Father God, please restore, build up strong, rekindle that pure passion in side, that affectionate love for Jesus Christ in each of us today.
Why love the world or things in it, instead of loving the Lord, His plan, and people He created? I really love to meditate upon these verses too: 1 John 2:15-17.
“Do not love the world, nor 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 and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away and also its lusts, but the one who does the will of God abides forever.”
Lord, have your way with us so we will love all that You love and hate what You hate. Thanks for being our living hope! As we stand on the threshold of a whole new year, send authentic spiritual awakening and biblical revival. Start it in us, stir it up in our hearts -- in each one. Strengthen, quicken, edify, kindle, equip. Please fan into flames a passion for your Name. Do it again... cuz we really like to live red hot for You, Jesus! No time for lukewarm carnality, immature distracted worldliness, or some other icy cold non-endurance in 2019. Clothe us with power from on high -- let Your glory fall. Again. Have Your way -- wanna walk in Your Way!
Please know that God the Father’s attributes of justice and wrath aren’t ever in conflict with His love—they are rather a natural extension of His love.
He loves you perfectly, and because God loves perfectly, He also hates perfectly too. The two go together -- they are actually inseparable. To love perfectly is to hate perfectly as well. That is to say if you really love something, you really hate whatever threatens that something to destroy it. If you really love someone, you really hate whoever threatens that someone to harm or destroy. And the greater your love in you, the greater your hatred is. The more your good affection for what is right, the more your good disaffection for what is wrong.
That’s why Psalm 97:10 says, “Hate evil, you who love the Lord.”
Loving God right actually requires us to hate all that is opposed to Him and His Word. Unrighteousness won't do that.
Whatever it is that you love most will cause you to hate whatever is contrary to that unless you've somehow allowed something inside of you to become twisted or perverse. And the absolutely flawless.. always perfect love of God demands an absolutely perfect hatred of all those things which are contrary to that pure love. In our U.S. society today people have been taught to hate the word hate (and we are never to hate people or what's of God).
Let it sink in deep -- God loves perfectly, and He actually hates perfectly. He still loves sinners (like you and me) perfectly and He hates sin that destroys all those people He really loves.
God’s perfect love for His people is generous, it's excellent, it's relentless and it's lavish. He rightly expects us to reciprocate—not in scope, because our capacity to love is finite. Rather, He requires us to be single-minded in our pure affections and any divergence or distraction amounts to betrayal.
He is the Initiator and we are the responders. We love Him because He first loved us. For God so loved the world that He did something about it.. He gave what was so costly to Him... He sent Jesus. And Jesus willing left heaven and came here in love for us sinners. That's why we want to all out worship the Lord in spirit and in truth! There is acceptable biblical worship and then there is unacceptable worship today, but we will go with Christ and the former.
The divine perspective on such spiritual infidelity is basically spelled out in a verse found in 1 John 2:15: “Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.”
That’s the love God hates -- the love of this corrupt world system involving the lusts of the eyes, the lusts of the flesh, and boastful pride of life. Those are the three areas where Christ was tempted when He was walking here. And those are the areas where we all get tempted in today. God hates sin, He hates that evil system of sin (the world system). How are you doing in your prayer life and righteous fight of faith?
Pray that you can hate sin and the world system to the same degree that Jesus does. Pray that you can love God the Father and righteousness to the same degree that He loves the Father. If you don't there is room for spiritual growth.
Believer, you indeed know our real enemies:
1,) The evil system of sin a.k.a. the corrupt World system,
2.) The old fleshly nature within, and
3.) The Mr. Lu-Cifer (the devil, the father of lies who kills, steals, and destroys. He's called Satan), a thug with his fallen angel gang.
So how is sin described in the Bible?
1.) Sin is defiling. It is not just an act of disobedience, it is an internal pollution. It is likened to filthy rags. Man, even at his best, is only doing what is essentially filthy rags.
In 1 Kings 8:38, sin is likened to sores that come from a deadly plague. In Zechariah 3:3, it is likened to filthy garments that cover someone. It stains the soul. It degrades man’s nobility. It darkens his mind. It makes him worse than an animal, baser than a beast. It is so defiling that, according to Zechariah 11:8, it causes God to loathe the sinner. And it even makes the sinner loathe himself. And you will remember, writes the prophet Ezekiel, your ways and all your deeds with which you have defiled yourselves, and you will loathe yourselves in your own sight for all the evil things that you have done.
So sin is defiling; that is to say, it stains and it pollutes. That is why Paul calls it the filthiness of the flesh. Thomas Goodwin, the Puritan, wrote, “Sin is called poison; sinners, serpents. Sin is called vomit; sinners, licking dogs. Sin is called the stench of graves; sinners, rotted sepulchers. Sin is called mire; sinners, pigs.” Graphic language to describe the pollution, corruption, and defilement of sin. It has turned all of the human race into defiled beings.
2.) Sin, as to its nature, is rebellious. It is rebellious. It isn’t just that you slip up and break the law of God. It is that there is in you a will to rebel. Psalm 12:4 says, “Our lips are our own. Who is lord over us?” So says the sinner. Jeremiah 2:31, “We are lords. We will come no more to you,” say the sinners to God.” Jeremiah 44:17, “We will certainly do whatever thing goes forth out of our own mouth,” say the sinners. Sin is so rebellious it is God’s would-be murderer. Sin would dethrone God and ungod God and replace Him with the sinner. Sin is defiling, but it is also blasphemously rebellious.
3.) Sin that it is ingratitude. It is, in its own nature, ingratitude. It is God, after all, who’s given us all things. It is God who gave us life and breath and food and beauty and joy and love. It is God who’s given us all the goodness of life, knowledge, wisdom, fun, laughter, skill, health, relationships. The sinner is literally engulfed with the goodness of God. But he abuses his privileges. He’s like Absalom. You remember the story of Absalom. As soon as David, his father, had kissed him and taken him to his heart, Absalom went out immediately after that and plotted a treason against his own father.
And so it is that the sinner who is kissed by God in the realm of common grace, who indulges himself in God’s graces and God’s mercies, turns rapidly to betray God by being only the friend of Satan, God’s avowed enemy. Sin is such gross ingratitude, and Romans 1 says it is characteristic of the sinner that he is not thankful to God.
4.) Sin is totally incurable - it is incurable apart from the Lord to answer your repentant pray to forgive you. Man does not have in himself the capacity to do anything about his sin. He is sin to the bone, and he cannot alter that. In Isaiah chapter 1, “Alas, sinful nation, people weighed down with iniquity, offspring of evildoers, sons who act corruptly, they have abandoned the Lord, they have despised the Holy One of Israel. They have turned away from Him. Where will you be stricken again as you continue in your rebellion?”
Then he says this: “The whole head is sick, the whole heart is faint, from the sole of the foot even to the head, there is nothing sound in it, only bruises, welts, and raw wounds, not pressed out or bandaged nor softened with oil.”
It's so sick - sin-sick from head to toe and utterly incurable, like a leper. Jeremiah 13:23, says, “Can the Ethiopian change his skin color or the leopard, his spots? Then may you also do good that are accustomed to evil.” You can’t do anything about sin in your life apart from knowing Jesus Christ.
The great Puritan, John Flavel, said, “All the tears of a penitent sinner, should he shed as many as there have fallen drops of rain since the creation, cannot wash away one sin. The everlasting burnings in hell cannot purify the flaming conscience from the least sin. Not anything in this life and not anything in all of eternal hell could expiate sin from the sinner. Hell is where men pay an unpayable debt. There is no human cure for sin, not good works, not reformation, not education.”
And then we need to add that sin is deadly because the Bible says the soul that sins, it shall die. The wages of sin is death.
It’s amazing knowing how hard people actually work at sinning. This defiling, rebellious, ungrateful, constant violation of God’s law, which is incurable and deadly, is still the choice of men. Men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil. They pursue sin gladly.
Jeremiah 9:5 says, “They weary themselves committing iniquity.” They wear themselves out sinning.
Psalm 7:14 says "in pain, they bring forth evil. They literally bring forth evil with such commitment and devotion that they will pain themselves to achieve it."
Proverbs 4:16 says they can’t sleep unless they do evil.
Isaiah 5:18 says they "drag sin around like a beast pulling a wagon."
Ezekiel 24:12 says Jerusalem’s people weary themselves with lies.
People go to hell sweating, make amazing effort to sin. This is all they know. This is all they’re capable of. This is life. This is where they seek their pleasure and their fulfillment. Sin, then, as to its nature is defiling, rebellious, ungrateful, incurable, and deadly.
How many people are affected by sin? And the answer to that is everybody. All, Romans 3 says, have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Romans 3:10 says there is none righteous - no, not one. No one escapes sin - no one. The whole world lies in the lap of the evil one, says 1 John chapter 5. In fact, in Romans 5:12, it says, “Just as through one man sin entered into the world and death through sin, so death spread to all men because all sinned.” The whole human race is infected with this virus. No one escapes.
What are sin’s results? What does sin do to us people? Well, it's clear what it does.
1.) Sin causes the Devil's evil to overpower man -- "Yes, it causes evil to overpower man. Man is utterly and totally dominated by evil. His mind is dominated by it. His will is dominated by it. His affections are dominated by it. All man can conceive in his mind is that which is sinful. He has a futile or an empty mind as regards righteousness. His will is polluted so that he will do whatever he wants to do. His affections are polluted so that he loves darkness more than light. It causes evil to literally dominate man.
2.) Sin holds all men under Satan’s control. Because all men are sinners, they are therefore under the power of the general, you could say, or the monarch or the king of the kingdom of darkness, Satan himself. They walk according to the prince of the power of the air, says Ephesians 2:2. The devil, then, rules the sinner because the devil rules the world system in which the sinner is held captive.
3.) Sin results in bringing man under God’s wrath. And the Bible is clear about that, it calls sinners, all people who are lost sinners, children of wrath. It says that God is going to bring about retribution on all lost sinners, and they will spend eternity in hell if they die in their sins.
4.) Sin subjects men to all the miseries of life. Because of sin, we have misery. That’s why Job 5:7 says, “Man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward.” That’s why Romans 8:20 says, “The creature is subjected to futility.” That’s why Isaiah says there’s no peace for the wicked. That’s why Solomon, who had everything the world had to offer, could look at it and say, “Vanity of vanities, it’s all nothing.” It’s all meaningless, it’s all empty." ~ John MacArthur
Jesus Christ is the Father's only Solution for you and your sin. Sin really overpowers people, brings him under Satan’s control, brings him under God’s wrath, subjects him to all the miseries of life, and ultimately, number five, it damns him to eternal hell. Jesus, frankly, is personally responsible for the precision and the clarity which the New Testament gives us to the doctrine of hell. It was Jesus Himself who described hell with clear, unmistakable language - Matthew 8, Matthew 13. So that’s what sin does.
Sin is thee universal problem -- all people in all nations have sinned. ALL have. None are righteous, so says Romans 3. There is none good, no not one. Sin is to be ditched and avoided. The chaos from sin has really been seen in the earth more and more. Will things ever get better here on earth. Yes, there is hope in Christ--it'll get better here after the His Second Coming to earth cuz He'll thrash all his enemies that constantly hate Him, who have been too hard hearted to hear His good Message and repent. It'll get worse and worse here until Jesus comes again (even though there will be an awakening in the middle of the tribulation years with Jews turning to Christ and spreading the Gospel Message). But then it'll get far better on earth after Jesus returns.
Sin has essentially generated the cosmic chaos that exists in the heavens between God and Satan, between holy angels, between fallen angels, as well as between men and men and men and God. The chaos of the heaven has become the chaos of the earth. All of the realm of created beings has been devastated by the reality of sin. And we want to talk about its impact on human life. Sin attacks every baby at the moment of conception, and it waits, it lurks to embrace that baby fully when it leaves the protection of the mother’s womb. Sin rules every heart, it intends to damn every soul to hell.
Sin turns beauty into ugliness, wholeness into deformity, joy into sorrow, bliss into wretchedness. And that’s why the Bible in Joshua 7:13 calls sin the accursed thing. It is compared in Scripture to the venom of snakes and the stench of rotting death. Understanding sin for what it really is ..is critical so that we understand the need we have -- our great need for a Savior and His salvation from sin.
Now, just a few questions to sort of frame up the big picture. Let’s ask the question, what is sin? And the answer is simple, 1 John 3:4, “Sin is the transgression of the law;” that is to say, sin is any violation of God’s law - any violation of God’s perfect holy law. Sin is unrighteousness while the law of God affirms what is righteous. Any act, any word, any thought, any motive that violates God’s holy, just, and perfect law constitutes sin. It’s not a narrow category, it’s a sweeping and broad one.
And God has the right as God, as holy God, to establish what pleases Him and what does not. He is the authority. He set the standards for man to live by. He established what is right, what is wrong, and anything that God says is wrong constitutes sin.
Listen, it's a good day to ditch all that's evil, yes to over come evil with good by worshipping the Lord. The one Lord we really love (the Jesus of the Bible), and to start really hating the world system and the sin that Jesus hates.. even to the same degree that Christ hates the world system and sin.
