Money, Sex, Power

Living in the Light

• All of creation was meant to communicate the supreme beauty and worth of God.
• God created the world for His glory. He created the world so that He would be magnified by the way His creatures find their greatest satisfaction in Him.
• Money, sex, and power exist ultimately to show that God is more to be desired than money, sex, and power.
• Everything hangs on what we value as supreme. What is our highest treasure? What is our greatest satisfaction? When God takes that place in our hearts (of the greatest treasure and satisfaction); then money, sex and power begin to find their true and beautiful order. 

Definitions and Foundations

• Money: not just paper and coins but the pleasures, advantages or status that money can signify.
• Money, sex and power are gifts from God. If they sink us, it's not because they are bad. It's because something happened inside of us to turn instruments of grace into instruments of sin, into altars and incense in the temple of pride.

Notes from John Piper's book: Living in the Light: Money, Sex and Power.

Fake Christians walk in darkness

1 John 1:5-10
This is the message we have heard from Him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we have say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

If we have fellowship with God, it's because we are united with Him in light and therefore cannot walk in darkness.

God is the light. He sent Jesus as the light of the world. Whoever follows Jesus will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life.
Life is given in connection to Jesus and it enables us to see and become.

John 12:36 says that while you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light.
When we believe in Jesus, we are enabled to SEE light, and to SHINE with the true light of God.

John 1:14 - and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

• The Pharisees failed to see this light;
• Those who crucified Jesus failed to see this light.

When you see the light, life has come into you.

When you see the light, the glory, you become like it.

1 John 2:8-11

The darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining. Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness. Whoever loves his brother abides in light, and in him there is no cause for stumbling. But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes.

Love is the expression of the light. We become like the light when we believe in the light. The Light (God) is love. We become like the Light by loving others.