“Possessions Over God – Part 1” || Perception Vs. Reality || Week 2

Are you ready to continue this series? This series kicked off hot and fast and I’m ready for Week 2. This series is called “Perception vs. Reality”. We look at the headlines on the news and social media about the various parts of this world and go, “Holy crap! What the *** is going on?” I know more of you Christian folk use proper vocabulary to say that, but I want to reach a bigger market. We see these headlines and learn about the perception of what the state of the world is. The reality though can be WAY different from what we see. We defined the difference between reality and perception last week. Reality is the world as it exists; perception is being aware of the world as we can sense it. So let’s dive into this week’s message.

Today’s message finds the words of Peter and John in their appropriate books and talks about their possessions and how much they liked their possessions. Today’s message is called: “Possessions Over God”.

Let’s jump towards the end of the New Testament to 1 John 2. We’re going to read verses 15-17, which says: “Don’t love this evil world or the things in it. If you love the world, you do not have the love of the Father in you. This is all there is in the world: wanting to please sinful selves, wanting the sinful things we see, and being too proud of what we have. But none of these comes from the Father. They come from the world. The world is passing away, and all the things that people want in the world are passing away. But whoever does what God wants will live forever.” There’s a lot to unpack here. Let’s take this verse by verse because this message requires all three verses.

Verse 15 tells us to not love the evil world or the things in it. John often repeats the importance of love and that God is love, and also reveals that God hates a certain type of love: the love of the world. “Love” here signifies affection and devotion. God, not the world, must have the first place in the Christian’s life. Now “the world” doesn’t refer to the physical but the invisible spiritual system of evil that is dominated by Satan and all that it offers in opposition to God, his word, and his people. No middle ground is found between these two statements: following God or rebelling God. Look at the false teachers who had no such singular love, but were devoted to the world’s philosophy and wisdom, thereby revealing their love for the world and their unsaved state.

Don’t fall in love with the reality of the world. The reality of the world is a scary place full of uncertainty and unknown. You may think that YOUR reality is known and that you know what your future holds. Plot twist: (thank Pastor Steve!) you don’t! You have NO CLUE what your future holds because tomorrow is not granted. We’ve seen that a lot during this pandemic that tomorrow isn’t granted. Multiple numbers of people are dying up to the point where we watch the death counter as a scoreboard, especially since we’ve had no sports for almost 3 months. Tomorrow’s not granted, and I don’t know what side of the fence you want to lean on. The world’s…or God’s. Don’t love evil! I know, we’ve seen so much more evil in the world via the headlines and social media and news programs because that’s what we’re surrounding ourselves with and THAT is what is shaping our reality. God can shape our reality as well! We talked about last week how we go through a metamorphosis of our mind when we lean on the Holy Spirit to guide us. The world can guide to positive success, don’t get me wrong, but I think we reach a bigger impact when we lean on God and the Holy Spirit to guide our success. Let’s move on to verse 16.

While the world’s philosophies and ideologies and much that it offers may appear attractive and appealing, that is deception. Its true and pervasive nature is evil, harmful, ruinous, and satanic. Its deadly theories are raised against the knowledge of God and hold the souls of men captive. Heavy stuff, I know, but it’s not wrong. The world thinks it’s offering us a sexy new life. We see all the glitz and glamour of the celebs and influencers on social media and think: “I WANT THAT!” I know I’m right because I’ve been there. We see it on face value because it’s our perception of their life, but we don’t see the whole story. We don’t see the hard work, the anxieties, the mental stress, the struggle, the upbringing…ALL THAT! We don’t see the full story, so we perceive positive when it’s truly an act or the face value over what they want to share. Let’s continue!

John talks about pleasing our sinful selves. These desires refer to a negative here for a strong desire for evil things. Our selves, our flesh, refers to the sin nature of man; the rebellious self dominated by sin and in opposition to God. It’s an interesting description here and one I want to talk about more. The rebellious self-dominated. We do this to our selves. We take the sexiness that the world offers us and go: “ME! ME! ME!” and push God to the side. It’s like we’re the parent to God trying to shield God’s eyes from something we don’t want him seeing…our sin. NEWS FLASH! God sees it all, and funny enough. He sees what we don’t come forward with more. He sees it and knows it all! We dominate the power of the world’s wants and push God to second place. I’m not saying I’m holier than thou because I’ve done it myself. Especially trying to hide it because I don’t want to be caught nor held accountable. It’s a tough battle to climb, and one I’m still climbing, but it’s doable. Here’s an interesting point as we continue to talk about verse 16.

The eyes are what Satan uses as a strategic avenue to incite wrong desires. Look at Eve! Satan’s temptation there made Eve attracted to something beautiful in appearance, but the result was spiritual death. I was thinking about something Jesus said and it matched up to this beautifully. It’s like a book was woven together that way! 😉 Matthew 5:28 says: “But I tell you that if a man looks at a woman and wants to sin sexually with her, he as already committed that sin with her in his mind.” Your lustful eyes cause you to sin more times than not and you don’t even realize it. Satan uses them to incite the wrong things. Have you ever realized why sex sells? BINGO! We pull an Eve and look at what we perceive as beautiful in appearance, but the reality is we are going after something we shouldn’t because we don’t know what we’re doing and God’s not involved with it. If God was involved with it, WE WOULDN’T HAVE DONE IT! There’s more to say, but I’m not an expert in talking about sex and porn and how the Bible talks about it. Talk to your Pastor or a trusted spiritual leader to get more details. My 25-year old brain doesn’t have a lot of knowledge on it! Let’s finish discussing verse 16. Ain’t the beauty of the Bible grand?

Pride in possessions…here lies the crux of the message. This phrase has the idea of arrogance over one’s circumstances, which produced pride or exaggeration, parading what one possessed to impress other people. James had already said this in James 4:16: “But now you are proud and boast about yourself. All such boasting is wrong.” John is talking about people being arrogant over their life, which later produced pride that one tries to impress others with. Have you ever bought something just to impress your spouse, your friends, your co-workers, or even your family? It could be as small as a phone, computer, or laptop or as big as a car, house, or a boat. We try to fill our lives with earthly possessions to try and please others but we pleasing ones that we shouldn’t care about how they perceive us. We’re trying to impress others so they’ll like us…or more like so that don’t hate us. Instead, we need to care less about what other humans think of us and care more about what God thinks of me. He’s the ultimate judge! As long as you and He are good, any other relationships shouldn’t matter. He is the foundation for all relationships and all your relationships need to go through him for approval! That’s another sermon…never mind! Go read Pastor Michael Todd’s book, “Relationship Goals”. He’s a better explainer, preacher, and overall person than me to talk about relationships. Time to wrap up verse 16.

Guess what? Everything we just talked about: pleasing our sinful selves, wanting what our sinful eyes see, and being arrogant. NONE OF IT COMES FROM GOD! The world is the enemy of the Christian because it is in rebellion and opposition against God and controlled by Satan. The three openings here, if allowing access to sin, resulting in tragedy. Not only must Christian reject the world for what it is but also for what it does. Christians are in a constant battle with sin because of how much we can be susceptible to it via the world’s ideals and philosophies. We need to fight against the sin of the world and what it stands for so we can bring God’s glory to light and turn the sin into repentance. IT IS TIME! We are talking about the final verse finally.

Verse 17 talks about how the world is passing away. We need to not love the satanic world system because of its temporary nature. It’s in the continual process of disintegration, headed for destruction. Interesting that we’re talking about it being temporary because of how that is true. Everything we have on Earth is temporary, even our bodies. God puts it on loan for us for about 80 years or so and then it’s time to return it to him afterward. Now what we do with it during our loan is on us. We have to decide if we’re going to do what He wants or what the World wants. The world is slowly degrading on multiple levels, and everything on it that people want is going with it. Whoever does want God wants though is granted eternal life. Those who follow God will abide as his people forever. While God offers eternal life to us, the present age is doomed. If we believe and confess that Jesus is our Savior, then we granted eternity when Jesus comes back to get us. This is great, don’t get me wrong, but it leaves a problem.

The present age is still doomed, which sucks. I’ve often thought that when I get ready to join Jesus in heaven, I want to leave the world in a better place than I found it. I can’t change the entire world. I feel like that is WAY too big of a challenge to take on myself, but I can change my reality of the world via the people I’ve encountered. It’s a big reason why I’ve done the Youth and Children’s Ministry for so long. I can try and offer my views and what the Bible teaches to the next generation and pray for the positive change. I can plant the mustard seed, but it’s their job to maintain the plant. I will offer the nourishment and watering I can through various methods, but they have to maintain it. Do what you can while we’re on loan from God to earth. Make it a better place than you left it or as Danny Gokey says, “Leave it better than I found it”.

 Whew…that took a different plan than I thought, but as always. God’s plan is bigger than my own. That’s means next weeks’ message should be a good one too because I got to split this message into two parts. This entire message was based on 3 verses. Crazy. So stay tuned for part 2 of “Possessions Over God” when we dive into 1 Peter. Stay blessed!