Knowing Him by Abiding in Him

Please note: This transcript is provided as close to verbatim record of the sermon.

Knowing Him by Abiding in Him

1 John 2:15–17 (with key passages from 1 John 2, John 15, Ephesians 2, and others)

Greeting and Camp Context

All right. Good morning everybody. Morning. How is everyone doing in the middle of our camp today? This is the middle point of our camp, right? You’re all doing well so far. It’s such a privilege and an honor for Daniel and I to be with you.

And I want to tell you: this group is a very, very energetic group. I feel like I’ve gone down in my age quite a bit. At least some of us might feel that way here. Yeah, good. I mean, you guys are so young. You’re so young. You have your whole life in front of you, and I trust the Lord will use whatever that you hear from here—from this point on, including the Bible study sessions and the workshops—to change your life so that you can live the best of what the Lord has given to you.

Now, I was also encouraged this morning when I got a text from one of our brothers back home at Hillview Bible Chapel saying, “Hey brother, just want to let you know that I’m praying for you and Daniel as you serve the Lord there.” And then I’ve got a number of emails from our home assembly saying that they’re praying for the camp. They’re praying for us as we serve the Lord here.

So it’s such a privilege—from us here, 17 hours by flight away—serving the same Lord and praying for each other like this. It’s a tremendous privilege.

And I see a lot of new faces today coming in for the camp for the first time this week. So maybe I can take a little bit of time to recap a little bit of what we have been seeing in the last couple days.

 

Recap: The Theme of 1 John—Knowing Him

The topic for today is going to be knowing Him by abiding in Him.

But we started off this week earlier on Monday with this topic of knowing Him by walking in holiness. The idea—one of the main themes of John in writing the epistle—is that you would know the Lord Jesus Christ.

Do you all remember the two words that we saw for knowing Jesus? The word “know”—there are two Greek words we looked at. Anybody? Yes sir.

Oida and Ginosko.

• Oida is more of a perceived knowledge—more of a data kind of knowledge. You know by learning, by looking at things, by observing things.
• Ginosko is not like that. It’s more of an experiential knowledge. You know somebody because you have lived with them, because you have known them for years. The years of your life with them have given you that experiential knowledge.

And that’s the kind of knowledge that John wants his readers to get as they read his epistle.

We talked about knowing God or knowing Him by walking in fellowship. John said, “What we have heard with our ears, what we have seen with our eyes, what our hands have touched concerning the word of life, this we proclaim to you.” And we saw that John was a very excited guy.

Even after like 50–60 years of the Lord having been taken up to heaven after His ascension—John is writing this in his late 80s or 90s, probably about 80–85 or 80–95, somewhere around that timeline—but still, after 60 years, John was so excited. He didn’t even want to start off the epistle by saying, “Hey, I’m John writing this letter to this church.” He was just—boom: “What we have heard… what we have seen… what we have touched…”

You know, anything about Jesus should really, really, really excite us. And if you’re not excited about Jesus, there’s something really wrong about you. If you’re not excited about the salvation that you have gotten from the Lord Jesus, there is really something wrong about you. John was excited and we should be excited as well.

Then the second day on Tuesday morning, we saw the importance of walking in the light—knowing Him by walking in the light. God is light and in Him there is no darkness. And because there is no darkness in Him, we have been called to walk in the light.

And imagine this, right? For those of us who are saved: once we were in the domain of darkness, we were in the kingdom of darkness. And now we’ve been transferred into the kingdom of His light, kingdom of the beloved Son. Now you even have the opportunity to be like Jesus—to be like God Himself, who is the light. Isn’t that an amazing transformation?

But John says you’ve got to walk in the light if you say that you are in the light.

And today we’re going to talk about abiding in Him and the importance of it.

 

Scripture Reading: 1 John 2:15–17

So turn in your Bibles to 1 John chapter 2. We’re going to cover quite a few verses in 1 John chapter 2, but we’re going to begin with these three verses:

1 John 2:15–17
“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, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world. The world is passing away and also its lusts; but the one who does the will of God lives forever.”

 

Prayer

Why don’t we bow our hearts one more time to commit this time to the Lord?

Father God, I’m so grateful that we sang that song: Yet not I, but Christ who lives in me. And that’s our goal this morning. Father, it’s not I—not any of us here in this room—but Christ be magnified. Christ be glorified. That we will all understand the depth and the breadth and the height of the love of God that’s been expressed and manifested through Jesus Christ our Lord.

So Father, we pray that You’ll bless our time this morning as we get into Your Word, as we talk about this truth of abiding in Him. We ask that Your presence would go before us. We give You thanks, in Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

 

Part 1: The World Can “Suck You In”

You know, there are some things in life that would stick to you in terms of memory.

When I was five or six years old, I don’t remember a whole lot of things when I was five or six years old, but I do remember this one particular thing. I don’t exactly know how old I was, but it was maybe five or six. We lived in a place where my father was a full-time servant of the Lord. So we had this assembly building, and we lived at the back of the building—more like a parsonage or something like that. It was a very small place, and I grew up in South India. The houses were all very close to each other. So there’s not privacy filters in terms of conversation. You can hear what the other people talk in the house if they were a little louder and so on.

I remember there was a huge wailing and crying one day. The mom was running inside the house beating her head and her hair is all down, and the brother and sister were crying like crazy, and then the father was crying and wailing as well.

And then I came to know that their older son—who was probably a few years older than I was, probably in his early teenage years, or even lesser than 12 or 13—went to a river to take a bath or play with his friends, and he was sucked in because of the current of the river, and he got killed.

And after that point in time, whenever I would go to their house, his picture would be there, and I would see that and say, “Man, he lost his life in a river.”

And then when I was in college, there was this one guy—I remember I was in my second year in college—this guy came to me and he said, “Hey, can I borrow some money from you? And I would give it back sometime later.” And so I gave him some money. And I don’t know if he used the money to go to this place, but he went to a place where there was a big dam and there was a huge river as well.

And then that Saturday I came to know that he got washed away. He got into a current in that river in the dam, and then he died. I never got my money back. But how sad it is, isn’t it?

The Bible compares the world to a place where you can be sucked into if you’re not careful.

The world has such an influence in people’s lives—in the unbeliever’s lives as well, and even in the believers—that you can be sucked into the things of the world.

That’s why the exhortation comes this morning like this:

“Do not love the world.”
It’s a command. It’s in the imperative. John does not mince any words. He does not say, “Just be careful with the world a little bit because it can have an influence on you.” He says:
Do not love the world nor the things of the world.

 

Part 2: What “World” Means (Cosmos)

The meaning of the word “world” in Greek is cosmos. That’s how it’s spelled in the Greek; in English we call it cosmos. Cosmos means order, ornament, adornment, or orderly arrangement. The word cosmetic comes from the word cosmos.

You know, cosmos does not necessarily talk about the people of the world. It talks about the system of the world. In the New Testament, cosmos is a term that is used as a vast system or arrangements of human affairs.

For example, cosmos refers to:

1) The riches of the world

Daniel and I come from a place which is probably maybe one of the top three richest places in the country—it’s Silicon Valley. I mean, a lot of money there. And I think Daniel and I would be considered more in the poverty range. At least I would be. I don’t know about Daniel.

There’s so much money flow, and because of all this money flow there’s a lot of value system that is way different than what you and I would consider as values.

2) The attractions of the world

Think of all the gadgets. How many of you are crazy Apple product fans here? Good—just one or two. Come on, man. You got to make me happy.

You probably would have heard about the craze when iPhone 17 was released—and for every iPhone release there’s so much craze: people standing in line for hours and hours together and so on.

Think about all the video games. One of the problems that we have at Hillview with young people is to help them understand how video games really take their mind away from what they should be focusing on—eventually taking their mind away from the Lord.

Think about the chasing after pleasures of the world, or successes of the world. People want success. They want to grow higher and higher and higher in life, only to realize as you go higher there’s not really that peace and the promises that are promised when you want to go up there.

And then there is the attraction of money—people chasing money all the time. “I want to be rich.” “What do you want to be when you grow up?” “Well, I want to make some more dollars.”

Talk about social media attractions. People like to have more online friends than real friends. “How many online friends do you have?” “Oh wow—I have 2,000 friends.” “How many friends do you really talk to?” “Maybe two and a half.”

Do you like to have more likes and loves on the online platform, or would you like to have someone criticize you a little bit for something you need to be changing in your life? Usually it is the former.

Attractions of the world—that’s what cosmos is.

3) The pleasures of the world

Pleasure is something that God has given. But over time, Satan wants to use the pleasures that can be used for God—or in a godly way—to distract the world or bring the world to itself: comfort, money, sex, physical pleasures.

4) The educations of the world

“I need to get into some of the reputed colleges of the world.” This is a big problem that we face among our high school students too, who want to go to their dream colleges.

And one of the things that they face is: “I want to go to this dream college and I don’t mind missing my high school meetings. I don’t mind missing Monday evenings or Sunday mornings because I want to target that Ivy League or some of those big names in the world.” Nothing wrong with it per se, but if the mind is set on that, that’s where the problem comes.

So John says all these problems of the world fit under three categories:

The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.

Think about the skyscrapers in the world—countries competing to show their pride. Which is the highest skyscraper today? Burj Khalifa. And someone is trying to build one way higher. Why? Because they want to stand on top of the world. Because they want to proclaim, “I am better than them.”

Pride is self-centeredness: “I am better than him. I am better than her. I’m a better guitar player. I’m a better piano player. I’m a top student.”

We’re obsessed with our looks. The amount of money that goes into cosmetics in the world today because of the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and primarily the pride of life.

Some of these can be for good reasons—health-related. It’s always good to keep the body in shape. But if that becomes an idol, that’s where pride of life comes in.

There are even boasting about spiritual things: “Hey, I fast twice a week or twice a month.” The Lord Jesus condemned the Pharisees for that attitude.

Or: “I can play piano better than anybody else.” Or: “I can memorize verses.” We have a ministry at Hillview called Crosswalk Ministry where kids memorize verses. We want to encourage them, and we recognize them—but the warning we give is: make sure the Word is treasured in your heart. It’s not just in your brain. Because there is a temptation to say, “I know all the books of the Bible. I know the doctrines more than anybody else.” That fits under pride of life as well.

John says those are all from the world.

 

Part 3: The Kind of Love John Forbids (Agapao)

You know the word love John uses is agapao.

John only uses the word agapao in John’s epistle. There’s no other word he uses for love in this epistle. So anywhere you see the word love, it’s agapao.

Agapao—agape in the noun form—is the highest level of love. Why is it the highest? It is the love that the Father has on His Son. It is the love that the Son showed to the people of the world—He went to the cross with agape love.

And it is that word John uses here: “Do not agape the world.” Why should you not agape the world? The world is not worth it.

There are three things I want to tell you to begin with.

 

1) Do Not Love the World Because You Don’t Belong Here

You don’t belong to the world. If you are a believer, if you are born again, if you belong to the company of believers, if you belong to the church of God—your home is not the world. The world is not your home. You’re just passing through.

Turn to Ephesians chapter 2.

“You were dead in your trespasses and sins… you formerly walked according to the course of this world… God being rich in mercy… made us alive together with Christ… raised us up and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”

What a marvelous transformation that is, isn’t it? You were dead in sins and trespasses, and God has brought you to a place where you are seated with Christ.

And the Lord Jesus prayed like this: “I have given them Your word and the world has hated them because they are not of the world just as I am not of the world.” If you belong to Jesus—and Jesus was not of the world—you are not of the world as well.

Always keep this in mind, young boys and girls: You belong to Jesus Christ. If you belong to Jesus Christ, you don’t belong to this world.

As I said earlier, you have your whole life in front of you. You’ve got to make decisions in your life. Some of you are in your early teenage years, some in late teenage years, and some of you are in your 20s. The 20s is what we call the decade of decisions.

When you make decisions, always remember: you don’t belong here.

When you make decisions to go to college, to equip yourself for the rest of your life, remember: you don’t belong here—you belong to Jesus.

When you make decisions to date, when you make decisions to marry the person you’re dating, remember: you don’t belong to this world—you belong to the Lord Jesus Christ.

It doesn’t matter what citizenship you have. It doesn’t matter you have American citizenship or not. Who cares? Really, who cares? Even better—Singaporean passport is the number one in the world. In a sense, it doesn’t matter as much as this: your citizenship is in heaven. If you don’t value that, you’re not valuing the salvation God has given to you. You’re starting to value the values of the world.

 

2) Do Not Love the World Because of the Pressure It Puts on You

The world wants to conform you to its image.

I’m sure the culture is like this in Singapore as well. But in Silicon Valley, if you sign up to work in a company, you’re really signing up your life to work for that company. It’s not just 8 hours. It’s a minimum like 10 or 12, and sometimes weekends too. You really are signing up your life.

The world will take as much as you give.

You can study for the rest of your life—bachelors, masters, PhD, double masters, double PhD. It’ll take whatever you’re going to give it. So be careful because the world is trying to conform you.

“Do not be conformed to this world.” The word Paul uses is not cosmos there; it’s aion—the age. Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

Think about Daniel and his three friends—Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. They were taken to Babylon. They were the top-notch guys. And one of the first things the Babylonian culture wanted to do was adapt them to their language, their culture, their food.

They wanted to take the preciousness of what was taught to them in Israel and change it so they’d be useful to that system for the rest of their lives.

The world will pressure you.

 

3) Do Not Love the World Because It Is Passing Away

Don’t be deceived. Don’t love the world because it’s all passing away.

There are so many warnings in Scripture: the world is passing away. Don’t invest in the things of the world.

Remember the Lord Jesus Christ said: don’t store up your treasures on earth where there’s rust and thieves, but store up treasures in heaven where there’s no rust and no thieves. It’s not going anywhere. That’s a wise investment.

It’s a great thing to see that all of you have taken the time—some of you have taken time off work and school and other things—to spend time here. This is an eternal investment. Do this every year if the Lord enables you to. Invest in the spiritual things because these cannot be taken away from you.

So do not love the world.

 

Part 4: How to Win the War Against Loving the World (Four Helps)

So how can you keep the world away from you? How should a believer react to the world’s pulls, deceptions, and attractions?

In the remainder of our time, we’ll look at four things from 1 John 2—four things that would help you not to love the world and win this war.

 

1) Keep His Commandments

Look at 1 John 2:3–5.

“By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments. The one who says, ‘I have come to know Him,’ and does not keep His commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him; but whoever keeps His word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected. By this we know that we are in Him.”

John says very emphatically that keeping the Word of God—obedience—a pattern of obedience—is expected in the life of a believer.

He repeats it in different places:

• 1 John 3:22: we receive because we keep His commandments and do what’s pleasing.
• 1 John 3:24: he who keeps His commandments abides in Him.
• 1 John 5:3: this is the love of God—that we keep His commandments—and they are not burdensome.

John seems to be attracted to this word: keep.

What does it mean? The Greek word is tereo—to keep watch over, guard, preserve something.

You might think keeping and obeying are the same. They are similar, but there’s a subtle difference.

• Obeying is more like following a command: God says do this, so you do it.
• Keeping emphasizes guarding it as valuable—cherishing the Word—treasuring it—so that you love to obey.

So my question to you this morning is:
Do you long for the Word of God? Do you love God’s Word? Do you read because God says so or because someone tells you to read the passage of the day? Or do you wake up and say, “This is God’s Word—I love it—this is going to help me today, so I can live the life I’m called to live”?

Joshua said: “This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night…” Are you somebody who meditates on the Word of God?

Reading is good. Reading once a year is awesome. But meditating is saturating your mind: reading, re-reading, applying, finding out what it says.

Success doesn’t come because you keep your Bible by your pillow and sleep under it. Success doesn’t come because you have multiple versions or read in two or three languages. Success comes by meditating on the Word day and night.

Psalm 119:11: “Your word I have treasured in my heart, that I may not sin against You.” That’s the idea—treasured, guarded, kept.

James 1:22: prove yourselves doers of the Word and not mere hearers who delude themselves. The Word is like a mirror—it shows you what needs correction. Don’t look and say, “I’ll do it tomorrow.” That’s deception.

So, keep the commandments of God.

 

2) Abide in Him

How do you not love the world? You don’t love the world by abiding in Him.

John uses this word many times in the epistle—24 times across five chapters. The Greek word is meno: to stay close, continue, remain.

Turn to John 15. The Lord Jesus says:
“Abide in Me and I in you… As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me… apart from Me you can do nothing.”

Abiding means constant communion with Him. An abiding life is a life of constant devotion to God.

Turn back to 1 John 2:14:
“I have written to you young men because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one.”

The word of God abides in you—you retain it. And as you remain in the Word, you remain in the Lord, and Christ remains in you. When you abide, you become fruitful.

Often times we enjoy reading books about the Bible, but not necessarily the Bible. I certainly have that temptation. But if the book you’re reading does not create an aspiration or desire to go back to the Scriptures, you might as well throw that book away. There is nothing that comes close to the Word of God.

Abiding also means imitating Christ.

1 John 2:6: “The one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked.”

It’s a cycle: you obey Him, and you abide in Him; and as you abide in Him, you want to obey Him more. They are interdependent.

 

3) Grow in Him

If you do not want to love the world, grow in Christ.

1 Peter 2:2: “Newborn babies long for the pure milk of the word, so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation.”

Growth is integral to life. If there’s no growth, there’s concern.

The Bible speaks of stages: children, young men, fathers.

God’s goal is conformance to Christ.

Romans 8:29: those He foreknew He predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son.

The Lord didn’t have to do that. If He saved me and said, “David, you can just slide by the door into heaven,” that would have been sufficient. But God says, “Because you believed in My Son, I’m going to conform you to My Son.” That requires growth.

So in 1 John 2:12–14, John identifies three groups:

Children

“Your sins have been forgiven… you know the Father.”
New believers know: my sins are forgiven, and I know my Father. That’s good and wonderful—but it’s the first stage.

You told the story of your son in Singapore. You were gone 20 minutes and he cried, “Where’s daddy?” All he cared for was: “I want daddy.” That’s the child stage.

You told the story of the second one with the two Lego pieces. Not huge, not complicated—just: “I love my daddy and I want to give something.” That’s a beautiful stage.

Young Men

“You have overcome the evil one… you are strong… the word of God abides in you.”

It doesn’t say, “I want you to be strong.” It says: you are strong. It doesn’t say, “I want you to overcome.” It says: you have overcome.

You used the picture: as the child fights sicknesses and the immune system grows, it becomes healthy. Spiritually, you develop consistent victories over sin. The word is connected to dunamis—power.

If victories are not habitual, you are still in the children phase. You may be growing, you may be confessing, but growth looks like repeated victory after victory as a pattern develops.

You mentioned the struggle in purity, and how some—by God’s grace—have grown into consistent victory, with accountability, daily honesty, and willingness to do the work. That’s how you grow from child stage to young man stage.

You also emphasized the advantage of youth: being young in age and strong in the Lord. You have your whole life in front of you. Don’t waste it. Don’t give it to the world. Give it to the Lord.

Then you gave examples of young men in history who invested their youth and were used mightily:

• Martin Luther: 27 at Scala Sancta; 34 at the 95 theses.
• George Müller: 27 moving to Bristol.
• John Bunyan: 32 jailed for preaching.
• William Booth: 36 founding Salvation Army.
• David Brainerd: set out at 25; died at 29.
• William Carey: languages in his teens; went to India at 32.

You urged: invest your teenage years and your 20s in Christ. Marry well. Start a godly family. It would be wonderful to see young elders raised up in their 30s and 40s—but you have to do the work now.

Fathers

“You know Him who has been from the beginning.”

John says very little here, but it is profound: spiritual maturity is a deep, settled knowing of Christ—knowing Him who has been from the beginning.

 

4) Do the Will of God

Finally, if you don’t want to love the world, do the will of God.

1 John 2:17: “The world is passing away, and also its lusts; but the one who does the will of God remains forever.”

You mentioned that there are aspects of God’s will—His sovereign will (what He determines) and His revealed will (what He calls us to obey). The key is yielding yourself to obey Him.

You referenced 1 Thessalonians 4:3: “This is the will of God, your sanctification—that you abstain from sexual immorality.”

The word for will is thelēma—the desire of God.

“Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” God’s will is done in heaven. But here, you can be a reason why the will of God is done on earth—in your own life. One of the things you must do is not love the world.

Because the world is passing away. You’re not going to get anything out of it. It will be a foolish investment to invest in the world.

Live for the Lord. The Lord can do the best out of your life.

 

Closing Prayer

Let’s pray.

Father, we thank You for these exhortations from the Scriptures. We ask that You will help us to be faithful to it as we have heard it. We pray that we will not just be hearers of the Word and not doers—deluding ourselves. Lord, we pray that You will grant us the grace to obey what You have told to us in Your Book. We thank You for this time that we can get into the Word of God. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.