Three Things You Should Never Love to Do Well

Now, let’s go on with this list of corruption. I’m running out of my time now, but anyhow.

“Men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.”

There are eighteen distinct moral blemishes in that list. We won’t take time to go into them all.

But in the time that I’ve lived, in the Western world, in nations such as Britain, the United States, Scandinavia, Germany, nations which I’m familiar with, almost every one of these moral blemishes is much more manifest than it was fifty years ago.

Many of you who are in the same sort of age bracket as I am will agree with that statement, I’m sure. We have witnessed a process of corruption in our society, and it’s continuing, and it cannot be reversed. The only solution is a totally new beginning.

But I want to point out to you three things that are very significant. There are three loves that really are the root of all the problems: love of self, love of money, and love of pleasure.

And I would say European culture and society, including Britain, is dominated by those three features: love of self, love of money, love of pleasure. And you see, love of self is what leads to the breakdown of society, because ‘I’m so important to myself, I can’t live with anybody. Nobody is good enough for me. Nobody does things the way I want.’

Statistics show that in the United States today, the average number of people in a household is 1.7. Two people can’t live together any longer. What’s the cause? Love of self. ‘I want things my way. It’s my convenience that matters. I’m important. Cater to me. And if you don’t, take care of yourself. I’ll get on without you.’

Love of money. I think the one major spiritual power that dominates Western society is Mammon. Basically, in the contemporary culture today, if a thing makes money, that justifies it. No other argument is needed. Even pornography is called a billion-dollar industry.

And you see, I think justice is impossible where the love of money prevails, because rich people can get away with anything. They can buy their way out of anything. They’re just as guilty in most cases as the poor, but their wealth is a protection for the time being, but remember, not forever.

And then love of pleasure. There was a slogan that went right through the United States that sums that up. ‘If it feels good, do it.’ That’s the contemporary way of describing love of pleasure.

But I’ve talked to many people who were in the Jesus Movement in the 1960s, 1970s. They discovered that though it felt good, it didn’t do good. And at the end of ten or fifteen years, they were wrecks, physically, morally, and spiritually.

Then the next phrase is the most frightening of all. That’s in verse five. At the end of this list, it says,

“Having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away.”

Now, I don’t believe the Bible would call anything that was un-Christian godliness. So we’re talking about some form of Christianity, but it’s a form that denies its power. In the context, what is the power that that is denied? The power to change people.

So now, we don’t call homosexuality sin, we call it a sickness. We don’t try to change them, we just arrange ways to live with them. And incidentally, homosexuality is just one sin amongst countless others. I’m not singling them out by any means, just pointing out that basically the church has lost the faith to see people changed.

And so it invents ways to live with them the way they are.