(Text Only)
Title: Do Not Love The World (Part One)
I rather like today’s passage. It is one of those passages that really separates the preaching at Heritage from other churches. This is not a simple passage. It can easily be misread, mis-taught, and misunderstood under the umbrella of simplicity.
Even worse, this passage can also be misapplied and misquoted to have us hiding in fear from everything we enjoy in life: Cookies, Cavs Games, Bar-Be-Que’s, hugs, everything! But correctly understood, correctly taught, and correctly applied, this passage can serve as a reminder of what we are to have our focus on, our love in, and our obedience to.
Does that sound like a sermon worth hearing?
Well, I hope you said yes, because you are about to hear it anyway.
I. What does it mean to Love?
The first mistake many will make, is to assume that they know what it means to love something the way that John is describing it here. In English, we only have one word for love…anyone know what it is? (Love)
In Greek, there are at least four words for love, in the New Testament alone, and each has a varying meaning depending on context. I’m not saying that your translation, or my translation is wrong for using the word “love” as our English equivalent…it’s the closest thing we have, so it’s the right word, but to be Biblical, to be more accurate, to completely understand the specificness of what John is saying, we need to dig a bit deeper.
Let me give you an illustration so you’ll understand.
(“Car” slides)
Was anything I said wrong? Could it have been more accurate?
Tell me some things that you love. (Take answers)
The following would be accurate statements:
Pastor Ben loves. (In no particular order)
1. Jesus
2. Truth
3. Film
4. Cleveland Browns
5. Hot Wife (his, not yours, well, I love her too, but in a different way)
6. Mo Williams
7. Nevaeh Claire
8. Video Games
9. The Number 9
10. Dippin’ Dots
This word “Love” is the Greek “Agape”
1) concerning persons: to welcome, to entertain, to be fond of, to love dearly.
2) concerning things: to be well pleased, to be contented at or with a thing.
Now, if I apply the full definition of the word “Agape” these 10 things take on an entirely different meaning.
1. Jesus (person) YES
2. Truth (thing) YES
3. Film (thing) NO
4. Cleveland Browns (thing) DEFINITELY NO
5. Hot Wife (person) YES
6. Mo Williams (person) NO
7. Nevaeh Claire (person) YES
8. Video Games (thing) NO
9. The Number 9 (thing) NO
10. Dippin’ Dots (thing) NO
It’s a slippery slope to interpret “love” too simply and then say, “Well John says if you love anything in the world, or the things of the world, the Father is not in you. So we should not love the things of the world.”
Look at number six. Do I love Mo Williams? No, I enjoy him as a basketball player. I am a fan of his and th team he plays on. But do I welcome him? Do I entertain him? Am I fond of him personally? Do I love him dearly? No, I can’t. I might, if I was given the opportunity.
Look at number 8. Do I love video games? Agape love? No, I enjoy them. But I am not content with video games. They are not the be all, end all of my existence, that can only be the Lord Jesus Christ, and the blessings that flow from him. But even those blessings, even things like my daughter and my wife MUST come second to the creator himself.
As Carman, the witty Christian musician once said, “Now there’s a lesson to be learned here about dealing with temptation: You keep your eyes on the creator, man, and not on his creation.”
We can’t venture any further in today’s lesson until I am sure we understand what John is saying when he writes “Love.” We will not be a church that quotes this passage and then uses it to correct others behaviors by qualifying what is “of the world” and what is from God.
When it comes to those things, we’d be MUCH smarter to refer to Paul in Romans 14 and enter into a dialog not about “what is of the world” but rather wrestle with the two questions: Is this thing permissible? If so, is it beneficial?
Questions?