Love > Gifts

Well hello Salt Church. I think we got a little echo, don't we? How's everybody doing today? Y'all doing good? Praise God.

Praise God. We are back in 1 Corinthians. We launched back last week, digging through scripture, learning about how to be a healthy church. How to be a perfect church? No.

But a church that follows hard after God. A church that wants to learn more how to be like Christ and how to love each other. Love God and love others. And we've been rolling through this series week after week. We started at the beginning of the year.

And yeah. Oh yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Are y'all picking on my?

Yeah. Thank you. My makeup artist is off today. So yeah, my makeup artist is off today. And my wardrobe, you know.

Professional. Didn't come in because of the rain today. But you guys are here because, you know. Praise God. Amen.

Y'all are gonna look after me. All right. All right. Okay. Well, just quick announcement.

Next week is Mother's Day. Mother's Day. So moms, this is your guilt Sunday. You can guilt your family to come to church with you. So why don't you guilt somebody to come to church with you next week?

We're gonna have family portraits next week. So bring your whole family and get you a portrait. If you haven't had a portrait with us, they always come out really great and put in a nice frame and hang it up in your room. Mom, you want a family portrait, right? Amen.

We need a family portrait, don't we, Miranda? We haven't had one in a while. So sometimes we miss out on the free family portraits, you know, on Sunday mornings. So we're gonna come dressed up ready to get us a portrait as well. So invite somebody to Salt Church next week for a very, very special time to celebrate mothers and to enjoy God as family together.

You know, very, very wonderful, wonderful celebration of motherhood. We couldn't do it without moms, that's for sure. Goodness gracious, man. Miranda's worried that one day if she passes before me, what I'll, you know, if the kids are still young, what I'll do, you know? What's gonna happen?

I don't know. Kids haven't taken baths in two weeks, you know, while she's out. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German pastor in the World War II era, a faithful man of God, a part of the German resistance. Ultimately, he was executed of a failed plot to assassinate Hitler. In the 1930s, as the Nazis rose to power, Pastor Bonhoeffer discovered this small community of people that he believed was the antithesis of the Nazi ideology, a community that was called Bethel, Bethel.

And here's what he writes, here's what's written in a book called Pastor, Martyr, Prophetic Spy, Bonhoeffer. It says this, Bethel was founded in 1867 as a Christian community of people with epilepsy, but by 1900 expanded to include several facilities to care for 1600 physically and mentally disabled persons. The founder's son expanded his dad's vision even further, turning Bethel into a community entirely for the disabled and deprived. And by the 1930s, it was a whole town of schools, churches, farms, factories, shops, and housing for patients and nurses and caregivers. At the center were numerous hospitals and care facilities, including orphanages.

And Bonhoeffer saw Bethel as this utopia as response to what was happening with the Nazi power. And he said this, it was a gospel made visible, a fairytale landscape of grace, where the physically and mentally disabled were cared for in this beautiful Christian atmosphere. A fairytale landscape of grace. That's the key there. This is the kind of gospel community that the gospel itself creates.

This is a community that gospel community helps create. And you're going to see a description of that in 1 Corinthians 13 today. So if you'll open your Bibles or open your apps and we'll follow along there. What we're going to see today seems at the same time hopeful but unrealistic. Appealing but unrealistic.

It's an unrealistic look. Sure, all of us would love to be the sort of person that we see in 1 Corinthians 13. The great love chapter, this fairytale, everybody loves each other. But that's kind of the problem. It feels like a fairytale because in the real world we aren't that loving.

We don't love our neighbors like we should. We fight with our neighbors. Our kids won't listen to us. If we want a job, we have to, we can't be soft. We have to be hard and we have to have our edge there.

So if we look at a chapter like this one and you think, this sounds sentimental, you're not alone. But if you really understand what Paul's saying, sentimental is the last word you're going to think of when you read this chapter. Because Christian love is countercultural. It often is confrontational. And 1 Corinthians 13 is one of the most famous chapters in the Bible when it talks about love, the great love chapter.

And some of you... You had this read at your wedding. I know I use it in my wedding sermons. You've had it etched on your cross stitch above your kitchen table. And that's fine.

Just remember that the immediate context of this chapter is love in the church. It's not necessarily a romantic love, although it can be put there, or a family love, your kids and you and whatever. Those can be used in that context. But there is a problem as we've learned through the last months of looking through 1 Corinthians that there's problems with the church and Paul is addressing these problems. And the Corinthians are using their gifts for show instead of service.

They see it as a show. Look at me. Look at what I've got. They should have been using their gifts to bless, but instead they were using them to boast. They believe these gifts set them apart from others.

Like, we're better than you and we're more powerful than you. We're superiorly spiritual. And Paul wants to address this. Paul wants to show them that unless these gifts are driven by love and love alone, they are worthless. Love is everything in the Christian life.

Love is absolutely everything. You can apply the principles Paul gives here to any relationship, romantic or family or friendships or neighbors, but never forget that the immediate context when we look at this is love in the church. Love between you and me and others that are sitting around you. That's the love he's talking about here. In fact, just to prove that, let's start with chapter 12, kind of ending with chapter 12 and finishing up there.

It says in chapter 12, beginning with verse 29, if you're following along, it says, Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all possess gifts of healing?

Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret? And of course, this is a rhetorical question. The answer is no. Everyone does not possess all of these gifts.

And in verse 31, but earnestly desire the higher gifts. What is that? Well, you may be thinking, well, you know, these higher gifts of prophecy and these higher gifts of tongues and interpretation of tongues. But here's, for this reason alone, to enable you to better serve others. The gifts that enable you to better serve people.

The gifts that better serve your family and your friends. That's what he's talking about here. And I will show you a still more excellent way. Now let's jump to chapter 13 where we're digging in today. It says this, if I speak in the tongues of man and of angels but have not love, I am a noisy gong, a clanging cymbal.

You're just a bunch of noise if you don't have love. And if I have prophetic powers, whoo, if I understand all mysteries and all knowledge and I have faiths so as to remove mountains but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, if I deliver up my body to be burned because that's how sacrificial I am, but I don't have love, I gain nothing. The point I want to make as we start this off is that it's impossible to do super religious things, it is possible, excuse me. It is possible to do super religious things, to do super religious, superially religious and spiritual things and it be selfishly motivated.

You can have selfish motivations. You can speak in the tongues of man and tongues of angels. That means the pinnacle of spiritual gifts. You can have the best gifts that God can possibly bestow upon somebody and we'll talk more about that in the coming weeks. But the bottom line is when you speak with tongues of man and angels, you know, that's the varsity squad of gifts.

Let's just be honest, there's some supernatural gifts. But they don't impress anyone if they're not done with love. I can have great prophetic powers that I can perceive exactly what somebody, what the Spirit says about somebody or to somebody in a specific situation. And maybe you're somebody that God frequently talks to and speaks to you about somebody else or in a situation or in a church situation. And how do you know exactly what somebody needs to hear?

You hear it from God, right? It's a powerful gift. Or if I understand all mysteries and knowledge, I understand the things of the Trinity and the things of God and the nature of God and the mysteries that most people aren't able to know. And you can explain it well or if I have all faith as to remove mountains where you perceive what God wants to do and ask Him for it and believe that He's going to do it and then He follows through and does it. And if that happens to you often, a powerful gift, even all those things are true.

But if I have not love, if I have not love, I gain nothing. You can have all of those beautiful, powerful gifts that are available to us through the Holy Spirit. Love is everything in the Christian life. And Jesus said you could reduce His commandments down to two things. Love God and love people.

To love the Lord your God with all your soul, mind, and love your neighbor as yourself. If you do these, then everything else naturally falls in place. The reverse of that is if you do anything else without these, if you do anything without these, then you're nothing. You don't have anything. And you say, well, why would anybody do those things if it wasn't driven by God, if it wasn't driven by the love for God?

That's a good question, right? Why would people participate in these gifts? Well, first of all, the love of praise would be one. That people... People want people to see them.

Look at my gift. Look at my power. They need affirmation and admiration of others, and they're doing religious things to obtain that. You used to do this by being a good sports person and doing well in a basketball court or really great at a job, but now you're in the church doing it in another way. If I can't obtain admiration out there, I'm going to obtain admiration in here, man, because I'm a prophet.

I'm an apostle. I've seen those self-proclaimed apostles and prophets and different... To get admiration, this seems to be what's going on with the Church of Corinth. They have this desire for adoration and admiration and affirmation, and God is not so much beautiful as He is useful to them. Not as beautiful to them as He is useful to them.

What's the difference between being useful and being beautiful, you ask? When something is useful, it's a helpful tool to get something that you want. Imagine a man who courts a woman, who dates a woman, wants to marry her, but the only reason he does it is because he finds out that her family is very wealthy. That she has prestige and he can get something from him. He may be the best boyfriend out there.

He may be the perfect person, may treat her well. But if he's doing it for that fact that she is wealthy, her family comes from a high elite background, if it's for those reasons, what good is it? What good is it? Is that love? Even if they are good people.

Even if they are doing it for all the other reasons that seem okay on the outside. That's the difference between usefulness and beauty. But what would it be for us? Like a good marriage maybe? God, I love you for a good marriage.

Or I want to escape hell. I want to be in heaven. Or prosperity or some other blessing. And you might want those things bad enough that you'll discipline yourself to be great Christians. You'll be an awesome Christian.

You'll come to church every Sunday. You'll do all the right things. And you'll devote yourself to the right spiritual disciplines. But if there's no love in it, what is it? God is just a convenient means to an end.

So it might be love of praise. It might be the desire for blessings that motivates you. It might be that being good is how you think you'll earn heaven. That's where that comes from. But any good work done in order to earn something from God, any good work that's ever done to get something from God, by definition, is inherently selfish.

That we're being selfish. I love how Charles Spurgeon tells the story of a carrot farmer who showed up to the courts of an ancient king. He grew the biggest carrot he possibly could. He wanted to present it to the king, to honor the king. And he says this, The farmer said, King, I have harvested this carrot.

I knew it was deserving of a king. So I am bringing it to you to honor you, to express my appreciation for you as my king. You've led well and justly and protected our borders. I am a devoted servant. Well, the king was moved by this and said, You know, I happen to own the land next to your farm.

I'm giving you 300 acres of land because of that honor. Well, there was one king's noble that was standing nearby and thought, Wow, if the king gives 300 acres in response to a carrot, imagine what he'd give to me in response to a real gift. So that night he went out and bought the finest horse he could find. By the way, the Kentucky Derby was this weekend. That's kind of convenient, right?

Talk about horses here. He buys the finest horse he could find and he trots it in the next day and says, Oh, king, when I saw this horse, I knew it was deserving of a king. I want to give it to you from your humble servant. And the king was a very wise king. And he knew that the nobleman was giving the horse to him only to get something from him.

He said this, Yesterday, the carrot farmer was giving the carrot to me. Today, you're giving the horse to yourself. Every religion in the world, every religion except for the gospel of Jesus Christ, sees heaven based on our good works. That earning a place with God is inherently selfish. Every religion except for the gospel of Jesus Christ says, I have to work, I have to earn, I have to produce some kind of fervent adherence to religion.

Some of the most religiously devoted people I've ever known in my life are Muslims or Buddhists. Some of the most praying people, some of the most sacrificial people, some of the most living without people that I know are people from those religions. But what do they live for? That they might enter into heaven? That they might earn enough or do enough or build enough brownie points to make it into heaven?

That is inherently selfish because you're not serving God because he's beautiful. You're serving God because he's useful to you. And that's what's happening with the Corinthians. They're motivated in spiritual gifts so that they can put themselves above others. They, they, they, and Paul's saying, This is inherently selfish.

This is a selfish thing. It does nothing in the eyes of God. It does nothing for the church. And he was addressing the issue. And that's why he says it starts sounding like a noisy gong, a clanging cymbal.

Many years ago I was teaching this and I had a friend of mine on the drum set and he kept tapping the cymbal over and over and over again. I could just tell people were really getting annoyed by it. And like I can't hear the pastor because he keeps tapping on the cymbal every few seconds. You know, ting, ting, ting. People were getting so annoyed.

But the point was that's exactly what it's like when you live your life for yourself, when you're doing gifts just so that you can have the admiration of others. It's annoying. It's annoying to others. It's annoying. And it means nothing.

And it's annoying to God. By the way, when Paul uses the example of cymbals, it's likely that he's thinking about the gods that they were serving, the temples, the pagan temples and the pagan gods, where they would clash cymbals and gongs all day long trying to get the attention of the gods. So at the end of the day, our religious devotion is what Paul is saying is our religious devotion is just paganism dressed up like Christian in Christian clothes. So we're just practicing paganism. Cymbals can be beautiful in an orchestra, right?

It's beautiful when you're put together. But what makes a symphony a symphony is that the instruments work together to form one united sound. And if one is going off, I think of Will Ferrell's cowbell skit, you know, back in Saturday Night Live, you know, one of my favorites. You know, we've got to get more cowbell, you know, we've got to get more cowbell. I need some more cowbell.

But the rest of the band is getting irritated. He's like, just hitting that cowbell. When I trained people in music in the past and did worship conferences and stuff like that, we'd always teach that if somebody's on their own, on their instrument, you can have an incredible electric guitarist on stage. But if they're just like, you know, doing Eddie Van Halen stuff while the rest of the band is trying to lead in worship, then they're just on their own. Or a vocalist is like, whoa, whoa, all over the place over here, and you don't stay in the pocket, then you don't blend together and hold each other together.

I'm glad when I have a full worship band behind me because I don't have to play the guitar as much and I can focus on singing and I don't have to sing to this level or that level. It all blends together. It's so beautiful. Nobody is taking first place in this. Nobody is taking center stage.

And when everybody works together, it's beautiful. So it is in a symphony. So it is in the church is that when somebody is over-exaggerating their gift or building their gift up to look like they are the best. I have the gift of prophecy. You just have the gift of administration.

So I am superior to you. Believe it or not, that happens. It's the same way in acting. If you're an actor, you know, when you have the person on the side, the extra or the side actor, if they're continually getting in the scene and in the way of the overarching message of the scene, right, it doesn't make any sense. I think of, I can't remember exactly when it was, but I think it was another Saturday Night Live skit.

I think, you know, I got all these Saturday Night Live skits put through my head where they were doing a play and then the person would just come by the screen and go, and walk by it, you know. And it just kept going back and forth, back and forth, just distracting from the whole thing. That's exactly, exactly what Paul is trying to get at with the church. Apart from love, everything and every other religion is empty. It's hollow.

It's displeasing to God. And it's annoying to others. And so you just, just because you're religious or your gifts are like powerful and they're actually God-given gifts and they do things outside of love, it's nothing, is what he's saying. Because this is what the Corinthians were. They were impressive.

They were so impressive on the outside. Man, you go to us. Worship service, everybody. I mean, they had the flags flying around. Hallelujah.

And people were like, praise God. The worship was spot, man. Like you walked in and it was tight in there. The speaker got up, man. And I'm telling you, everything was polished and laid out and perfect.

All the right terminologies. Everything was there, man. The greeters were at the door. They were walking out like our people were this morning, getting umbrellas out. They were doing it right, man.

Everything looked good. But on the inside, there wasn't any love. It was religious, but not love. There's a medical term I've heard. It's totofoti.

Totofoti. T-O-T-O-F-O-T-I. It's not a real medical term. My mother knows this term because she was a nurse for years and they kind of use it among the floor there. But it's not a real term.

But it means thin on the outside, fat on the inside. What this means is those people that make you sick, that eat lots of chocolate and pastries and never get fat. You know, they're always looking great. They look like they just came out of the gym all the time. You know, those people that you really hate.

But the problem is that if you continue to eat that way, you might look good on the outside, but you're fat on the inside. You're unhealthy on the inside. And that was the truth of the church. They had intense worship. They had miracles.

They had signs. They had wonders. They had gifted leaders. They had gifted speakers. But only on the outside.

Because on the inside, if you look past the service and you look past the giftedness and you look past the heart, you found hearts clogged with selfishness. It was about them. So what? What ? What does real love look like?

In verse four through seven, Paul gives a fifteen point message. Some of you would be walking out the door right now if I said, okay, we're getting ready to give fifteen points. But Paul did it all the time, okay? And you can apply them in relationships, like I said. You can apply them in marriage and in your family.

But let's get to this fifteen point. I'm not really gonna, I'm gonna roll through it real quick, I promise, okay? The different things that he says love is. Fifteen different ways that love is. But it's specifically pointed to us, the church.

It can be used in marriage. It can be used in relationships. But this is for the church. Here's what he says in verse four. He says, love is patient and kind.

Love is patient and kind. Patience means you expect others not to be perfect. Not to be perfect. It means you're patient with others. Love is kind.

Kind means considerate of others. That you instinctively are considerate of others. You're always thinking about how to best serve that other person or how not to get in the way of that other person if it causes them to steer a certain way. It's not just happy with okay, but considerate of them being okay. That I want you to be okay.

Naturally, we consider ourselves, right? We're consideration of, you know, we get mad because people haven't considered us, you know? One of my, what do you call them? Love things or whatever. Love languages is consideration, you know?

Consider me. But inherently, that's kind of selfish, right? Because it's about me. But naturally, we consider ourselves, but love considers others. Love does not envy.

Love does not boast. Love does not envy. What does that mean? It means that you rejoice in someone else's blessing. Even when you're experiencing no blessings.

Or you should be the one experiencing that blessing. What happens when that person gets a house that they wanted? How do you act? Or you want it? Or the promotion that you wanted?

Or that boyfriend that you wanted? Or that ministry or that business grows and yours doesn't, right? How does that make you feel is the question. Do you envy them? Parents, what's your attitude when someone else's kid is doing well is doing well is doing well and yours isn't?

Do you secretly think, well, I wish their kid would misbehave like my kid misbehaves? They need to experience that. Or do you rejoice with them? Do you despise their blessings secretly wishing that they were not blessed the way they were? Do you get an attitude every time you hear that somebody gets something or something happens to somebody or they're celebrating and you're thinking in the back of your head, oh man, I didn't want to hear that.

I'm having a horrible life right now. I don't want to hear that. I know all of us have been there. I've been there. You've been there.

Right? Love is not like that. Love rejoices in others' blessings even when we aren't experiencing it. Even when we're not happy, we rejoice with people that are happy. And we celebrate with them.

And love is not arrogant. Love is not arrogant. What does arrogant mean? Arrogant means always thinking of yourself. Preeminently.

Always focused on rights and entitlement. What I deserve. What I should because I'm the best. I work hard. Look at me, you know.

Believing you deserve blessing and irritated that you're not delivering those blessings because you should be, you know, there in the middle of that. Or not rude. Love is not rude. Some scholars translate rude as dishonoring. Dishonoring someone.

Love doesn't dishonor a person by treating them like a commodity to fulfill their needs. Evaluating someone on how well they fit into your plan, into your scheme, emotionally, sexually, or whatever. That cog in the machine to get your happiness. That's what rude is. That's what rude is.

Paul puts these two together. Arrogant and rude because he is saying that a person of love doesn't approach life as if life is all about them. And it is everybody else's purpose in life to provide happiness for them. People don't live that way. Love doesn't live that way in the Christian life.

Love, it does not insist on its own way. That's the next point. People coming into your life is not about meeting your needs. Getting married is not about meeting your needs. You know what?

That's the greatest training ground for that, right? Theoretically, you now have someone in your life that you have to focus on over yourself. And ironically, most of us commandeer marriage to get what we need. We think that if we're married, we should be getting what we need. Or kids is the best example.

It's the master class in breaking this lack of, the back of selfishness. Kids, because those kids aren't going to think about your needs when they're young, at least. Not for a while, anyway. I mean, my kids, at least while they're young or when they were young, never said, Dad, you look like you're having a hard day. How can I bless you today?

My five-year-old, six-year-old, seven-year-olds, when they were that young, they didn't do that. They still don't do that. Sometimes Savannah might step up on occasion. With kids, you know, think about kids just on vacation. When you go on vacation and you take your kids, you know, you come back needing a greater vacation because you didn't get what you wanted out of your vacation.

It was supposed to be a vacation, and all you did is serve your kids the whole time, right? So you come back and like, you're miserable and aggravated. I didn't get what I wanted out of my vacation, so I need another vacation away from my kids. In fact, I heard one person say that he started, he stopped calling his family vacations, family vacations, he started calling them family trips. And it made it better for him.

It changed his expectations of what he expected out of it. It wasn't a vacation, it was a family trip. And he also said this, I know that if I don't come back from the vacation more tired than I left it, I wasn't even a good dad anyway. Love takes this attitude towards others in your life too. How many times have you gotten upset with a friend because they didn't give you what you needed at the time you needed it?

Like you weren't a good friend because when I needed you to be strong, you were needy. When I was down, I needed you to be up and you were down. They were blind to some things that you really needed in your life. And selfishness says I better reevaluate my friendship because if they're not giving me what I need when I need it, and they're not reading my mind and knowing exactly what I need and I want, and that can go in marriage and everything, right? If they're not getting that, you know, why would I want to be, why would I want them to be my friend anymore?

And relationships end all the time because of that. They weren't there for me. They didn't give me that phone call when I really needed them most. And they were hurting too about something else. So, you know, my needs are better.

My needs are greater. I need them. How dare they? Love says I'm not here to insist on getting my way. Ultimately, I'm here to serve, not to be served.

That's what real friendship and real love is. Love is not irritable. How many of you are irritable people? Easily triggered is the word there. Are you easily triggered?

Because self-centeredness sees the world primarily through the lens of what I need and what I want. That's how it sees it. It's quick to get angry when you don't fulfill its desires, right? But love doesn't think through that filter so it is more patient when you are frustrated or you're disappointed with someone, you know, because they didn't come through. Or love, resentfulness, you know.

It isn't resentful, you know. What does that mean? Keep no record of wrongs. In fact, NIV says love keeps no record of wrongs. It doesn't pull up the past.

When somebody disappoints you or when somebody hurts you, are you somebody that pulls up everything that ever happened in the past and escalates it to the place where it becomes this hateful fight, right? You did this and that connects to this previous time that you did this and back in 2009 you did that and then your mom told me that when you were in high school you did that and then it turns into that and that and that and this is the problem. You know what love does? Love doesn't bring up the past. Love doesn't use the things of the past to try to target the person.

It keeps no record of wrong. Past wrongs are like ammunition and bullets in a firing fight. Love, it does not rejoice. It does not rejoice at wrongdoing but rejoices with truth. Love never delights when someone else struggles.

But it cares enough to speak the truth. It cares enough to correct the person that's hurting themselves. It doesn't remain quiet and just let them live in their sin and live in their darkness. It doesn't do that. Do you love someone enough to speak into their life?

Do you love someone enough even though it might be uncomfortable for you or you might be cut off for a while because of the thing you say? Do you love them enough to speak truth in their life? Do you care enough about that person that it even can get uncomfortable to have those conversations? Because fake friends don't bring up those things. Fake friends doesn't care about, you know, anything but their comfort.

And they won't say anything because it loves its own comfort more. Love bears all things. When you love someone, you patiently endure the wounds of the selfishness and the immaturity. You know that real change takes time. And it's used to feeling underappreciated.

We just know that. That's what real love is. I love how C.S. Lewis says it.

He says, how do you know if your friendship is selfish? If you get upset when the gratitude does not come and you give up. And he goes on to say, if you do good things for your friend in hopes that they will see what you do and appreciate it, you'll be disappointed. So are you doing things just so that you can be appreciated? Is that real friendship that, oh, if I do this, then they're just going to pat me on the back and tell me how wonderful of a friend I am.

And then you bring up history when they don't do that. Remember when I did that. Remember, I've done this for you. You hold it over their heads. That's not real friendship.

Love bears all things. Love believes all things and hopes all things. Let me put these two together. Love never gives up hope for this person. It never gives up.

It never stops believing who this person is and who this person could be in Christ. Paul's not talking about some kind of silly and naive hope though here that looks past faults. When somebody, you know, does something wrong or it doesn't just say, well, they're just great. It recognizes the thing. You just never give up what God could do in them and what he created them to be.

You perceive what God has created them to be and what God could recreate them to be if they're in a place where they're not living the way that God wants them to live. For instance, a good dad may know all the flaws of it. But it doesn't mean that. And we may bring up those flaws, right, to help them. But we do that because we believe they're amazing people and all the things that they can be.

And just as a side note, too many dads spend too much time talking about how bad their kids are and what they're doing wrong instead of encouraging them. And I believe in you. And here's why. When I correct my kids, I say, here, look, you're doing this wrong. You know, you have those hard conversations, those discipline moments.

And sometimes it's heavy and it's deep and it's strong. But I always say, this is why I'm correcting you here because I believe that you're so much better than that. I know who you are. I know who God created you to be. I see your gift.

I see your leadership skills. I see all those things there. And I believe in you. True love believes in a person, regardless of what they're doing. It believes in them.

It never gives up. God never gave up on us. How could we ever give up on those around us? So by saying love believes all things and hopes all things, Paul doesn't mean this naive, optimistic, but a confidence in how God made people and intended people to be. And we do this all the time.

Just for instance, if a woman comes to me and says, you know, or comes to our elders and says her husband is abusing her, but he denies it. We don't just kind of go along, well, you know, love believes all things and there's all things. I mean, and we give them the benefit of the doubt, right? And like, like, it's not really going on possibly. And love believes all things.

But what about her? What about her that she had the, the, the bravery even to come forward? What about her, the benefit of the doubt for her? So we don't just reluctantly and just push it to the side and hopes for all things, believes all things. We deal with the problems that come, but we also recognize that God is a restorer, that he's a healer.

He brings about the best in someone through his blood, through his resurrection and through a relationship with him. We know that God has designed people for more. There's nothing he can't fix. There's nothing he can't redeem. There's nothing he can't heal.

That's who our God is. He's a God of miracles and we believe in a God of miracles. Love endures all things. I know these, see, these are a lot of points here and we're coming to a close here in a minute. Love endures all things.

You say, God, uh, Leon, you just keep going and going. Hey, I'm just preaching the possible Paul sermon here. Okay. He believes all things. He endures all things.

Again, it never gives up. It can't, it's, it's bound to that person. It can't be happy unless that person is complete. So there you go. 15 descriptions of love.

So how can we produce that love in our hearts? How do we do that? I mean, do, if you're like me, you read this and you're not like, yeah, that sounds like me. No, that doesn't sound anything like me. None of that sounds like me.

In fact, all of them are opposite of what I do. I do on a regular basis. So, so what do I do? Do I, do I just remember these 15 points and maybe spend, you know, 15 weeks working on these different points or try to work out those emotions in my heart? That won't help.

It won't work. In fact, you will be exhausted if you try to work out these emotions and do it that way. Martin Luther talks about the dilemma of the great commandment. Jesus commands us to love God with all our heart, soul and mind and love our neighbors and ourself, as I mentioned earlier. And Jesus is commanding us to do that by definition, but it cannot be, it's commanded, but by definition, it cannot be commanded.

It cannot be commanded because you can't make something do something they don't, someone do something that they don't, they don't know how to do. If you love something, you don't need to be commanded to do it, right? You just do it. If you love pizza, if you love steak, I don't have to be commanded to like steak. It's just easy for me to, to like steak.

I'm just going to like steak. It's going to be good. It's going to, I'm going to enjoy it. But if you try, you try to get me to eat something I don't like, like if you smear mayonnaise all over my burger, I don't care how much you say that that mayonnaise is going to make this burger good and you're going to love it. I'm not going to love it.

I hate mayonnaise, yucky, yucky, you know, gooey all over the place. I don't, I don't, I don't like it. I've tried. You can say it all you want to. I barely do mayonnaise.

I do maybe a little bit of mayonnaise on, on my ham sandwich or something like that. That's about the best you're going to get out of me. But I, I, you are not going to get me to, to eat that. You're not going to get me to eat beets. My wife loves beets.

Beets are great for her. She thinks they're candy, but man, I'm telling you, I don't care how much you tell me that beets are good. How much she tells me how good beets are. I do not have a desire to eat beets. Therefore I, I do.

And that's the dilemma when God commands us to love God and love others that we, it's something that can't be commanded. That's why love of this kind has to be received before it's shown. It has to be received. And that's where we discover the secret of this. This is where I'm landing.

That we, the secret of this chapter is that we have to receive it before it's shown. Let, let me ask you a question. When, when we went through that list, didn't it seem like Paul was describing somebody else in that? His name is Jesus. He was speaking about Jesus.

I believe when Paul was putting together that list, he was thinking of the heart of Jesus. Let's, let's just enter Jesus in all those places. Jesus is patient. Jesus is kind. Jesus considered our knees higher than, than his own and bore himself on the cross for our sins, right?

Jesus does not envy or boast. He did not consider equality with God, something to grasp it. But, but he emptied himself of glory and made himself a servant to serve others and to save us. Jesus was not arrogant. He was not rude.

Jesus is not insisting on his own way. In fact, he prayed, thy will not matter. I will be dying. Jesus was not irritable or resentful. He was a friend of sinners, a man of sorrows, acquainted with greed.

Jesus did not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoiced with the truth. Of all the laws the Father gave him, he said, not one single one of them, not one jot and tittle is taken away. He was rejoicing in truth. Jesus did not rejoice at wrongdoing or rejoice in truth. And Jesus bore all things, believed all things, and hoped all things, and endured all things.

His love would not let go until he could declare boldly on the cross that it is finished. That's our God, Jesus. Looks like Paul was describing Jesus in this scripture. And love like what is described in 1 Corinthians 13 has to be received before it's shown. You have to receive that love.

And what Paul is thinking of is the person of Jesus. And that's why Paul, the apostle said, we loved him because why? Because it's the right thing to do? Because we need to memorize a list? Or because we have accountability of partner?

Or we just get a ticket out of hell? I mean, is that what it says? No, it says because he first loved us. Knowing the love of God for you produces the love of God in you. Only Jesus' love can give you the freedom to love others like this 1 Corinthians 13 love.

It's only by confidence in a loving, the loving plan of God, a Jesus Christ in your life, that he is responsible to meet your needs. And he will cause all things to work together for the good of those who love him. And if you believe that, you can be free from the dependency of everybody else, of the affirmation and the acceptance. When you have Jesus, you are fulfilled. Happiness and fulfillment and security can't be found in people.

It can only be found in Jesus. And of course, your friends has to appreciate you more. Of course, your wife and your husband has to be this and say this. But when you are confident in Jesus' love, you are not captive to them anymore. If they miss out on what they're supposed to be as a husband or a wife, or if they miss out on them being what they're supposed to be as as a good friend or good neighbor, you're independent of that because your dependence is on the God who loves you.

That you place your love in him. Only Jesus' love can keep you from boasting and being envious. Why do we boast? We boast because we're insecure. But if I have Jesus, if I'm insecure in his love, then none of that really matters.

I don't have to be boastful. I don't have to be envious. And I can be happy in Jesus. There's an old hymn that said, being happy in Jesus, we'd sing in church all the time. You can be happy in Jesus.

Be happy in Jesus. Only Jesus' love fills the emptiness of our hearts. Only Jesus. Tim Keller uses a great analogy in his book, The Freedom of Self-Forgetfulness. He says, the only time we usually think about a part of our body when it's hurting is when it's hurting.

I'm not thinking about my knee right now because it's not hurting. It's just there. But when it's hurting, I think about it all the time. Walking, standing up, getting out of bed. And Keller says, when you're always thinking about yourself all the time, do you know what that tells you about yourself?

You've got a problem. And your soul is hurting. And because if you are working well, if your soul's working well, if your soul wasn't hurting, you wouldn't be thinking about you all day. You'd be healthy enough to think about others. And only Jesus can heal that part of you.

The love of Jesus gives you the acceptance you crave, the significance you crave. His promises give you security. His promises teach you about love. And how could you hold somebody accountable for a $2 offense when Jesus has cleared you of billions of dollars of offenses? That's the love of God.

When you know that, how could you keep record of wrong to somebody else when God has forgiven you of all those things? And again, only by soaking yourself in the love of God, in the love of Jesus Christ, can you truly love others and grow in the love of God the way that this 1 Corinthians 13 love is. That's the only way. That's why 1 John 4, 19 says, we love because he first loved us. So press into the unconditional love of God and Jesus Christ and ask God's spirit to produce this 1 Corinthians love in you and in me.

Let's read the last chapter as we end here, or the last part of this chapter as we end here, because it will set us up for the next few weeks. Love never ends. Verse 8, it never go, is never going away. Not for all eternity. God's love always, always, always is and always will be.

As for prophecy, they will pass away. As for tongues, it will cease. As for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part. That's just saying that we're not in the presence of God yet, guys.

That's why we need prophecy. That's why we need miracles. That's why we need tongues. We need knowledge. We need all these things.

But verse 10 says, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child. When I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. So I needed things like prophecy. I needed things like miracles.

I needed things like tongues. And I needed all these wonderful gifts. But when the perfect is When the return of Jesus comes, and when all things are made right, the partial will pass away, right? And when I became a man, I grew up in childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face.

Right now we can't really see because we're not in the presence of God yet. We see dimly what God is doing, but one day we will see face to face. Now I know in part, then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. All these other gifts, Paul says, will fade away because, guess what, you'll have jobs in heaven. You might even have a glorified version of yourself, but there's only three jobs I know there won't be in heaven.

There won't be police officers, there won't be doctors, and there won't be preachers. Why is that? Because you don't need, there won't be anybody doing anything wrong in heaven. And doctors, you know, you don't need any healing anymore, right? And preachers, we got Jesus.

We don't need to preach Jesus anymore because Jesus is there preaching to us, praise God. In heaven we'll not need prophecy because everything will be made perfect before us. The mind of God will be available to us. And we have no gifts of exhortation or teaching because the knowledge of the Lord will cover the heavens and the earth. We won't need miracles because we don't have to be sick anymore.

We won't be sick anymore. Amen, get, but what will remain is verse 13. So now faith, hope, and love abide. These three things, but the greatest of these, what is it? It's love.

Love lasts forever. Faith, hope, and love lasts forever. And the greatest of these is love. It is the currency of heaven. It's love.

So if you're going to focus on growing in anything in the Christian life, focus on growing in love. If we're going to grab on to a gift and hold on to it tighter than anything else, what does that need to be? This first Corinthians type of love. And once you get that, everything else in the Christian life comes as natural as roses on a rose bush. The good news of the gospel is you can't produce it in yourself.

You can't make it happen in you. Soak yourself in the love of God. Get into the love of God. The irony of the Christian life is that the only ones that get better are the ones that know their acceptance isn't based on getting better. That the love of God, to open our hands, to open our hearts to the love of God and Jesus Christ.

Can we do that today? Let's close in prayer and ask God's love just to pour on us today, Lord. Father, we thank you, God, for your word. We thank you that you sent the apostle Paul to write this lovely letter to the Corinthians so that a few thousand years later we would have it in our hands to be able to speak to our lives as well. God, we desire to be a church that loves, that doesn't hate, that encourages, that doesn't gossip, that builds up and doesn't put down, that walks with each other and lives side by side, not putting one gift above the other, Lord, but everybody celebrating their gifts in unity, Lord Jesus.

The things that you could do in this world, Lord. If we just capture just a glimpse of what real love is, that you first loved us, that when we were yet sinners, you gave your life for us. We were undeserving. We didn't deserve any of it, Lord Jesus. There was nothing available to us, Lord, but death and hell.

Because that's what we deserve. That's really what works does. It sends us away from you, Lord, rather than to you. That's the good news of your gospel, Lord Jesus, that you loved us so much that you gave your life for us. Lord, let us know that even more, even greater.

At a greater level, Lord, we ask God that we surrender our hearts to you, to experience you. We open up our hearts to you today, Lord, to experience the love that we can't manufacture, we can't command, Lord. If we know that you first loved us, why me? Why you? Why anybody in this place, Lord?

God, if there's somebody here today that doesn't know you at a personal level, doesn't have a personal relationship with you, Lord, we ask God. If you're here today and you want a relationship with Jesus, if you want to experience this love, he's already tugging at your heart. Just submit to him. Just agree with him. Just pray this.

Lord, Lord, I believe that you are the son of God, that you love me so much that you gave your life on the cross for me. When I was yet a sinner, you saved me. Come into my life. Come into my heart. Cover me with the blood, Lord.

Heal me inside, spiritually in deep places, Lord. Come into my life and walk with me. Show me your love, Lord.