Sermon Transcript:

Thank you, Terry, appreciate you. Alright, we are in First Corinthians, and we're at First Corinthians 13. We're going to be on what's called the love chapter, which may be familiar to many of you, if you've been to any weddings. It is familiar. It's also familiar in our culture at large, a lot of people like the middle section of of this chapter, and I want to kind of really articulate what I think that means and how it fits in the broader context. Remember, while we're in First Corinthians, We are the church, and what it's doing the whole book is it's helping us to establish what the church should be like, how it should function, everything from spiritual gifts. You've already seen many spiritual gifts exercised this morning, whether it was Shelby through prayer, or turkey through administration and leadership, or George and others through leadership of the band and worship. So all these things are exercising the spiritual gifts of the church. This section in the scriptures is all about the spiritual gifts. So when you think about First Corinthians 13, for sure, everybody's going to think about it as the love chapter. But I think you can also think about it in its context of chapter 12, chapter 13, chapter 14, of a conversation around the spiritual gifts and the exercise thereof. And I think that will become important as I read the first section, First Corinthians 13, beginning in verse one, if I could speak all the languages of the earth and of angels, but didn't love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging symbol if I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God's secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn't love others, I would be nothing. If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it, but if I didn't love others, I would have gained nothing. Again, in this context, he's talking about these three spiritual gifts of prophecy, of tongues or languages and of knowledge. And what he's saying is that these things are important because he's already talked about him, he's already addressed them. He's going to address them again. But let's be sure that our aim is love. Let's be sure of our aim. Now, aim is just what you would think of what are we pointing towards? What's our goal? It's going to become very, very evident when you look at the next chapter, the very first verse, it really says, Let your goal be love. And then he begins to tell us about how prophecy and tongues are used. Now, I brought this up last week, but I want to be real clear on, what is prophecy? What is tongues? I don't think there's a lot of question about what is knowledge, but prophecy is that speaking in such a way that when it is spoken, that our hearts are pierced, and that can be in private setting, that can be in a public setting, or a platform like this, but prophecy, which is a prophet, if you're a male prophetess, if you're a female, but anyone who has the gift of prophecy, they they speak in such a way that it's poignant, that you it touches your heart, and you're like, oh my gosh, that seems like that's a work of the Spirit. Now, we've learned last week, and we'll continue to learn, that you test everything according to God's word. So there's never a time where you write things down from a prophet or prophetess as if it's the very words of Scripture, like, Okay, this is something I can add to the end of my Bible, no, but it is something for you to contemplate and think is what they're sharing with me clear from the rest of the Scriptures and what I know and what others are also helping me to understand. That's why you need the church, because we're not isolated, we're not alone, that we even even in interpretation, and how we go about coming to certain conclusions about our own lives is done in the context of community, the gift of tongues. I've already sort of talked about this last week, and I think it's going to become evident that it is really the gift of being able to speak in another known language. And if you go on and read chapter 14, I think that comes out. I know that there is a question about private prayer language and groanings before God. I'm going to address that in chapter 14. But for sure, what sometimes is seen as the gift of tongues, where everyone in a group setting is speaking in unison in a language that's not understandable. That is not the gift of tongues, as I understand the Scriptures, the gift of tongues is a known language that's clear from Acts, and that's clear when you get to the next chapter, 14. So if you have the gift of tongues, either through study or through a supernatural act, you're able to communicate in a language that someone understands and that God's going to use for His glory. Maybe that's a good way to think about gifts, spiritual gifts in general, because when you think about, okay, man, do I have this? I don't know if I've got a gift. I don't know how God wants to use me. We talk about this all the time, that you and I, we're products of nature and nurture and what God's done in our life. And so there's some things that you and I are not.

Really gifted in you can be naturally gifted in administration and leadership. You can be naturally gifted in words, but different kinds. Some of y'all are gifted in words being able to write them down that's meaningful to you, and that's meaningful to others. When you write words down, others of y'all are gifted in words from communicating orally, and you say, Man, that's that's that comes easy for me, or comes easy. Some of y'all are gifted in numbers, right? So maybe you found your way into some construction field or an accountant because you you're good with numbers, and some of y'all are good with your hands and putting things together. All of these things are gifts that when God gets a hold of you and you're filled by the Spirit that He then uses for His glory, it's like, it's like winding your sails in order for you and I to exercise our gifts in the world for the benefit of the church, for the benefit of our family and for the benefit of our community. So don't overthink spiritual gifts. It runs in lanes and in patterns of what you and I are already doing. But what happens is, we ask ourselves, is this for God's glory? Is it spirit filled and ultimately, what this chapter is helping us to see is, is our aim love? Is what we're doing filled with love. Because whatever you and I are doing, if we're doing it for ourself, or we're doing it for a moment, or we're doing it for money, or we're doing it for our kids or our grandparents, or whatever. That's going to fall short if our aim is not love. In fact, this, this, these verses right here. Say, listen, you can have faith that moves mountains, um, you can possess all kinds of knowledge and share it with others. You can even, and he really goes specific here, you can even give all that you have to the poor, you can go and just be one of those people who's who's really generous, and just living like a pauper, like a poor person, because you've given it all the way. You can even sacrifice your body. What does that mean? That means, of course, you know, ultimately it can mean some sort of

giving your your body away, like in some sort of sacrifice militarily or otherwise. But I think it's also you can even be hard on your body, sacrificing your physical health for someone else. But if it's not about love, if it's not about that, it says in these verses, as weird as it sounds, and it would have sound weird to them, and it sounds weird to us at some level, really, I would have gained nothing, because that's something to give to the poor and live like a poor person because you've given everything away. That's something to sacrifice your physical health or your body or anything like that. But if it's just for yourself or just for some other means, besides love for God and love for others, it says in these verses that you've gained nothing. Let's be sure of our aim, first point. Second thing we want to get into is really sort of the sort of the meat and potatoes of this chapter, and where you're probably familiar. It goes like this. Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. Does not rejoice about injustice, but rejoices whenever the Truth Wins Out. Love never gives up. Love never loses faith. It is always hopeful and endures through every circumstance. I want to put up a chart to hear that really, all it's doing is I've just taken the phrases and I've just put them in one or two columns. It's all about love. But is it stated positively? This is what love is, and if it's stated negatively, what we're what we're trying not to do, it's really on the other end. Now, again, when you and I look at the scriptures, if you're anything like I am, you think, okay, I know who needs to hear this boy. I wish someone I worked with, or someone I lived with, or someone I went to school with way back, or I wish my parents would have known this. But like, listen, the word of God is for you and me. Okay, so we can't control them, so we gotta ask ourselves, Lord, what does this mean for you and and for me? Because the other thing you and I probably realize is, man, I can't do this. I've fallen short of this this morning, I was unkind and impatient getting ready for church, and that church was my good deed for the day, right? But here's the thing about this, it's talking about God's love for us that then, of course, works out in love for others. But again, it's dependent on Him and His Spirit working in and through you and me, not that we have to muster it up, right? Because if you and I have to muster up, and you and I have done this before, right? You've gone to your auntie's house or someone like that, and you've gotta muster up the the courage, you've gotta muster up the strength to sit next to that cousin, you know, I'm talking about the one that's really going or whatever they do and when they're gonna they're going to they're going to ask you for money, or they're going to take some money, or they're going to kick you in, something's going to go wrong, right? Because you got a little drama in your family. You got little things that cause you angst, as I do as well. So what we'll sometimes do is I can muster through this. I can I can sort of grip my hands through this.

That's That's not love, that's just trying to get through something. What Love Is is that you because you spent time with the Father, because you've received love from God, because that's the essence of who God is. Then we're able to have a little bit of patience

because of their story and their circumstance. We were able to have a little bit of kindness when they snatched the food first. You know what I'm talking about, you and I all have those friends and relatives, the ones that pile on the plate the most, what brought the least or cooked the least, right? So as you have a little bit of kindness, right? We can have a little bit of of rejoicing when the Truth Wins Out. We try to highlight what is going good in someone's life? Yeah, I get that that they're mean and they may even be a drunkard, but are they doing something positive that I can point out in order to encourage them and even encourage myself? So I'm not just I'm not just surviving in this household for the time being. It never gives up. Aren't you so glad that God never gave up on you and me? I mean, how many stories did we hear this morning about story after story of people, even in their 40s and beyond whom now God is has got a hold of them, and how many people prayed for them? How many people wish they had gotten right sooner? With God, love never gives up. This is how God deals with us. And because God deals with us this way, we can then deal with others this way. This is so this is such an important concept, it's going to become evident as I read the last section. But I want to be real clear here, when we're talking about the strength to love others, it's the idea that we bring Heaven down, right? That's the essence of the Lord's prayer Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. That's why I talk so much about being salt and light and bears of the kingdom and bears of the cross in our home and in our community and in our workplace, because you and I spend a lot of time doing something for our occupation, even even in retirement, we spend a lot of time outside the walls of our house. How are we viewing these interactions with others? We are viewing this as strength of we are bringing a little bit of Heaven down into these people's lives, whoever's lives they are, because God's brought a little bit of light and hope in our life. Never gives up, never loses faith.

Never loses faith. This is what the essence of love is. It's always hopeful. It's always forward looking that God's got something better for you and me. God's got something better for him or her. Endures every circumstance, and you say, Man, I'm struggling right now. I don't think I can hold up under the weight. You're not meant to you're meant to give it to Jesus, you're meant to take it to the cross, and then he holds it up. And then, as he is working in your life, he then empowers you and me to exercise the gifts of the Spirit, which have to include love, because it's on the top of the fruit of the Spirit. And he allows us to do this and stated negatively and not jealous. How much? How much jealousy have you got going on in your family? We could go, we go Mom, Dad, brothers and sisters, but when we start going extended family, so no, we're all good. We all love each other, really. How was the last family reunion? How was the last funeral when we had to go divide assets? How? How positive was it? Then, how was their lack of jealousy? Then we have to have the heart of the Father, because he has had the heart of towards us first, not boastful, who wants to be around someone who's a blow hard, who, who's always talking about themselves or or always, sort of, we have it though. We have it in our own lives. Not proud, not rude. How many of us are just sometimes rude, rude to people in our own household, people who were supposed to love? And how are we supposed to get out of that rut and out of that pattern of continually being rude to one another and people that were called to love? We're receiving, we're downloading the love from the Father that enables us to love others. If you see any of this love chapter as some sort of aspirational burden, that's all it's going to be. Is a burden, right? Because how many of us have heard one of these sayings at a wedding and we're like, man, good luck with that. I mean, I didn't work out too good with for me. Good luck trying to accomplish this, because we will fight literally as we're going down the aisle. Have you ever seen I've done enough weddings. I've seen fights. I've seen looks that I knew would create a fight later, literally before they hit the door. And my story is not much different. I get that. So then how are we supposed to live and how are we supposed to love? We're supposed to understand that God's already accomplished this for us, and now he's enabling us to be a little less rude, a little more patient, a little more less demanding its own way, cuz, because that's what marriage is, right? It's such a sanctifying process because you and I, we thought we were decent people.

School, we didn't think we were selfish. How many of y'all stood I know many of y'all are married in the room, or you've been married before, you have parents who are married, but how many of y'all have stood up there and thought, Man, I'm a selfish person. I'm so glad I'm getting married today, and I'm such a selfish person. I'm so no, no, you you thought you were decently good, although you wouldn't be standing up there trying to invite someone else into your life. How long did it take you to demand your own way about your dresser or your socks or your clothes or your food or the temperature in the household? I mean, I could keep going, right? Love does not demand its own way. It's not irritable. How many of us use excuses? Well, it's first thing in the morning, and, you know, I'm not a morning person, I've gotta get my cafe, I've gotta get my coffee. And it's like, well, wait a second, do you have the Spirit of God living inside of you or not? And like some of y'all like, not till 9am

but I'm here to tell you, love compels us right when we don't feel like it, right? Because some of us think, Oh, well, I'm being disingenuous if I don't feel like getting him or her their shoes or their cup of coffee or fixing his or her dinner tonight, it's like no walk in love. And then often, what will happen is those feelings will come. You'll never regret loving someone else, right? Who has ever regretted loving someone else? You and I have all kinds of regrets, of sassing people and and talking and being rude and all, but we've never regretted love, not irritable. Keeps no record of wrongs. How hard is this? Cuz we've all got a tally, either literal tally or a tally in our mind of, you know, which cousin did this wrong, or, you know, I let them borrow this my truck, my trailer, it came back a little less working right, a little bit more squeaky, a little bit more broken. Whatever it is love keeps no record of wrongs because, because, remember, this is how the father interacts with us. How many of us want a heavenly father who keeps a record of wrongs? That every time you and I hit our knees to pray that our Heavenly Father is like, well, look at what you did. Look, how can I I'm not going to listen to listen to your prayers. Look, I got this record of all this stuff that you've done against me. Who wants a relationship with the Father in heaven like that, or someone here on Earth, nobody does. So the heart of the Father is he keeps no record of wrongs. And as far as it's up to you and me, we've got to be people who don't keep records of wrongs, because if you and I do that will always lose some of y'all are real strong justice people like me like No, it's not right. It's not right that they always take the last piece of bread or whatever it is, and but I'm saying that like you can have that you can have that and find yourself increasingly alone, increasingly irritable, increasingly being one of those men or women that people don't want to be around or call so keep no record of wrongs. Does not rejoice about injustice. So of course, we don't like it when things don't go the way that they're supposed to, and God's law moral or otherwise, but we understand that God's got things going on, and he knows more than you and I do. We don't just take things in our own hands and try to say, Okay, well, I'm going to figure out how to bend this towards what I think needs to be done. We trust God and endure in every circumstance. So second point, I want us to see this morning, you can have everything. And then I'm saying everything. I'm not just talking. You know, a lot of times we're in a we're in an interesting time in our culture where we're really celebrating kind of about five or 10 billionaires who seem to control a lot, whether it's your whatever your flavor is, whether it's Elon Musk or Bezos or, you know, used to be Bill Gates and others, or Warren Buffett. I get all that, but we sort of hold up these, these, these men and sometimes women. Where was I? Okay? If I can only have their money, I could, you can have everything, but minus love. Guess what? You got nothing. How many of y'all want to be in a big old home? And I don't know what luxury is for you, whether it's a big casita or whether it's some you know, you can't have a boat because you gotta go 12 hours to use it. But I don't, I don't know what it is that that that defines luxury for you, but go ahead and have that in your mind. How many of y'all want that big old house, that big old screen TV, that nice outdoor space, and noone there who wants to be there with you? No one wants to come see you, because instead of exuding the fruit of the spirit of love, you are the one who's irritable, rude, keeping records of wrongs, of your friends and relatives and cousins. See you see where I'm going. You can have everything, but minus love, minus love of the Father first, because it's not in you and me. I just want to be real clear again. I want to be real, real clear. It's not in you and me to love like we're called to love. So all of you have been to a wedding ceremony, even if you're not married yourself, and you've heard these verses read, if not you just heard them read. Love is patient, love is kind. Is not jealous. You heard the whole thing. It's not in you or me to walk out this door and to even do this perfectly for the next 24 hours. But what is in you and me is.

Very spirit of God, he lives inside of you and me. He has saved us. He has rescued us. He set our feet upon a rock, and he's enabling you and me to be a little bit more loving, a little bit more kind, a little bit more hope filled the next day than the day we were before, because he's working inside your heart and in mine. So what? So that we can gain Christ, and then we can be the Roma of Christ. I'm sure it's going to be, it's going to be the stench of death. For some I get that that's not up to you. It's up to you and me to be faithful in loving. It's not up to you and me to control how someone else responds in front of us. But rest assured, you can have everything, but minus love you and I got nothing. Third and final section I wants to see this morning. Again. It's so tied to I told you a lot, it's about this eschatological focus. That's a big word to just say, the future things

prophecy and speaking in unknown languages and special knowledge will become useless, but love will last forever. It'll last forever. Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture, but when the time of perfection comes, these partial things will become useless. When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child, but when I grew up, I put away childish things. Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely. Three things will last forever, faith, hope and love, and the greatest of these is love. So those three gifts that I brought up earlier prophecy, tongues, or speaking in unknown languages, the second gift and the third one is special knowledge. He's telling us that in the future time when all of us die and go to heaven or Jesus comes back, that those things will become useless, because now we will know Christ will be with Him forever. Sometimes people ask, Why study the End Times? Why think about Revelation? Why think about the future? When we think about the future, it helps inform us of the present. That's what he's trying to say. Yes, he wants you to understand prophecy is good. You want people to speak truth in your life. That's what a prophet is, or a prophetess or truth teller. Yes, you want people to understand God's word. So you want them to understand the Bible in their heart language, so they're not translating in their head. That's why we translate Bibles and all kinds of translations. Yes, you want to have people with special knowledge that comes from both studying and supernatural knowledge that God has given them for a time or season. But guess what? It's going to become useless because it's going to go away. Why? Because the new heavens and new earth that we will be up with God in heaven forever and ever, and also Heaven will come down at the end. That's the point of revelation to make all things new. Now we only see part of everything. Now, eventually the whole picture will become clear, and when that day of perfection comes where you and I have no more crying, no more pain, no more cancer, no more aches when we get out of bed, all these things that we will know as we are now, then fully known. He gives us great illustration to talk about childhood. And he says, You remember when you were a child? It's just true. I love how Paul gives just concrete down to earth illustrations they can understand, then we can understand now. He says, when you were a child, you did childish things. You know, we don't, we don't blame little kids for trying to figure things out. We do this a lot, right? This is, this is true, especially here on the borderland. We just kind of send our kids out. They'll figure it out. It's like a wait a second. They just had six Cokes. They'll figure it out that their tummy wake later. You know? It's like, that's just the that's just the way it goes around here, right? And so what is going on there is that we're allowing children to conduct themselves like children. But what happens eventually, you gotta grow up. You gotta grow up. All of y'all have different standards, but eventually you put your hand on your son or your daughter somewhere around 18, like you gotta get out there, you gotta get a job, you gotta go to school, you gotta have responsibility. You gotta and so what's happening here? He's just saying that there's a progression in life. He's saying the same thing with the hope of the Gospel right now, we have a father in heaven. That's why he's very clear to say, I'm the father in heaven. You're my children. This is what this is God talking now. And so that's the state that we're in. We know some things. We've figured some things out. We've got these gifts that God has given us, both naturally and supernaturally. But guess what? Eventually it's going to go away. We're going to grow up and go from being children to full fledged adults. Now it's partially there, right? You're partial.

You're little boy, little girl. You're partially grown up, but soon you're going to grow up for real. He talks about that you can see things imperfectly, like a mirror. Now you think about a mirror in the ancient world, they're not like mirrors like now, right? I can't imagine very foggy, very hazy, very, very unclear. He's saying that's kind of what our life is like. Now, we don't know everything about God that we want to know, but eventually we'll see God face to face, just like Moses. Remember, this is always the hope.

Adam and Eve were walking with God in the Garden right talking with God face to face. People, the 12 disciples and others, were walking with Jesus, seeing God face to face. Moses was able to communicate with God on Mount Sinai, just seeing his backside, he glowed, but it's that whole idea of now we will come face to face with our Lord and Savior, and we will be known completely, and we will know completely, just as God now knows us completely. So that's just that love, and that's why I want to lead to our last, third and final point love will overflow for eternity.

The easiest way to think about this, because it's hard to wrap our finite minds around this, is the whole idea that the Father Son and Holy Spirit are in fellowship with each other for eternity, in both directions, and that love that they have, and we know the essence of who God is is love. Let's talk about that later in first John. But he introduces this concept right now, and he says that faith, hope and love, but the greatest of these is love. Remember that came into to a country song Alan Jackson around September 11. Those y'all that are millennials or older, you probably remember that. So he was using it to kind of bring us together after a tragedy. But the point of the this verse that faith, hope and love remain, saying that even in heaven, even the new heavens and new earth, there's going to be faith that we're faith filled looking at what God's doing, there's going to be hope that God always has hope filled people around him. But more than anything, kind of at the apex at the point is going to be what it's going to be love. Because love, what it does, going back to the fountain, illustration, is that it overflows for you and me, forever and ever. It's it's an unceasing fountain of love overflowing from the throne room of God, and mainly seen to us through the work of Christ. That's what Christ's death on a cross is celebrated and talked about even now. That's why 10 people said, Yes, I want that Jesus that you're talking about, because they understand that the hope can only be found in there. It can only be found in the grave. And the resurrection, it can only be found when we go under the water, death to self, rising to new life. So the reason why we could just indiscriminately give out love, it cost me nothing. I give it out. You can spit my face. You can slap me. You can say, I don't want that Jesus or whatever. I don't want that love you're trying to give me. I don't want the kindness you're trying to show me. That doesn't change the fact that who put it in my heart to even want to do that, and the ability to do that, that's God himself, and that even when we get to heaven, it's going to keep it's going to keep flowing towards us. This is hard for our finite minds to wrap around, isn't it? Just that whole idea of that what begins here on Earth, our relationship with God, through Jesus Christ in Heaven, through the act of love on the cross, will continue on and continue overflowing. Just think about a fountain. Think about a fountain. I know it's hard to find them, but think about a fountain that not only, not only goes like this, but it just, it just overflows, and it never ceases to overflow. That's what he's talking about here, with the idea that the love from the father so that that's very encouraging to us this morning, isn't it? That gives us now application and the ability to love others? Why? Because he first loved us. Let's pray, Father. I thank you for your word. I thank you how you have not left us wondering and wandering to ourself, I thank you for these families and those who have committed to you. And I pray right now, as I know there's spiritual darkness here, as well as spiritual hope. And I just pray that hope and love and faith wins out more than anything, Father, I want to echo back to you the words that you have already given to us, which is the greatest of these is love,

help us to love others as we have been loved by you. We ask these things in Christ's name, Amen. Amen.