. I have railroad tracks right behind my office, so sometimes I'll go to think or I'll talk on the phone and I'll walk on a railroad track.

And what I found is that if you keep your eye right on the track ahead of you, and if you think about your center of gravity, because it's really all about center of gravity, you've got to focus your center of gravity on in that one place. And if you do that, then you can walk quite a distance without falling off either side. I've always had a terror of falling off of a high, you know, some high balance beam or a cliff or something like that. But if you look in the place that you need to go, then you can walk that balance beam. And that's the matter of the eyes.

Keeping your eye on the direction, you fiercely focused on the right direction and not getting distracted. Every once in a while I'll be walking along and I'm aware that there's someone over here, there's someone in a car, somebody opened a door, you know, in a building and I'm walking by and and most of the time, you know, when I when I glance over I I I stutter, you know, within my steps and sometimes I'll fall off because I got my eyes off the middle of the track. And it's like that in so many things. You know, it's like that if you're riding a motorcycle. If you're going between two posts, don't look at the posts, okay?

Because you'll probably hit the post. Look right in the... Look where you want your tire to go. And that's the problem with the lust of the eyes. Because what the eyes see, the heart loves.

What the heart loves, the eyes will want. And what the eyes want, the will does. And whatever the will does, drives the eyes to want more of it and so there's this great warning of the lust of the eyes and it's it's such a terrible thing to have a darkened eye. Jesus spoke of that if your eye is full of darkness, how great is that darkness? Keep your eyes on the light.

Keep your eyes on what's beautiful and good. You have no hope for hating the world and turning from worldliness unless you love that true and straight and beautiful and narrow and eternal pathway to heaven. That is the greatest hedge against temptation. Is to love not the world, but to love the Father. But to love the Father.

And then there's the pride of life. Now while the other aspects of worldliness are inward, and yet they do have outward manifestations, the pride of life tends to show itself more in outward manifestations. It's a pride that arises out of something it It is the pride of life in other words It's the pride out of life you have life the life that you're living and it's the This is about the pride that exists as a result of your life, like who you are, your image, your brand, what you want to be, what you want to present to the world. It's the pride of who you are and what you want the world to think of you. That's the kind of pride that he's talking about.

And he's referring to the things of the world or worldly goods. By the way, this same word of life is translated in 1 John 3, 17 as the world's goods. Whoever has the world's goods, whoever has life, It's translated the very same way. And so the basic idea is that he's talking about the pride that comes from having goods, certain kinds of goods, and using outward possessions as a means of defining yourself or bragging about your strength or your wisdom or whatever. He's talking about the things that make us proud, the things that we use to prop ourselves up to give the impression that we're successful or cool or compassionate or something like that.

You know, anything that you use to try to prop up the idea that you are just so fantastic. And so the pride of life is in operation when we use the things of this world to maintain an image, to communicate our superiority, you know, through what we have. And it can be done in many ways. We're all very, very familiar with this, you know. Some of you have sold cars, you know, for a living before.

You understand this so well, because the pride of life rises up, you know, in front of every car salesman. True? Absolutely. It's just like green coming out all over because the pride of life can be built by what you drive. Or it could be your accomplishments, the degrees that you might have.

It could be the friends that you spend time with. You only hang out with really cool people. And you actually hang out with them because it does good in your mind anyway for your reputation. It probably doesn't do that much good before God. It could be through the kind of house or the sort of the angle of the furnishings.

Some people like this type of furnishing. Early American. Some people are country. Some people are shabby chic. It's a way to present themselves, to say that they are so creative.

Now, I'm not here to say that there's necessarily anything inherently wrong in any of those categories at all. That's not the point. The point is that we use everything. It doesn't matter. You know, you can use something rusty to present your human pride as well as something shiny.

Because the devil is no respecter of anything in the world. He'll use anything and everything for the pride of life. You know, for some it's he who has the most toys wins. For others it's he who can create the least amount of garbage wins. You know, the environmentalist.

You know, he who drives the worst car wins. Some people actually think that way. You know, you feel guilty if you have a nice car, or you feel good about yourself, and it presents the right image if you have a crummy car. You know, This is just how the pride of life works. It always works.

It's all about getting pleasure and accolades from this world, from the people you want to try to impress. Not God, but this world. It's the way that we puff ourselves up. So this is the trickiest thing about worldliness, okay? It's so tricky because it works in every imaginable context of culture And this is why this should be a four hour long sermon because it's very very difficult to grasp all of what the Bible says.

But the pride of life can be the motivation in a person who does one thing, but it's not the pride of life in another person who does the very same thing. That's what's so tricky about it. You can glory in your poverty, You can glory in your big house. Well, you know what? The dark human heart can glory in anything and gather a group of friends, a little tribe that'll self-congratulate one another for their little idol.

But their life has nothing to do with God they're building their life out of the pride of life They're building their life trying to make a brand and an image to make themselves Look beautiful and wonderful and good in their own eyes and in the eyes of others That's the problem with the trial with the pride of life. It makes you feel better about yourself. You know the pride of life is dangerous because it will be destroyed. The English Puritan George Swinick says that pride is the first shirt we put on in paradise and the last that we'll take off when we die. Because God is opposed to the proud and he gives grace to the humble.

And God has called us to wage war against pride, these fleshly lusts that wage war against our souls. The apostle Paul said that it was our affections that entraps us. He says, you're not restrained by us, you're restrained by your affections. And you know, Any pastor can say that to its congregation. You're not restrained by us, you're restrained by your own affections.

What do you love? Do you have your eye on what is straight and true and perfect and clear and beautiful and right and pure? Or does your eye go off into the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes? Now, if you look at what happened in the Garden of Eden, you'll see an illustration of all three of these lusts, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. It follows the very same pattern.

In the Garden of Eden, Eve saw that it was good for food. That's the lust of the flesh. She saw that it was pleasant to the eyes. That's the lust of the eyes. She saw that it was desirable to make one wise.

That was the pride of life. She wanted to be thought as wise. The temptation of Jesus Christ in the wilderness follows this exact same pattern. He was led up into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil, and he was tempted by the lust of the flesh. Because he was hungry, he had been fasting for 40 days, and the devil tested him with bread to satisfy his body.

He was tempted by the lust of the eyes to do something spectacular, to throw himself down and to be such a vision of spectacularness, of being thrown, of jumping off the temple and being rescued. He was tempted by the pride of life when the devil took him up on a high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory and he said all these things I will give to you if you bow down to me. Jesus Christ was tested with the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life in the same way that Adam and Eve were. This is the way that the devil works. Now, how do you escape worldliness?

I don't know. I don't want to give a list, but I can give you this. Whatever your list is, is going to include these things right here. Evaluate everything in your life according to the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, everything, and recognize how damaging and how damning it is to love the world, and to recognize it is a test of salvation. If you love the world and the things of the world, The love of the Father is not in you.

And to me the question, it has just come back so many times to me this week, why would anyone want to be separated from the goodness and the purity of God by one single thing in this world. Why would anyone want to spend their lives with something that will be taken away from them? And then there's the origin of worldliness in verse 16. He who loves the world, the love of the Father is not of the Father, but of the world. Now this to me is one of the most pivotal statements in this.

There are things that are not of the Father. If you love the world, you are getting not of the Father. And you know, what comes from the Father? Everything good comes from the Father. And you don't want the world to edge out something good from the Father.

That's the idea that he's presenting. That there are things in this world that are not of the Father. And they take up bandwidth in your life. They are not of the Father. They are not pure.

They are not true. They are not good. And they take up bandwidth of the Father. That's the problem with the world. And that's the problem with the entertainments of our world.

They consume the bandwidth that could be consumed by the love of your Father. And what comes from the Father? Well, James says that every good and perfect gift comes from the Father of lights. There is only good that comes from the Father. And He's always edging out the worldliness in us to cleanse us, to purify us, to purge us through the sanctification process that He has us on.

You know, Paul says to the Ephesians, he says, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. God desires his people to be full of the blessings from the heavenly places and every part of the world that you imbibe consumes the bandwidth of God and his His fatherly love and his care his treasures that are in heaven for you. And the question is, how much of the world do you want? How much of the world do you want to consume the bandwidth of your soul? How much?

Any at all? Please, if you want any at all, recognize what you're saying. It's nothing but loving the world and despising the bandwidth of the beautiful and beneficial authority of the love of God in your heart. This is the most disappointing part of loving the world. Is that the love of the Father is consumed by the bandwidth of the world.

And then he speaks next of the destruction of the world. He's now just declaring how unprofitable and How foolish, how stupid, how insane it is to love the world because the world is passing away. Verse 17, and the lust of it. But he who does the will of God abides forever. So the bandwidth of the world, it will be destroyed.

You gratify the flesh, but that gratification will turn to something that you will hate. You may fill your eyes with lustful things. They will always turn on you and they will be destroyed. They'll be burned up as wood, hay, and stubble if you're a Christian. But cast into everlasting darkness if you're not.

So either way, there's no profit in it. A whole life filled up with wood, hay, and stubble, the bandwidth of your life cluttered with all these things Rather than the things of God unclutter your life turn from all that is unprofitable Why because the destruction of the destruction of these things is eminent And you may gain the whole world and lose your own soul. You know, Peter said that the world is passing away and the works of it. Jesus said that We're living in the days like Noah, where they were eating and drinking and giving in marriage. They did not know that God was coming to wipe it all away.

In Revelation, we see the picture of how the whole world order is overthrown in Revelation chapter 12. And the great dragon is cast out, that serpent of old called the devil, Satan, who deceives the whole world. He was cast out of the earth and his angels were cast out with him. This is the destiny of the love of the world. It'll either be wood, hay, and stubble, all the garbage and clutter and junk in your life will be burned up with fire or you will be thrown in everlasting fire when God brings everything down in this great conflagration where he separates the sheep from the goats.

And Jesus is saying that the world is a sinking ship. Get off that ship. Unclutter the bandwidth of your life. You may be popular now but you're going down with the world. You know Jim Elliott, that missionary who was killed by the Alka Indians, said he is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.

And what he's saying is that the most rational thing you can do is to give up the world because you cannot keep it. It will be destroyed. It's going to be taken away. Don't cling to it. Get rid of it.

He's saying the most rational thing is to cleave to Jesus Christ. He will not be taken from you because you belong to Him, because you have a father and you're in his kingdom. And then finally the perpetual blessing of godliness is stated in the last part of verse 17. But he who does the will of God abides forever. And this is the permanence of the love of God.

He who does the will of God abides forever. These are matters of obedience. That God desires an obedient church, just like Jesus said that his disciples were to go and preach the gospel and to find people who would obey all the things that he has commanded. This is the kingdom of God. Let me just give you some very quick applications here.

This is warfare. Embrace God's testimony of the nature of the world. It is inside you. It's all around you. We have a different view of the world.

For us, the world is passing away and it's lost. We don't want the bandwidth of the world to be part of our bandwidth. We want to turn away from it. Number two, the world never delivers what you hope it will. You'll always find out that the world has given you the short end of the stick.

Isaiah describes it as like you're sleeping on a bed and the sheets are too short and you just can't sleep. You can't get a comfortable sleep. It's just too short. The world gives you what is short. For a moment it may seem good, but it isn't.

You're just in there, fitful and turning. And then the devil mocks you as a result of your stupid choice. You'll want to throw your idols away from you because the world will never deliver what it promises. Remember that scene in Isaiah? There's a picture of a person taking their idols and they just, they hate them now.

They hate them because of what their idols did to them and they throw them to the bats. They throw them into the, into the, into the holes in the ground to try to get rid of them because the world doesn't it doesn't it doesn't satisfy and then thirdly growing our affections for heaven is the greatest hedge against worldliness And then finally saturation in the Word of God keeps us from loving the world. That's why Jesus said, I'm not to his disciples in John 17, I'm not taking them out of the world. I'm leaving them in the world. But he calls on his father to sanctify them in truth, thy word is truth.

The word of God is the way to consume the worldliness of the world that has taken up the bandwidth of your life. There are always two kinds of people in a congregation. There are Christians who are struggling with the world and need to renounce the world and turn away from it even more to discover other ways that They have loved the world and the personalities and the entertainments of this world. And then there are those who love the world in a way that will cause their eternal destruction. And they've never turned to Jesus Christ.

The power of the love of the world has never been broken and they have no help, they have no hope. Those are the two kinds of people that are here today. And the solution for both is the same. Turn to Jesus Christ and be saved from this wicked and perverse generation. And recognize that what it means is that you will have a Father and you will be a son.

And He's the Father of every good and perfect gift that he rains down on his children. And this is the greatest motivation for turning, is the goodness of God the Father and his Son Jesus Christ, and the salvation that he holds out to all sinners who fall short of his glory and who've been entrapped by the world. Would you pray with me? Oh Lord You have put us in this world and there are so many dangers and toils and snares. We pray, O Lord, that You would give us a corporate hatred, an individual hatred of the world so that we might have the whole bandwidth of our life consumed by your holiness.

Amen.