Aug. 30th, 2026 || 1 John 2:15-17 || Listen HERE
This morning I want to start by asking you a question that is simple enough for a child to understand, but deep enough to To challenge every one of us. The question is… What has your heart?
Not simply what do you believe? Or what do you do? Or what do you love? Or what do you treasure? But what is it, that you find yourself thinking about when nobody is asking what you’re thinking about?
Because the Bible repeatedly teaches us that our behavior flows from our hearts. We eventually move toward what we love. Our choices reveal our treasure. And that is why John does not begin this passage by saying stop doing bad things! He goes deeper. He says do not love the world.
That command can sound strange at first. After all, scripture tells us that God made the world, that creation displays his glory, and that God himself loved the world in sending his son. So what exactly does John mean?
He is not telling Christians to hate the earth, hate people, hate their families, hate their work, or refuse every good thing God has made. John is talking about the world as a system of values and desires organized against God. A way of thinking that says, in effect, I want life on my terms. Do you know anybody like that? I want what I want. I want to be satisfied, admired, comfortable, and secure. And I do not want God to rule over me.
There is a song from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory about a spoiled little girl, Veruca Salt, who gets everything she wants from her parents. Here is a few lines from that song:
“I want the world, I want the whole world, I want to lock it up in my pocket. It’s my bar of chocolate, give it to me now. I want 10,000 tons of ice cream and if I don’t get the things I am after I’m going to scream. I want presents and sweets and surprises I don’t care how I want it now I don’t care how I want it now.”
That’s from 1971. A little more real today I’d say. The world is making everything more appealing. I see UPS and FedEx trucks every few miles. You can get groceries almost put away in the cupboards for you. And they are making it easier and easier to love the things of this world by such convenience.
And John says that kind of love cannot peacefully coexist with the love of the Father. That is the burden of these verses this morning. There are two loves competing for our hearts. The world says live for what you can see. You deserve more. Its all about you! Jesus says, I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. The world says find your life here, and Jesus says in John 10:10 “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” Jesus didn’t come just to get you into heaven someday. He came to give you life right now.
And John wants us to see that what looks so permanent around us is actually very temporary. The world is passing away. But the person who belongs to Christ abides forever. The world is competing for our hearts. Matthew 6:21 Jesus says “For where your treasure is there your heart will be also.”
Jesus does not treat the heart as a neutral place. Something will have it. Something will occupy the place of greatest value.
Something will determine what you fear losing, what you spend your time pursuing, what you are willing to sacrifice for, and what you believe will finally make you happy. That is why the world does not have to convince you to become an atheist in order to capture you. All it has to do is simply teach you to live as if God isn’t important. You can believe in God and still spend your life chasing the world. You can come to church and still be captivated by the approval of people. You can still sing about Jesus and still secretly believe that money, comfort, success, how you look, possessions, or recognition will satisfy you.
The world is constantly preaching. Our culture tells us what is worth having, what is worth fearing, what is worth celebrating, and what is worth sacrificing for. And much of the time its message sounds harmless. You deserve this, you need this, you’ll be happier when you have this. Think of advertising and how much they spend on advertising to make you want to buy their product. On the surface level, it sounds great, but underneath the message is telling a lie. Car companies telling you your value is what you drive. Rest is equivalent to buying more comfort. Happiness is 10 lbs away this is YOUR
time, find your happy place. That there’s joy in the next purchase, the next trip, the next upgrade. And all of that is saying God is not enough.
That is why John says “do not love the world”, He is not merely warning us about bad behavior. He is warning us about a rival god. OK, let’s look at verse 16. Here, John gives 3 ways the world can capture us, or 3 expressions of worldly desire.
1 The desires of the flesh
2 the desires of the eyes
3 pride
These three categories are broad enough to describe much of what pulls our heart from God.
1 DESIRES OF THE FLESH:
First, the desires of the flesh. The desires of the flesh are those sinful cravings that say I want what I want and I want it now. It is the inward demand for satisfaction on our terms. Just like Veruca, that sweet little girl From Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
This kind of desire of the flesh can certainly include sexual temptation, but it is bigger than that. It can include our hunger for comfort, our desire for revenge, our demand to be entertained, our cravings for pleasure, or our insistence that we should never have to suffer or be inconvenienced. There are certainly a lot of good desires that God created in us, but sin takes good things and makes them ultimate things. They are called idols. Food is good, but food cannot be our God. Rest is good but comfort and sleep cannot be our God. Marriage is good but another human being cannot be expected to give us one only God can give us.
The flesh says “I must have this” And the gospel says “Christ is enough” Galatians 5:24 Paul says “And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.”
Notice that Paul does not say the Christian never feels sinful desires. He says those who belong to Christ have a new relationship to them. We no longer Have to bow before every desire that rises inside us. We belong to another king and that is King Jesus.
2 DESIRE OF THE EYES:
The second desire is of the eyes. John talks about this temptation to want what we see. We see something in our hearts immediately begin saying I need that. I deserve that. I want that. Why don’t I have that? This is why comparison is so powerful. You can be perfectly content until you see what somebody else has. Your life has not changed, but suddenly your heart is dissatisfied. Think about the way social media can work. You can wake up thankful for your home, your family, your work, And the ordinary blessings God has given you. Then you look at a few pictures, other people’s vacations, other people’s food, (Because we take pictures of our food and put them on social media) or their new house, their new car, their seemingly behaved kids, and within minutes you are comparing your real life with everybody else’s carefully selected moments. And suddenly what God has given you feels small. The eyes can preach a sermon to your heart. You do not have enough.
Psalm 101:3 says “I will not set before my eyes anything that is worthless.”
That Does not mean we have to be afraid of everything we see. It means we should be thoughtful about what we continually place before our eyes, Because what we stare at long enough can begin to shape what we love.
3 THE PRIDE OF LIFE
Finally, John says pride of life. This is the desire to boast in what we have, what we know, who we know, and what we have accomplished or how people perceive us. It is the desire to be seen and admired. And pride is especially dangerous because it can Disguise itself as religion. We can become proud of our theology, proud of our morality, proud of our church attendance, proud of our ministry, proud that we understand the Bible, and even proud that we are not as worldly as other people. But the cross will not allow us to boast in ourselves.
Galatians 6:14 Paul says “But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ”
At the cross, every Christian stands on level ground. None of us gets to say, God saved me because I was impressive. We say I am a Sinner, and Christ is merciful.
THE LOVE OF THE FATHER IS NOT IN HIM
We come to the sobering warning in verse 15 “If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.”
Brothers and sisters, those are serious words. John is not saying that a Christian will never be tempted by the world. If that were true, the cross wound have been unnecessary. John is not calling for sinless perfection. Christians will be tempted by the world but we are called to not love the world, and when we’ve experienced God, the world loses its power to satisfy.
The question is not whether you struggle. The question is what direction your heart is going. Does sin grieve you? Do you repent? Do you want Christ more? Do you Increasingly see the emptiness of the things that once seemed so attractive? John is giving us a test of genuine faith. The person who has been born of God cannot finally make peace with a life organized around rebellion against God. Grace can change us. This is important because Christianity is not moral improvement. It is a new life. One that Christ is the center of.
2nd Corinthians 5:17 says…” Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away, behold the new has come.” The gospel does not merely give you a list of things you are not allowed to do. The gospel gives you Christ. It gives you a new heart, new desires, and a new destiny and a new identity.
The world cannot deliver what it promises
One of the great lies of the world is that if you just get enough of the right things, you will finally be satisfied. More money, more comfort, more recognition, more pleasure. More success, more possessions. But the problem with worldly satisfaction is that it always needs one more thing.
But eventually the new thing becomes ordinary. Then something else catches your eye. And the cycle begins again. The world is a master at creating appetites it cannot satisfy. Hebrews 13:5 says “Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said I will never leave you nor forsake you.”
Notice the biblical answer to greed is not simply try harder to be content. The deeper answer is the promise of God’s presence: I will never leave you nor forsake you. In other words God himself is the treasure. The world says “you need more,” the Gospel says “you need to be satisfied in God, He alone is your portion.
Now here is where the gospel changes everything. If all I do this morning is tell you, stop loving the world so much, I have not given you the answer. You cannot simply command your heart to stop loving something. The answer to a lesser love is a greater love. That is why the Christian life is not fundamentally about trying harder, its all about seeing, and tasting and experiencing Christ more clearly and treasuring him more deeply.
Philippians 3:7-8 “But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord”
Paul had impressive credentials. He had religious status. He had a reputation. But when he saw the surpassing worth of Christ, he counted everything else as loss. Paul is not saying that every earthly blessing is evil. He is saying that none of them compares with knowing Jesus. That is the Christians great discovery: Jesus is better than all of those things that the world runs after. And why is that? Because the world can give you things, But those things are temporary and fleeting. But Jesus gives us life. We now have access to God through Jesus.
I Think about the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. Satan offered him food After not eating for 40 days, power, and glory. Jesus refused the shortcut. He trusted his father. Matthew 4:10b “You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.”
Where Adam failed, Jesus succeeded. Where Israel failed, Jesus succeeded. Where we have given into temptation, Jesus stood firm and then the sinless Christ went to the cross for sinners like you and me. This is where our hope becomes gospel hope. We are not saved because we have perfectly resisted the world. We are saved because Jesus perfectly obeyed, died in the place of sinners, rose again, and gives his righteousness to those who trust in him. 2nd Corinthians 5:21 “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God”
Think about the wonder of that. The one who never loved the world more than the Father died for the people whose hearts have repeatedly done exactly that.
Jesus did not go to the cross Because he was trying to bargain with the father. He went because the father and the son had planned from eternity to magnify the glory of God’s mercy by saving sinners through his blood. Praise God!
Let’s move to verse 17. “And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever”
John is giving us a reason. The world is passing away. Everything around us that seems so permanent is temporary. Your possessions are temporary, your career is temporary, your reputation, your body, bank account even this present age is temporary. We are tempted to live as though what we can see is all there is. John says no, it’s passing away.
Imagine building a beautiful sandcastle on the beach. My 5-year-old loves to do this. You spend hours making it perfect. You put all your attention into it. Then someone tells you that the tide is coming. If you understand that, you don’t spend the rest of the afternoon acting like your sandcastle is permeant.
That’s what John is doing for us. He is reminding us, the tide is coming. The things that seem so important today will not seem important when we stand before God.
Matthew 6:19-20 “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, Where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven.”
Jesus is not telling us to neglect our responsibilities. He is telling us not to make temporary things, meaning things in this world, our treasure. John 17:15-16 Jesus words in His high priestly prayer, “I Do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.”
This changes how we live. We can Enjoy God’s gifts without worshipping them. We can work hard without making success our identity. We can possess things without allowing things to possess us. We can receive praise without needing praise. We can suffer without believing that comfort is our small g god.
Why? Because Christ is our treasure. John Piper “When Christ becomes your treasure, the world becomes your mission field not your home. It loses its power to define you, to satisfy you, and to enslave you.” This is what Piper is saying from a practical standpoint. “If God is not the treasure of your life, then money, sex, power, and pride will be. And they will ruin you. But if Christ is your treasure, then you are free to enjoy everything else as a gift, not as a God.” So, what does this mean for us?
So, what I would like to do now is ask you some questions. These are not to condemn you; I have genuinely asked these questions to myself in my study for this message.
These questions will help us examine our heart before the Lord.
What do you think you must have in order to be happy? What are you afraid of losing? What do you envy when you see someone else have it? Whose approval matters most to you? What occupies your thoughts when you have nothing else demanding your attention? Those questions can reveal where our treasure is: we think of Romans 12:2 “Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.”
The world is constantly trying to press us into its mold. But God is renewing us from the inside out. He uses his word, his spirit, prayer, worship, fellowship, suffering, repentance, and the ordinary means of grace to turn our hearts toward Christ.
So don’t merely ask, what do I need to stop doing? Ask what do I need to see more clearly about Jesus? Because when Christ becomes more beautiful, the world becomes less attractive. When eternity becomes more real, temporary pleasures lose their power. When grace becomes precious, pride begins to die.
And the cross puts everything into perspective. At the cross, We see the true emptiness of worldly glory. The world looked at Jesus and said, “we do not want him” But God was accomplishing salvation through the very cross that looked like defeat. Galatians 6:14 “Far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
At the cross, you see your sin And God’s holiness. You see justice and mercy. You see the seriousness of sin and the greatness of grace.
Jesus was not merely an example of how to resist the world. He was our substitute. He took the judgment we deserved.
1Peter 2:24 “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.” Die to sin and be lifted up in righteousness. Kind of the idea of baptism that we will be doing later today. Buried with Christ, and raised to walk in a new life.
And because he rose, the Gospel does not end with forgiveness. It leads to new life. Christ is not merely making bad people slightly better. He is making dead sinners alive. He is continuing to refine us. Ephesians 2:4-5 “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.”
That is why there is hope for every Christian who feels that pull of the world. Our hope is not in OUR ability to hold ourselves together. Can you imagine what a train wreck THAT would be? Our hope is in Christ, who has saved us and is continuing to change us in the likeness of Jesus, and to make us whom he has created us to be.
OK, maybe today you are here and have come to the conclusion that your heart has been captured by the world. Maybe you have been chasing money, comfort, pleasure or recognition or approval. Maybe you have been trying to find in creation only what the creator can give you. Do not run away from Jesus because you see your sin, run to Him. Acts 3:19 says “Repent therefore and turn Back, that your sins may be blotted out.” Repentance means turning. It means saying “Lord, I have loved things of this world more than I have loved you. I have believed the world’s promises. I have trusted things that cannot satisfy. Forgive me. Turn my heart back to you, Jesus” You know how many times I have prayed that prayer? It’s not a one and done, This world makes it so easy and so appealing for the love of things to take a front seat before the Creator, the One who holds everything together.
And the best news of all time is that Christ receives sinners! John 6:37 Jesus says “Whoever comes to me I will never cast out”
that’s the gospel! You do not have to clean yourself up before coming to Jesus. You come because you need him. You come because you are a Sinner. You come because he is a Savior. He purchased you with his blood. And for the Christian who is already in Christ, this passage is equally important because it is a reminder to wake up. To look again at Jesus, to realize what is temporary and what is eternal. And to remember what Christ purchased for you.
The world as we know it, is passing away. The house, the car, the money, the job, all the pleasures of this world will be gone. But Christ will still be there.
1 Peter 1:3-4 “According To his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” That is what we have in Christ: an inheritance that cannot perish, cannot be stained, and cannot fade.
So, spending your life building your identity around things that are passing away all of sudden seems foolish.
Spending your life trying to squeeze eternal satisfaction out of temporary things seems like choosing a puddle when offed an ocean.
Trading the treasure of Christ for the temporary pleasures of the world is like trading diamonds for dust.
The world says, “You need more.” Make yourself great, you deserve it. Live for what you can see.” Jesus says, “Come to Me, follow me, live by faith.”
The world offers things that eventually disappear. Jesus offers the all satisfying portion of your soul.
Jesus says in John 10:28 “I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.”
Church, what has your heart?
If the answer is anything other than Christ, don’t merely try harder. Look to Him. As things fade from this world, may we discover what the Gospel has been telling us all along. Christ is enough….. If you are here today and haven’t given your heart to Jesus, please don’t wait. We have folks that would love to pray with you. They will be standing at the back of the church, as we worship through song in a minute.
Closing Prayer
Father, we confess that our hearts are easily drawn away from You. We chase things that cannot satisfy us and hold tightly to things that cannot last.
Forgive us for loving the world more than we love You. Forgive us for believing that comfort, success, possessions, approval, or pleasure can give us what only Christ can give.
Turn our hearts back toward Jesus. Give us a greater sight of His beauty, a deeper love for His Word, a stronger hatred of sin, and a greater desire for holiness.
When we are tempted by the desires of the flesh, remind us of Christ. When our eyes wander toward what we do not have, remind us of Christ. When pride rises within us, remind us of the cross. When this world seems permanent, remind us that it is passing away.
As believers, thank you that our salvation does not rest upon our perfection but upon the finished work of Jesus. Thank You that you lived the life we could not live, died the death we deserved, rose from the grave, and now you keep your people by your grace.
Make us a people who live in this world without loving this world as our treasure. Make Northshore Church a church that treasures Christ above everything else and gladly gives ourselves away for His glory and the advance of His gospel.
And when our lives are finished, may we see that the treasure we chose was the only treasure that could never be lost.
We pray in the strong and precious name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
