What the World Needs Now is the Church

When I take my children to McDonalds (which I hardly ever do) 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 a Happy Meal. They are not interested in the food in a Happy Meal; they want that little prize. Ronald McDonald has succeeded in convincing my kids that their little lives are not complete unless they get a Happy Meal. He 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 better toy later. I have tried to buy them off. But 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 in about thirty seconds. As soon as 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 have never heard my kids say “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 last year.” It doesn’t work that way, does it?

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 on buying Happy Meals, and the Happy Meals keep on not delivering happiness.

Well, that’s kids and kids are naive. Adults are different, right? Wrong! When you get older, you don’t get any smarter. Your Happy Meals just get more expensive.

People go through life trying to buy happiness: a new car, a new house, a new hairstyle, a new body, a new relationship, a new lifestyle. They think that if they can just get that one more little prize, they will be happy. And when they get it, they find out that they’re still unhappy.

The truth is that when we seek to satisfy our own desires, they don’t stay satisfied. And that is the fundamental principle on which the world operates. And the world is what John talks to us about in our passage for today. We’re looking at 1 John 2:12-17.

Now you can divide this passage into two sections. John is talking about two institutions: the church and the world, and he draws some contrasts between the two.

The first section, from verses 12-14, is a word of encouragement to the church. Let’s read it again.

1 John 2:12-14 I write to you, dear children, because your sins have been forgiven on account of his name. I write to you, fathers, because you have known him who is from the beginning. I write to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one.

I write to you, dear children, because you have known the Father. I write to you, fathers, because you have known him who is from the beginning. I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God lives in you, and you have overcome the evil one.

Now frankly, this is kind of an odd passage. It seems rather repetitive. What is John getting at here; what’s on his mind?

Well, you remember that in the previous section, he’s talking about spiritual authenticity: what are the marks of a real Christian? There were a lot of religious phoneys in his day, just as there are today. People going around claiming to be Christians, but living like the devil.

What John is doing now is this: he is reassuring his readers that he doesn’t think that they are phoneys. He says “your sins have been forgiven; you have known the Father; you have overcome the evil one; you are strong; the word of God does live in you.”

One of the great truths of the book of 1 John is that you can know that you are a Christian. You can be sure of your salvation.

1 John 5:11 And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.

There’s another interesting aspect about what John writes to the church. He realizes that he’s writing to people who are at different stages of spiritual development. Look at what he calls them: children, young men, and fathers.

In every church, you have spiritual babies, you have spiritual adolescents, and you have spiritual adults.

When you are a spiritual baby, the biggest thing in your life is knowing that your sins have been forgiven. But then, as you begin to grow, you begin to do battle with the evil one. You struggle to overcome his hold on your life. Sometimes you feel like you’re in the middle of a war. You’re in that stage of spiritual adolescence, and it can be a difficult, confusing time, just like physical adolescence can be.

And then, as you continue to grow spiritually, you reach a point of spiritual maturity where you realize that all that matters in life is to know God - to know Him who is from the beginning.

This is a word of encouragement to the church. But then John adds to it a word of warning about that other institution: the world. Let’s look at the next three verses, beginning at verse 15.

1 John 2:15 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 John talks about the world, he’s talking about an institution that is controlled by the evil one. It is an organized spiritual system which is opposed to God, which resists the redeeming work of Jesus Christ, and which seeks to draw us away from God. The world is human society organized and operating under the power of evil.

The world is a spiritual system that is built on the premise that you can be happy without God. It operates on the assumption that you can find happiness and meaning in life by fulfilling your own desires instead of knowing God.

That is what the world is all about. It’s all about getting what you want, instead of seeking what God wants.

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 is at enmity with God. You cannot love the world and at the same time truly 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.

John describes for us in these verses the way that the world system operates. It operates on the principle of unfulfilled desire.

We all have inner needs and desires. We need to be loved, we need physical care and nourishment, we desire significance - we need to know that our life means something. Now those needs are positive; God put those desires within us. And God intends to meet those desires for us as we enter into relationship with Him.

But Satan tries to persuade us, through his world system, that we can get those needs met apart from God, by going our own way, not God’s way.

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 our needs.

When Satan tempts us, he comes down one of three avenues:

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? Even something as simple as food can have a tremendous spiritual influence on us.

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 are out of control.

The world will tell you to indulge your physical appetites. Don’t deny yourself. You can be happy if you follow your physical 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 an artificial need - a chemical dependency 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 do is place our physical appetites under God’s 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 a 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 books, 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 can 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. She began to lust after it with her 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. You are one-of-a-kind. You are significant! And part of being human is to feel that uniqueness. Deep down inside of us, we instinctively know our own significance, and we want others to recognize it too. There’s no better way to kill a human being than to tell him that he doesn’t mean anything to anybody.

There’s nothing wrong with this desire for significance. 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 more special than anyone 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 a 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 even need God. Pride is what made Satan the devil. And pride is Satan’s most deadly 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 Number One. But you can be like God if you eat it.” So she ate it. Satan had awakened her pride.

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 to be 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.”

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 so that the Jews would realize that Jesus was someone 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.

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.

And John says “Don’t love the world, or anything in the world. The world and its desires are passing away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.”

Two institutions: the church and the world. The church is made up of people who know God, who have had their sins forgiven, and who are going to live forever.

The world is made up of people who are trying to meet their own needs, who are living apart from God, and who are doomed. They’re walking in darkness.

The people in the world desperately need us. They’ve bought into a system that is feeding them lies. They need the truth. They need the Gospel. They need the church.

But the church won’t be able to do those poor lost people any good if we ourselves have secretly fallen in love with the world system; if we have begun to believe those lies of the devil, too.

You can’t be a Christian and sit on the fence. You can’t try to live your life with one foot in the church and the other in the world. It doesn’t work. You’ll be a spiritual phoney. And you’ll be a pretty mixed up and miserable Christian as well.

I’m praying that each one of you will have the courage to stand up and be counted on the Lord’s side. Be spiritually perceptive enough to see through the lies of the devil who says that you can be happy without God. It isn’t true. Never has been, and never will be.

The only Happy Meal that brings true satisfaction is when you feed on the Living Bread, 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.”

We’re going to have a baptismal service on March 20. If you want to stand up and be counted for Jesus Christ that night, you see me after the service.