← Divine Savior Church-North Collin County
Divine Savior Church-North Collin County
Bearing Real Fruit | June 14, 2026 | Pastor Caleb King
00:19:14
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God's word for our consideration this morning comes from our second reading from First John, chapter two. We bow our heads to pray.
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May the words of my mouth and the meditation of all of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord,
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our rock and our redeemer. Amen. In the name of Jesus, my dear brothers and sisters in Christ. In the thick Virginia fog on the coast in 1914, the steamship Monroe was rammed by the merchant vessel Nantucket. And the Monroe steamship sank. Within the next 20 minutes or so, 41 sailors lost their lives in the frigid waters of the Atlantic as Congress convened a hearing to figure out what had happened.
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Originally they had thought that the Nantucket and the Nantucket's commander, the. What's the word I'm looking for? The. The Captain. Thank you, Tony. Captain. He was to blame because he rammed into the Monroe. But as they did cross examination, they found out that the Captain Johnson of
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the Monroe was operating with a compass
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that deviated as much as 2 degrees
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from a standard magnetic compass. Captain Johnson said, well, this is pretty standard and this actually works really, really well. In fact, it's kind of the norm for master in trade and the coast wide trade system to use such a compass. However, the compass that he thought was going to work pretty well proved totally otherwise. There are tragic consequences to misorientation not just at sea, but in the Christian life. You see, the compass of the human heart is directed essentially by what it loves and who.
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And what we worship fundamentally shapes what we love. And we're not always all that aware of the things that convince us of the world to love rival gods as opposed to the one true God. In other words, you can't not love and you are what you love and you worship what you love and you
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don't always love what you think you do. Just like that. Captain Johnson, who thought he was headed in a certain direction, but wasn't. And John speaks directly to this misorientation of loves in the words that are before us. This morning, you see, John was writing to Christians who had begun to think that they didn't really need to do anything with God's commands or God's law. They certainly didn't need to obey them. Their love for God was enough already and so they needed nothing to do with that.
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And if God wasn't worthy of their
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love, then, well, somebody or something else is going to receive it, namely the world. And so John says, do not love the world.
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In fact, if anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. And that word love is talking about the love that directs your will, your intellect, and your purposeful choices that you make. In other words, John is saying, don't love the world in such a way that the world is what is directing your will, your intellect, and your purposeful choices that you make. In fact, fact, do not love the world or anything in the world in the manner that your will, your intellect, and your purposeful choices are being directed by the things of the world either.
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Why?
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Because if you are filled up with love for the world and things of the world, then the love of the Father which is intended to direct your will, your intellect, and your purposeful choices that you make is not in you a simple truth.
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Because, well, if I'm filled up with the love of the world, then the love of the Father has no room there. So what does this mean and what does this not mean? You and I are not forbidden to admire and to enjoy and even make good godly use of the things of this world, like family and friends and neighbor and relative, and maybe the vocation that you have been given.
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Your home, your occupation, the beauty and the grandeur of nature that has surrounded you and the thousands of other things that God has placed all around you in this wonderful world. To live in the world, to see the world, to feel the world is
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different than to love the world.
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God has created it for our enjoyment.
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But the sinful nature wants to get more out of the world than God is designed for the world to give.
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And so whatever in its connection, in its tendency and in its influence that is hostile to God, we are hostile towards it because God says, do not love the world.
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If anyone loves the world, the Father is not in them. We have been set apart for Christ's kingdom, and we already belong to Christ. So then Paul gives some examples of what he's talking about.
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He says, the lust of the flesh, the sinful desire that springs up from our sinful nature, that only wants sinful gratification. The lust of the eyes, the lust that goes well beyond what somebody can actually even get their hands on.
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The pride of life.
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That prideful arrogance that assumes that we can direct and determine the course of our lives without God at all. The prideful arrogance. To think that we can figure out what we are going to achieve, what
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we are going to go and do
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without God at all. And notice something about those three things
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that John brings out. The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life. That prideful arrogance, or all of those things are things that come from inside of us.
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The devil who seeks to lure you
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away from God and his word and from godly living has an ally.
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And that ally lives inside of us. And that ally, the sinful nature lusts after the things of the world.
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The world would say that, wow, they're just. They're just innocent amusements. The world would say, it's just having a good time. It's not that big a deal. All that is are fancy little phrases to cover up the vile nature of the world and what the world is trying to do, dragging you around, away from Christ. And even people like us might catch ourselves saying things like, well, if I
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have it, then that means God wanted
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me to have it because, well, we bought into this idea of if it feels good, do it, type of rationale and behavior and culture. To look at what we have or what we've accomplished, the bank account that's wonderfully padded, or to look at the way that we've raised our kids and then the. The way that we have set them up for success better than anybody else, of course. And then all the things that we have, the things we've accomplished, and to look at those things as a beautiful, convenient source of pride because look at how good a job we've done directing the course of our lives all on our own. And what we've done. Well, John comes out and just says it for everything in the world.
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The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of
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life comes not from the Father, but from the world.
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Their source is not the father, but it's the world. The devil trains our eyes to stop at nothing, to keep on moving towards the world.
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The devil knows very well your weaknesses better than we do. And the devil knows how to change our loves and what we love. Our soul clings to what we love
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is what we live.
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And it becomes a part of our unconscious life.
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What we love becomes a very part of our very self. And to be somebody that is filled up with or that loves the world is to be a person that is
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simply filled up with the world. And John says that none of those things matter at all.
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He says the world and its desires pass away. The world and its desires and the things of this world are like the bad compass that leads you nowhere safe at all. It's like the water that you try to hold onto in your hands, but. But it just runs right through your fingers and you can't hold onto it. And it leaves you shattered and broken and absolutely destroyed.
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If somebody gave you a compass that deviated more. Let's say more than 2 degrees from a standard magnetic compass and then also said, go ahead and get on a boat and sail.
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Oh, by the way, the boat's also sinking.
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Would you get on? Of course not. That's exactly what John is saying about the things of this world and the
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love for the world being worthy of your love. It's not why, because it's going to pass away.
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But whoever does the will of God lives forever. And that's really where our problem becomes apparent. Because you and I don't have a heart that naturally points towards God by nature. We don't. The only way that happens is the love of the Father. The love of the Father knows your weaknesses even better than the devil does. The love of the Father knows how
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to change your loves. The love of the Father does change your loves. The love of the Father is what directed his will, his intellect, his purposeful choices to be all about you. The love of the Father is what directed his will to strip himself of
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everything as he became a human being
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for us, so that he could do the will of the Father and nothing else, even if it takes him all the way to a cross. The will of the Father. The beating heart of God's love put on display in the person of Jesus to direct his purposeful choice to lay his life down for you so that he could then take it back up again. Sins forgiven, paid for in full, death defeated, life eternal now belongs to us. You know what that means, Christians? God loved you when your compass was
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pointed in the opposite direction.
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And he doesn't stop loving you when the world tries to pull you away from Christ. No, it's the Father's love that changes the direction of your compass completely. To be one that isn't loving the world anymore or loving the things of this world, but is loving the Father who has loved you perfectly, to make you one who knows the one true God and what the one true God has done that gives birth to this desire in you to do the will of God. Because the love of God for you now creates love for God within you.
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And what you love your soul clings to.
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What you love is what you live. What you love becomes a very part of your very self. It becomes a part of your unconscious living.
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To be one who is filled with love for the Father is simply to be a person who is filled up with the Father's love for you as it's revealed in the person of Jesus Christ, crucified and risen for the forgiveness of of sins. That's where John tells us to Place our love not in our accomplishments, not in our successes, not even in our
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failures, not in what we have or
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what we do, but in the person of Jesus Christ, which reveals God's love for us.
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Before God asks anything of you, he
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gives you everything in Christ. And the place where he does that is the Holy Scriptures. That's where you learn about who the one true God is.
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That's where God gives direction of what it means to do the Father's will. The place where he tells you what he has already done in the life, death and resurrection of His Son, Jesus Christ. God's love put on display for us
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and then shows us what kind of people he has made us to be as we stand holy and purified in the blood of Christ, forgiven children of God to say no to ungodliness and to sin, and to say yes to pursuing the Father's will.
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To get to be wrapped up in all about what God's Word says and the beautiful goals that God sets out for his people in His Word. Things to strive for a life that is perfect, to strive for it, the will of the Father. Not to compensate for your sins, they're already paid for at the cross, but
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instead to draw beautiful attention to the unfathomable love of God put on display in the person of Jesus Christ, who has forgiven you, who has made you to be his child, who has empowered you then to pursue the Father's will. And that makes you, as Jesus describes it in our Gospel reading, a branch that is connected to the vine himself. To be a branch that bears fruit as you remain in Christ and Christ remains in you by faith.
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To be a branch connected to the vine that is freed beautifully to go
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and pursue the Father's will. To live by faith, to trust God's promises, to let God's Word define and
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direct your life, to pursue habits that are defined by doing the will of the Father. To throw off the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life and the arrogance. To think that we can direct and determine the course of our lives without God, and instead to fix our eyes on the One whose love means everything for us.
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And he makes a promise confident that whoever does the will of God lives forever. Not because what we do saves us, but because we are saved by Christ. And now Christ changes who we are and therefore what we do. And when you find yourself deviating, you have the perfect compass that brings you back. Return to the Scriptures, Christians, where you hear God's Word for you. What God has to say for you and to you, for your thirsty soul that needs the forgiveness and needs the encouragement to keep going. Return to your baptism where you hear the promise of God to be faithful to you.
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Return to the supper where his body and blood are given to you and the most important words for you for the forgiveness of sins. Return to Christ's promises, return to the
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Father's love, and then return to live in the world. To live in the world, to see
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the world, to feel the world, but
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not to love the world. Because love for the Father has taken that place already, because of what Christ has done, to see the allure of the sinful world and to get to say confidently, you're going to perish, you are not going to last, you are going to pass away. My love, my will, my intellect, my purposeful choices belong to someone else. They belong to the one who lived for me, died for me with such a love so that I would be filled up with his love, to now live under him and his kingdom and serve him in everlasting righteousness, innocence and blessedness all of my days. Why? Because the world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever. Christians, the world promises to guide you, but its compass is way off course. The love of the Father points unfailingly towards life eternal. And that love now lives in you because it's been poured out for you, Jesus. And that is a life that is the most beautiful life to live, doing the will of the Father. Because what you love is what you live. And that life, because of God's promise, is a life that goes on for eternity. Amen.