Summary:
Why does it seem so easy to love "humanity in general" and so hard to love "people in particular" (especially roommates)? How does loving particular people convince us that God truly loves us?

Transcript:
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Hello, welcome to Mosaic Church. My name is Jan, one of the pastors here at Mosaic. If you're new or if you're visiting, welcome to Mosaic, we're so glad you're here. We'd love to connect with you either in person afterwards, or through the connection card in the worship guide. If you fill it out legibly, you can either toss it into the offering basket afterwards, or redeem it at the Welcome Center for a gift that we have lovingly prepared for you.

With that said, would you please pray with me over the preaching of God's holy word? Heavenly Father, we thank you that you are God of love. You didn't just give us words of love, you gave us the greatest act of love in the history of the universe. You gave your son, Jesus. You came, and you walked the way of love. You didn't just show us the way of love, you walked it. You embodied it. You epitomized it. You made the way of the cross the way of life. We come to you Lord, and we confess now. On communion Sunday we confess that we have not loved as we ought, that all too often we are not patient, and we are not kind. All too often we do envy, and we do boast. All too often we are arrogant and rude. We insist on our own way because that is the way of the city. This is how you get ahead.

All too often we are irritable and resentful. We rejoice when our competitors stumble, instead of rejoicing with the truth. All too often we do not bear all things as we ought. We do not believe all things as we ought. We do not hope all things as we ought, and we do not endure all things as we ought. Lord, we repent. We confess, but we also repent. We ask for grace. I pray that your grace today melts our hearts, that it removes the layers of hardness and callousness around our hearts. Holy spirit come, move in this place, move in our hearts. Show us where we are not walking in the way of love as we ought, and teach us not to zigzag on the way, but go straight on the straight and narrow following Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior in whose name we pray. Amen.

The title of the sermon today is Pixilated Love. By pixilated love, I do not mean virtual love. I don't mean theoretical, hypothetical love. What we mean is loving real people with real love, granular love. Now today, we are looking at 1 Corinthians 13, meditating on this text. For at least two reasons you may have already checked out. You may already say, "This is not for me. This is not what I need to hear," primarily because 1 Corinthians 13 is the wedding passage, and this isn't a wedding. There's no bridesmaids, there's no flowers, why are we reading 1 Corinthians 13?

Well, because 1 Corinthians 13 was written to a church. Yes, it does apply to a married couple, but it also applies to every single one of us. We are to love like this. That's number one. Number two, love is not the way that you get by in this city. We live in a city that celebrates the intellect, celebrates IQ, celebrates academic accomplishments. We live in a cerebral culture dominated by thoughts of big people, important thoughts from important people on important subjects.

Rene Descartes said, "Cogito ergo sum," I think, therefore I am, meaning the essence of humanity, what it means to be human is to think. That's part of what it means to be human, but we are more than just brains. Most of our decisions that we make are actually driven by desire of the heart. He did not say, "I love, therefore I am. I am love, therefore I am." This is a text that if you understand this, if you don't just understand it with your mind, but if you understand it with your heart, it will transform every single aspect of your life. This text, right here, is the most profound, the most eloquent treatise on love in both scripture and all of human literature.

Agape love. Before I get into the preaching part of it, I will say this. I'm not coming to you as some kind of specialist in love. Actually, I think it's very ironic, ironical, which is the ironic way of saying ironic. It's ironical that I am the guy talking about love. It does not come to me naturally, but by God's grace I'm growing in it. It's easy to preach. I can give you a theology of love. I love theology. I can give you the acts of Jesus and we can do all kinds of hermeneutics. I can tell you what it says in the Greek.

Now, when you put me in the car with my whole family, I've got four daughters, so that's six people in the car, with my brother this week driving to Rhode Island to my dad's 60th birthday. A trip that's supposed to take an hour and 20 minutes, instead it took three hours and 20 minutes, because my youngest daughter puked three times. My brother is sitting next to her and he said, "I just saw full berries come out." Try being patient and kind in that situation. Jesus take the wheel.

We all struggle with this. This is how scripture ... Scripture says, "This is the standard. This is what God has for us. Be perfect as I am perfect. Be loving as I am loving." Oh you can't. This is us. Someone can help. Someone can bridge that chasm. Someone can show us the way of love. Loving God is easy. God is beautiful. God is perfect. God is consistent. God is generous. God is loving even to those who are unlovely. His love makes us loving. It makes us lovely. Loving God is easy. Loving people, not so much.

In the newsletter I sent out this text that really articulated this perfectly. It's the fact that we love the idea of being loving. We love the idea of loving humanity. This is from Dostoevsky's, The Brothers Karamazov in Chapter four. There's an elder, and he's counseling this lady that comes to him. She's like, "I'm struggling with my faith." He says, "Try loving people completely indefatigably. She's like, "Oh, I love everybody. I'm even willing to leave my daughter to go become a nurse." Meaning, I want to love other people, not her.

He gives her a story. He quotes a doctor that he had a conversation with. This is what the doctor said. The doctor said, "I love humanity, but I wonder at myself. The more I love humanity in general, the less I love man in particular. In my dreams," he said, "I have often come to making enthusiastic schemes for the service of humanity, and perhaps I might actually have faced crucifixion if it had been suddenly necessary, and yet I am incapable of living in the same room with anyone for two days together, as I know by experience."

Can you relate? "As soon as anyone is near me, his personality disturbs my self-complacency and restricts my freedom. In 24 hours I begin to hate the best of men. One, because he’s too long over his dinner, another because he has a cold and keeps on blowing his nose. I become hostile to people the moment they come close to me. It has always happened that the more I detest men individually the more ardent becomes my love for humanity."

Working with this definition of love, Biblical love, or Christian love is self-sacrificing, caring commitment that shows itself in seeking the highest good of the beloved. There's sacrifice, there's a caring commitment. It's decisive, it's an act of the will, and you seek the best. You seek the good of the one whom you're called to love. It's drastically different than love in our culture.

Love in our culture is tolerance. I'm willing to tolerate you. I'm willing to live and let live. Or, it's being in love, sensory overload. That's not what love is. Let's look at 1 Corinthians 13:1-13 to see a Biblical definition of love.

1 Corinthians 13:1-13, "If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong, or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not loved, I gain nothing. Love is patient and kind. Love does not envy or boast. It is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends."

"As for prophecies, they will pass away. As for tongues, they will cease. As for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part, and we prophecy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, then I shall know fully even as I have been fully known. So now faith, hope and love abide, these three, but the greatest of these is love." This is the reading of God's holy and infallible word, may he write these eternal truths upon our hearts.

We'll frame up our time with three points. We'll look at love empowered, love expounded, and love epitomized. Love empowered, just to wreak out the context. The context in 1 Corinthians 12, St. Paul has been saying that we as Christians are one. That's a spiritual reality. We've been baptized by the Holy Spirit into the body of Christ. That's a spiritual reality that needs to manifest itself physically. Therefore, we, as a local body of believers, as members one of another, are interdependent, therefore, no one can say explicitly or implicitly I don't need you, or I'm not needed here.

We're designed by God for interdependence. If he brings us to a local body of believers, we are to connect. We have spiritual gifts that God has given to us at our conversion, or regeneration, gifts that grow as we use them. They're tools to build up the body. St. Paul talks about the spiritual gifts, prophetic gifts, and tongues, and knowledge, and words of incite, et cetera, and then he pauses. What he knows is the Corinthians are saying, "We're ready. Give us the details. Give us the details of how to use the gifts." He pauses and says, "No, you're not ready." He gives us the details in chapter 14. He stops in chapter 13, he gives us something more important than a treatise on gifts. He gives us a treatise on love. It's the crescendo of the whole argument here.

What he's saying is, "No matter how powerful you are naturally, no matter how powerful you are supernaturally, if you are not empowered by love, it ultimately means nothing. Your accomplishments ultimately mean nothing." He used that phrase nothing twice. Verse two, "If my faith starts to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. Verse three, if I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing." He says, "You can give all of your money away. You can actually give your whole life away. You can be martyred for the faith, but if you are not motivated by love ..." Yes, you can be martyred for the faith and not motivated by love. He says, "It means ultimately nothing."

The question here is what's driving you? We are so driven. What's driving us? What's the force? What's the motivation? Sometimes it's a feeling of obligation, I need to do this. I have to use my gifts. I have to be generous. I have to sacrifice. Maybe it's expectations of other people. What are they going to think? Maybe it's fear of embarrassment. St. Paul says, "You can end disease. You can cure cancer. You can solve world hunger. But if you do it without love, it ultimately means nothing." Those words are as strong as they sound. That all gifts ultimately are useless without love.

What motivates everything that we do Christian? What motivates our work? What motivates our social media habits? What motivates our spending? What motivates how we care for ourselves? Is it love? It would be as if Superman, the most powerful being that there is other than Jesus Christ. Jesus number one, Superman, fictional, whatever. Imagine if I'm in a burning building, and I cry out for Superman. He comes in, swoops me up, because Superman is strong enough to carry me. He's carrying me in his arms and I'm like, "Thank you Superman, that was so kind of you." He says, "Stop moving, you're ruining the photo op."

Superman did a great thing. He saved me. Superman turned out to be somewhat of a not a nice guy. I'm glad he saved me. I'm going to tell everyone he's not a nice guy. It's like if you get in a fight with your wife as she's cooking you dinner. Not that that's ever happened to any married couples here. Your wife is grilling up a steak and the perfect grill marks are on the steak. Halfway through you forgot it was your anniversary, I don't know, just hypothetical. She gives you the steak. She's like, "Here, eat it. Here's your side of contempt. I'm going to douse it in disdain." I'm still going to eat it. It just doesn't taste the same. You know what I'm saying?

1 John 4:7 says, "Beloved let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God." What's he saying? He's saying that unless you are a Christian regenerated by the Holy Spirit, filled with God's love, you can't love as you are commanded to love. There's a natural love, that's not what he's talking about. He's using the Greek word agape, which is a supernatural love. It's not just a physical love. It's not just a human love. It's a Godly love.

He says, "This love is from God, and whoever loves like this has been born of God." Meaning, being born comes before, it proceeds loving like this. You ever wonder why scripture commands that we love? Jesus said, "This is all of the law distilled into two sentences. Love God and love your neighbor as yourself." Why does God command love? God commands things that do not come natural to us, because natural is fallen. Do not sin does not come natural to us. Be humble does not come natural to us. Love like this does not come natural to us. We need help.

I'm going to table that for just a second. We'll get back to it in point number three. Here, in point two, we're going to look at an exposition of love. Love expounded, 1 Corinthians 13:4-7, "Love is patient and kind, love does not envy or boast." That's really important what you just did there. Love is, love is, love is not. It's chiastic structure. Love is patient. Love is kind. That's what it is. Then he gives us descending steps of what love isn't. "It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not arrogant, it is not rude, it does not insist on it's own way, it is not irritable, it is not resentful, it does not rejoice in wrongdoing," Then he starts bringing it back.

"It rejoices with truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things." Why is he doing that? He's giving us a positive definition, and a negative definition. He's like, "This is what love is and this is what you're doing." This is what love isn't. He's defining love. We live in a world that loves to talk about love in general, a very amorphous and ambiguous idea of love. You define love however you choose. That's not how scripture talks about love.

Scripture it defines love. It defines true love. I don't know if you know this, it defines love not as a feeling, it defines love as action. It actually defines love as a path. It defines love as a way. Why does it define love as a way, because Jesus Christ said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life." What's Christianity called in the book of Acts, before the term, before they were coined Christian, or little Christs? What was it called? It was called the way. It was called the people of the way. St. Paul, Saul, before he became Paul, he was persecuting people of the way.

Why were they called people of the way? Because they were living this way. They were living, they were walking on the path of love, following Christ who didn't just show us the way, He is the way, meaning we can't love like this apart from Christ. Love is patient. I'll just go through every single one of these quickly. Love is patient, it's long tempered, it's long suffering in the King James, it's slow to anger. It endures personal wrongs without retaliating. Your graciously bearing with other's imperfections, faults, defects. Assumption, loving is hard.

Presupposition, we're called to love sinners, and they will sin. As they sin, we are called to be patient with them, giving them room to change, giving them love to change. Love is also kind. Kindness is patience in action. It comes form the Greek word which means helpful. You look for ways and opportunities to help people with their needs. The word actually comes from ... The semantic range is very broad for the word kindness, chrestos, in the Greek. One of the definitions it's used to describe mellow wine. Meaning kindness is the ability to be gentle, to sooth hurt feelings, to calm an upset person, to help quietly in practical ways.

There is a tenderness to this love, even when people don't deserve it. Especially when they don't deserve it. That's when you're most like God. Luke 6:35, "Love your enemies and do good, and lend expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful, and the evil." God was kind to us even when we were ungrateful and evil. That kindness is meant to bring us to repentance.

Romans 2:4, "Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness is meant to be lead you to repentance?" Love does not envy. Envy here means an eager desire, and that can be manifested in either a positive or a negative way. Positive envy, or jealousy, is used to describe God. God is jealous for our best, therefore, he wants to protect us from sin, from idols, because he knows what's best. The negative form of envy is greed or selfishness. You become possessive. You are mine and mine alone. You're here for me.

Also, love does not boast, and it is not arrogant. Bragging reveals a proud heart. Pride is the number one obstacle to love. In any relationship, if you start viewing this person, whoever the person is in your life, if you start viewing this person as something that you deserve, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, children, you are here to serve me. You are here for me, instead of I am here for you.

Scripture talks about people as gifts in our lives. When you start looking at a gift as something that you earned, as something you're entitled to, that's the first step to love cooling off. In a relation ... I go through this in my pre-marital counseling, and I actually have to keep reminding myself in my own marriage. My wife is a gift from the Lord, precious gift. I do not deserve her. I need to treat her as a gift. That's humility. Pride says, "I earned this." No. Love is humble, and everything is a gift including this person.

1 Corinthians 4:7, "For who sees anything different in you?" Another translation says, "For who made you to differ? What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?" Everything we have is a gift from the Lord Jesus Christ. He needs to humble us, and when we're humbled, love flows freely. Love is not rude. It doesn't act unbecomingly. Love has good manners. It tries to put others at ease.

Love is courteous, it's polite, it's sensitive to the feelings of others. It's tactful, it's empathetic. Love does not insist on it's own way. It doesn't demand it's own rights. There's no selfishness in love. Selfishness is actually antithetical to self-sacrificing love. Love is not irritable. Selfless loves is not provoked. It's not touchy. It doesn't have a short fuse, or hair trigger temper. Love is not resentful. It doesn't keep track of wrongs. It's an accounting term for numerical calculation that we are not to tally wrongs. We're not to keep score.

God, when we come to him, he takes our record of wrongs and he nails it to the cross, imputes our sins to Christ, and imputes Christ's righteousness to us. It isn't resentful, meaning that you don't remember other people's sins against you once they've repented. God doesn't. The omniscient God of the universe, he says, "As soon as we come to him, as soon as we repent, he casts our sins from himself as far as the east is from the west." God says, "I shall not remember your sins any longer." How does the omniscient God of the universe forget anything? He chooses to. It's not resentful.

Love does not rejoice in wrong doing, but rejoices with the truth. Love is never glad when others go wrong. When they stumble, there's no gloating, there's no, you owe me. Obviously there's a fine balance. When you love someone, you love them truly and you want the best for them, so you don't compromise the truth. You don't take a soft view of sin. When there's sin in their lives, you come with sensitivity, and love, and tenderness, you try to help them repent of that sin and follow Christ, because sin destroys.

3 John 4, "I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth." Then in verse seven, he gives us four repetitions of all things. It's that hyperbole to make a point. "Love bears all things, it believes all things, it hopes all things, it endures all things." He's not saying that love accepts sin. What it says, when a person does repent, that you gently restore the person. You protect the person by covering and not broadcasting the weakness.

Love bears all things, it believes all things. Love always trusts. It doesn't imply gullibility. You're not suspicious of character, of motives without good reason. You give the person benefit of the doubt. You don't immediately blame or accuse. Love does not play devil's advocate. I hate that phrase. "I'm just want to play devil's advocate." Don't be devil's advocate. We give other people the benefit of the doubt. That's what love does. There's mutual trust.

Obviously if trust has been broken, then it needs to be earned again, step by step. Love believes the best. It also hopes all things. It hopes for the best for the person. You're not pessimistic about the people that you love. You're optimistic because you understand that by God's grace this person can grow. We all are works in progress. The person isn't how they ought to be, but they're definitely now how they were. We're still growing.

By the way, when you believe in someone like this, because you love them, I know that you're growing, I see your growth, then they rise to the standards, to the expectation. Finally, love endures all things. It's a military word meaning that we do sustain the assault of the enemy, but we hold up under trial, persevering in spite of difficulties. We don't bail out of tough situations. We don't bail as loving people out of tough relationships, because God didn't bail on us.

Point number three is love epitomized. We hear this. We hear this. How many of us have ... Raise your hand if that described you. You're loving. No, no. I'm not. I'm not patient. I'm not kind. I do envy. I do boast. We struggle with this. Every single one of us, we struggle with this. This is where the gospel comes. Christianity doesn't say, "Be perfect," and then leaves us to our own resources. Christianity says, "Be perfect as your God is perfect, be loving as God is loving," empowered by God's love, energized by God's love.

By the way, we need the epitome of God's love, which is Christ. 1 John 4:7-10, "Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God. This agape is from God, for whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God because God is love. In this, is the love of God. In this, the love of God was made manifest among us that God sent his only son into the world so that we might live through Him." So that we might live through him.

Not only is he showing us the way, he's walking the way of love, and we are in him by the power of the Holy Spirit so that we might walk through him, live through him, love through him. This is love, not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. So dense, I love that text. I love how the Apostle John, who is the apostle of love. "Beloved children, love one another," those are his final words in his final sermon.

John didn't start with a rosy picture of humanity. John 5:42, Apostle John quotes Jesus Christ, "But I know that you do not have the love of God within you." He's talking to people who were religious. Jesus says, "You don't have this love. It's not natural to you." Human love, the kind that John is calling us to, is supernatural love. That's what he's talking about, it's not the norm. He's not talking about requests for natural affections. Be nice to each other, win friends and influence people. That's not what he's talking about.

He's talking about something supernatural. To love your neighbor as yourself. To think about your neighbors finances as you think about your own. To think about your neighbors health as you think about your own. To think about your neighbors dreams as you think about your own. That's what separates Christians from non-Christians, God's love. St. Teresa, Mother Teresa, she said this about Satan, "Satan could not be Satan any longer if he could once love his neighbor as himself." Satan couldn't do this, because Satan existed for Satan. Satan was curved in upon himself as Augustine says.

John takes this phrase that God is love. Love is from God because God is love. This is a very important phrase. It's a phrase that our culture has misunderstood. God is love. He's not saying God is only love, because God has other attributes other than love. He's not saying love is God, that love is ultimate. No, God is ultimate. What he's saying is that God continually gives of himself for the benefit of others. He continually pours himself out.

This talk about God is love, perhaps you've heard this? You must have heard ... If you live in American culture, you've heard that Jesus loves you. You've heard that God is love. This is one of the reasons why our eyes kind of glaze over, and like, yeah, yeah, God is love, yeah, yeah, God loves me. How do you know that God loves you? Outside of the pages of holy scripture, how do you know that God loves you? How do you know that God is loving?

There is not one religion, other than Christianity that teaches this. No other world view teaches this, that God is so loving that he gives his most precious son for us on a cross. Why are you a Christian? If you're a Christian, why are you a Christian? In your mind, I'd like you to give an answer. Why am I a Christian? Because I was baptized as a child, because I was confirmed, because I became a member of a church, because I go to church, because I serve, because I give, I've read the Bible, I'm a Christian.

That's not what John says. John says, "You are a Christian, you are of God, you have been born of God if you love God." Not if you have a theology of God's love, but if you love God. If you can't say that honestly, from the recesses of your soul, if you can't say, "I am a Christian because I love God, because he first loved me," then perhaps you have not yet been converted. If your heart is cold toward God, if your heart isn't moving to God in worship, if it isn't moving to adore him, then perhaps you haven't been converted.

Dear friend, you need to be converted. The way that you are converted is you cry out to God and say, "God, I need you God. I repent of my sin and my selfishness. God, let me see what Christ has done for me on the cross." What has Christ done for us on the cross? Here we need to feel the shock value of love. This is how the scripture talks about love. It's not just some sentimental sappiness. There's a shock value in God's love. In our natural state we hate God. You say, "Whoa, strong language. I don't hate God. I don't care about God. I'm apathetic to God. I'm indifferent to God."

Indifference toward God is actually the worst form of hate. If you hate someone, you're actually thinking about them. There's some kind of visceral reaction against this person, against God for example. If you're indifferent, there's just a hardness. Indifference is actually the worst form of hate. We, in our natural state, utterly are utterly indifferent to God. We kicked against him. We despise him. Luke 19:14, Jesus gives a parable about a king whose citizens hated him, sent a delegation after him saying, "We do not want this man to reign over us. When we heard of him coming, ruling, being our Lord, we sneered at him. We were his enemies."

Jesus, knowing that he would come, that he would love fully, completely, ultimately, he knew he was going to be crucified, yet he came. Psalm 22:14, "I'm poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint." He came, he walked the way of love, and the way of love was the way of the cross. En de via dolorosa. He agonized over us. He sweat blood for us. He was ridiculed for us. Then he carried a cross on his mangled shoulders for us, staggering through the streets of Jerusalem. He laid down on that cross willingly. He didn't fight it. He was raised on that cross. He spread his arms in the greatest gesture of love in all of human history, because he loves us.

He was despised and rejected by us. he was despised and rejected by them. When you see that Christ didn't just die for someone, Christ didn't just die for Christians, he died for you. He absorbed God's wrath for your sin, for your indifference, for my indifference. That's what changes us. There's no greater reason to love than love. When you realize that God made that first step, that he love you first, that love woos us, that love compels us. God doesn't just command love, he compels our love with his love first.

Why am I a Christian? Because God loved me first. Why do I love God? Because God loved me first. Why do we start there? Why do we start with talking about the vertical love, your relationship with God? Why not just talk about loving human beings? We started with that in the beginning. We're good at loving humanity in general. We love the idea of loving humanity. Then when we've got to love particular people, we realize it's so hard. We need a supernatural love infused into our hearts in order to love people horizontally.

The gospel can't be reduced to some kind of benign humanism, just horizontal without the vertical. By the way, this is the largest miscalculation of millions of nominal Christians, and nominal Christians nominations that say, "Let's just be good people. Let's just be nice people. Let's not talk about sin. Let's not talk about the cross. Let's not talk about God's wrath."

God showed us true love. Love is patient and it is kind in verse four. Paul here speaks about love in a way ... He doesn't speak about love as a syllogism or feelings. He speaks about love almost as if he's talking about a person. Did you notice this? He is. Love does something. Love does not do other things. One commentator says, "In a pagan society there was confusion about the title of Jesus, that Jesus was Christ. Jesus was the Christ. Christos, C-H-R=I-S-T-0=S, Christos, Jesus was the Christ.

The word for kindness here is Chrestos, C-H-R-E-S-T-0-S, love is Chrestos. There is confusion here in Roman A.D. 49, the emperor Claudius expelled the Jewish Christians, because Suetonius, the historian says, "There was disturbance over Chrestos." There wasn't riding over kindness. There was riding over Christ. For them in Rome, this was so new, that these people as they are being martyred, as they're being arrested, as they're being persecuted, they're still kind.

They have returned kindness for hostility. They were like this is the way of Chrestos, Christos, I don't know it's all one in the same. This is what St. Paul is doing. He is playing on those words. Yes, this is about Christ. Jesus is patient. Jesus is Chrestos. He's Christos and he is patient. He is kind. He does not envy. He does not boast. He is not arrogant. He is not rude. He does not insist on his own way. He is not irritable or resentful. He does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Jesus bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. God's love always takes the initiative, and our love is always a response to God's love.

I say that to say this, this changes everything. If you catch a glimpse of the power of love. If you get that fire in your heart, it changes everything. It changes everything that you do. It changes everything that you do Monday through Friday. It changes the trajectory of your life. If someone can say about you, like instead of putting Jesus' name in there, if someone could say that about you with your name. I tried doing this with my own name. It's so hard, just reading out loud. Jan is patient. Jan is... I'm working on it. Honestly, this is the reality talk part of the sermon.

This changes absolutely everything. Imagine world history without Christianity. Imagine world history without the way of Jesus Christ, without the love of Jesus Christ. Just imagine it. It would look incredibly different. Christians were motivated by this love to meet real needs. This is what led to human progress at the most basic level. Let me just give you a few examples. Christian love has changed the world in medicine. The first hospice was invented by whom? In 325, at the Council of Knights, the bishops were told to establish hospices near cathedrals. The first hospital was built by St. Basil of Cesarea in 369.

Care for the mentally ill, that was a movement started by Christians. It was a Christian initiative, so was nursing. Florence Nightingale who formed the Red Cross said, "Jesus told us to love our enemies, meaning even during war we need to cross lines and help the wounded. Education, who started the first libraries? Christians at monasteries. Monks started monasteries. The monks started libraries, and then those libraries were the foundation to the first universities and educational institutions where they taught both genders. Universities, and then ultimately the printing press. Who started the printing press? Christians.

They were like, "Let's get Bibles out." Then they're like, "Oh wow, we just invented something that actually revolutionized the world." Almost all of the first 123 colleges and universities in the U.S. were founded by Christians. Just look at Boston, Harvard University started by Puritans, BU started by Methodists, BC started by Catholics, Christians.

Work and economic life. Christianity redeemed the perspective of manual labor. Jesus Christ comes and he works as a carpenter, dignifies manual labor. Laziness, sloth, idleness, it's a sin. Do not steal, that concept led to the concept of private property, property rights. Human rights, by the way, that's a Christian concept that we are created in the image of God with dignity, value and worth.

Science, modern science is directly linked to the Biblical understanding of the world. God created everything. There' rules, there's laws we should study what God created and maybe we'll know God better. Art, literature, music, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Bach, Hondo, Brahms, Dante, Milton, Bunion, countless other, Sistine chapel, Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper, Rembrandt's Christ at Emmaus, there's Simeon in the Temple.

Western music, Handel's Messiah, Mozart's Requiem, the soaring compositions of Johann Sebastian Bach. Gothic cathedrals, Western literature, Dante, Milton, Shakespeare, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy. So extensive is the Christian contribution to our laws, our economics, our politics, our arts, our calendar. Our calendar, 2019, from what? Our holidays, our moral and cultural priorities that the historian Jane Roberts write this, "We could none of us today be what we are if a handful of Jews nearly 2000 years ago, had not believed that they had known a great teacher, seen him crucified, dead, and buried, and then risen again."

My dream, my dream is for you not to just be like, "Oh wow, Christians have done so much. Now I'm going to go to my job on Monday and think about building my LinkedIn, and building my CV, building my resume." This is my dream. My dream is that if the Lord should tarry and not come, my dream is that in 2000 years, I dream that historians look back and they say, "If it were not for Christians in Boston in 2019, giving everything that they had, all of their natural talents, and supernatural talents, if they didn't do that, we would not have cured cancer. We would not have solved global hunger. We would not be living on Mars, maybe, I don't know."

If you take everything that you have, and who's the next Michelangelo? Who's the next Bach? Who's going to revolutionize medicine? Who's going to revolutionize the economy? If you are motivated by love, and powered by love, we can absolutely not just change the world, but change eternity by God's grace.

1 Corinthians 13:8-12, "Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away." What are prophecies for? They're to show us a glimpse of what's behind the scenes in the spiritual realm. They will pass away. "As for tongues, they will cease." We will no longer have to communicate with God through the spiritual gift of tongues. "As for knowledge, it will pass away." Why? "For we know in part, and we prophecy in part, but when the perfect comes to laos. When the new heavens and the new earth come, when Christ returns, everything is absolutely perfect, the partial will pass away."

"When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known." Mirrors back then were made out of metal. You could see something and it's real what you see, but it's not perfect. It's not exact. It's a distorted reflection.

What we know about God through is revelation, through mysteries, through knowledge, through prophecy, it's real, it's true, but it's incomplete, it's imperfect. One day we won't need all those gifts, because we will have God face to face. We'll see God. This is why love never ends, because we have God's perfect love, face to face with our glorious savior. What we have now is rich, and it's sweet, it's a kind gift of God, but it's temporary and it's partial, but then we'll get the full thing.

What I do, we won't need this in heaven. What I'm trying to do is give you a glimpse of the glory of God, give you a glimpse of how incredible God's love is. There's no preaching in heaven. There's no pastors in heaven. Why? We have the real thing. I have no idea what I'm going to do in heaven. I have no clue. I discovered LinkedIn recently. LinkedIn, you've got to say, "This is what I do." Then there's a section where you put in your skills set. Imagine doing that if you were me. I just put in random stuff. I was like, "I'm not even on this for real. I'm not looking for a job."

One of the skill sets was stand up comedy. I put in stand up comedy. I think that's what I'm going to do in heaven. It's that and rap. I think I'm going to write rap lyrics. I don't know. We're going to have God and we're going to have the perfect, perfect expression of God's love, perfect experience of God's love.

1 Corinthians 13:13 before we transition communion, "So now faith, hope, and love abide these three, but the greatest of these is love. Why? Because faith and hope are just a means to an end. When the Lord returns at the resurrection, and we stand before his throne, faith will lead to perfect sight. Hope will become a reality, and love will be all that remains. Love is supreme because love never ends.

At this time, we're going to transition to celebrating holy communion. We do this in remembrance of Christ's greatest act of love. Christ gave himself, body broken for us, blood shed, to cleanse us. If you are a Christian you are welcome to participate in this part of the service. It's a reminder for us of the spiritual reality that's happened in the inside. If you are not a Christian, we ask that you just spend this time to meditate on what you've heard. Also, if there is any sin in your heart against any particular people whom you have not loved as you are called to love, spend this time doing some deep repentance.

The ushers are going to hand out the elements. Please hold onto them, and then we'll partake together. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you. Though we were unlovely, you still loved us, and pursued us, and wooed us, and you compel us to fulfill the commandment to love you and others. You compel us through your love. We pray that you bless our time in meditating and repenting, and preparing to participate in holy communion. Let us now do this lightly, but let us do it reverently, and discreetly, and soberly in the fear and reverence of God. We pray this all in Christ's name. Amen.