The Unholy Trinity: Part Two—The World
June 13, 2004
 
	Last Sunday we considered the first member of the Unholy Trinity that wars 
against our souls—Satan. We considered the two great lies that he tells people—that sin 
is no big deal and—when people see through the first lie—that sin is such a huge deal 
that it can never be forgiven.
	This morning we will take a look at the second member of the Unholy Trinity—
the world. The first way in which the world is our enemy is shown by a parable Jesus 
taught. In the parable a man went out to sow seed in a field. Some of the seed “fell among 
thorns, which grew up and choked the plants."(Matthew 13:7)
	The picture that Jesus uses here is immediately understandable to most of us. The 
type of soil Jesus talks about here is trying to support both weeds and wheat. You know 
what very often happens when weeds are allowed to grow in your lawn or in your 
flowerbeds. They gradually take over, spreading more and more until finally there is very 
little grass or very few flowers left, and what is left is sick—and perhaps even dies.
	Jesus explains the parable this way…“The one who received the seed that fell 
among the thorns is the man who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the 
deceitfulness of wealth choke it, making it unfruitful.” (Matthew 13: 22)
	Now the word that Jesus uses here for “worries” is actually a word whose root has 
the meaning of “to draw in different directions” or “to distract.” And that expands the 
definition of the problem a bit more, doesn’t it? Because it’s not just worries that distract 
us from the seed that is the Word of God, but it’s also the pleasures, the—well, just about 
anything that keeps us so busy that we are distracted from spending time in the Word of 
God. It’s anything that attracts our attention in such a way as to make us confuse our 
priorities and think that these things need to come before hearing and reading the Word. 
	Think of Martha in the story in the gospels. (Luke 10:38-42). She’s running 
around like crazy, “drawn in different directions” or “distracted” from Jesus by all the 
meal preparations she is making. She is swamped! And when Jesus chastises her for this, 
he doesn’t suggest to her that meal preparations are in any way sinful, but he tells her that 
they are evidence that she has goofed up her priorities, that the things and the social 
norms of this world have caused her to become distracted from what is truly important. 
	Has the world done that to you? Have the things of this world—even the things 
that are blessings from God—become a distraction for you, beginning to grow up and 
slowly choke the life out of the faith that is alive in you? I know what happens to 
calendars when we indiscriminately put any and every event on them and accept any and 
every invitation on them. I know what happens when I start to think that I need to attempt 
to sample every blessing that this world offers and when I convince myself that so long as 
that blessing is not sinful, I ought to pencil it into my schedule and write it down on my 
“to enjoy” list. That schedule becomes so cluttered and that list becomes so long that the 
feeding of my faith begins to get choked out of my schedule and as a result the faith 
begins to get choked out of my life. What changes do you need to make in your life and  
how do you need to recognize the threat that the world is posing to you and to the one 
thing that is truly important—your faith in your Savior?
	If you fail to make those changes and recognize those threats, it’s likely that the 
danger of conforming will increase. The apostle Paul warns against this in Romans 12, 
saying, “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world…” (Romans 12:2) and 
he implies that if we do conform to the pattern of this world, we will no longer be able to 
“test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing will” (Romans 12:2).
	Perhaps it seems next to impossible that you would ever be unable to test and 
approve—that is, to understand and accept—God’s will and his commands.
	But it can happen a whole lot easier than you think. Some years ago, musicians 
noted that errand boys in a certain part of London all whistled out of tune as they went 
about their work. It was talked about and someone suggested that it was because the bells 
of Westminster were slightly out of tune. Something had gone wrong with the chimes and 
they were discordant. The boys did not notice that there was anything wrong with the 
peals, and quite unconsciously they had copied their pitch. (Source: Donald Grey 
Barnhouse) 
	And that is how we can end up conforming to the world. The ways of this world 
are terrifically out of tune with the ways of God. But when a decreasing amount of our 
time is spent  listening to the perfect pitch of life and living that is found in the Bible and 
when an increasing amount of time is spent listening—almost dangerously 
unconsciously, almost without really realizing it—to the discordant music of the world, 
we will eventually start to sing out of pitch—and most dangerously, we won’t notice it or 
think anything of it.
	How has the world begun to cause you to conform your thinking to its ways? 
When you learned that David Letterman had finally had a child, did your thinking 
conform to the Word of God? That is, were you appalled that he had chosen to have a 
child even though he was not married? Or were you more focused on the fact that Dave 
seems to be “a nice guy” and the fact that babies are cute? That is, did your thinking 
conform to the world’s ways or to God’s ways?
	Has the way that the world packages sinful lifestyles—with attractive-looking 
characters supported by a laugh track—begun to cause your thinking to slowly conform 
to the world’s ways?
	Does the amount of time that you spend with God and his immutable standards 
concerning morality pale in comparison to the amount of time you spend with the world 
and its ideas concerning morality—and has your thinking on the subject begun to reveal 
that inequity?
	And conforming to the thinking of the world will finally will lead us to love the 
world. I don’t mean that we will enjoy the world—for there are a great many blessings in 
this world that a Christian may in good conscience enjoy. Rather, I mean that we will 
begin to love the world—above everything else. Our minds and hearts which have first 
been distracted by the world and then conformed to the world will soon become 
dominated by the world. We will become entirely about the here and the now—or 
perhaps the there and the future—but  always the there and the future of this world. The 
distinction between right and wrong, between good and evil will blur—or even cease 
entirely to exist. The same will happen to the concept of sin.
	To what degree has this happened in your life? What do you love so much that 
you have ignored or erased the Bible’s—yes, God’s—take on it? What part, what aspect 
of the world have you come to love so much that it has erased the love of God your 
Father from your heart? Do not be misled. If you love the world to the extent that you 
have ignored God’s Word on a particular subject, the love of God your Father has been 
erased from your heart! John warns, “Do not love the world or anything in the world”—
and then he adds chillingly—“If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in 
him. For everything in the world—the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the 
boasting of what he has and does—comes not from the Father but from the world. The 
world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever” (1 
John 2:15-17)
	As people who have allowed the things of this world to choke the Word of God 
out of our schedules, as people whose minds have conformed to the thinking of this world 
all too often, as people whose very words and actions have shown all too often that we 
have loved the world more than we have loved God, that last sentence from John is a 
terrible one, isn’t it?
	He says, “The world and its desires pass away.” We live as though this is the 
only home we will ever have. We live as though this world is all that matters, all that 
lasts, we live as though the Word of God does not really matter in comparison to the 
ways and pleasures of the world, when in reality—as Peter writes while quoting Isaiah, 
“All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass 
withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord stands forever.” (1 Peter 1:24,25).
	In another of his epistles, Peter speaks of Judgment Day and says, “That day will 
bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat.” 
(2 Peter 2:12). And when that happens, when this world that we think is so terrifically 
important, when this world that we consider to be constructed out of such lasting material 
is revealed as having been nothing more than a temporary paper-mache stage set, what is 
to keep us from being also burned like so much grass? What is to keep us from being 
told, “Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil 
and his angels” (Matthew 25:41). What is to keep us from finally having to admit that 
the world was never our friend, but in fact our enemy—and that it has won the war 
against our soul?
	The answer for the problems caused by the second member of the Unholy Trinity 
is found in the second member of the Holy Trinity—Jesus Christ. For Jesus says, “But 
take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). He most certainly has.
	He overcame the world by not allowing its distractions to choke out time spent in 
God’s house—remember that the Bible speaks of Sabbath Day trips to the synagogue as 
being “his custom” (Luke 4:16). He overcame the world by not allowing its distractions 
to choke out time spent in prayer to his heavenly Father—remember that the Bible says 
that although there were constantly crowds around him, although there was enormous 
pressure to add more and more things to his “to-do” list and to allow those things to 
choke out time spent with his Father, still “Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and 
prayed” (Luke 5:16)
	He overcame the world by not conforming to the thinking of the world, but by 
continually having the mind of his heavenly Father. Even when people tried to get him to 
accept the world’s way of and approach to doing things and thinking about things, he 
swam against the tide, powered along by the Holy Spirit’s words found in the Bible.
	Jesus also overcame the world by not loving the world. When the world offered 
him a throne, he rejected it. This happened after the feeding of the 5000, when the crowds 
wanted to make Jesus their king (John 6:15) so they could continually belly up to the 
buffet. Jesus’ response to this chance at power was first to withdraw to a mountain by 
himself (John 6:15)—perhaps to pray to his Father for strength to overcome this 
temptation to love the world—and then later to preach a sermon (John 6:25-71) that he 
knew would cause people to desert him (John 6:66)—yes, would even cause people to 
hate him and want to kill him (John 7:1). 
	Jesus also overcame the world—and here we see how the first enemy of our 
souls—the Devil—works with the second member of the Unholy Trinity—Jesus also 
overcame the world when the devil tempted him by offering him “all the kingdoms of the 
world and their splendor” (Matthew 4:8) if Jesus would only bow down and worship him. 
Jesus overcame the world, overcame the temptation to love the world, the temptation to 
love the world more than God, saying “Away from me, Satan!” (Matthew 4:10)
	Yes, Jesus has overcome the world, and therefore so have you. For Jesus was your 
substitute in all these things. Jesus’ perfect obedience to his Father, his perfect 
overcoming of the world has been credited to your account by God. Your sins are 
forgiven.
	Not only have you overcome the world through Jesus’ perfect life and his 
innocent suffering and death, but you can continue to overcome the world today and in 
the future.
	James encourages us who have been made clean and pure by Jesus to now keep 
ourselves from “being polluted by the world” (James 1:27). 
	How can we do that? I suppose that we could entirely withdraw from the world 
into some sort of a Christian island which cuts itself off from contact with unbelievers 
and unbelieving influences—but that would not remove us from all temptation, for both 
the devil and the third member of the Unholy Trinity would still be able to find you and 
war against your soul. Besides, to withdraw from the world would make it impossible to 
fulfill one of Jesus’ commands—one which we will talk about in just a few moments.
	However, we will want to exercise some caution as we go about the world. Paul 
quoted a Greek poet who said “Do not be misled: ‘Bad company corrupts good 
character.’” (1 Corinthians 15:33). Recall the illustration of the bells in London and 
make sure that the sort of company you keep—whether the company of your friends, the 
company of your entertainment, or the company of those with whom you work—is not 
the sort of company that is in danger of corrupting the good character that you received 
when you came to faith in Jesus.
	But the best way the way to overcome the world, the way to avoid being polluted 
by the world, the way to escape the world’s corruption is not by escaping the world and 
not even by making sure that you don’t keep bad company, but rather by something 
else—by keeping the best of company, by knowing Jesus. Peter says that people “escape 
the corruption of this world by knowing our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 
2:20). A continual focus on him and frequent hearing in his Word of his saving work for 
us will lead us to know him in the way spouses know each other. They don’t merely 
know of each other, they aren’t merely aware of each other’s presence and perhaps some 
parts of their personality, but in fact they know their spouse so well that they have 
actually become a part of them.
	What is your plan to escape the corruption of the world this week? That is, what is 
your plan to better know your Lord and Savior Jesus Christ this week? Make a plan, lest 
the world distract you from him.
	Finally, remember when I said before that we may not leave or withdraw from the 
world because Jesus has commanded us to remain in—that’s in, not of—an important 
distinction—Jesus has commanded us to remain in the world when he says to us, “Go 
into all the world and preach the good news to all creation” (Mark 16:15). Tell those 
who have been overcome by the devil, those who have been overcome by the world that 
there is one who has overcome this world for them so that they might join him and us 
forever in the world to come. Amen.