EVENING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 11/03/2024 9:26 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-2 “The Command Not to Love the
World”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: 1 John 2:15a
Message of the verse: “Do not love the world or the things in the world.”
I mentioned in my other SD’s that my wife and I took
a weekend trip to watch our a volleyball tournament as our daughter is the
coach at her school where she also teaches Spanish. The school is a part of the church where we
attend. At any rate her team came in
second in the state in a certain Christian schools, not certain what they call
it, but it was the first time that our volleyball team ever got that far, and
they came in second place which made us happy.
Our daughter is a very good coach and has done this for a number of
years, and the thing that is best in her coaching is that she really has a
great ministry with her girls, and also is a very good coach.
Now it is time to write about this verse which I was
going to do on the last day of October.
I begin with a quotation from John MacArthur’s commentary as he writes “Second,
John would not have commanded believers to hate the world of humanity. That is because God loves people in the world
and sent His Son to be the propitiation for their sin.” He then give a whole list of verses which I
am not going to put onto this SD.
“The world and its things, which John warned his readers not
to love, is the invisible, spiritual system of evil. It is the kosmos
(‘world order,’ ‘realm of existence,’ ‘way of live’) governed by Satan; as
Paul reminded the Ephesians, ‘You formerly walked according to the course of
this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that
is not working in the sons of disobedience’ (Eph. 2:2). Later in this letter John wrote: ‘the whole world lies in the power of the
evil one’ (5:19; cf. 4:1-5; John 12:31).
The ‘world’ here refers to the same evil system that Jesus referred to
when He said, ‘If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before it
hated you’ (John 15:18; cf. 17:14). So,
it was not humanity in general or the created order that hated Christ, but
rather the wicked, corrupt (2 Peter 2:19), demonic ideologies and enterprises
that stimulate fallen humanity…In keeping with this understanding, the apostle
Paul correctly viewed the world as engaged in a massive spiritual war against
the kingdom of God.”
“3 For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according
to the
flesh, 4 for the weapons of our warfare are not
of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. 5 We
are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the
knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the
obedience of Christ” (2 Cor. 10:3-5).
Let
us look at the word “Speculations” which means ideologies or belief systems,
ranging from privitive, animistic systems to sophisticated, complex world
religions, philosophies, political theories, or any unbiblical worldviews. They represent all unbelieving ideas and
dogmas that, often from an elitist standpoint, rise up against the true
knowledge of God. On can surely see this
type of development in the world today as it seems that the world is racing to
a one world “religion” along with a one world government which will be headed
up by the Antichrist, who I truly believe is alive somewhere in Europe at this
time.
MacArthur
concludes by writing “In response, believers are commanded to confront and
destroy the world’s spiritual lies and false speculations with the truth. Paul thus identifies the world as the full
spectrum of beliefs and inclinations that oppose the things of God, and John
implicitly echoes that definition. When
a person becomes a Christian, he or she is no longer a slave to the world
system. Christians have been ‘rescued…from
the domain of darkness, and transferred…to the kingdom of His beloved Son’
(Col. 1:13; cf. 2 Cor. 6:17-18; Eph. 5:6-12).”
Lord willing I will continue in the next SD by
looking at 1 John 2:15b-17, which I hope will be done in one SD.
11/3/2024 9:55 PM
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