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For those of you that might have been looking for the message this morning to be, Our God is Great, I apologize, ahead of time it will be a different message and I'd ask you if you'd please turn in your Bibles to 1 Corinthians.
Just open your Bibles to the book of 1 Corinthians and as you're turning there. I have watched my wife, Deb, cook in the kitchen and on occasion she has taken some of the juices that come out of the meat that is cooked and mixes some things in the cabinets and out of the refrigerator in that pan and reduces it down to this golden, great, rich gravy.
It reduces down. Some of you have nodded your heads, you know what I'm talking about. Where's that going, Brother Dave? Well, let me put it this way to try to kick off. It's always good, they say, to kind of introduce where you're heading.
If you could take your Christianity, if you could take what you and I believe, as believers, those who are the children of God, and if you could stick it in a pan for a period of time and you could reduce it down, what would it reduce to?
And that's the nail that I'm going to hit on this morning, over and over again, as Brother Dave usually does. As you turn in your Bibles, of course, you may already be thinking where he's going to be going.
And if you were thinking 1 Corinthians 13, you're right. 1 Corinthians 13, if you'd turn with me there, please. And I would just like to read the first three verses. I'm reading from the King James. When I read and I say the word charity, of course, in your translation it may say the word love.
1 Corinthians 13, 1, though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. Though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith so that I could remove mountains and have not charity, I am nothing.
And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned and have not charity, it profits me nothing. Shall we pray together? Our Father in heaven, it is our desire, as has already been prayed, that as this message goes forward, that I may be hidden, and that your word may be brought to the forefront, and that you would speak to the hearts of your people, and, Lord, that you would speak to those that are outside of Christ in something that is said this morning, that they too may see what it means to become a Christian, to be saved by the grace of God.
Particularly for your people this morning, I ask that you give us not only ears to hear, but hearts to receive your word. We don't want to leave here the same that we came in. We want to be changed. We want to be made more like the image of our blessed Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
And, O God, only you can do that. And so we ask that you, by the ministry of the Holy Spirit, would apply this word to us and tear us and shape us and mold us and make us into the people you desire for us to be.
For the glory of Christ we pray. Amen. This is a chapter that is known to many of us. It is one of the greatest, strongest, deepest writings of the Apostle Paul. Some have called 1 Corinthians 13 a hymn of love.
Something that we should note with this chapter is that this is part of a letter. This is part of the book of Corinthians, 1 Corinthians, this first epistle, written to a troubled church. And the book of 1 Corinthians is pretty negative in many ways in that Paul had to deal with some major issues that were going on in the church.
And if you remember in chapter 1 there were divisions in the body. In chapter 3 there was factionism or cliques or partyism. In chapter 3 there was also, he spoke to them about carnal living. In chapter 4 there was spiritual pride.
In chapter 5 there was gross sexual immorality. Six, Christians taking other Christians to heathen courts. In chapter 7, ignorance of the marital duties and obligations. In chapter 8 there was ignorance in the area of Christian liberty.
And in chapter 9, questioning of Paul's apostleship. In 11 there was drunkenness at the Lord's table and they were not observing the Lord's table properly. And then in chapter 12 and in chapter 14, the Apostle Paul is instructing because in the Corinthian church there was ignorance, there was pride, and there was misapplication when it came to the spiritual gifts.
It was a focus, a negative focus, Paul having to correct them. Then we come to chapter 13 and you know about this chapter where it speaks of love or charity. It is a breath of fresh air. It is a positive change from Paul's previous arguments and explanations and warnings.
It kind of reminds me sometimes when Naomi, our daughter, was living at home. She plays the piano and there would be times when I'd be studying and it would be a grueling time sometimes. And I'm going through the message and all of a sudden I would hear the piano start playing and Naomi was practicing and it was just a breath of fresh air.
I would just stop, kind of close my eyes, pray and be renewed and go on in my studies. Well, this is what this chapter is like. And I want you to be careful to look at this chapter in its context and we need to take note that it follows or it continues the teaching of the Apostle Paul in chapter 12.
And then it goes on, of course, in chapter 14, the same subject of dealing with spiritual gifts. Chapter 13, as I said, comes right after chapter 12. And in chapter 12, the Apostle Paul deals with how the Holy Spirit brings the different members of a church together and how precious and how special that is.
And don't you ever think that you can't do anything or you don't have a great part in the church or an important part. We're all important. We're all valued. We're all going to be used of the Lord here at BBC as members of this body, the local body of the Lord being expressed here upon the earth in a New Testament church.
It's a precious thing. And he speaks in there about how there are different members and there are different gifts in the Spirit of God giving different spiritual gifts to different people. And those gifts are blended, those gifts are combined in the church so that the whole body profits, so that there isn't any schism, so that it functions well as it ought to.
And then he gets down to the end of chapter 12 and he lists off in verse 28, he says, there are some first apostles and prophets and teachers and he's listing these gifts, miracles and healings and helps and governments and all this.
And he says, are they all apostles? Are they all prophets? Are they all teachers? Are they all workers of miracles? Have all the gifts of healing, do all speak with tongues, do all interpret? And this is what Paul is dealing with.
They were coveting. They were going after. They were seeking after showy gifts. They were seeking out of their selfishness. They were seeking preeminence. They were seeking position. They were seeking the offices.
And Paul says here in verse 31, he says, but covet or desire earnestly the best gifts or the greater gifts. And then he says, and yet I show you a more excellent way. I'm going to show you, Paul says, a better way.
And of course we don't have the chapter divisions in the Greek and it goes right on to chapter 13 where Paul is going to show them something that is a way that is more excellent, a way that is greater, a way that is different than the way that they were currently desiring, the way that they were going and the focus and the attention that they had is supposed to be in a different area.
Chapter 12 then discusses the receiving of the gifts. Chapter 14 discusses the proper way to exercise those gifts. And right in the middle we have this chapter 13 where he deals with a certain aspect of gifts, spiritual gifts.
And as I think about this and we look at this, chapter 13 deals with the proper motivation that we ought to have in our Christian life when it comes to exercising our spiritual gifts. It's the proper motivation.
It is the power, the energy or the environment that these spiritual gifts are supposed to operate in. The gifts themselves, Paul is saying, is not the excellent way. That's the Corinthians where they had it wrong.
The gifts aren't the excellent way. The gifts aren't the greater way. But the motivation behind your gifts and my gifts and the reason we exercise those gifts in the local church for the profit of the body.
See, that's the difference. The Corinthian church, there was selfishness. And what can I get out of this? What's in it for me? What is it that when I come to the church service or when we all gather together as a body, what is going to be coming my way?
The apostle Paul is going to teach them in chapter 13 that it's not about you as is so prevalent in the culture in which we live today, but it is about honoring God and it is about serving others and it is about thinking about others before yourself.
And it is about mutual love for other people and showing that type of love. And I guess I would ask this question. Have you ever thought and asked yourself the question, why are you doing the things that you do that you call serving the Lord?
Why do you do them? Hopefully you will have an answer near the end. I think you'll have the answer from 1 Corinthians 13, hopefully where it kind of just boiled down in my studies. And hopefully I can bring that across this morning.
But I believe that Paul is saying here, I will show you a better way of demonstrating your zeal for the Lord. I will show you a better way to serve Christ. I will show you a better way for handling yourself in the body.
Better than aspiring to be an apostle or a teacher or a ruler in the church. Matthew Henry said, to have the heart glow with mutual love is vastly better than to glare with the most pompous titles, offices or powers.
Did you get that? To have your heart glow with mutual love is better than to glare with power and pomp and honor within the church. So I think as we see and I think as you understand, as we move into 1 Corinthians chapter 13, a chapter which begins in verses 1 through 3, dealing with the excellence of love.
Now there are also in this chapter the characteristics of love, the permanence of love, the superiority of love. Those are other messages. Lord willing, maybe we can get there. But first and foremost, we're going to start off with the excellence of love.
For those that are, those person who's looking for the title of the message, I believe that would be a good one. The excellence of love, the text, 1 Corinthians 13, 1 through 3. Paul begins this chapter by trying to point out how preeminent love is.
And we're going to see that. I mean, there's going to be no question about it that this is important. And I hope that as you examine yourself, as you listen to this message, and you think about this, and then you're going to go home and hopefully think about the message.
And I think about that man that was up there and what he did wrong and what he did right. And these inflections and these weird phrases and the things that he did. But the message from God of what God has to say is key and what is vital and what we ought to latch on to this morning.
And I believe it's the excellence of love. Or how important love is and how the Corinthian church had been wasting their time. They had been sinning. They had been misdirected in their focus. If you remember, Paul recognized that they did have many spiritual gifts.
There's no doubt about it. They were a gifted church, but they didn't focus and they didn't go the more excellent way. They were operating in the flesh and not in love. And he wrote this church to correct that problem.
And Paul's not saying, I mean, Paul is not saying, and you'll see as we read through here, he's saying, though I speak with the tongues of men and angels. These different things that he's saying, he's using hyperbole here.
He's stretching it to the max. He's saying, if I could do these things or if you and I could do these things, even if we could do these types of things, if we lack something, then it's wasted. Then it's nothing.
I think you're going to see that as we go. Even if we could be the super Christian and do these mighty things, if there is no love behind our speech, if there is no love behind our actions, if there is no love in the knowledge that we acquire and how we use that knowledge or in the faith that we have and how that is exercised or shows itself in our lives, or even if we ultimately sacrifice ourselves, as he says here, it does not matter.
It means nothing. It will come up short if it is loveless. If our life is loveless. He's attempting to set the Corinthian believers straight because, as I said before, they coveted the showy gifts, but they neglected the greatest, most important aspect of Christian living, and that is to have a heart that glows with love.
Love for God and mutual love for others, and it expresses itself because love acts. Love does something. Love, as you know, agape love, ultimately in the scriptures, when it speaks of love, love sacrifices itself.
Any time that you see when it talks about God loving for God so loved the world that what he kept, no, he gave. God demonstrated his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
Here in his love, 1 John 4 .10, not that we love God, but that he loved us and gave his son to be the propitiation for our sins. When there is a love expressed or shown in the Bible, it is a giving. It is a sacrifice.
And what's the matter with that? What is the matter with the culture in which we live? As I said earlier, it is more blessed to receive than to give in this culture. The biblical principle is that it is more blessed to give than to receive, just turned around the opposite in a godless, Christless world.
And we in the church ought to exemplify, we ought to manifest what the scriptures say when it comes to love, and that is that we ought to be a sacrificing people. I want that to be thinking about, be in your mind as we start going through these things.
What does it mean to love? I mean when Paul goes in here in chapter 4, I mean chapter 13, and he starts talking about how that charity suffers long, and we're not going to get there. That's the characteristics of love.
Charity suffers long or charity in your translation may say charity or love is patient. It's long suffering. Actually, in the Greek it means to be long-tempered. It means to be, as I read once, to be long-fused.
I remember one time when I was younger, have you ever seen a whole pack of firecrackers all kind of woven together, and somebody lights them and throws them out and they all go off? Well, you know, invariably there's some that don't go off.
And you could go and try to capitalize on those, and sometimes the ones that you get, they have a very short fuse, and you've got to be very, very careful when you go to light those, because it's going to go quick.
And what that idea is, is that when we're dealing with other people, if we are short-fused, that means the fireworks are going to go off quickly. We are going to snap at people. I'm going to get that person.
I don't care. And what is that? That is selfishness. That is pride. That is not the attitude that is spoken of here, because love is to be patient with other people, even when they don't get it, even when the unbeliever doesn't understand it.
And we see these characteristics coming out. We're not going to get there, but I want you to see that practically as we go through these first three verses. When I talk about at a very high scale or grand scale the excellency of love and how vital it is, I want you to be remembering that all along in the believer's life that love does show itself.
Love does act. I mean, love is kind. It looks for opportunities to do other people good. Love doesn't boil over with envy. Love isn't a windbag, as the word here is in the background of the word, as far as not vaunting or bragging about itself.
It's not puffed up. It doesn't behave itself rudely. It's not rude. It's not indecent. It's not shameful. It does not seek her own. That means it's not selfish. It looks to help other people. It's not puffed up.
It's not conceited. It's not proud. It thinks no evil. It doesn't hold records against other people. What other thing, then, is necessary than true love in the life of a believer, especially when we gather together as a group of people and as we live together and how untoward we are to each other?
With all of our warts and bumps and bruises, I remember Pastor Mike told me, I used to hear him say that when I first came to the church, he said, I'm a living human being. If you stay around me long enough, I'm going to offend you.
And how true that is. But how are we going to deal with it when it comes to handling those things and those situations that come up? How are we going to treat each other? Well, it ought to be out of love.
Let's see what the Apostle Paul says about the excellency of love. Chapter 13, verse 1, he says, As though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and I have not charity, I am become as a sounding brass, or I am become as a noisy gong, or a clanging cymbal, a tinkling cymbal.
The word for tongues in the Greek is glossa. It is the Greek word for language. It refers to a normal, intelligent, human-spoken language. It was the spiritual gift that was exercised on the day of Pentecost when the disciples spoke and all the men from all the different locales around heard the message in their own tongue or language.
What Paul is saying is even if God gave me or even if God gave you the gift of tongues, languages, and even if I could speak with a special angelic voice and vocabulary, it would not amount to anything if the words were not accompanied with love or the words were not spoken in love.
What will it sound like? If they're loveless words, I am become as a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And Paul may have been alluding to the erroneous worship of his day wherein at this time there were people who honored their false gods in pagan worship by speaking in ecstatic languages along with or accompanied with noises of gongs, cymbals, and trumpets.
So what Paul is saying here is if you try to exercise your spiritual gift in the flesh, which the Corinthian church was doing, no matter how sincere you are or how gifted you are or how great it sounds, if love is not your motive, it is no better than the gibberish of a pagan worship.
I think that ought to cause us to think about what we do and how we say what we say and why we say. It troubles me about myself, and if it troubles me about myself, maybe it does for you or maybe trouble is not the word, but every once in a while I will stop in my tracks and I will say, why am I doing that?
Why do I want to teach that Sunday school class? Why would I want to preach? Why would I want to counsel somebody? Why do I want to marry those two folks that come to me and they want to be married? And I can only tell you that for me, and I know it would be the same for you as a believer, and I hope that you could say this, is that you are what you are, and I am what I am by the grace of God.
God has saved me. God has plucked me out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock and established my going. I'm a child of God through the great work of God, the great work of salvation.
And what has God done? He has shed the love of God abroad in my heart for him and for others. And I desire to show, and I may not be good at what I do, and you may not be good at what you do, but if it is with a motive of love, it means everything.
And it brings glory to God. And it is an honor to the Lord. And it is the right way to do it. It is the excellent way. It is the greater way. So speaking and teaching and preaching, talking about Jesus to other people, and testimonies and giving counsel and instructing children in Sunday school classes, or giving advice to others, if it is done without the Spirit of God, without the fruit of the Spirit, and the first one is, the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5 is love.
If it is done without love, it is just a big gong. It is noise and not melody. It is no substance. It is not the real thing. Have you ever traveled in an airplane going along and all of a sudden the PA system comes on?
Don't you just love it? This is your captain speaking. I am on a plane with Deb and she says, what did the captain say? And I said, he said, I have no idea. That is what our life is like if what we say is without love.
It is a noise. There is no substance. There is no reality in it. But brethren, my beloved brothers and sisters in Christ, if you speak five words from your heart and you have a desire for the glory of God and to show that you love the person that you are speaking to, it is worth more than all the text in a secular library.
There is substance there. There is meaning to it. And what is scary about this verse is if you look at it, he says, if I could speak with the tongues of men and of angels and I don't have charity, I become this emptiness, this noise that has no substance.
And I would encourage you to live a life of ministry with love so that it has an abiding substance. I encourage you that if you would desire that your life would count to matter, then love must be present.
I've got to go on to verse two. Then he goes in his hyperbole, in his teaching here, he says, and though I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge and though I have all faith so that I could remove mountains and have not charity, I am nothing.
Though I have the gift of prophecy, I am able to, this is a great gift in the scripture. In chapter 14, Paul speaks of it as one of the greatest spiritual gifts. Why? Because prophecy means the ability to proclaim God's truth.
This is one of the meanings of it. To proclaim God's truth in a language that people hear and understand. It means you can publicly proclaim the truth of God with clarity, with power to interpret life by relating God's principles to life itself, to help other people, to give them an understanding.
Like in the book of Nehemiah, when they got up and read the word of God and then the other men went around and gave the people an understanding. That's what it is, to speak the truth of God. And how is this that it ought to be done?
How is this wonderful gift to be exercised? Paul is saying here that even if you could do all of this, if you could prophesy, if you could do this wonderful gift, but have no love, it is of no value. And sadly, there are some who preach and teach for the wrong reasons, like pride, self-glory, heartless duty, ambition, prominence in the community.
But anyone who stands up before a group of people to declare God's word must do it in love or it ends up, in this verse, I am nothing. Albert Barnes in his commentary said, Without love, I don't do anything good towards anyone.
I do not live for the greatest purposes which God designed. All is vain in regard to the great purpose of my existence. Unless I have love, I am lost. You may have the ability to preach and teach, or you might not have the ability to preach or teach, but still there are times as believers where you will associate with other people and talk to them.
And let me ask you a question. When you talk to other people, when you're speaking to them, when you're ministering to them, do you love them? I once read that there are many preachers who love to preach, but not many preachers who love the people they preach to.
That is so different here at BBC. You hear Pastor Mike say it all the time, that not only does he know that you love him and you love the Lord and you love the word of God, and yet, and I've spoken to the other elders in the church, we don't labor this way just for us to get a check in our little book, our spiritual checklist book.
We labor in the word and we labor to bring it to you. And I trust it is genuine and it is real. It's because we love you. It's because we want you to hear the truth. We want you to grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord.
And I wonder about you, my brother and sister in Christ. I would add to that statement before, there are many Christians who love to minister and exercise their gifts, but very few of them who really love those they are ministering to.
Theirs is a loveless duty. Theirs is a chore. Theirs is a heartless activity. As a matter of fact, there are many that don't even think of the reason why. As the question I asked earlier, why do they do what they do?
But Paul did, and he says that that motivation must be love. God's word comes to us very clearly in this chapter. If we lack love in the performance of our Christian service, we are nothing. I mean, I had a person at work that I needed to, on an annual basis, we write a review and we look at all their performance from the previous year, and we rate them.
They do not exceed. They do not meet expectations. They meet expectations. They exceed expectations. And I rated this person as barely meeting. When this person came into the review, they felt like they had far surpassed.
Their perspective of what they were doing was far different than what I had, and I had the standard, and I knew what was the goals. I knew what was laid out, charted out for that person for the year, and their perspective was vastly different.
And I wonder, the danger here is the perception here is that what you value and what I value may not be what the Lord values when it comes to how we're performing our Christian service. If it is that we're doing it, what?
Without love. If it is loveless, if it is falling short of having true, genuine, mutual love and affection and devotion in there, we have not met the expectation that the Lord would have for us. Agape love, self-sacrificing love, as I said earlier.
And you and I must show it or else we are, as the verse says, nothing. I mean, that hits me very, very seriously and with great sobriety. I am nothing. John MacArthur says, Without love, eloquent speaking is like a screeching siren, but with love it is a melodious organ.
The tongue without love is a snake. It hisses and strikes and poisons with its venom. Only love gives the tongue gentleness and tenderness. So when it comes to speaking with the tongue, when it comes to speaking when it comes in front of other people or teaching, or when we're just speaking to other people, I wonder how it is that you speak.
When nobody else is looking, when nobody else is around, why do you say the things that you do? How are we supposed to speak? Well, in Ephesians 4, you don't have to turn there, but in Ephesians 4 .15 it tells us that we are to speak the truth in intelligent tunes, right?
No, we're to speak the truth in an eloquent manner. No, we're to speak the truth in ways where we are thought highly of. None of those are right because we are to speak the truth in love. Speak the truth in love.
We are to walk in love. We are to walk as the Lord Jesus walked, this compassion and a pity and a true love and a tenderness for those that he ministered to. And we are to walk as he walked. Paul goes on to make his point about the excellency and the preeminence of love by saying, even if I had the spiritual gift of knowledge here, if I could understand all mysteries or if I had all knowledge, so much that I could understand every mystery, and a mystery in the Bible is just something that was hidden in the past and is now being revealed.
And he said, if I knew all of those things, it were possible to have a grasp on every Bible doctrine and precept and principle, even if I memorized all of the Word of God and knew it and you knew it and I knew it, but we did not have love, on a scale of one to ten, you and I would be a big zero.
Why? Because love is vitally important in the believer's life. And if it is missing in your service, it is a serious shortcoming. And some people know a lot, but if they don't show love when they share what they know, God through the Apostle Paul says that that person is nothing.
And I'm afraid that sometimes in our Christian churches and in Christendom today, and in our Christian homes, we are emphasizing the wrong thing. When it comes to knowledge, gain the facts, gain the knowledge, learn this, learn that.
Develop deep minds, but shallow hearts. That's what we're doing sometimes. I'm not saying that we shouldn't learn. I think we should be, as Pastor Steve recommends or has taught us all, how many of us are theologians and your hands all go up, because we ought to learn about God.
We ought to seek to know more, but not at the expense of not having our heart engaged. Our heart must be. Let every believer strive for excellence in the area of love, love for God, which moves our hearts to be loving towards our fellow man.
Matthew Henry wrote that a clear and deep head is of no significance without a benevolent heart. It is not great knowledge that God sets a value upon, but true and hearty devotion and love. Did you get that?
It's not great knowledge that God sets a value on, but true and hearty devotion and love. Paul goes on to say, you know, if I had the gift of prophecy, if I could understand all mysteries and knowledge, though I have all faith so that I could move mountains.
If I had such a prayer life, and if you had such a prayer life, that every obstacle and every burden is blown away, because we had power with God in prayer, believing prayer, effectual prayer, prayer that doesn't doubt God in the least, prayer that moves mountains of doubt and difficulty and despair.
And if you could pray that way, and though the illustration of what Paul is teaching here is about in a different direction, this is a thing to look and desire for. We want to be able to pray this way, but even if you could pray this way, be super prayer warriors, and we do not have love as the powerful, motivating influence driving our prayers.
Go ahead and move as many mountains as you want, but without agape love, a self-sacrificing love, a love that you will give yourself, you will expend yourself for other people, a love that grows from a devotion from God.
We, the verse says, are what? Nothing. We are nothing. If our life was like an Olympic event, and we were not clothed with love, there would be no gold medal, silver or bronze, we would get the big goose egg, zero.
As far as our Lord is concerned, if love is absent, we come up short, we are lacking what God says is essential. Paul doesn't stop there, though. He goes on in verse 3, and he says, and though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor.
What he is saying here, and we are thankful that as a church we have been used of the Lord to be able to be helpful, he is saying we should be benevolent. But in our benevolence, in our giving, it would only be profitable if we give or provide for the needs of others when we have a desire along with it to demonstrate true Christian charity.
And here is a principle, true love is self-sacrificing as I said, but not all self-sacrificing is a demonstration of true love. Do you understand as Paul is teaching this, he is saying, you could speak with the tongues of men and of angels and not have love, you could prophesy, you could have all knowledge, you could have all understanding, you could have faith to remove bounds, you could bestow all your goods to feed the poor, you could give your body to be burned, and you can do all of that without love.
That's scary. I mean, are we wasting our life? Are we wasting our time? Are we wasting precious moments? Are we spinning our wheels? Are we thinking in the right area? Are we ever examining ourselves to see, do I really, really exercise a motive in the bottom line of why I'm doing what I'm doing?
Is it because I love the recipients of the ministry that I'm giving them? Am I doing it in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ giving thanks unto God for the glory of God, but because I love their souls?
I'm preaching the gospel to lost people because I am concerned that they will perish, that they will end up in hell someday, separated from God, if they do not receive the Lord Jesus Christ as their Savior, and I am compelled to tell them the gospel because I love them, because I care for them, because I so desire to see them forgiven of their sins and become children of God through faith in Jesus Christ.
You could have the wrong reasons for doing any of these things. It could be a sense of obligation, but the heart is not in it. It could be peer pressure. Well, you know what, everybody else is doing it.
I guess I need to do it too. What will they think of me if I don't do what they're doing? It could be legalism. If I do this, then maybe I'll be accepted with God. Maybe you do it because you pacify your guilty conscience.
I messed up this week, and I'm going to give or do whatever so that I can make up for it. Maybe you do it to be recognized, as I've already said. Even if we bestow our gifts, our goods to feed the poor, as he says in here, that means in the Greek to feed there means to break off and distribute in small portions, to feed by morsels.
It means if a person did give away all that they had piece by piece until it was all gone, if it lacks love, it is useless and it is an empty cause. Matthew Henry again said, Our doing good to others will do us no good if it is not done well, namely from a principle of devotion and charity, love to God and goodwill to men.
And you know that you're hearing me this morning say this over and over again, but have you thought about that? Have you really, deeply, seriously, honestly considered why am I doing what I'm doing? What is the motivation behind what I'm doing?
I mean, giving my body to be burned and I have no love. That's what he says here. I mean, I can bestow all my goods to feed the poor, give my body to be burned, and if I have not charity, it does not profit me anything.
It doesn't do anybody, it doesn't do me and it doesn't do anybody else any good because it had the wrong motive. It profits me nothing. It won't do you or anybody else any good. I have to stop a moment just to give an illustration here, and I thought of this one for this about not doing anybody any good.
Some of you are going to think, well, this is way off. Where did he get that illustration from? But I remember once as a kid watching those three brilliant guys, the Three Stooges. You know what I'm talking about.
Some of you don't even know what I'm talking about. But they had a job once where they were delivering ice in the days when there were ice boxes and the only thing that kept the food cold was ice. And I don't know if some of you might be smiling because you remember this.
Some of you might be smiling just because Pastor Dave is going off weird again and I'm just going to smile. But they had a job delivering ice, and they had one customer who was way up this flight of stairs, and you remember Curly or whoever goes and gets the ice tongs in the truck and he gets this big, huge block of ice and starts running up the stairs.
I mean, it's a haul all the way up there. And when he gets all the way up there, he's got this teeny little ice cube left because it's a hot day and they're all sweating. Teeny little ice cube. Useless.
All that work. All that labor. And nothing to speak of. No profit. No value. No recognition there. It's useless. Could that possibly be how we're living as believers? Effort upon effort, laboring, saying things, but it's of no profit because there's no love in it.
You're correcting people. You're pointing people in the right direction, you hope, but your heart is not engaged. It profits you and them. Nothing. You could be giving yourself over and over again in your ministry.
And, brother and sister in Christ, it's time. Even when it comes to our living within the church, it's time for us to begin clothing ourselves, as the Apostle Paul teaches in the epistles, to clothe ourselves with love, to clothe ourselves with a devotion for other people, with a true care for them.
We think of them more highly than ourselves. We put them first. We're not king of the hill. We put other people. We're pushing them first. You exhibit it, I mean, in something as very practical as when the food is set up on the tables in the back, you're not the first one to race to the table and say, it's me, me, I'm first.
But you gladly let other people go in front of you. It might seem like a very small and insignificant thing, but it is because you care about that other person. You love them. You're going to do for them.
You're going to look for an opportunity to do them good. But that's what love is kind, it means, to do them good. This is so sobering. Nothing can take the place of love. Nothing can take the place of love.
Without it, these apparent great spiritual achievements would produce no spiritual benefit when they lack the essential gradient of love. What is the proper motive? Necessary for every child of God, if our motive is not love, you can count on this, everything will add up to nothing.
Without love, I'm as pleasing as a noisy pagan gong. Without love, I am nothing. I add up to nothing. Without love, all of my efforts are of no spiritual benefit to me or to others. MacArthur put it this way, the loveless person produces, this is verse 1, the loveless person produces nothing of value.
Verse 2, the loveless person is himself of no value. And verse 3, the loveless person receives nothing of value. Did you hear that? Did I hear that? May the Lord encourage us to be people who are striving to love those that we minister to.
How can I wrap this up? Some very quick practical lessons from all of this. Paul is not minimizing the importance of having gifts or exercising gifts. He's not doing away with them. He's just saying that those gifts are important and they ought to be exercised in the body for the mutual building up of that body together so that we are together, we are functioning as we ought to be functioning.
But if we are selfish, if we are loveless, if we are not looking out for the benefit and the well-being of other people, we're going to push ourselves forward as the Corinthian church did and there were schisms and there was fighting and there was factionism and there was cliques and it wasn't working as it ought to be because love was absent.
Paul's not minimizing the gifts. He's emphasizing the need of a proper motivation in our efforts. When we serve Christ, we must have love. Secondly, if you have a choice, brethren, this week for some homework as Pastor Mike does, if you have a choice between going to another Bible study and adding to your knowledge more and more to gain more knowledge and understanding or right in front of you is an opportunity where someone is in need and they need your help right then and there, please exercise love.
Please focus on that person that God puts in front of you and bear your heart out and pour out your heart. Paul said, I would rather be willing to be spent for other people or poured out for others because he loved them.
You look at the Apostle Paul's struggles that he went through in his life and the shipwrecks and the scourgings and the beatings and then he said when he comes right down to it and the care of the churches, Paul loved the church.
He loved the churches that God had used him to establish in the preaching of the gospel and he cared so much for them that he gave himself for them over and over again and he was spent, poured out for them.
Sometimes we don't need to learn and know more and you know where I am coming from there, we need to learn but sometimes we don't need to learn and know more. What we need to do is act in a loving way with the knowledge that we already have.
Put it to use. I sometimes get very concerned with Christianity today is like I said, is we know all about the Bible facts but we know so little about agape love. Third, every once in a while examine your motives.
Do I really love my neighbor? Do I really love my spouse, my kids, my parents, my friends, the brethren at church? Do I love the kids that I'm teaching Sunday school to? Do I love the babies in the nursery?
When I'm changing their diapers, is it a demonstration of love? When I'm handing out a bulletin at the door, when I'm cleaning the bathroom, when I'm lining up the chairs, when I'm writing the card for the person who's sick, when I'm visiting somebody in the hospital, do I really love them?
I trust that you will. I trust that biblical love will become, if it is not already, the theme of your life. And I encourage you to spend time in prayer asking the Lord to examine your motives. Are you serving out of love?
If not, confess it. Forsake it. Forsake the improper motive that you had and be clothed with love. And if you forgot everything that I said this morning, I'm going to give you a little math lesson. I didn't think of this myself, but I'll give you a little math lesson.
Some of you learned, remember math equations? Here we go. Remember this important equation when it comes to the Christian life. It will encapsulate my whole message in five words. Life minus love equals zero.
Life minus love equals zero. I remember when I was in Texas in church, there was a special offering song that was sung. I don't remember all of the words, but I do remember this. Something along the lines, if love does not get hold of me, I am nothing.
And the refrain was, or part of the refrain was, Jesus, reduce me to love. When it comes to my Christian life, Jesus, reduce me to love. Is love important? You better believe it is, because life minus that love is zero.
That's what the Apostle Paul said. We can't get away from it here in the text. That's why I want to encourage every believer here this morning to ask the Lord for increased love for him and for others, because I do not want your lives to be, I want your lives to be melodious, not noisy gongs or trumpets.
I want your lives to be full and have value and mean something and not be empty. I desire for your lives to be profitable and not wasted, and your lives to mean something, to matter, to count for time and eternity and for the glory of our blessed Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who alone is worthy.
And some of you are here this morning, and you don't and cannot experience this love that I'm talking about, this love of a Christian and a Christian's life, because you don't know who God is. You think God hates you.
You think God is an ogre. You think God is suppressing your life and your freedom and is trying to do away with your happiness and joy. You think that God could never and would never have a relationship with you, because you've sinned so greatly that there is nothing that can take that guilt and shame away.
And, of course, the Bible truth comes very clearly to that type of person who thinks that way, that the blood of Jesus Christ can cleanse away every sin. And your sin may be great, but God's grace is greater in Jesus Christ.
You think that your sin is so mountainous, it's too huge, it's too big of a thing to cover, but the blood of Christ can cover it all. Calvary, as the hymn writer wrote, Calvary does cover it all. And what you need is not to be living, as I said, and doing these things that I said earlier here, practicing love, focusing, making love the theme of your life.
What you need to do is you need to look to Jesus Christ and live. You need to behold the bleeding sacrifice upon Calvary's cross, the Lord Jesus Christ, the demonstration of love. You want to know where true love is?
Look to the cross. Here in His love, as I quoted earlier, not that we love God, but that He loved us and gave His Son to be the propitiation for our sins, the one to satisfy the wrath of God, the one to be the perfect atonement for us, all of our sins being laid upon Him.
And if you look to Him, you will live. You will have forgiveness of sins. You will become a child of God. You will know what it means to love God and for God to love you. But right now, it's a big question mark to you.
I remember that as a young child. I remember, what is this whole thing about God all about? It was just a big question mark to me. The question mark is removed, not in a plan of salvation, but in the man of salvation, the Lord Jesus.
And if you call upon the name of the Lord, you will be saved. Your sins will be forgiven. You trust Him. Of course, you repent of your sins. You turn from your life and all that you thought was worth something, and you just throw it, as the Apostle Paul says, in the trash, in the dunghill, that you might gain Christ and look to Christ and live.
And if you call upon Him, if you believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ, the Bible says you will be saved. God's promises always come true. And your sins will all be forgiven. And you will come to experience what I said earlier, that God loves a person.
God can put His love. God can bestow His love upon a person. And it blew the Apostle John away. He says, Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon me, that we should be called the children of God, the sons and daughters of God.
You will know what it means to be a child of God if you look to Christ. Believing He died for you was buried and rose again. And you can have life in His name. And for those of you that are here this morning, I would greatly encourage you to examine your heart, to examine your life, to be doing this frequently and often.
What is the real reason behind what I'm doing? Because it is a serious thing if it's life minus love is zero. A loveless life is I am nothing. It profits me and nobody else. I'm a sounding, noisy gong.
May it never be in the church of the living God amongst God's people. Shall we pray? Our Father in Heaven, the Word of God is so sure and it is so true. And we can't escape it and we don't want to escape it.
We want to have it be like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces when it comes to our lives. We want it to change us. We want to be molded and shaped as the people that you desire us to be. Lord, as your son taught, he said, they will know that they are my disciples not because of the degrees they have, not because of the knowledge, not because of the great spiritual gifts, not the abilities, the talents.
But Jesus taught that they will know that they are my disciples by the love that they show when they have one for another. Forgive us, Lord, when we have been unloving and unlovely in your sight. We're thankful that you are faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
And that from this moment on we can be a people who consider why we do what we do and the motive behind it and that we get our glasses, so to speak, focused right when it comes to looking at life. And we look at it as you look at it.
God is love and we ought to walk as you walked here upon the earth with great compassion, with great kindness, with great pity. Help us, Lord, to change in this area of our lives and love others just the way that you loved us and saved us and you cared for us by giving yourself for us.
May we sacrifice, may we be spent for others so that Christ would be glorified and magnified in the ministries of BBC, out of our homes, in our very lives, at work, school, wherever we find ourselves, all for the honor of his precious name.
We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.