Thu May 7

Listen up, little ones

Especially for the littles in your household.

Listen for the word world.

Reading

1 John 2:15-16—Do Not Love the World

Optional Reading

Proverbs 26:11

Keys for kids

Also for the littles. Young households might choose, after Keys for Kids, to go directly to praise and prayer.

Do not love the world!
Loving the world means hating God.
Anything that comes from the world is against God.

Questions

(Some read the ?s before the notes/ ask them after.)

What is the world?
How are you tempted to love the world?
Why are things in the world opposed to God?

Notes

(See Saturday for authors.)

Do not love the world. It’s a simple command, but it’s hard to obey. But what is the world? Sometimes, it refers to all people. This is the object of God’s love in John 3:16. Other times, the world refers to everything that stands against God. In the case of this passage, it’s clear that John is using the latter definition.

It might be enough to say, “do not love the world,” but John wants to help us understand why we shouldn’t love the world. The first thing he does is set the stakes. If you love the world, the love of the Father is not in you. The force of this warning could be brought out in another way: if you love the world, you don’t love God. And if you don’t love God, it’s because He doesn’t love you. You can’t sit on the fence. There’s no neutrality. If you love the world, you can’t love God.

If we’re tempted to doubt what John is saying, he builds off that warning by proving that the world is opposed to God. He lists three things: the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, and the pride of life. While this isn’t an exhaustive list, it certainly is comprehensive. Any evil we can think of can easily be traced back to one of these three things. And guess what the source of these things is? It’s not God, but it’s the world. All three of these things stand for something that God hates.

The stakes are high and the lines are drawn. Do not love the world.

Swedish Method questions

See the Sunday notes for meaning of the symbols.

Praise

Psalm 36a, 111a

Prayer

Ask God to help you not love the world.
Pray for the preparation for preaching God’s Word this Lord's Day.
Pray for a member of our church, for your family, and for a non-Christian friend/family member.