Are you a lover? (Part 2)

Thanks for tuning in to No Compromise Radio with pastor and author, Dr. Mike Avendroff. Today on No Compromise Radio, we'll be hearing Pastor Mike open the Word of God in a recent message he preached at Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, Massachusetts.

Now let's join Pastor Mike in progress as he preaches through the Scriptures, verse by verse, with No Compromise.

Love Is Needed Because It Is the More Excellent Way

Third hypothetical is found in verse 3. Love is needed. We need love here at our church. Why? Because it is the more excellent way. Verse 3, if I give away all I have, by the way, that is an ongoing giving.

Jesus said to the rich young ruler, pretty much give everything that you've got. That would have been a lump sum one time giving. This is an ongoing tense. If you just keep on giving and keep on giving in your whole life, you just give and give and give and give and give and give and give.

That's just what you do is you give. And if you deliver up your body to be burned but have not love, you think you're gaining it all, but you're really losing it. Other people might be gaining in spite of you, but you're losing.

Now if I give away all I have, that's easy to interpret, but the textual apparatus we use to study Greek manuscripts in this second part says, if I deliver up my body to be burned. That's not the best translation.

That's not the best manuscript. That's not the oldest manuscript that's closest to the New Testament. The best translation is, give over my body that I may boast. That I may boast. NAS doesn't have boast, ESV doesn't have boast.

And it's really a one-letter difference if we transliterate it. Calcesamai is to be burned. Calcesamai is to boast. Catch the difference? It wasn't really much of a difference. I could have just used a little more guttural spitting sound and you would have got that to burn word.

Now certainly burning Christians, martyring Christians was something that happened, but it didn't happen until later on. They crucify Christians. Then a little bit later on, past the New Testament, then they'd end up burning Christians.

So certainly it would be true if you give your body to be burned but you didn't have love, you have nothing. That's true. But what Paul is really saying is, if I give over my body that I may boast. What do you mean give over your body?

You know what they would do back in those days? You know what people at Corinth did 30 years after this letter was written? They gave themselves into slavery and the money that they got from selling themselves into slavery, they gave to their family for food.

Listen to Clement writing to the church at Corinth towards the end of the first century. We know many among ourselves who have given themselves up to bonds in order that they might ransom others. Many too have surrendered themselves to slavery that with the price which they receive for themselves, they might provide food for others.

Both are true. The textual evidence is clearly, if I'm going to give myself up to slavery and then boast about it, oh, you might have benefited from the money for food, but I didn't benefit anything because it wasn't done for your good.

It was done for me to look good. They were wrong side up. The Corinthians were. One scholar said the totality of the gift, giving yourself, contrasts dramatically with the nothingness of the result. I can even give my entire being for slavery or for martyrdom and then my return is, if it's selfish, is zero.

That's worse than Facebook stock for sure. Dedicate my life to seeking gain for others is the right way to go about it. Paul says love is necessary and then he describes what love is. Let's go to verses four through seven.

You've got to have love if you want to minister effectively here based on what Jesus, the risen Savior, has done for you. You've also got to know what it's like and how to define it and that's what we have here.

Maybe not a definition, but more of a description of what it does. Fifteen descriptions of agape love. Action-oriented, much more than feelings. Fifteen descriptions. So, guess what our outline is going to be today?

How many points are we going to have? Well, it's Baptist Church, so three points and a poem. No, 15 points. Fifteen descriptions of love, some negative, some positive. Don't forget this, specifically for Corinth.

We could learn, husbands and wives can learn, our church could learn, but it's because Corinth did the exact opposite. There's more to be said about love in the Bible, much more, but for the Corinthians, this is what they needed.

They didn't need some kind of, well, love your neighbors yourself and the Corinthians are like, well, that's a little too vague. Could you define it more? Could you describe it more? And Paul does that very thing.

An other regard. If God is for us, we ought to be for other people. Now one of the things you'll notice as we start going through this list, is it's going to be hard to live up to this list. It's a demanding list and you're going to start noticing right away that Corinth needs this and God is just like this.

If they would have done these things, their problems would have been solved. The unity problem would have been solved. The immorality problem would have been solved. Civil ligations would have been, they would have been solved.

Everything would have been solved if they would have loved one another like Christ loves his church. There's something rotten in Denmark, except here it's rotten in Corinth and so this is the solution.

By the way, if your life here in the church is bad towards other people, if your marriage is bad towards your spouse, God loves repentance and today's the day that you can start loving your spouse. Today's the day.

Today's a good day to start. Self-originating love, number one. Let me put them in the form of questions so it's more effective for preaching. First Corinthians 13 .4, 15 descriptions of love. Number one, love is patient in the form of a question.

Are you a patient person? Now this word has to do with not patient during circumstances, but patient with other people. Other people bug, provoke, they get under your skin and love is patient. It waits well.

God is forbearing, slow to anger, Exodus 34. We are his children. We ought to be the same. Self-restraint. Somebody's bugging you and you aren't going to fly off the handle being impatient. Romans 2 talks about the patience of God.

Do you think lightly of the riches of his patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance? And by the way, this is a bearing up without complaint. I know how to act in front of other people and so I can try to become patient, but in my mind underneath it all, it's the murmuring and the complaining and I can't believe I have to do this with this person and I can't believe they're saying this and it's, no, love says I want what's best for you and I'm just going to bear up.

You aggravate me, but I'm going to love you. That didn't sound like I wanted it to come across. When people are aggravating, then we need to love. That's better. Number two, love is kind. Are you kind?

Now patience is this. I'm not going to retaliate when you're aggravating me. Kindness is, oh, you have a need in your life? I'll meet that need. Where one is more passive, this is more initiating. You've got a need and I'll meet that need.

That's what kindness is used of God in Psalm 24, Psalm 30, Psalm 33, lots of times kindness is used. How about Ephesians 4? Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ forgave you.

Luke 6, how about this? 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 God himself is kind to ungrateful and evil men.

Helping. Do you help people? Do you seek out their needs? Paul Harvey had a story about a man named Carl Coleman who was a kind man. Fender bender, both cars stopped. Young woman was crying. She said it was her fault, it was a new car.

Two days ago she bought it and drove it out of the showroom. How could she face her husband? Mr. Coleman was sympathetic but explained he needed the driver's license number and registration. She reached in the glove compartment for her registration and on the first page of paper written in heavy masculine scrawl, the account says, were these words, in case of accident, remember honey, it's you I love, not the car.

Isn't that kind of a nice moment here at the church? That's like a Mother's Day moment on Father's Day. But that is kindness. That is kindness ahead of time. I'm going to be kind ahead of time. Now Paul goes into some negative behaviors that Corinth had.

Number three, love is not jealous or envious. Do you envy? Do you see it in verse four? Love does not envy. If Corinth could have gotten this right, party strife would have been over. They were envious.

Cain envied Abel, killed him. Joseph's brothers, envious, tried to kill him, almost killed him. Jews jealous of Paul and Barnabas. Somebody's got some success and instead of going, bless the Lord for him doing that for you, you want what they've got.

S. Lewis Johnson's right. He said when people are weeping and they've lost a loved one, it's real easy to come alongside of them and weep with them. But when they've just got some kind of great gift of money, they've got won something, some great accomplishment, it's harder to come alongside and say, I rejoice with you.

But love is supposed to do that. Be pleased with the success of others. And if Jesus has died for them, if they are Christians, that would be a good thing because God wants their best. We should want their best too.

Paul goes on to say in number four, love does not brag or boast. Are you a boaster? Are you a windbag? Now boasting in first Corinthians, first Corinthians one, boast in the name of the Lord. Good. We're boasters.

I'm a boaster in the Lord. You're a boaster in the Lord. We've been made to boast in the Lord. That's right. But when the boast is not with the object of our faith, when the boast is not of the object of our faith, it's of us.

Then that's not love because I'm supposed to want what's best for you. But I'm telling you how great I am. And love doesn't boast. And that's exactly what the Corinthians did. Braggarts, boasting, windbag-like.

Jesus wouldn't commend this kind of behavior. This isn't love. This reminds me of Muhammad Ali, the great boxer. I am the greatest. He's on an airplane. The flight attendant says, sorry sir, you've got to put your seatbelt on.

Mr. Ali, you'll have to fix your seatbelt. Superman don't need no seatbelt. Flight attendant said, Superman don't need no airplane either. How can I want what's best for you and love you while I'm bragging about me?

It doesn't go together. These two, it doesn't fit. Number five, love is not arrogant. Found in verse four, it is not arrogant. Pretty much related to the other one, but Paul sets it out here. And I ask you the question, are you arrogant?

The word here is where we get the word fusio, found in chapter four three times, found in chapter five and chapter eight. Remember, it's the sound of blowing up a balloon. Just think about people's heads blown up by their own ego.

Love isn't arrogant. It's not inflated selfishness. Paul goes on and he says in verse five, number six for our descriptions of love. Love does not behave indecently, our ESV says. It's not rude. Now certainly, love should not be rude.

But the underlying key here is, first Corinthians chapter seven talks about treating virgin betrothed ones in a decent manner. In other words, there's a connotation here of sexual impropriety. Love doesn't do that.

And by the way, the Corinthians needed to know that, because this letter is rife with Paul dealing. Go back to chapter six, go back to chapter five, dealing with sexual sin. And love doesn't act unbecomingly or sexually rudely, taking something that isn't yours.

That's rude. And so there are overtones here of sexual sin, improper, inappropriate. Rudeness is always wrong. But here there is a disgraceful sexual rudeness that Paul knows was unseemly, and he talks to them.

Number seven, found in verse five, it does not insist on its own way. Is it your way or the highway? Is that the kind of person you are? As long as everybody does what you say, we're good to go. But when you are crossed and you don't get your way, and Paul says, that's not love.

It does not insist on its own way. And you can think of the condescension of Jesus in Philippians chapter two, cloaking himself with humanity to die on our behalf. He didn't grasp equality with God. He didn't say equality with God is something to be grasped.

He was a great example of selfless love, submitting to the Father. Yes, he willingly went, but he submitted to the Father and went. If there's any other way to get rid of this cup, Father, would you let me get rid of this cup of temptation?

But no, I'll do what you say. Isaiah 53, the substantiate death of Christ, not seeking his own, not insisting on his own way. Number eight, found in verse five as well. Love is not irritable, found in verse five.

Are you cantankerous? Are you grumpy? I didn't say this the first service because I had to preach this service, but I'll say it now because we're friends. Are you a grumpy old New Englander? Maybe you've got a heart of gold on the inside.

And I've noticed that New Englanders are kind of grumpy on the outside. But once you win them over, they're kind on the inside, at least some of them are. But enough of that New England talk. California people are just nice on the inside, but they don't really care on the, nice on the outside.

But they don't care on the inside, so they're just hypocritical, right? So what's the difference? Irritable, the positive word I think would be poise, grace. The word in Greek is where we get paroxysm, which just means a fit.

A fit of anger, short fused. Some people actually brag that this is them. Don't cross with me, I got a short fuse. I say what's on my mind. That's not love, that's not godly, that's not helpful for them.

You mean to tell me that when I talk that way to anyone, that's actually good for them? That's wanting the best for that person? No. Number nine, found in verse five, it's not resentful. According to the ESV, the NASS does not keep a record of wrongs, found in verse five.

Now, if you keep a record of wrongs, you will become bitter and resentful. If God keeps no record of wrongs because they're already paid for by Christ Jesus, if God doesn't count our sins against us, Psalm 32, because they've been counted against Christ to count on Calvary.

If we count sins against people, we'll become resentful. But if we've been forgiven for two million sins, Matthew 18, ought we not to forgive other people for their sins? And that's what love does. I've sinned more against God than you've sinned against me.

And if God has forgiven me, how can I not forgive you? And if I forgive you, then I'm not going to be resentful. Sad story, but I had a loved one, I can say her name now, but my grandmother. And she was the most resentful person I ever met.

Now, there are probably more people that were more resentful than she was, but I just didn't know them. And something that happens to old people sometimes is they lose their, as children say things that they think, but there's no veneer of politeness.

Sometimes older people do the same thing and they just say what they think. And since my grandmother could not forgive people, she was resentful. Friends, we should not resent anyone because we have been forgiven so many sins.

If somebody comes to you, if your spouse comes to you and says, will you please forgive me? I'm sorry I sinned against you and against God. I've asked God to forgive me. Do you think you could please forgive me?

Could anyone in their right mind thinking biblically say no? I'll have to think about it. No, I'll let you see if you earn your repentance around the house, and then I'll give you my communication and my affection.

Love is not resentful. I just can't wait to show my spouse. Every time they sin, I'm gonna write down what they do and one day just show them that entire big list. Actually, that was an illustration that I read about.

My spouse did that. You know what, let's write down, if you do something that bugs me, let's write that down and at the end of the month, let's all get together and talk about it. And so the one spouse did all that, and then the other spouse showed the little scraps of paper to the spouse and everyone said, I love you on it.

That is exactly right. This is cost accounting terminology. This is, I got a little black book, and every time you do something bad, I'm gonna have a little mental deal. By the way, if somebody says to you, please forgive me, you can never bring it up to God, yourself, or them ever, ever again.

The words of forgive me, when granted, I forgive you, you never bring it up again. And then you don't have to replay, I know what that person said to me on that day, Father's Day, 3 o 'clock in the afternoon, standing over the grill, smoking my eyes, there's the filet, didn't even eat it because then we got in a big fight, how do you remember all those details?

I can't remember what happened last week. How do you remember the details? Because you overplay them and replay them and memorize them so you know every single detail, that's not love. That's what the Corinthians were doing, mental bookkeeping.

Number ten, let's just go through these quickly. Number ten, it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, found in verse six. You should love justice, God does. You should hate injustice, God does. You should hate gay pride parades, because God does.

You should hate Jerry Springer's show, because God does. When something is up there and it's inappropriate, clapping is not the loving response. Good, at least there's somebody who's worse off than I am, yay.

No. Number 11, found in verse six, love rejoices with the truth, do you? It doesn't suppress the truth. It doesn't exchange truth for a lie, Romans 1. If Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, it affirms the truth, it embraces the truth, stands up by courage to preach the truth.

Number 12, love bears all things. Art covers all things, is a good way to translate it. Number 12, found in verse seven. Now when he says all things in verse seven, all things, all things, all things, all things, Paul is being, he's exaggerating here, because there's some things that we can't bear, that we can't hope, that we can't believe, we're not these super gullible people.

And we bear falsehood, or we bear blasphemy, but he's just trying to say all-roundedly, love bears all things. And that word there, to bear, means to throw a cloak over, to cover. And that's how you endure it.

The picture is, I throw a cloak over something that's displeasing to me, and that's the way I endure that. I bear it, I cover it. Verse seven, number 13, love believes all things. This doesn't mean be tricked by Jehovah's witnesses at your door.

This just means you give people the benefit of the doubt. When your kids say something to you, and I'm going to do X, Y, and Z at some set of time and all that, I go, okay, believes all things. I'm going to just want what's best for you.

Number 14, love hopes all things, hopeful, optimistic, yet not just the way the world does it, but knowing Jesus is coming back and is going to make every wrong right. Hoping all things, that's what biblical hope is, not I hope so.

But I hope so because Jesus is coming back, 1 Thessalonians 4, we just read it. Some people grieve like they don't have any hope. We grieve with hope, because we know Christ is going to come back. And then finally, number 15, love endures all things.

With a tenacious steadfastness, love doesn't give up. So now if we look big picture at chapter 13, verses 4 to 7, what if you put your name in there? Many commentators have said to do that, but what if you just did?

I'll tell you, when I put my name in there, I am depressed. Let's try. Mike is patient, Mike is kind, Mike does not envy, Mike does not boast, Mike is not arrogant, Mike is not rude, Mike does not insist on his own way, Mike is not irritable, Mike is not resentful, Mike does not rejoice at wrongdoing, Mike rejoices with the truth, Mike bears all things, Mike believes all things, Mike hopes all things, Mike endures all things.

Who could live up to that? I mean, really? If you live your life with all these imperatives and never then say, but there's a triumphant indicative, as Machen would talk about, there is someone who is this, who was this for you, who grants forgiveness because when God sees you, he sees you in Christ.

Then I read it and I think, Christ is patient, Christ is kind, Christ does not envy or boast, Christ is not arrogant, Christ is not rude, Christ does not insist on his own way, Christ is not irritable, Christ is not resentful, Christ does not rejoice at wrongdoing, Christ rejoices with the truth, Christ bears all things, Christ believes all things, Christ hopes all things, Christ endures all things.

Thank God I have a representative substitute. That's what we say. And if there's anything wrong with these verses on your pillowcase, it's only wrong if you don't think of them in light of your representative substitute, because who could live like this?

Jesus is the only one. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Ebendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God's Word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 8 .30 and 11 a .m. and Sunday evenings at 6 p .m. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston, Massachusetts. You can check us out online at bbcchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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