Bad Habits - Audio
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So, today we're continuing our series in 1 John. A couple of weeks ago you might recall that we talked about the family, meeting the family, sort of characters in the church. There's like children who have childlike faith. There was the young adults who are the spiritual warriors, defeating the enemy through prayer and love. And then there was the parents who kind of are in charge of making sure that we stick to the truth and we don't lose that. Today John's going to kind of warn us though because there are some pitfalls that those of us in the family of God can stumble into and they can be extremely damaging to the church, to our faith and they can totally set us back. There is a series of bad habits that we can get into that can wreck what God's trying to do through this family of faith. And so today let's listen to what John has to say and let's find out hopefully this doesn't distract or you can follow on the screen here or you can pull out your phone Bible that goes, "Do not love the world or the things in the world." If someone loves the world, love for the Father is not in that person because everything, everything in the world, the things the body craves, the things our eyes long to see and our overconfidence and what we have, that all that stuff has its origin not in the Father but in the world. But listen, the world is fading away and all of its cravings are going with it. But the one who practices God's will is living forever. There's a lot going on here and I'll pick it apart as we go through especially if you're a church person and you're familiar because I don't want us to get lost in it. But let's start out with this. What's the first thing that John's concerned about? He's just told us about these different members of the family, the family of God, we're defending the faith, we're fighting against the evil one, we're practicing childlike trust. But there's a danger for us and the danger is that we might fall in love with the world. We might fall in love with the things around us. If you remember from the New King James translation, you'll say it says, "The lust of the flesh where I have the things the body craves, the lust of the flesh." It says, "The lust of the eyes where I have the things our eyes long to see." And it says, "The pride of life where I have overconfidence in what we have." And the reason I've updated this language is because when you hear the word lust in English, what do you think about? Really nobody? Sex! Come on! And not that sex isn't implied here, sex is a part of the things the body craves. But really, epithemia, that's the word behind crave or lust in the Greek, it really just kind of means like desire or work of stuff to do with sex, it just doesn't. It can mean that, but it doesn't have to. And so when you hear the lust of the flesh in English, it sounds a little bit, I mean, it's poetic, but it sounds like we're talking about something very specific. But that's not really what's going on. Rather, it's the things that our body desires, the things that our bodies crave. And if you are familiar with history, you may remember L'Oreal, L'Oreal, Selé. Anybody who speaks French here? Jim's like, "Oh yeah, son king, I know."
Transcription truncated.
Continuing our series in 1 John, John's warning about the traps that the family of God can fall into that can make us ineffective for God's work and enslaved despite our freedom in Christ.