1Jn.2:15-17

You may not be aware of it, but there is a very significant anniversary taking place in America right now. We are passing a cultural milestone. It is the 25th anniversary of the Big Mac hamburger. I trust that you will all pause to commemorate this anniversary in an appropriate fashion. Go and see your doctor for a complete physical, including an EKG and cholesterol test.

You can say whatever you want about the food at Mcdonald’s, but you can’t say that the people who sell it are stupid. The people who run McDonalds are brilliant.

When I take my children to McDonalds, I have found that they only want one thing. They want a Happy Meal. What is a Happy Meal? It is a hamburger, fries, and a drink in a cheap cardboard box with a little prize thrown in. The prize is some pathetic little trinket, worth about ten cents.

But my kids fervently believe that they have to have it. They are not interested in the food in a Happy Meal; they want that little prize. Ronald McDonald has succeeded in convincing my children that their little lives are not complete unless they get a Happy Meal. That clown has created a McDonalds-shaped vacuum in their little hearts.

I have tried to tell my kids that I will buy them a hamburger, fries and a drink and give them some money to buy a toy later. I have tried to buy them off. They will hear none of it. They have to have a Happy Meal.

Now the irony of a Happy Meal is that the Happy soon wears off. About thirty seconds after they’ve opened the box and played with the toy, the Happy is all gone. It is an illusion. No child ever discovers lasting happiness in a Happy Meal. I never hear my kids saying “Remember that Happy Meal we had last year, Dad? Wasn’t that great? What lasting joy it has given us. We are so content now because you bought us that Happy Meal.” It doesn’t work that way, does it?

Everybody says that kids are smart. You would think that after a while, the kids would catch on. You would think that a child would say, on his way into McDonalds “You know, I have found that a Happy Meal never brings me lasting happiness. It never delivers what it promises, so I’m not going to get suckered into it this time.”

No, that never happens! No matter how many Happy Meals leave them disappointed and empty, they’re always ready to come back for more. It’s almost like they are addicted and they need a new fix. So they keep buying Happy Meals, and the Happy Meals keep not working.

Kids are naive, right? Guess what? So are adults! When you get older, you don’t get any smarter. Your Happy Meals just get more expensive. People go through life seeking to buy happiness: a new car, a new house, a new hairstyle, a new body, a new relationship, a new lifestyle. They think if they can just get that one more thing, they will be happy. And when they get it, they find out that they’re still not happy.

The truth is that when we seek to satisfy our desires, they don’t stay satisfied. And that is the fundamental principle on which the world apart from God operates: if you get what you think you need, then you’ll be happy. But you never are. Let’s look again at that passage in 1 John 2:15-17…

1 John 2:15-17 Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world—the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does—comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.

When we talk about the world, in this context, we’re talking about a system that is controlled by the evil one. It is a system which is opposed to God, which resists the redeeming work of Jesus Christ, and which seeks to draw us away from God. One Bible scholar defined the world as “human society organized under the power of evil.”

The world is a system that is built on the premise that you can be happy without God. You can find happiness and meaning in life by substituting the fulfilment of your desires in the place of knowing God. That is what the world is all about. The world is built on the principle of getting what you want, not what God wants for you.

John says that if you buy into that system - if your basic motivation is to try to be happy by getting what you want - then you cannot really be a Christian. John says that love for the Father cannot co-exist alongside love for the world. The world is evil, the world is empty, the world system is at enmity with God. You cannot love the world and at the same time love God. Those two things are mutually exclusive.

James 4:4 Don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.

Let’s look at the way the world system operates. It is built on desire; unfulfilled desire. Satan always approaches us along one of three lines, relating to our desires. That was his approach to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden; that was his approach to Jesus, when he tempted him in the wilderness; and that will be his approach to you and me. He comes to us through the channel of desire.

1. the cravings of sinful man (KJV-the lust of the flesh)

This is our natural physical appetites - the fulfilment of our physical needs. God created us with inborn physical needs - the need for food, the need for shelter, the need for relationship, the need for sexual fulfilment. When the serpent tempted Eve in the Garden of Eden, the Bible says

Genesis 3:6 …the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food

The first point of temptation for Eve was that she desired the fruit because she was hungry. Satan said “Go ahead. Eat it. You’re hungry. You have a legitimate physical desire for food. Here is some food. Eat it.”

Isn’t it interesting that the very first spiritual temptation in recorded history had to do with eating? When Satan tempted Jesus in the wilderness, he started with the same approach. “You’re hungry. You’ve been fasting for forty days. What a spiritual man you are, Jesus. But now it’s time for a little refreshment. You deserve a break today. Turn these stones into bread and dig in.” Satan was appealing to his appetite for food.

It is important to realize that our desire for food can be our spiritual undoing, just as much as any other physical appetite. Gluttony is as much a sin as sexual promiscuity. Both of them are physical appetites that we have allowed to go outside the boundaries that God has placed on them in our lives.

The world will tell you to indulge your physical appetites. Don’t deny yourself. You can be happy if you follow your appetites wherever they lead. And the world has even manufactured some new substances to tempt you - caffeine, tobacco, alcohol, narcotics. All these things create within your body a chemical dependency mechanism that cries out for fulfilment. Ultimately, they lead you away from God into addiction and slavery.

God created our physical desires. But he intended that we rule them not that they rule us. Our appetites are good when we keep them in their intended place. But out of control, they ruin us. And that’s what Satan and his system would like to see happen. So the first thing we need to pray is that God would help us to keep our appetites under His control.

2. the lust of the eyes

God not only created us with appetites of the body, but he gave us appetites of the soul as well. We all have an aesthetic sense. We all have a God-given appetite for beauty, for order, for design. We all have an appreciation for nice things.

God put within us an drive that draws us toward that which is beautiful. We want to get close to it. We want to possess it. That’s why people become collectors. Whether it is paintings or baseball cards or musical albums or guns, people enjoy having nice things. When you’re buying a house, you’ll always pay more for a house with a view than one without, because people enjoy beauty.

But the world corrupts this appetite of the soul. We so easily become obsessed with having nice things. We begin place too high a priority on that appetite. It begins to control us. We begin to think that we have to have the best of everything. And the more it controls us, the less pleasure we find in the nice things we do have. We’re always thinking of getting more. We become greedy, and we lose sight of God. The lust of the eyes is a love for beauty without a love for God.

Let’s go back to the Garden of Eden. The Bible says that after Eve saw that the fruit was good for food, she also saw that it was pleasing to the eye. She wanted it because the fruit was attractive. She desired it for its appearance. The lust of the eyes.

Satan’s second approach to Jesus in the wilderness was along the same lines.

Matthew 4:8-9 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.”

The world offers us nice things. The world offers us beauty. But it’s a beauty that turns to ashes because it’s a beauty that is apart from God. You can have all the beauty in the world, but if you don’t have a relationship with God, you will be miserable inside.

3. the pride of life (the boasting of what man has and does)

God has made each one of us unique. There is nobody else like you in the world. And part of being human is to feel that uniqueness. Deep down inside, every one of us is convinced of the fact that we really are special. And there is nothing wrong with feeling that way. When we feel that way, we are simply appreciating the wonderful work of our Creator. That special-ness that we feel is because we are his workmanship, and God doesn’t make junk.

But that’s where we come to a spiritual cross-roads.

Satan wants to take that sense of our own uniqueness and use it against us - use it to turn us away from God. So he whispers to us “You really are special. In fact, you’re the most special person that God ever made. You’re just a little bit better than everyone else.”

And as soon as he gets us believing that, he has awakened pride in us. And pride will eat us alive. Pride is the most desperate sin of all. We’ve been talking about sins of the flesh, and sins of the soul. Pride is sin of the spirit. Pride is the sin that cuts us off completely from God. Pride is what makes us ultimately say that we don’t need God. Pride is what made Satan the devil. And pride is Satan’s most devastating spiritual weapon against us.

Let’s go back to the Garden of Eden. Eve looked at the forbidden fruit and she saw that it was good for food. That was the lust of the flesh. She also saw that it was pleasant to look at. That was the lust of the eyes. But then what did Satan do? He appealed to her pride.

He told her that if she ate that fruit, she would become wise like God. And he said “That’s why God doesn’t want you to eat it. Because he doesn’t want you to be up on his level. He’s selfish. He wants to be Numero Uno. But you can be like God if you eat it.” So she ate it. Her pride made her do it.

Jesus, in the wilderness, felt the same temptation; the temptation of pride. Jesus was the Messiah. He knew it, and Satan knew it, but the Jews didn’t know it. The Jews were wandering around in the dark, looking for the true Messiah. Jesus knew that his role as Messiah was not to come as a conquering hero, but a suffering servant who was going to die. He would be despised and rejected by the very people he had come to save. They would say “Away with him. He is not our Messiah. Crucify him.”

Now imagine how tempted Jesus must have been to prove that he really was the Messiah. And what better way to prove it than to put on a little demonstration? That’s why Satan suggested that Jesus throw himself off the pinnacle of the Temple: so that God would save him from bashing his brains out on the rocks below, and that the Jews would see that he was something special.

But Jesus wouldn’t do it. Jesus never did any of his miracles just to show people how great he was. He knew that that would be an act of pride and disobedience.

Pride is a devastating thing. Pride can make us think that we are doing God’s will, when we are really just trying to advance our own agenda, and make ourselves look good.

In the Muslim religion, believers are called to prayer several times a day. They stop whatever they are doing, and get down on their knees and bow toward Mecca. Some Muslims develop a callous on their forehead, from bowing down and touching their forehead to the ground several times a day. And they wear that callous as a badge of honor. It shows just how devout they are.

Pride can cause callouses on our hearts too! The devil would like nothing better than for you to be a good church-going, religious person on the outside but have pride in your heart. Pride is the attitude that says “Look at me. Look at how spiritual, how devout, what a good Christian I am. Look at all that I do in the church. Why, if it weren’t for me, this church wouldn’t be able to exist.”

Satan will push you in this direction if he can. So we need to be on our guard against the sin of pride. The Word of God says “Humble yourself in the sight of the Lord, and he will lift you up.” It’s better to let God lift you up than to lift yourself up.

The lust of the eyes. The lust of the flesh. The pride of life. These are the values of the world system. These are the things that the world says will make you happy. But don’t believe it; it’s a lie.

The only Happy Meal that really brings happiness is when you feed on the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus said “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.” The world and its values will leave you starving, but Jesus will feed your soul.