Love of the world
Day 688, Tuesday, June 30
1 John 2:12-27
John’s words includes calls to obedience, but they also contain encouragement and commendation. He writes to all (dear children) because their sins have been forgiven because of the name of Jesus and because they know the Father. He writes to fathers because they know Jesus. He writes to sons because they are strong and the word of God lives in them and they have overcome the evil one.
He has a word of caution, though, advising the readers, “Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever.
In advising us not to love the world, John is certainly not telling us not to love people. Back in the gospel of John we were told how much God loved the world in the sense of loving the people he had created and desires to save.
He’s also not really telling us to not love the created world. While loving the things God has created can be distorted into greed and coventousness, we were told in Genesis that the creation is, in itself, good.
What he is warning against is loving the values of the world: the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. While we usually associate lust just with sexual desire, it’s used more broadly here. “Lust of the flesh” would include sexual desire, but would also include tempations of food and pleasure and even excess comfort. “Lust of the eyes” would include temptations of possession: wanting to accumulate material things. “Pride of life” covers pride in all its forms: believing oneself to be superior to others or even excessive self-reliance.
There is also a word of warning for those who claim to honor God but reject the life, teachings and salvation of Jesus: “No one who denies the Son has the Father; whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also.”

-Rev. Mark Fleming

Tuesday meditation

Ecclesiastes 2:17-26
So I hated life, because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me. All of it is meaningless, a chasing after the wind. I hated all the things I had toiled for under the sun, because I must leave them to the one who comes after me. And who knows whether that person will be wise or foolish? Yet they will have control over all the fruit of my toil into which I have poured my effort and skill under the sun. This too is meaningless. So my heart began to despair over all my toilsome labor under the sun. For a person may labor with wisdom, knowledge and skill, and then they must leave all they own to another who has not toiled for it. This too is meaningless and a great misfortune. What do people get for all the toil and anxious striving with which they labor under the sun? All their days their work is grief and pain; even at night their minds do not rest. This too is meaningless.
A person can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in their own toil. This too, I see, is from the hand of God, for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment? To the person who pleases him, God gives wisdom, knowledge and happiness, but to the sinner he gives the task of gathering and storing up wealth to hand it over to the one who pleases God. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.

Prayer focus
Protect us, God, from the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.