We're returning this evening to 1 John chapter 2. 1 John chapter 2, please, in your Bibles. We'll read together verses 15, 16, and 17 of this chapter. 1 John 2, beginning the reading of God's Word in verse 15. Let's all hear the reading of His inspired and infallible Word. 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. May the Lord add His blessing to that reading from His Word for His name's sake. Please bow your head with me for a moment, and in that quiet moment ask God to speak to you. Say, Lord, whatever You need to say to me tonight, go ahead and say it. I want to hear. Let's all pray. Father in heaven, we come in Jesus Christ's name again to Thy throne of grace because we realize we have no might, we have no power to do anything spiritual apart from the Holy Ghost. Thou hast taught us plainly in Thy Word that if we ask for Him, if we ask for His grace, We ask for His energy. Thou wilt give it, and give it gladly. We do not come to a God whom we believe we have to twist Thine arm to somehow persuade Thee or convince Thee to bless us. Thou hast taught us Thou art quite willing to bless us and quite ready to bless us. We admit, Lord, we confess it's our sin that we are reticent to ask for the blessing. But in Jesus' name, We do pray for that blessed work of the Holy Spirit to be wrought in the preaching and in the hearing. Take up thy servant. Confess, Lord, is nothing more than a vessel of clay, weak, fragile, has no power, but it's the power that's in that truth of the gospel that thou has promised to use. Use him tonight to glorify Christ. And, Lord, still the hearts of Thy people grant the grace to understand the Word. We realize, Lord, that we can understand the words, the nouns, the verbs, the grammar, and all that, but not understand the message that's in the words, not see the Christ of the Word. We pray now, O Spirit of God, that Thou would enlighten our understanding, that we might see more of the things that are freely given to us of our God, that we might see more of Jesus Christ and how we, as His people, can be like Him. And it's His name we pray, Amen and Amen. We are returning this evening to this subject of sinning saints and how the sinning saints work with the Holy Spirit to bring about this magnificent transformation into the image of Jesus Christ. In spite of all of their faults and failures, in spite of all their open sins and their secret sins, God's people still want to be like Jesus. The hymn writer said, I have one deep supreme desire that I may be like Jesus. To this I fervently aspire that I may be like Jesus. I want my heart, His throne to be, so that a watching world may see His likeness shining forth in me. I want to be like Jesus. Our chief end As you well know, in this life as well as in the next is to glorify God and to enjoy Him. The more we enjoy Him, the more we actually glorify Him. The more we glorify Him, the more we enjoy Him. And the best way that we can fulfill our end in life is to press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. When you read that well-known statement of the Apostle Paul in its context, you realize that the great prize that he was pursuing, that he was running after like a man in a race, was perfect conformity to Jesus Christ. That's the prize. That's the goal. Perfect conformity. to Jesus Christ, since we have been, after all, predestinated to be conformed to the image of God's dear Son. That's the point. That's the reason of God's predestination. The Holy Spirit is gradually, from glory to glory, changing all of the Lord's people into the likeness of Christ. What we're considering just now have been for a couple of days now, how we, as those saints, either help him or hinder that work. Last evening, we turned to this passage in I John chapter 2, where the apostle is dealing with overcoming the lusts of the world. It's necessary. This is part of what we need to do. If we're going to be a help in the transformation process and not be a hindrance to the Holy Ghost, we're going to need to know how to overcome the lusts of the world. You see, I submit to you again tonight that the chief way that the devil tries to turn us away from pressing toward that mark. The one thing He does above anything else to try and stop our transformation into Christ-likeness is by tempting us, seducing us, luring us with the lusts of the world. And verses 15 through 17 that we read tonight are, I believe, one of the fullest statements on what the New Testament means by that term, the world. Christians, Christians, I'm underscoring this. Christians are told, love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. I don't know if you've ever stopped just to think about that. Christians are told to not do that. You'll remember the only thing I addressed last evening was to define our terms If we're going to understand what this is all about, defining our terms, specifically the term or the expression the world and those related terms of worldliness and worldly. Satan uses the world to seduce God's people away from God and into forbidden territory to try to keep the Spirit of God from carrying on that great work of making them like Jesus. Christians, therefore, quite plainly, are to war against being worldly. As we saw last night, it's critical that You and I have a very clear and biblical understanding of what those terms actually mean in scripture. Only then will we be able to discern it whether it's in us or it's in somebody else. If we don't really have a grasp of what worldliness is or being worldly is, we're not going to see it or we're going to think we see it and it's not. just because we don't understand it. Trust me when I say that this is the last thing the devil wants to see. He does not want to have God's people have a clear grasp from the Scriptures of what the lusts of the world are all about, of what worldliness is all about. He doesn't want that identified. He wants God's people to be absolutely confused about it. I imagine I could be wrong. My wife doesn't believe me when I say things like that. I could be wrong. But I imagine that when I posed those questions last night that I did somewhere in the message about what is and isn't worldly and those kinds of questions that are now being asked in the church, I imagine more than a few of you weren't really sure whether I was saying that this or that was worldly or it wasn't. I could almost hear someone saying with your Balaamina brogue, was that man saying that having a Mercedes is worldly? I wasn't saying one thing one way or the other. I was simply raising the questions. What I want you to do is to think, to think for yourselves, to come to the Scriptures and glean from the Word of God what is worldly and isn't. I thought it was interesting that I was about, at the end of the meeting last night, about to climb into Mr. Greer's car and someone asked me, of course, tongue-in-cheek, I see you didn't have the courage to mention driving an Audi. But I wondered, did anyone here wonder if I was saying it was worldly to drive a Mercedes or a Jag or an Audi? Because I wasn't saying that. Did anybody here wonder if I was saying it's worldly for women to wear trousers or for men to have beards or not have them? I wasn't saying that. I want to tell you something. I have no doubt that were I to poll this gathering tonight on whether or not this or that thing is worldly, there would not be perfect agreement. And I'm not going to explain that just in saying, well, you know, the ones that were really up the ladder spiritually, those that are really close to God, that's why they see it and that's why someone else doesn't. No, I will tell you those that are walking the closest to the Lord will not be in agreement on what is worldly and what isn't. It's not going to happen this side of glory. We're going to come to the same scriptures, read the same verses and come to different conclusions. It doesn't make me right or him wrong or her right and her wrong. That's the reality. We're all at different levels of understanding what the Word of God teaches. The thing that we have to do, what is so imperative, is that we actually come to a biblical conviction and understanding of what is worldly and what isn't worldly. Because we have got to resist the devil on the worldly lusts, not on things that aren't worldly at all. We've got to know what they are. We're going to resist Him so that He will flee from us, and if we're going to look more like Jesus Christ. I say again, if we do not do that, we will end up thinking we're perfectly fine, because we have, we think, broken the code. And this is the code, and these are the laws, and this is what is worldly, and this is what isn't, and I've got my list, and that's how everybody else should believe what I believe. It's not going to happen. You write down your list of what you think is worldly, and I'm going to tell you there will be things on it that I will say, I don't believe that. If you come to the conclusion that that man is worldly because he doesn't cross my T's and dot my I's on everything that I say is worldly or isn't worldly, if you say he's worldly, then I am telling you, you're unbiblical. Flat out. You see, there's going to be, as it was in the church at Rome, there was, I think I mentioned this, the fighting going on between Gentile believers and Jewish believers because they had different ideas about what worldly was. But there were genuinely areas of indifference. The ideophoras, how it's referred to in the theological world, Areas of indifference. There are areas that I can't be indifferent about. You have to say, that is sin. That is the lust of the world. That is wrong. I have got to turn my back on it. It doesn't matter if anyone agrees with me. And you've got to come to those convictions from the Word. But there are areas, you know, that are areas of indifference. I've got to come to my own convictions about what that is and so do you. And you need to know them for yourself. And your kids need to see that you understand them for yourself. Because they will come to you down the road and ask you why. Why do we do this? Why don't we do that? Well, it's what's always been done, right? This is what's been believed for decades. That's not going to satisfy Him. As God's people, we have to be able at least to take them to an open Bible and say, you might not agree with this, but let me read this to you and say, here's why I won't let you do this. Here's why I won't let you go there. Here's why I can't let you go out dressed like that. Here's why. They might not agree. Might not like it. But you have to know from the Scriptures why you believe that what you say you believe is worldly or it isn't worldly. Where we all must be united is that if anything draws us to the world that leaves us looking like the world, acting like the world and not looking and acting like Christ, it is to be rejected out of hand as worldly. It is nothing but Satan trying to keep us from this magnificent transformation into the image of Christ. So, what is the world? I said last evening that this New Testament term refers to the organized system, the organized system of fallen humanity under the headship of Satan, the prince of the world. It is the world, under Satan's rule, that lives as if God does not exist. The wicked, the sinner is set in his heart. There is no God. It's the world. The world lives as if God does not exist. It is the world that wants nothing to do with Him, the world that has rebelled against Him, and therefore those who are of the world have no thought of God. They only think in terms of this world. Because that's where they're living, day in and day out. What they think about is their life in this world, which is governed by their human instincts and by their carnal, worldly desires. And that's what you would expect. I don't expect someone who is of the world to act like they're of the kingdom of Christ. I expect to act like they're of the world. We're foolish to think otherwise. Perhaps the best way to sum up what the New Testament means when it uses the term the world is to say that it is everything, anything and everything that is opposed to God, that's the world. Anything and everything that's opposed to God. There's the question you ask. Is this thing, is this activity, Is it an opposition to God? That's the question. Or is it a friend to God? Is it a friend of grace to help me, to help my wife, to help my husband, to help my children on to God? Or is it a hindrance? Whatever it is, the world is everything that would come between us and this progression into Christlikeness. So the prince of this world comes to us. with the things, John says, the things of this world to get us to live just like all of His minions in this world live. He tries to get us to live as if there is no God. Somehow to shut God out of our thinking. That's why we can actually engage in the sins with a high hand. I'm not referring now to sins of ignorance. Because they're sins of ignorance, we don't even realize we're doing them. But I'm talking about deliberate, willful sin. And there's something going on when that happens. You've put God, the awareness of God and His presence out of your mind. And that's exactly what Satan wants to happen. He comes with the allurements of the world so that we will somehow shove God in a corner, shove Him out of our consciousness, and go ahead and engage in that which is so detrimental to our transformation to the image of Jesus Christ. And isn't it funny, after the deed is done, whatever the deed might be, the shame that we feel. the sadness, the grief. Now, all of a sudden, what's happened? The Holy Ghost has made us aware we're in the presence of God. Now, how does Satan go about to do this? To lead us into sin and particularly to get us to love the world, attempt us to love the world and its things. Well, first off, and I said this at the end of the message, I'm just now picking up what I sort of left off as a hanger yesterday evening. The devil seeks to convince us that the world is our friend and not our enemy. That's first. He seeks to convince us that the world is our friend and not our enemy. And I gather that from what John says, look down, love not the world. Those two words right there, one actually original, right there tell us his tactic. Don't love the world. Don't treat it like it's someone you're loving. Just the opposite. The verb tense can mean one of two things. Depends on which way you want to take it. He can mean, stop loving the world. You're doing it, stop it. Or, do not have the habit of loving the world. He's still talking to Christians. Think about it. There would be no need, no need whatsoever for the Holy Ghost to give this prohibition if Christians were not prone to treat the world as a lover, to treat the world as a friend, one that you would welcome into your arms and embrace and even kiss. You would never count someone a friend who broke into your home, who ravaged your wife, and cut the throats of every one of your children. You would never view them as your friend. If you knew they were going to come into your home, steal you blind, ravage your wife, and kill your children, you would do everything in your power to prevent it. Why? Because this is an enemy. But you know one of the most subtle and successful means that robbers, thieves, have had in their employment of robbing is to trick people into thinking the homes they want to rob that they're friends. They'll come along and offer work and they'll be very kind and let me in. And it's when they finally, what they've been duped, this guy was not a friend at all. He was out for my goods the whole time. But boy, was I completely deceived. Deceived. The unsuspecting victims would never have let them into their home, let alone into their family circle, unless they were convinced that they were their friends. And Satan is busy trying to convince Christ's people that these lusts of the world are really our friends. Come on, he says. Go ahead. It's not your enemy. You can indulge that. You can play with that for a little bit. You can just have a little taste of it. Satan knows exactly where he's going with a little taste of the world. Just get me, get my little toe in there. That's all I want, and I will ravage that believer's life. Because the devil's plan is to take you from one little indulging of the lusts of the world to completely drown you in He knows how to work. He comes and presents to us, to our minds, these worldly things. Things that He knows, He knows are of the world. They're His kingdom. And through His wiles, His snares, We begin to rethink things. Maybe that's not so bad. Okay. It's something we need. Something I need. It's something to be desired. It's really going to help me. It's going to make me better. Does that sound familiar? Does that not sound like Genesis chapter 3? That's exactly what Satan was doing with a piece of fruit. It wasn't a fruit. It was what the fruit represented. Rebellion against God. She looked upon it. It was lovely. Good. Desire to make one wise. And she ate. That's what he does to this very day. You know, you'd think we would get it after a while. What did I say, though, the other night? We are all spiritual dyslexics. We learn so slowly. He comes to us with the same old, same old, same old, and we fall for it. I thank God the Holy Ghost is there to do His work in spite of our failures, but we need We need to learn how to be wise as He comes to us and tempts us with the world. Not try to excuse it. Not try to say, this is going to be good. You know, this is going to be good. I can take this. And so this temptation comes. It comes to our hearts. He actually, as you well know, our problem is from the very first night. The very first night there is sin that dwells within us and it will dwell within us until we die. He comes and He finds a willingness to believe the lie. I don't understand, I will tell you, I do not understand. I mean, I can explain to you technically, theologically, what happened with Eve when she actually was deceived, but how there was nothing, there was no sin within her. He was coming to a perfect creature, and yet she just totally changed and turned. We're not like that. We have this sin, this flesh within our members, and Satan comes knowing that. He can play on that lust of the flesh. So, He comes to get us to love the world, to desire the world, since the world is no longer viewed as an enemy, to be hated, to be fought against. So, what is it now to do this forbidden thing that the devil tempts us to do to lead us into sin? What is it to really love the world? Because you want to ask yourself tonight, am I in some way loving this world? Am I really? Have I, has he deceived me? Because you do know, you do know that there is going to be a deception poured out in the end days that if it were possible it would deceive the very elect. Have I been duped? Have I bought into his lie? And I'm actually approving of that. I'm actually calling something my friend that is really my enemy. To love the world. Now, I want you to think about love not. What it is to love someone, to love something, if you really love them. You could actually think about right now your own marriage relationships, or maybe ones that you've had. Maybe the spouse has gone on to glory. Maybe you're in a courting, or as you say here, a curtain relationship. Maybe so. You would understand this expression of what it is to love the world. How can I discern it? First, to love the world is to have a very high regard, a great esteem for the world. So much so that it's over God. You think very highly of something you love, don't you? You have a very high regard for its opinions. You want to know what he thinks or she thinks, right? Because you love them. You value their judgments. You value their acceptance. You value their attitudes and you value their value system. That's what it is to love the world. You have a high regard for the opinions of the world. You esteem their attitudes. You love their value system. That's somebody of the world. Now when we as Christians were told, love not the world, John is saying, rather the Holy Spirit is saying, you do not want to have a high regard, a high esteem for the opinions of the world and the value system of the world and the judgments of the world. You don't esteem the world over me. You don't think more of what the world thinks. You're not going to them for their opinion. God says, you come to me. When those wedding invitations were given out in Luke 14, there were those who refused to come. Why was it? Why did they refuse to come to the wedding feast? Well, because they held that their farms and their oxen and their wives and the things of the world, they held them in higher regard than they did the wedding feast of the son. Christ said in Luke 16 that that which is highly esteemed among men is an abomination in the sight of God. People who are in the world, I mean, I'm describing now people who have never been born again by the Spirit of God. They're lost. To this day they're lost. They have a very high esteem for all that's in the world. That's why they just pursue the world tooth and nail. Just go after it as hard as they can because they just love it. They want to know What are the world's fashions? What's the world pursuing? What's her pleasures? How should I talk? How should I think? I want to be a man of the world who goes for the gusto. Christ says it's an abomination in God's esteem. When Christians fall prey to this temptation to treat the world as a friend and not an enemy, They will value the acceptance of the world more than they value the acceptance of God. They then will place a higher value on temporal treasures and possessions than on heavenly treasures. Because, ah, the world's a friend. They are plagued with worldliness when they esteem and they crave the approval of men rather than the approval of God. And they don't want to look foolish in the world's eyes. Or being rejected for their Christian faith. Or their holy living. When the world invites them to come with me and do this or that, X, Y, Z, I can't do that. I'm a Christian. And there's that little reticence to say that because they're going to make fun of me. Well, who in the world, pray tell, are you having a regard for when that enters your thinking? I don't want them to think ill of me. And what you see, what is so vital is that we have that attitude, I don't care what the world thinks of me. I don't care what my co-worker is going to say or laugh at me. What I care about is what God thinks. What I care about is His judgment and His value system, not the world, because the world is not my friend. The world is my enemy. And if I want to be like Jesus, I'm going to have to live every day of my life like that. To the degree, to the degree that we do that, we aid the Holy Ghost in our transformation process. To the degree that we do not do that, we are hindering His work, we're dampening His influences, and we are grieving Him. And we don't make much progress. I am not saying for a moment that we lose our salvation. That's never going to happen. but your growth rate will be different. Your spiritual growth rate will be different from one who continually looks upon the world as an enemy and resists the devil when he comes with his allurements. We love the world, in second place, when our thoughts are fixed on the world. You remember what that was like, don't you, in those early days when you were courting, or maybe some of you now are in that stage. And I just, you know, all throughout the day I just would think about my wife Kim. She wasn't my wife then, but it was a delight. I don't mean to think, you know, past tense, I still longer delight now, but you know, marriage comes along and things change and you're living with them every day now. But those times of separation from her, I'm up in school in the south, in college, she's up home in the north, my thoughts were fixed on her because I loved her. When you love the world, your thoughts are fixed on the world. The world really engages your attention. You think much about that which you love. David said in Psalm 119, 97, Oh, how love I thy law. It is my meditation day and night. You would expect that, wouldn't you? If you love the law, the Lord, if you love the word of God, he simply showing that it's fills my thoughts. It's my meditation day and night because I love it. Paul in Philippians 3.19, he describes those who are the enemies of the cross as those who mind earthly things. They set their mind on that. They fix their thoughts upon that. The sad truth is, it's not only the enemies of the cross that mind earthly things, but it's sometimes, more times than I think we want to confess, it's the friends of the cross who mind earthly things because they fall prey to the temptations of the devil. If this wasn't a very real danger for Christians, Paul would not have had to have written Colossians 3 chapter 2, set your affection, the word means literally, set your mind upon things above and not on things on the earth. Set your mind. Fix your thoughts. It's the mind, the mind, the mind because what you think is going to work out in how you live. What fills your mind will come out of your mouth. It will come out of your behavior. It will come out of your desires. Set your affection on things. Set your mind on things. All without entering a monastery or a nunnery as we saw last night. The love of the heart fills the thoughts of the mind and that will always translate into the desires of the will. Which leads me in the third place to say we love the world when we spend the bulk of our time and energy on the things of the world. I don't know how it's been for you during these meetings, but I could just go on all night and preach. I know you have homes to go to and jobs to get up to tomorrow morning, but when I sense the Lord's presence, I just want to stay there. When I sense the Lord standing beside me in this pulpit, I don't want to go down. If we love the Lord, when we see Him, we want to be with Him, near Him. We want the time doesn't matter to us. It doesn't matter. We're not trying just to cram our little 10-minute devotional in so we can rush out and do what we really like to do. That's loving the world. That's where our hearts are set upon things that are not spiritual but very worldly. I will tell you point blank, if you sat there and said, I wish that man would shut up. That's the pure world talking. I want to get home. I'm not interested. You can know right then and there, that is the spirit of the world. Love, you see, must act. Love has to act. It takes husbands a long time to learn that, wives, because, as I've said before, they want to hear something more than, I love you, honey, and bring them flowers on Valentine's Day and on their birthday. They want you to show them by your actions that you actually do love them. And men, they have some interesting ways of how they want that shown, but that's what they're looking for, because love acts Thoughts and desires have to find expression. And when we love something, we show it by doing whatever we can to be with it. Can I just tell you a little love story? When my wife and I were engaged to be married, she was about three hours north of me, and I would get to drive up on the weekends, go where she lives with her mom. You know, those three hours, they just flew by. I wasn't keeping the speed limit, I'll be honest, but that's not why they flew by. It was the delight I had in her, wanting to spend time with her, as much time as I could, because that's why we get married, isn't it? We want to spend the rest of our lives with that other person, because we love them. So if we love the world, we can't wait to get at it. We can't wait to get out of church and do those things that we want to do. That's the love of the world. Churches are bothering to us. If it's annoying, that's loving the world. Fourthly, when we love the world, we become upset and dejected when we don't get the things of the world that we want. or when we lose those things of the world. We become dejected, downcast because we can't have the thing that we want. In a very infantile, childish way, we all tasted that when somebody we were dating jilted us, right? We thought we loved them and they just dropped us like a hot potato and it hurt. We didn't get what we wanted. Divorces hurt. There's a breakdown. That was someone you loved at one time, and they walk out on you, and it shatters you. Transfer that when someone is loving the world, they become really dejected and downcast because they're not getting that which they really want to be with. Really upsets them. Can't get the things we crave. And let everybody else know that they're unhappy because they can't get the things that they crave. Here's what the devil is after to tempt us to love the world, to forsake God when what God desires is that we love Him and forsake the world. Take the world, but give me Jesus, is how the hymn writer put it. All its joys are but a name. Just a name, that's all they are. They pretend to satisfy, to bring contentment, but they cannot do it because we are gods and we're spoiled for the world. We're spoiled. We can't satisfy. You want to start going through your mind now on those things that you think are worldly or things that are not worldly and start measuring it by these things? It's interesting you read of two occasions where Christ said, get thee behind me, Satan. One was to the devil himself when he tried to tempt Christ to worship him. He showed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time and said that he would give Christ all that glory, all that power, if he would just fall down and worship him. Jesus said, get thee behind me, Satan. meaning adversary. The other time it's used, of course, as you well know, in Mark chapter 8, I think Matthew 16 as well, the parallel account, is when Peter rebukes the Lord Jesus Christ for beginning to explain to them that the Pharisees and the scribes are going to slay him. Peter said, stop talking like that! Don't want to hear that! Christ turned his back on Peter and said, Get thee behind me, Satan, thou savourest, thou mindest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men. Right there, he said, you're acting like the devil, because you want that place of power and glory in this kingdom that you think's about to be inaugurated, and it's not going to happen. I'm going to die. Those words, I have to believe, just hit Peter like a ton of bricks. He had just called me, given me a new name, Peter, and now he's calling me Satan. Ah, but don't you see, when we love the world, that's exactly what we're doing. And Christ would say, get behind me, Satan. It's just like the devil. You are savoring the things, minding the things of the world. You've got all the time in the world for those things, but no time for God. When we love the world, fifthly, we look to it for comfort and consolation. and happiness. The world looks, of course, to alcohol, to drugs, to all kinds of entertainment to try and escape from the pain that sin brings, from the misery, the anxiety that life itself always brings to the world. But God is called the God of all comfort. He alone can bring comfort to anyone, real comfort, lasting comfort. Yet how many a child of God has looked to something other than God? How many a Christian, if truth be known, has been, even perhaps someone here tonight, is looking to something else other than God to bring them relief from their anxiety and their pain and their fear and their worry? I wonder, I just wonder how many Christians are living on prescription painkillers, not because they're in physical pain. It's just not there. It's because of emotional pain. And the high that they get from the prescription painkiller makes that go away for a little bit. I can speak with authority because I spent three years in drugs and drink and I know what I'm talking about. I stayed high to suppress the misery that the guilt of my backslidden state was causing me. I wonder how many Christians are doing that, looking somewhere else other than God for the comfort, the help, the relief that they need. How many are looking to, thinking that some new thing, some new experience, some new toy or trinket of this world is going to fix their sadness and is going to lift their anxiety? It is nothing but worldliness. It is looking to something other than the Lord to comfort you. Second major thought tonight. Not only does the devil try to convince us that the world is our friend and not our enemy, but the devil uses the world outside of us to tempt the world that is within us. All that is in the world, John says. all that is in the world, all that the world lives for, all of those which those who are in the world value and esteem the most, all of that which they make their purpose for living. That's all that is in the world. And John characterizes all that is in the world as the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. Another term we need to define is lust. There's nothing wrong with that word in and of itself. It's not a bad word in and of itself. It's used in a very number of good ways in the New Testament. Luke 22, verse 15. Philippians 1.23, Paul said, for I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, there's our word, and to be with Christ, which is far better. The problem comes in for the Christian when you add on that thing of the world, lust of the world. By of the world, I mean that desire, the thing that is desired, is just plain characteristic of the world, its attitudes, its actions, of all those that belong to the wicked world. The desire The desire and the object of the thing that is desired may be something very legitimate in and of itself. Our text doesn't say, brothers and sisters, use not the world. It says love not the world. It's perfectly alright. It's not worldly for Christians. It's not worldly for you as a child of God to use the world. It is worldly to love it. It is worldly to desire it. Nothing wrong with using it. Paul puts it like this, does he not? 1 Corinthians 7, verse 31. Christians who use this world, not abusing it. It's the abuse of the world that gets us into trouble. The wicked of this world. Can I say something? The world is here to serve the church. God has this world here. He has his elect chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world. And he has this world here to serve his people. Think about that. So the world produces clothes. Wicked people grow food. The world provides shelter. and medicine. The world provides things for our enjoyment, things for our protection. And we can use those things aright because it was made for that purpose. But when we begin to use what the world produces in excess, excess, when what it provides becomes what we live for, that we must have it at all costs, then we are abusing the world, and we are worldly at that juncture. You see, it's perfectly lawful in the eyes of God to desire to look nice, to have nice clothes. There's nothing wrong with that. But when your life becomes absorbed with buying clothes, however modest those clothes may be, when it becomes absorbed with that and having to wear the latest fashion, it becomes a lust of the world. The very last thing I would ever want to do is to offend needlessly any child of God in this place. But you know some years ago I was walking in, all I will call it is a hat shop, I don't know what the technical name is, but a hat shop looking for a hat for my wife. They're not prevalent in my part of the world. It's really hard to find decent hats. And I picked a hat up and I couldn't believe the price, 150 pounds, some 200 pounds. Fancy, fancy. You see the head covering? The reason for the head covering is for the woman to cover her glory, which is her hair. That in the worship of Christ, it's not about her glory, it's about His glory. Yes, it's a token of submission to her husband, but ultimately it's this covering of her hair, which is her glory. That's the point. Now, when you go and throw on top of that hair this hat that you've just paid 200 or 300 pounds for that draws attention to your head far more than your uncovered hair ever would because it's fashion. You wouldn't be caught dead without having that fashionable hat on. Is that not being worldly? Is that not running counter to the very purpose of the head covering? I don't see how it could be anything else but The last thing I would do for anyone here is offend. But isn't everything for us, as far as God's concerned, as we ask God, we said, have thine own way, Lord, tonight. We sang, search me, O God, know my thoughts. Isn't everything on the table? Isn't everything open game for the Holy Ghost to come and put his finger on? Is there some little room in your heart that you have it locked and Christ can't have the key? You can go anywhere else in my heart. You can go anywhere else in my home, but here it's stay out. And I say at that point in time that is nothing more than the world, that's nothing more than worldliness. And if we are actually serious, we pray for revival and I pray, I stand here tonight and I tell you I need revival. I am tired of the dry, the dust, the lack of power in prayer, in power with men. I know there's much more to this than I've ever tasted. And I have to say, Lord, You do with me, You tell me anything because I don't want to talk about one revival at the same time I'm going to hold on to this thing which You say is a lust of the world. How? Am I not mocking God when I do that? Am I not being a hypocrite when I do that? It's so easy to speak disparagingly of someone who is dressed immodestly. But see, it goes beyond that. It's about the heart. You can have the most modest clothes on and be dressed worldly. It's because of the heart. When a desire for food, nothing wrong with desiring food. When it becomes gluttony, eating not just to satisfy an appetite, but eating for the pure pleasure of the food. And you keep eating, and you keep eating, and you keep eating just for the, you can be as skinny as a rail. I don't have those luxuries. I didn't get those jeans, but I know people skinny as a rail. And they just keep eating and eating, not to satisfy an appetite of hunger. Pure pleasure. When an honest, earnest desire to provide for your family turns into preoccupation with being wealthy, when you have a greater desire to stay at home and watch TV than you do to go to church, When you know more about the characters of Hollywood than you do the characters of the Bible, when you can rattle off all the major sports teams and all the players by heart, yet you would really struggle to recite the books of the Bible. You have every reason to suspect that you have been seduced by the devil with the lusts of the world. When it becomes that which controls our hearts, our minds, our actions, when it becomes in between us and the Lord, when it's forbidden by God, the apostle calls it worldly lusts. At that point in time, we may take a legitimate desire and turn it into a God that we worship. We want to be with. We're sad if we don't get it. Upset. It fills our minds. We just made it a God. Because at the end of the day, worldliness is simply idolatry. There is a reason the first commandment says, Thou shalt have no other gods before me. But worldliness is exactly that. It's putting gods before God. These lusts of the world. The world's on the outside, but it's also on the inside. It's that flesh Paul talks about in Romans 7. Third and final point. Since the world is our enemy and not our friend, there are good reasons not to love it. If there has been anything that the Spirit of God has brought to your mind tonight, anything at all in this meeting, and he just nails it, is grieving me. That has been quenching my work in your life. I want you to hear these reasons why it's a good thing not to love the world. Number one, to love the world, to view it as our friend, is unreasonable. It is unreasonable. I'll go further than that. It is absolute insanity to turn to that which can never satisfy the soul as if it can. It's insanity. Why would we do it? Why would we engage in that? Why would we set that before our eyes, before our hearts? As David said, I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes. Why would we do that when we know it will ravage our souls? Isn't that what the prophet was saying? Wherefore do you spend money for that which is not bread? What in the world are you doing? Are you insane? Spending money and labor for that which is not bread and cannot satisfy you? To live like this world as our friend is also scandalous. When the Christian acts like the men of the world, then their love for the world and the things of the world give the appearance that Christianity is really all a joke. It's all a joke. That's what the world says. You know, when the faith healers come on and eventually they get exposed for their shenanigans, their deceptions and their money schemes, the world just laughs at Christians because they have no clue how to discern a true Christian from one who simply professes to be one. And they look at it, it's all a joke, and they laugh. The tragedy is when God's true people go lusting after the things of this world, and they act like the world, and they pursue the world. The world sees it. They see it. They observe it, and they say it's all a joke. They love their money. They love their pleasures, just like me. That's a scandalous thing. To love this world as our friend is dangerous. We set ourselves on a path that's going to take us away from Christ. It's going to take us away from the cross. It's going to take us away from fellowship with the Lord. It's going to happen every time. And we'll wake up and what's happened to me? How come my heart is cold? How come I don't want to go to the prayer meeting anymore? How come I'd rather stay home? How come I'd rather flip on the TV than read the Word of God? Not just I'd rather, but that's what I do. and fill my mind with the cesspool of the world. We'll become more and more acquainted with the ways of the world and that's not what you want. And then we expose ourselves when we do that to more and more temptations. To view this world as our friend is destructive. It will destroy our testimony. It will destroy our own happiness. It will destroy our ability to glorify God, our chief end in life, and then we're not going to enjoy him. Being transformed into the image of Christ will just fall by the wayside. Because we went a-hungering, we went a-whoring after the things of this world. Do we really want revival? Really? I believe we do. I honestly believe. I hear these men cry. I hear them weep for revival. There's an acknowledgment, you know, when you pray for revival, you are saying there's a deadness that's there. Because revive, the word means bring back to life. And would we not, brothers and sisters, confess that there's a deadness right now? in the church of the living God, is there not a deadness? Is there not a coldness in love? Is there not a tremendous lack of spiritual power? Is there not a serious lack of Christ-likeness? You've heard the saying many times, the old Scottish preacher said, I looked for the world and I found it in the church, and I looked for the church and I found it in the world. I don't know why God put this series on my heart. I just know that he did. But just maybe. It's time for Him to work, just maybe. And the Lord is calling us to Himself. If my people which are called by my name shall humble themselves and pray and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven. and will heal their sins, forgive their sins and heal their land. Maybe, maybe that's why God sent me here. That's my desire and that's my prayer. Lord, come in revival. Mr. Greer, would you close in prayer, please? Let's all bow together, please, before the Lord. Father in heaven, we bow together now. We come before thy throne of grace again. Thank thee for giving help to thy servant tonight, for enabling him to unburden his soul, to speak so honestly, so openly, to bring before us what thy word has to say to us concerning these matters in relation to the world, its lust, the pitfalls, the dangers, our own hearts, and all that has been set before us Lord, I do pray that thou wilt take thy word and use it, and come and visit us tonight, and come and move among us. Lord, we pray that thou wilt have thy way. As we sang in that hymn, have thy known way, Lord, have thy known way. And we ask, O Lord, that thou wilt be pleased to take thy word and use it to bring about hearts that truly and earnestly long for thee. hearts that have become convicted and troubled about loving the world and the things of the world. We thank Thee for helping Thy servant to explain tonight what this is all about. And Lord, we pray that Thou wilt come and create in us, O thirst for Thee, create in us, O Lord, an awareness, a consciousness of our need to pursue Thee, our need to run after Thee, our need to see the emptiness and the vanity of this passing world, and to realize that we must have the Lord, we must have him come back among us, we must have him return and visit us. O Lord, come and work these things out in our hearts and lives and minds, and let us know everyone before thee now. Let us know every soul, every individual, and every man, every woman's state. Lord, come, we pray, and operate by the Holy Ghost, and do what needs to be done. among thy people even here tonight. Bless thy servant. Be with him as he preaches again these coming two evenings. Lord, whatever you want us to hear, whatever you want him to say, we pray, Lord, that thou will give it and that thou will move among us. And may there be something arise out of this conference that will be the beginning of a moving of God again. whether here in Balomena or farther afield. We thank the Lord when you begin in a certain place to bring about a return to the Lord, to bring about a return to true holiness and a true walk with God and a true desire for God. It will create ripples that will go far and wide. And Lord, we pray that this will be our experience. Come again, we ask. And bless us, we pray thee. Part us now with thy favor. and go with us, we pray, and give us solemnity, give us that seriousness of heart and mind, even when the meeting comes to a close in that formal way. Yet may the meeting go on, and may the voice of God still be heard, and may the spirit continue to move for the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray, and for whose sake we ask all of these things. Amen.