Our culture is all about enjoying the good things in life. And holding out before us things we don’t have so that we wish we had them. Showing us how beautiful that beach resort is, how shiny that car is, how snazzy that new phone is. Do you remember the queues at the Apple Store in London when they launched their first iPhone?
Take cars. When another car pulls up next to you at the lights, or parks next to yours at the station, what do you think? You either think, “Wow – I’d love to have a car like that”. Or you think, “Huh – mine’s better than theirs.” It’s just one example of how we incessantly rank ourselves, look around and compare ourselves to others in the room. We either feel proud of what we’ve got, or we wish what someone else had.
Lots of people in this area commute to London. Every day, nearly 400,000 people work in the Square Mile. Those people are driven by all kinds of things, but many are driven by how much they can earn, what bonus they might get at the end of the year, how fast their pension can accrue, and how early they might be able to retire. Just the other day I heard of someone in this area who had retired at 35.
And before you think, “That’s not me – I have a humble, low-paid job and I’m happy with my lot”, we need to stop and realise that this approach to life infects us more than we realise. Which of us has never wished we had what other people had. As one friend of mine put it: The Bible teaches that money doesn’t make me happy, but I’m still willing to give it a try.
Did you know that 94% of adults in the UK have played the National Lottery at some point, and 70% play regularly. The National Lottery would not exist if most of us did not harbour a dream of waking up to riches we had never known possible.
Two foundation stones for the whole advertising industry: Pride in what we have. Desire for what we do not have, usually driven by what we see.
And the point is that we Christians are not exempt from all this. We pick up these approaches to life, almost in the air we breathe. Which of us has not been around to a friend’s house and found yourself wondering which TV they have, because it looks better than yours? Sure – some of us haven’t, but honestly – have you never felt “I want that”, about anything?
The problem with this is not that the material goods we all enjoy are bad. Everything God made is good, and is to be received with thanksgiving.
But there is a problem. And that short Bible reading spells out the two reasons why this approach to life is a big problem for the Christian
It doesn’t love God
The first problem is that this approach to life doesn’t love God. It doesn’t love God.
Have a look at verse 15: 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.
When John uses the word “world”, he doesn’t mean planet earth. It’s the same as in his gospel – “the world” is human society, whenever we organise ourselves to resist God and his purposes, to live our own way. We’re not to love that kind of world.
And we’re not to love the things that are in it either. And in verse 16 he spells out what those things are. They’re exactly what we’ve just been talking about: The desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions. We’re not to love that approach to life. Why not? Verse 15: If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
Insofar as you love that approach to life, you don’t love God.
That’s a bit stark. But he spells out why this is so in verse 16 – For all that is in the world,… is not from the Father but is from the world. That’s an approach to life that you didn’t learn from God. You learnt it from the world. You’re copying those who reject God, who don’t want to live his way. And so you’re copying a lifestyle that is the opposite of loving God.
That’s the problem with this approach to life – it doesn’t love God.
Sometimes two people get married where one of them has much more money than the other. The cynics start to gossip that the poorer person is only marrying for the money. They don’t love their future husband or wife. They love their money.
This is one step worse still. The approach to life that John is talking about is like the man who marries a wealthy wife, not so that he can live in her mansion, but so that he can enjoy the views over the property next door, and wish he could live there instead.
This approach to life – boasting in what we’ve got, longing for the things we can see we don’t have – it doesn’t love God.
So next time you find yourself, mobile contract nearly at an end, dreaming what might come next – what do you do?
You recognise that the way of life you’ve subtly bought into is the symptom, not the problem. What it’s exposing is that you don’t really love God. There are other things you love more.
So the answer is not to beat yourself up for getting drawn into the cycle of wanting the newest, fastest and shiniest thing. The answer is to feed your love for God.
You need to allow God’s greatness to grip you in new ways, so that you start to see that he is worth your love. You need to appreciate God’s love for you in fresh ways, so that you see that he is the one person who is worth living your life for. The latest, shiniest toys cannot love you back. As we’ll think in a minute, they cannot satisfy you either. But God is the one who is worthy of our love and worship, and who has already loved us in unimaginable ways. He even gave his own son to die for you, so that he and you could be friends once again.
There are lots of ways you can feed your love for God. Coming to church regularly can help. Reading the Bible for yourself, with some resources to help you, makes a big difference. I’d highly recommend joining a mid-week Bible study, or doing Christianity Explored if you’ve never done it.
There’s the first problem with the world’s approach to life: It doesn’t love God.
It doesn’t last
There’s a second problem. It doesn’t last. It doesn’t last.
This is verse 16. “And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.”
The world is passing away. And so are its desires. That’s because Jesus has come. Glance back up to verse 8: The darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining. Jesus, the light, has come into the world. There are still many dark pockets in the world, where people don’t’ want to know Jesus. But the true light is already shining, and so the darkness is on the way out.
Which means that the world has already begun to disappear. People still club together to resist God’s way for life, but not for long. And the worlds desires have begun to disappear. People still live for the stuff they own, and they still make it their ambition to own more, and newer, and better. But living for that is on the way out.
And one day, Jesus will come back to this earth. And all those who have loved him can look forward to that day, because that will be the beginning of life with him on earth, living life to the full, living life in harmony with God rather than fighting him, living for the things that really matter rather than just trying to accumulate stuff.
What John is saying is really very simple, but it’s so easy to forget: There’s no future in worldliness. It’s a dated system. It will collapse.
We all know about things dating, don’t we? In the modern world, technology moves so fast that things look dated really quickly. If you watch a film from ten years ago, so many cues on screen give away its age – things have moved on.
Perhaps you’ve even had the experience of setting your heart on the latest smartphone. So you save up for it and finally buy it, only to find out that it’s now yesterday’s model. It’s on the way out, and anyone who’s anyone has this new one instead.
We can relate to that, precisely because our hearts are so wedded to trying to keep up with the latest this, that or the other. Which means we all know a bit of that wish not to be left behind, not to be out of date.
What John is saying is forget the latest phone, car or tablet. This whole approach to life, that is driven by what we have or want to have – it’s so yesterday. It’s not where the future lies. Don’t be so out of date as to live for the stuff you have, or want to have.
It doesn’t last, but John says that something does. Whoever does the will of God abides forever.
If we live, always hankering after things that are newer, or bigger, or better, or faster, we will never be satisfied. Because there’s always something newer still, bigger still, better still or faster still. If we live this way, satisfaction will always elude us.
But John says that lasting joy is available –and it’s found in doing God’s will. In loving hi, and in letting that shape your life.
So if, like me, you need help from time to time in weaning your affections off a craving for the latest upgrade, remind yourself that it won’t last. Not the upgrade you hanker for, but the whole approach to life. Tap into that fear of ending up with an outdated model. And don’t settle for an outdated life. Don’t chase after a way of life that is fast disappearing.
It doesn’t love God. It doesn’t last.
Conclusion
It’s time we lived our lives for something that lasts, something that matters, something that’s really worth living for.
If you’re here today as someone who is still looking into the claims of Jesus, can I encourage you to keep looking. Jesus never taught that money or possessions are bad. But he did teach that loving those things can keep us away from loving the God who made us – and he invites you to follow him through life, to get a life, to get a life that has substance.
But I guess most of us here are already following Jesus. Jesus calls us to be in the world, but not of the world. The world lives for what we own and what we want. All too easily, so do we. Let’s live the alternative. Enjoying all that we have, but living to love God, living a life that lasts.