The Cardiology of Worldliness

When you're talking about the world, we mean the system of sin, or the system of evil.

All that is in that anti-God, anti-Christ system is made up of a matrix of the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life. Heart disease. It's one of the top killers of our time, claiming several hundred thousand lives every year. The good news, this epidemic is treatable if you understand the diagnosis and the causes and the steps you can take to manage your condition.

But even if you never have heart disease, you will face a more serious enemy, a heart problem that affects every human being. And thankfully there is a cure. John MacArthur shows you the disease and the only treatment as he continues his series here on Grace to You called The Love God Hates. And now here's John with the lesson. John 1 John 2, 15 to 17, Do not love the world, nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life is not from the Father, but is from the world. And the world is passing away and also its lusts. But the one who does the will of God abides forever.

I want to focus a little bit on diagnosing the cardiology of worldliness. All that is in the world, the sum of it is the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life. None of that is from the Father, all of it is from the world. When you're talking about the world, and by that we don't mean the created physical world, and we don't mean the world of men, we mean the system of sin, or the system of evil, all that is in that anti-God, anti-Christ system is made up of a matrix of the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life.

This is really diagnostic. This is getting down into the essence of sin and why we sin and what compels us to sin, instruction that is very helpful for us. But I want to put it in a larger context. Solomon was right when he wrote that there was not one person on earth who was righteous and good. There wasn't one person who did not sin.

It is the universal problem. All have sinned. None are righteous, so says Romans chapter 3. Sin then is the universal problem.

There is none good, no, not one. Sin has essentially generated the cosmic chaos that exists in the heavens between God and Satan, between holy angels, between fallen angels, as well as between men and men, and men and God. The chaos of the heaven has become the chaos of the earth. All of the realm of created beings has been devastated by the reality of sin.

We want to talk about its impact on human life. Sin attacks every baby at the moment of conception and it waits, it lurks to embrace that baby fully when it leaves the protection of the mother's womb. Sin rules every heart.

It intends to damn every soul to hell. Sin turns beauty into ugliness, wholeness into deformity, joy into sorrow, bliss into wretchedness. And that's why the Bible in Joshua 7 13 calls sin the accursed thing. It is compared in Scripture to the venom of snakes and the stench of rotting death. Understanding sin is critical so that we understand our need for salvation from sin.

Now just a few questions to sort of frame up the big picture. Let's ask the question, what is sin? And the answer is simple, 1 John 3, 4, sin is the transgression of the Law. That is to say, sin is any violation of God's Law, any violation of God's perfect holy law. Sin is unrighteousness while the Law of God affirms what is righteous. Any act, any word, any thought, any motive that violates God's holy, just and perfect Law constitutes sin.

It's not a narrow category, it's a sweeping and broad one. And God has the right as God, as holy God, to establish what pleases Him and what does not. He is the authority, He set the standards for man to live by, He established what is right, what is wrong and anything that God says is wrong constitutes sin. Now what is sin's nature? Going beyond just a simple definition of what it is, what is its nature? That is to say, what is its characterization or what are its essential components?

What is it like? How is it described in the Bible? And obviously you could spend a lot of time on this, but let's just give you some insight into that. First of all, sin is defiling. It is not just an act of disobedience, it is an internal pollution. It is likened to filthy rags.

Man, even at his best, is only doing what is essentially filthy rags. In 1 Kings 8, 38, sin is likened to sores that come from a deadly plague. In Zechariah 3, 3, it is likened to filthy garments that cover someone. It stains the soul. It degrades man's nobility. It darkens his mind.

It makes him worse than an animal, baser than a beast. It is so defiling that according to Zechariah 11, 8, it causes God to loathe the sinner. And it even makes the sinner loathe himself.

And you will remember, writes the prophet Ezekiel, your ways and all your deeds with which you have defiled yourselves and you will loathe yourselves in your own sight for all the evil things that you have done. So sin is defiling. That is to say it stains and it pollutes. That is why Paul calls it the filthiness of the flesh. Thomas Goodwin the Puritan wrote, sin is called poison, sinners serpents. Sin is called vomit, sinners licking dogs. Sin is called the stench of graves, sinners rotted sepulchers. Sin is called mire, sinners pigs. Graphic language to describe the pollution, corruption and defilement of sin.

It has turned all of the human race into defiled beings. Secondly, sin as to its nature is rebellious...it is rebellious. It isn't just that you slip up and break the Law of God, it is that there is in you a will to rebel. Psalm 12, 4 says, our lips are our own, who is Lord over us, so says the sinner. Jeremiah 2 31, we are sin. Jeremiah 44 17, we will certainly do whatever thing goes forth out of our own mouth. Thirdly we could say about sin that it is ingratitude.

It is in its own nature ingratitude. It is God after all who's given us all things. It is God who gave us life and breath and food and beauty and joy and love.

It is God who's given us all the goodness of life, knowledge, wisdom, fun, laughter, skill, health, relationships. The sinner is literally engulfed by the goodness of God, but he abuses his privileges. He's like Absalom. You remember the story of Absalom.

As soon as David, his father, had kissed him and taken him to his heart, Absalom went out immediately after that and plotted a treason against his own father. And so it is that the sinner who is kissed by God in the realm of common grace, who indulges himself in God's graces and God's mercies, turns rapidly to betray God by being only the friend of Satan, God's avowed enemy. Sin is such gross ingratitude. And Romans 1 says that it is characteristic of the sinner that he is not thankful to God. Further, sin is incurable.

It is incurable. Man does not have in himself the capacity to do anything about his sin. He is sin to the bone and he cannot alter that. In Isaiah chapter 1, the last sinful nation, people weighed down with iniquity, offspring of evil doers, sons who act corruptly, they have abandoned the Lord, they have despised the Holy One of Israel, they have turned away from Him.

Where will you be stricken again as you continue in your rebellion? Then he says this, the whole head is sick, the whole heart is faint from the sole of the foot even to the head, there is nothing sound in it, only bruises, welts and raw wounds, not pressed out or bandaged nor softened with oil. In other words, sick, sin-sick from head to toe and utterly incurable like a leper. Jeremiah chapter 13 verse 23 says, can the Ethiopian change his skin color or the leopard his spots, then may you also do good that are accustomed to evil. You can't do anything about sin. John Flaval, another Puritan said, all the tears of a penitent sinner, should he shed as many as there have fallen drops of rain since the creation, cannot wash away one's sin. The everlasting burnings in hell cannot purify the flaming conscience from the least sin. Not anything in this life and not anything in all of eternal hell could expiate sin from the sinner.

Hell is where men pay an unpayable debt. There is no human cure for sin, not good works, not reformation, not education. And then we need to add that sin is deadly because the Bible says that soul that sins it shall die, the wages of sin is death. It's amazing knowing that how hard people work at sin, this defiling, rebellious, ungrateful, constant violation of God's Law which is incurable and deadly is still the choice of men.

Men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil. They pursue sin gladly. Jeremiah 9, 5 says, they weary themselves committing iniquity. They wear themselves out sinning. Psalm 7, 14 says, in pain they bring forth evil. They literally bring forth evil with such commitment and devotion that they will pain themselves to achieve it. Proverbs 4, 16 says they can't sleep unless they do evil. Isaiah 5, 18 says they drag sin around like a beast pulling a wagon.

Ezekiel 24, 12 says Jerusalem's people weary themselves with lies. People go to hell sweating, make amazing effort to sin. This is all they know. This is all they're capable of.

This is life. This is where they seek their pleasure and their fulfillment. Sin then as to its nature is defiling, rebellious, ungrateful, incurable and deadly. The next question you might ask about sin is how many people are affected by sin?

And the answer to that is everybody. All, Romans 3 says, have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Romans 3, 10 says there's none righteous, no, not one. No one escapes sin.

No one. The whole world lies in the lap of the evil one, says 1 John chapter 5. In fact, in Romans 5, 12 it says, just as through one man sin entered into the world and death through sin, so death spread to all men because all sinned. The whole human race is infected with this virus.

No one escapes. And we might then ask the question further in our little discussion, what are sin's results? What does it do to us?

Well these are pretty clear. First of all, let me just give you a handful of them. It causes evil to overpower man. It causes evil to overpower man.

Man is utterly and totally dominated by evil. His mind is dominated by it. His will is dominated by it.

His affections are dominated by it. All man can conceive in his mind is that which is sinful. He has a futile or an empty mind as regards righteousness. His will is polluted so that he will do whatever he wants to do.

His affections are polluted so that he loves darkness more than light. It causes evil to literally dominate man. Secondly, it holds all men under Satan's control. Because all men are sinners, they are therefore under the power of the general, you could say, or the monarch, or the king of the kingdom of darkness, Satan himself.

They walk according to the prince of the power of the air, says Ephesians 2 to. The devil then rules the sinner because the devil rules the world system in which the sinner is held captive. Thirdly, sin results in bringing man under God's wrath. And the Bible is clear about it even calls sinners, all men who are sinners, children of wrath.

It says that God is going to bring about retribution on all sinners and they will spend eternity in hell if they die in their sins. Fourthly, another result of sin, it subjects man to all the miseries of life. Because of sin we have misery. That's why Job 5 says man is born into trouble as the sparks fly upward. That's why Romans 8, 20 says the creature is subjected to futility. That's why Isaiah says there's no peace for the wicked. That's why Solomon who had everything the world had to offer could look at it and say, vanity of vanities, it's all nothing. It's all meaningless.

It's all empty. So sin overpowers man, brings him under Satan's control, brings him under God's wrath, subjects him to all the miseries of life and ultimately, number five, it jams him to eternal hell. Jesus frankly is personally responsible for the precision and the clarity which the New Testament gives us to the doctrine of hell. It was Jesus Himself who described hell with clear unmistakable language, Matthew 8, Matthew 13, many other places. So that's what sin does.

We'll get to our issue for this text. Where does sin originate? We're going to answer this question and then move into a couple of related questions. Where does sin originate? The devil made me do it.

And that's a popular viewpoint. The devil made me do it. It's the devil who makes you sin. That is the pretty traditional viewpoint of many, many people who call themselves Christians. That is a dominating viewpoint in the Charismatic Movement.

In fact, I've talked to people who have come out of Charismatic churches who tell me that they lived the time they were in those churches under the sovereignty of Satan and the great liberating doctrine of the sovereignty of God set them free. There is a view that Satan is sovereign. Satan makes you sin. Satan brings all the trouble in your life. Satan is the problem.

If you could just rebuke the devil, if you could just figure the formula out to sort of cancel out the devil and the demons, if you can find the right little prayers to pray to bind Satan and bind the demons, you're going to eliminate the problems from your life. There are other people who think that society makes you sin, that the problem is the world. The problem is the society around you.

The problem is the television. The problem is the media around you. Or the problem is people that you have to work with and live with who exacerbate you and get you angry and that makes you sin and it's really not your problem at all.

You're a victim of society. And there are some people who think that it's really God. It's God, after all, who allowed evil in the world. It's God who allowed sin in the world and I'm just human and I was born human and since Adam sinned and we all fell, it's not my fault. God allowed it to happen and so it's really God's fault and that's where Adam was, you know, when he said to God, the woman you gave me, she made me do it.

I went to sleep single, woke up married, you picked my wife, what do you expect out of me? You can blame the devil or you can blame society or you can blame God, but not really successfully because that's not the problem. Turn to Mark chapter 7. There is a straightforward answer in the Scripture to where sin originates. Mark chapter 7, he called a multitude in verse 14 together, going to give them a little hamartiology, you know, the study of sin here. And he began saying to them, listen to me, all of you, and understand.

All those words indicate the importance of what he was going to say. There is nothing outside the man which going into him can defile him. Boy, what an interesting statement that is. There's nothing environmental. There's nothing outside of you, natural or supernatural, no human being, no demon, not Satan, not the world around you, certainly not God, James says, who tempts no man, does not solicit anyone to do evil. There is nothing outside the man which going into him can defile him.

Nothing that comes from the outside constitutes the problem. But the things which proceed out of the man are what defile the man. The problem is not outside of you, the problem is inside of you. Verse 17, when leaving the multitude, he entered the house, his disciples questioned him about the parable. He said to them, Are you so lacking in understanding also? Do you not understand that whatever goes into the man from outside cannot defile him?

Because it doesn't go into his heart but into his stomach and is eliminated, thus he declared all foods clean. And he was saying that which proceeds out of the man, that is what defiles the man for from within out of the heart of men. Now there is the problem. That is where sin originates. It is in you, in your heart. And from out of the heart, inside of you, proceed the evil thoughts, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries, deeds of coveting and wickedness, as well as deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride and foolishness, all these evil things proceed from within and defile the man. The problem is inside of you. We have met the problem and the problem is us.

This is basic. Genesis 6, 5 says, All the imaginations of man's heart were only evil continually. Jeremiah 17, 9 says, The heart of man is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. James chapter 1, Let no one say when he's tempted, verse 13, I'm being tempted by God, God cannot be tempted by evil, he himself does not tempt anyone.

Here's the problem, verse 14, Each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. It's not about the outside, it's not about God and it's not about Satan and it's not about society, it's about you. And if you lived in a cave, you'd be living with sin. If you lived in a cave like a monk, if you isolated yourself from every societal influence, if you hold yourself up in some assumed to be holy environment in a church monastery away from the realm of Satan and demons, you would still be literally in the grip of sin because it's not outside, it's inside. It originates in man's sinful nature.

It's really important to understand that. Now that leads me to another question as we move toward the text. What arouses sin? It's there, it comes out in evil thoughts, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries, deeds of coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness and other things. What arouses it? What incites it?

Doesn't it...isn't it capable of just sort of lying dormant? Wouldn't it be great if we could just create a Christian society? We'd have all Christian radio and Christian TV and Christian books and Christian...we'd have a Christian newspaper and we'd have a Christian insurance salesman and a Christian doctor and a Christian dentist and we'd just...we would just be apart from sin.

May I tell you, that wouldn't help. In fact, turn to Romans 7, 5, you might be shocked, you might really be shocked to read this. Romans 7, 5, while we were in the flesh, that is while we were unconverted, the sinful passions...listen to this one...which were aroused by the Law were at work in the members of our body to bear fruit for death.

Now there's an interesting twist. I thought if we all got together, got inside the cave and all we did was read the Bible, that would make sure we didn't sin. No, here he says, man is so sinful in his flesh, his sinful passions are so strong that they are actually aroused by the Law of God. What an indictment that is. You think it takes...you think it takes bad movies and bad literature and exposure to bad people and twisted representations in the society?

No. Man is so corrupt down inside that even the pure, holy, just Law of God will arouse his sin. The problem is not outside of man, the problem is inside. And it's so bad inside that you can put him in any environment, including an environment where the Law of God prevails, and all that's going to do is incite greater rebellion. That is the sinfulness of sin.

God hates. Now thankfully, no Christian will experience the horrifying and eternal consequences of sin that John talked about today. Christ's death and resurrection have made sure of that. And still, no believer will be free from sin's presence in this life. We're not free from the day-to-day battle against temptation.

And John, that can often seem like a constant battle. And so, what encouragement do you have for someone who is right now in the thick of the fight against sin? Yeah, we're all there, aren't we? To one degree or another.

You know, in some ways, I'm glad I'm old. I've been fighting the battle for a long time, but there has been victory through the years. And while your unredeemed flesh is still hanging on and you still have to confront the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, the longer you walk in the Word, the longer you walk in the knowledge of Christ, the longer you yield to the Holy Spirit and win the battle in the mind, the more victory you have, the stronger you get, the more joyful your life becomes, and the more grateful you are. And certainly, any ministry, any pastor, any Bible teacher, any Christian, has to have as a high priority helping, not only in his own case, but helping all the people around him, all the people he can influence, in the growing reality of sanctification. Certainly, as a pastor over a congregation of God's chosen and redeemed people, my goal is to help them gain victory over sin.

Let me tell you about a free booklet we'd like to send you. To help in this battle, it's called Freedom from Sin. Freedom from Sin.

It walks you through Romans 7, perhaps the most detailed, vivid account of the believer's battle with iniquity and transgression. How do you respond to sin? Those unholy desires and sinful tendencies that are always there. What if you feel guilty? What does that say about your spiritual condition?

What about your frustration? All of that is dealt with in the booklet, Freedom from Sin. We will send it to you free of charge. We want to help.

Yes, indeed, we do. And, friend, whether you're a new Christian who is not sure how to deal with sin, or a longtime believer who's battling against a nagging sin, or maybe you're looking for biblical answers to encourage others in their fight against sin, this booklet can help. To get your free copy of Freedom from Sin, contact us today. Our toll-free number here, 855-GRACE, or make your request at our website, gty.org.

Freedom from Sin is our gift to you. Just call for your free copy of this booklet, 855-GRACE, or visit our website, gty.org. And if this booklet or John's current series, The Love God Hates, or any of our resources have made a difference in your life, have helped you grow in your knowledge of the Lord and His Word, or maybe even been instrumental in your salvation, we would love to hear from you.

Your feedback is more important than you might think. And make sure to include this station's call letters when you email your story to letters at gty.org, that's letters at gty.org, or send a letter to Box 4000, Panorama City, California, 91412. You might even hear John read your letter on a future broadcast. Now for John MacArthur and the entire Grace to You staff, I'm Phil Johnson. And keep in mind, Grace to You airs this Sunday on DIRECTV Channel 378, or go to our website to see if it airs in your area, and then be here each day next week for another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time on Grace to You.