Love is More Than "Love

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Don Filcek; 1 Corinthians 13:1-7 Love is More Than "Love

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You're listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Mattawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsak preaches from his sermon series titled
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First Corinthians, Sinful Church, Powerful Gospel. Let's listen in. Well, good morning and welcome to Recast Church.
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As Pam said, I'm Don Filsak. I'm the lead pastor here, and I'm really glad to be back together with you after a couple of weeks out.
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We had a good time visiting New York City, visiting New York City. And I don't know that I need to do that again.
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It was nice for one experience. We did get to see a lot in the time that we were there.
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But I'm glad to be diving back into First Corinthians with you together this morning. But before we do that,
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I want to just remind everybody something that I'm not sure everybody is aware of. I think many of you are. And that's just that Recast is an acronym for core values.
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So our name designates our core values of replication, community, authenticity, simplicity, and truth.
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And that last one, truth, is the thing that ties everything up in defining what we mean as a church, what we desire to be as a church.
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Everything wrapped up in the capital T, truth of God's Word. We believe that the Word of God is a true, the true revelation of the
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Almighty to humanity through men who were moved by the Holy Spirit to record it for us.
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So in Scripture, we find God working redemption into the human history, the human race through our history.
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We who broke this world through rebellion against our Creator are not what we were made to be.
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That's the consistent testimony of Scripture. We are not what we were made to be. He did create it very good in the beginning according to Scripture.
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But if you read some headlines and familiarize yourself with this place where you're alive and where you're living, it doesn't take long to see brokenness, does it?
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Does it take long to see brokenness? How many of you would raise your hand and say, I've seen some brokenness just this week. I've seen some messes just this week.
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You can read the headlines and you can see the things going on around the world and you see wars in Ukraine and war in Gaza and you see political divisions and strife, not just on a global scale, but locally and in our own hearts and in our own relationships, in our own families.
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Broken families are a reality where we live. Broken relationships within families. Broken families where love that once burned white hot with passion has been cooled and iced to the point of no longer stirring any kindness or even affection where irritability reigns as opposed to love and kindness.
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Scripture explains why we have this reality in our world. As dark as this introduction might seem, we're going to be talking about love this morning.
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But why are things broken? Why didn't the Beatles solve it all when they sang to us, all we need is love?
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Why didn't that fix it? Why was collective humanity upon hearing that song not like, oh,
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I get it now, I just need to love better. If I could just love more, then we'd just solve it, so oh, thanks
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Beatles for fixing the world. Thanks, all we needed was love. And then we just begin to love one another perfectly, right?
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You heard the song. Now we're broken. And commands to love, commands to love each other better, commands to love each other well, fall only ever on the ears of those who are broken in our very ability to love one another.
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Last week was Valentine's Day. As a matter of fact, I sat down and wrote this message, the first draft of this message on Valentine's Day, a message about love.
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And God planned that out long ago when we started this series. I didn't plan that out, but that this message would fall on this week of Valentine's Day and I'd be here speaking about love.
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But at face value, I was deeply convicted this past week. Just I'm just kind of just letting this out there and I hope that it passes along to you as well.
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This passage was used by God to correct a slide I could identify through the text within my own heart.
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If I'm honest with you and I desire to be, I see seasons and patterns in my own heart and I'm guessing that you do too.
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Do you see seasons and patterns in your own heart of the way that you're processing things, the way that you're working? And I can just confess to you that prior to studying this,
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I could see a sliding pattern of irritability and unkindness in my heart and my own family.
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And I can certainly identify seasons and times of impatience. Anybody know what I'm talking about?
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You can leave me hanging on that one. Anybody see that? The irritability that rises up within you and unkindness, patterns of impatience.
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And then I was hit between the eyes with love is patient, love is kind, love is not irritable.
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Our world is telling us a really bizarre phrase, a really strange three -word phrase, love is love.
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And as far as definitions go, that's kind of stupid. And I believe it's intentionally stupid.
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Whoever came up with that slogan was hoping that you would not think deeply about it in the least. They were hoping you wouldn't mine it.
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They were hoping you wouldn't dive into it. They were hoping that you wouldn't think deeply, that we would all just accept blindly the position that all types of love, all types of love are equal.
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All loves are equal. Because according to scripture, here what we're going to identify is that love isn't just love.
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And not all loves are equal. And this text is going to be abundantly clear about that.
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What matters is a love defined by this passage. That's what matters. A love we cannot muster on our own strength, a love that must be given to us, a love only modeled perfectly by our
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Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. So let's open our Bibles or your scripture journals or your devices to 1
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Corinthians chapter 13 verses 1 through 7. And no, this is not a wedding, and this is about the only context in which you generally hear this read, but no, this is the gathering of God's people, the proper context for this to be read.
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1 Corinthians chapter 13 verses 1 through 7 recasts God's word to us as has gathered people here in this place this morning.
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1 Corinthians chapter 13, 1 through 7, the words of God as revealed to the
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Apostle Paul, If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love,
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I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but have not love,
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I am nothing. If I give away all that I have and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love,
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I gain nothing. Love is patient and kind.
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Love does not envy or boast. It is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way.
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It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.
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Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
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Let's pray. Father, probably very few words are more confused in our culture than this word that is central to our text, the word love.
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Vital and central to our calling. Vital and central to what you want to do in your people. Vital and central to what you're calling each and every person here to, to grow more and more in the knowledge of you and more and more into your love that we then in turn turn out to others around us.
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Father, I pray that you might meet us in the point of conviction this morning. Meet us at the point of encouragement this morning.
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Meet us at the point of correction this morning. Meet us at the point of hope this morning.
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Father, we love you. We desire to love you. We desire to love you more, and we recognize even as we read this passage the ways that we fall short of the high calling of love.
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We praise you and we thank you for Jesus Christ, the one who has shown us true love, the one who sacrificed for us, the one who is mending us, the one who cares for us, the one who is redeeming us.
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Father, I pray that from a place of being set on more solid ground through the love of Jesus Christ and having a stable footing that we would launch out into our lives of love and even now to be able to love you better in song, to love you better in our praise, to love you better in recognizing what it is that you have done for us to eclipse the struggles and the pains and the circumstances of this life with your glory and the glorious, glorious, glorious love poured out for us on the cross of Jesus Christ.
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Father, there's so much swirling in our culture, so many messes, so much unlove being conveyed.
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Father, make us a loving people. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, a big thanks to the band for leading us in worship.
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I'm just really grateful for Dave and the band and the work that they do every week, and you should be too because the alternative would be me up here singing.
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That would be really rough, so grateful for them. I do encourage you in the remainder of our time to get comfortable.
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I recognize that some of you, this maybe is your first, second time here, third time, whatever. Just encourage you to keep your
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Bibles open to 1 Corinthians 13, verses 1 through 7. We're going to walk through that passage, and then if at any time during the message you want to get more coffee or juice or donut holes,
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I don't know if there's any left back there, but I think so, so take advantage of that. But this passage, to some of our surprise, is not set in the context of a wedding.
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It is not about a wedding ceremony. It is not even written to married couples.
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It isn't written with marriage in mind. Now it certainly ought to be able to be applied within marital relationships or anywhere that we identify that there's a call to love one another, but it is written in the context rather specifically of a church gathering.
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So when we talk about this kind of love that is being expressed here, the first and fundamental place for this to be applied is among believers in the gathering of God's people, a gathering just like ours, a church just like ours, just like Recast, happens to be written originally to a church in Corinth, an actual local gathering of people with real names and real faces and real issues and real people.
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So Paul offers here one of the most sweeping, beautiful, and poetic descriptions of love that I would contend has ever been written, and I think one of the most poignant ones that has ever been written, and one of the most purposeful ones that has ever been written, of course, particularly because it's written by the
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Holy Spirit. But it is written for a unique purpose that might be shocking and surprising to some of us, and it's simply written to rebuke the
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Corinthians. This love passage read at many weddings is actually a rebuke.
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It's a rebuke of that first century church, Corinth. It's a rebuke that is artistically crafted and has a lot of poetic value to it and demonstrates that even a rebuke can be artistic.
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But back at the end of the last chapter, Paul explained that what comes next is an example of a more excellent way to live.
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That was in verse 31 of chapter 12. You can just see it right there if you've got your Bible open, the previous verse before our text.
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But earnestly desire the higher gifts, and I will show you still a more excellent way. More excellent than what?
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A more excellent way? More excellent than what? More excellent, this is the rebuke. More excellent than the
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Corinthians' arrogance. More excellent than their unkindness. More excellent than their self -centeredness that has been so clearly written about all throughout this letter.
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More excellent than their clamoring for their own importance. You see, in the most immediate context of this passage, the
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Corinthians thought that they individually, each one in Corinth thought they were the most important.
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They were the most important in the body, the most gifted. They were competing with each other for head position. And those who had the more miraculous spiritual gifts thought themselves to be the most vital and most gifted and most important.
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Everyone else was basically dispensable, meaning, of course, that many of them thought of themselves as indispensable.
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So speaking into this attitude of competitive arrogance in Corinth, Paul says, I'm going to show you a more excellent way, a better way, a much better way to live.
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And of course, many of us know that this is going to be the way of love. Our outline is going to be this, verses one through three, the necessity of love, verses four through seven, the definition of love, and then
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I'm saving for next week, the remainder of the chapter, the permanence of love. Because I thought we had enough just to dive into these first seven verses, so originally
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I had this lined out to take in one sermon and we would have been a little longer, so I just decided to make it two. But here in the explanation of the necessity of love,
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Paul is very clearly connecting this to the immediate context about spiritual gifts.
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Spiritual gifts need to be in our mind, at least in the context, this is nestled right between chapters 12 and chapter 14, that's all about spiritual gifts.
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And he starts with the gift that the Corinthians held in the highest esteem in verse one, if I speak in the tongues of men and of angels.
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Now they found a way to look important. They found a way to look valuable. If they could speak either in known languages that they hadn't studied, which would be a very clear miraculous manifestation if I just got up and spoke fluent
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Arabic, or French, or Spanish, or whatever language, and I've never duolingoed it, you'd be impressed, right?
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How many of you would be impressed if that just happened? Like we'd all be like, what? Or as he goes on to say, or a heavenly language, if I was able to speak the language of heaven, then they could be visibly seen as more spiritual than those who didn't.
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And it would be a, almost kind of like a visible stamp of God's authority over them. And this has defined a rift in the church down to this day where we have a rift between more conservative churches and Pentecostal and charismatic churches.
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But it's interesting, I find it very interesting that this passage exists to seek to squelch that division that is already, is very alive and well in our culture today.
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You see, some churches will demand that speaking in tongues is a sign of spiritual life.
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While that is the exact problem that this passage seeks to defeat, that it is not the case that those who are able to speak in tongues are able to do these miraculous things, are able to do healing, or any of that stuff, that they have any more or greater value.
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In any gathering where some have a gift of speaking in tongues and others do not, Paul will say that love must be the higher way.
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Love must be the operating system going on in a church. As a matter of fact, he will broaden this out to all gifts and activities done in the
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Christian life. It's not just about those more miraculous ones, but it's about anything that we might elevate as a gift and go,
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I'm better than you because I can fill in the blank. Verses or because I have done fill in the blank, you'll see that by verse three.
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But verses one through three basically boil down to the centrality of love. That's what we're getting at here. And it might be good to give a simplistic definition of love here in this text in order to know more precisely what we're talking about.
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What is that word that's used, love, all throughout this text? We're saying that that has to fuel and ought to fuel our activities in the
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Christian life, so it'd be good to know exactly what we're talking about here at the outset. Love, the
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Greek word agape here in this text, has had a lot written about it, maybe even a lot spoken about it. Maybe some of you are familiar.
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How many of you, raise your hand if you've ever heard the word agape. You knew that that was kind of a Greek word for love, you've heard that.
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It's almost kind of like a really, a word that's been beaten to death, or like beating a dead horse in Christian circles.
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But it's defined by Gordon Fee like this, a commentary that I read this week. He's a New Testament scholar, he has studied, studied, studied.
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He speaks New Testament Greek. He knows his stuff and he says this, agape is a state of being toward others in the way that God in Christ has been toward us.
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A way of being toward others in the way that God in Christ has been toward us.
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And if that sounds too theoretical, let's flesh that out for just a second here. Let's consider the way that God in Christ has been toward you.
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How has he been toward us? What kind of words would describe that? I would recommend some of these words and there's many more, but how about rescuing?
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Does that work? Has he been that way to you, rescuing? How about caring? Has he been that?
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Yes. Saving, sacrificing, nurturing, blessing, mending, and many other ing words, which we call gerunds in our language, right?
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Many other ing words. And after my study this week, I would also add this.
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This is vital for us to grasp, church. Studying the word love and studying the usage of the word agape throughout all kinds of both scripture and non -scriptural evidences of the way that that word was used in that ancient time.
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Love is not merely an emotion. Now, I think you knew that and I think people have told you love is action, love is not feeling, blah, blah, blah.
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How many of you heard that? Love is action, not feelings. Well, that's not 100 % true. It's not 100 % true. You see, it is not merely emotion, but it is never without feeling.
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It's not merely emotion, it requires action, but it is never an action without feeling.
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I would go so far as to state this that might ruffle some of you the wrong way, but one cannot grudgingly love.
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One cannot grudgingly love. We can call it something different. If there's a grudging, kind of drag me to it kind of attitude, then it isn't love.
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We might be able to call it something like service or something different, but it is not love if it is done with a heart that is like not in it.
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One can grudgingly serve, but without a heart of goodwill toward the other, it cannot rightly be called love.
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Therefore, the Christian virtue of love, and here's what's vital, this is extremely important if you're taking notes, write this down, the
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Christian virtue of love requires both a heart change and a commitment to act, both of those.
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A heart change and a commitment to act. Love wants the good of the other and commits to act for the good of the other.
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Both of those must be present for love. When you do kind acts without heart, you are not loving.
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You might be serving, but you are not loving. This elevates love to a unique thing that is brought to us in the gospel.
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There is no place in the world that love is better reflected than at the cross of Jesus Christ. He didn't go there grudgingly.
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He went there painfully. He went there that night before saying, if there's any other way we can show love, let's do that.
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But in finding that the Father said, there's really no other way to redeem them, this is the pathway that's set for us, then he went there out of love for you and I, amen?
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He counted the cost. He knew what he would face, but he was committed in both love to his Father and to us, his beloved.
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In defining love, it might be helpful to explain a fundamental flaw in the phrase that we see all over the place now.
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Maybe it's, I don't know, is this phrase about, is it like so last year or something? Love is love? Are you guys still hearing it?
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You guys still hearing it? Love is love? I still see it from time to time. It's a phrase that our culture has invented.
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I don't know who the movers and shakers are. They made it up, right? Who are they? I don't know who these people are, but they make stuff up and then it gets viral and then it's on the internet and it's everywhere and then it's bumper stickers.
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But love is love, and it just cannot stand up under the briefest of scrutiny. It does not take any depth of thought to disband this notion that love is love.
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What they mean by it is all loves are equal, and you can even see it symbolized by the bumper sticker, the equal sign, right?
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It's all just equal love, but we know that's not true. Just listen to these couple of really short sentences.
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I love my wife. I love God. I love tacos, and I love
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Michigan football. Not a single one of those is a lie, but certainly love does not mean the same thing in those sentences.
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You guys get what I mean? You guys know it right away. When I say those sentences, you know that love does not hold the same weight in all three of those.
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Is love love? Absolutely not. No way. Shape or form, is it the same?
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As a matter of fact, this all comes to us out of a flaw in the English language. Love is not love among those simple sentences because we have a lack within English.
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Now, we don't think of languages as one being better than another and one being better than another, but English is a super technical language.
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I don't know if you realize that. We are super good at describing the physical world around us, and so English specializes in the ability to ...
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How many words in English are there for the color red? We can describe what we see.
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We can describe what we take in, but we are terrible at describing emotions, where we flatten all ideas of a committed relationship to tacos to love.
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The same word applies to my commitment and love for God and the love that he has for me.
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What a lack in our language, right? And I'm pointing this out because the
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Greek language that this New Testament is written in has four words, four words that we can only translate into English as love.
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The only word that is ever seen for those four different modes of love are found to be the one word love, and one of them is eros, which is our love is love phrase.
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What we mean by that is sexual draw is sexual draw.
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Okay, I'll give them that. Eros is eros? Okay. Or we could better translate it.
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What I would like to see is just being more honest. Lust is lust. Would that work?
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Everybody okay? Raise your hand if you're okay with that. Lust is lust. Okay. All right. I'll give you that.
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But no, no, no. There's these four words. Friendship love. Philia, Philadelphia, the city of brotherly shove.
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I mean brotherly love, okay? That's friendship love. We think of it as maybe brotherly love, but actually familial love is a different word.
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This is about friendship. Philia is friendship. Hopefully you experienced that in your life where you had close friendships where you're kind of like with the bros or the ladies hanging out with the ladies and it's just like,
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I love this. I hope this, I just don't want this to end. Like I'm enjoying this evening together and I don't want it to end.
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Erotic love is eros. I already mentioned that. A standard committed love, agape, kind of the workhorse love, word for love in the
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Greek language. And then there's storge, one that you probably never even heard of and that's the familial love between brothers, siblings, parents, that kind of love, grandparents, all of that.
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Anybody that's interested in an excellent book on these four loves written by C .S.
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Lewis, it's really a great short book that dives into those four loves and the distinct usage of them and the way that they manifest in our culture and society.
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There's actually, I went ahead and grabbed a couple of copies of those out at the welcome table. First come, first serve.
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There's four of them out there. It's available on Amazon. The price, there's a little donation envelope in there.
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We don't make money off of those books. It's exactly the cost that we paid for them.
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I just want to get good resources to you. So any of those books that are out there, I encourage you to look there regularly for resources.
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Those are things that we've decided we'd like to get to you. But that aside, there's four different words in Greek for love.
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One in English that causes problems. But our word throughout this text is a fairly common word for the standard committed love, agape.
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Despite a lot of fake scholarship, elevating agape is a unique word for God's love and reserved for a special, you know, kind of like unconditional love or something like that.
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Agape is used all throughout the Greek world during this time for kind of just standard committed relationships.
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It's actually a word found all throughout there as that workhorse word for commitment to one another.
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And yet the definitions in verses four through seven are indeed filling out the Greek word agape with beauty and lofty standards for the way it is to be applied among believers.
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From this passage alone, we're being called into a more robust definition of love.
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But now, with hopefully a better definition of love that involves God's lean toward us in Christ, saving, rescuing, nurturing, blessing, sacrificing, that kind of love, we see that this quality is a necessity in the
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Christian life toward one another. As a matter of fact, I would go so far as to say that this love is a hallmark evidence of the
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Spirit's work within us. That a person who never has any exhibition of love whatsoever in their heart, no hunger and desire to please
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God, no hunger and desire to connect with His people, to love them well, to sacrifice for one another, where that is never the case,
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I'm not saying that you're nailing it, but where that is never the case, it is worthwhile to go back to the cross and say, am
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I connected to God through Christ? It's a reasonable thought. They will know we are
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Christians by our love. And the converse might equally be stated, they will know we are not
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Christians by our hatred. So, think that through. Well, Paul says really that love is to be toward others in the gathering.
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Look around. Where are we to apply this passage? Not only to our marriage, certainly within our marriage, but not only to our family, but to our local gathering, to one another.
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Paul says if he speaks in tongues of men and angels but doesn't have a lean toward God and others that has their blessing in mind, he is merely a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
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Now cymbals and gongs can be a net positive in a musical score when played skillfully and in time, but I think
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Paul is picturing me with the mallets in my hand during a New York City Symphony or something like that.
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It's not going to go well. I can tell you that right now. If I have to play that thing, it's going to be funny. It might go viral, as a matter of fact, as funny.
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But I am fairly confident in my own ability to destroy good music quickly with just a single gong or a single cymbal.
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I think I could ruin it. I think you give me one of those cymbals off of there on a Sunday morning, let me stand up here and bang on that thing, and I think
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I can ruin it for everybody. Do you guys know what I'm talking about? I could make enough noise.
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I could be loud, showy, think a lot of cowbell with the belly out, okay? Some of you know what
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I'm talking about. I could take over the performance in an extremely negative way, okay?
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This is the one who speaks in tongues without love for others, and it apparently was happening frequently in Corinth, and I think it's happening in churches all around our world today.
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And a brief point about speaking in tongues here that is building to my defense of my definition of tongues that is going to be more robust in the next chapter, because chapter 14 really dives down deeper into it.
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But the Jewish believed in an actual language of angels, that they would have said, the average Jew during this time, when they hear the phrase tongues of angels, they would have said,
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I know what that means, the language of heaven. And that some are able to speak the language of heaven.
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And for Paul to use it here is either misleading to Jewish readers, or there is such a thing.
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There either is such a thing as the language of heaven, the language of angels, or he's misleading the
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Jews who are listening to this. And I say it would be misleading because some scholars believe, and especially from a conservative cessationist, there are no speaking in tongues anymore, there's no miracles, there's none of this stuff.
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They would understand this to be merely using the tongues of angels as a metaphor for really good talking.
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Somebody who uses the tongues of angels is just good at talking. I don't believe that. I believe that that would be misleading to his audience because that's not what they would have heard it as.
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They would have heard it as a literal tongue that is not understood or apprehended by people listening, but is actually a language of heaven or angels.
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When they read tongues of angels, they knew what he was talking about, an indistinct prayer language that many in Corinth had experienced.
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Now I think verse one shows both sides of one gift, a gift that's labeled as one thing but has two facets to it, and some of you only have the one facet in your definition.
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And I've had some of you interact with me over the last couple of weeks, write me in about my last message on this and kind of try to seek to correct my definition of either prophecy or tongues.
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But what I think is very clear here, some could speak in the known tongues of men. Like if I speak in tongues of men, what's he getting at there?
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Like on the day of Pentecost. I think that's a facet, that's one prong of a two -pronged definition of speaking in tongues.
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They spoke fluently in languages that they hadn't duolingoed at all, yet as a gift of spreading the gospel, declaring the gospel to somebody in a language you've never learned.
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That would be pretty impressive. But the second is going to be the emphasis in the next chapter, the second prong of the definition, and it appears to have been quite common in Corinth.
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This was a heavenly language that was quite clearly applied specifically privately, was to be applied rather privately in prayer.
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Some of you have reached out to me to disagree with that definition of speaking in tongues, but hold tight and be sure that your definition is taking into account all the evidence, which must include where we're going to go in a couple of weeks in chapter 14.
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And often I find that chapter 14 of 1 Corinthians is completely absent from many evangelical
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Christians and conservative Christians' definitions of speaking in tongues. They don't even look at chapter 14 to get there.
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They look at Pentecost, or they look at Acts, or they look elsewhere, but they don't take into account chapter 14 and what it has to say to us.
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So I'm going to try to be balanced in that. But Paul's point here, specifically in chapter 13, is to attack the heart of the
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Corinthian controversy regarding spiritual gifts, because you can practice and be expert at both sides of tongues, speaking human languages you've never studied fluently to the glory of God and bringing the gospel.
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You can speak the language of heaven and angels, but without love you are making a cacophony of sounds that are drowning out the beautiful music that God desires to orchestrate through His church.
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He desires for us to be functioning well together, and instead you are just a loud noise in the middle of the beautiful music that God is trying to make in His church.
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Second in verse 2, he covers two more spiritual gifts, prophecy and faith, and he uses the extremes of those two verses to say you could have the most amazing and powerful expressions of those two gifts, but without sacrifice, without kindness, without patience or love toward others in your gathering, you are nothing.
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You could be granted all knowledge and understand all mysteries, but you are still nothing without love.
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The extreme of the gift of prophecy shows what it must entail. The New Testament gift of prophecy must involve at some level revealing knowledge and revealing and making known that which is shrouded in mystery.
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Those must be components because here's the extreme, knowing all mysteries, knowing all knowledge. You could have it all revealed by God to you and know the inner workings of God as it's revealed by Him, and you could speak it and be given a message to everybody about all
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His knowledge and wisdom, but without love, you're nothing. And as for faith, you could be a literal mountain mover.
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You could go all Yoda, you know, not with the force, but with the power of the Holy Spirit, moving a whole mountain, but if you don't have love, you're nothing.
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If you don't have love, you're nothing. I think it might be good to pause here and consider something fundamentally misunderstood about the
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Christian life. This passage is not about the efficacy of the gifts, but rather an indictment on those who are gifted without love.
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This is key because what I think we often somehow get in our Christian life is that we kind of assume that Paul is saying something he's not saying here.
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Paul is not saying without love, these gifts won't work. Is that what he says? Without gifts, you won't be able to move mountains.
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I mean, without love, you won't be able to move mountains. Without love, you won't be able to prophesy. Without love, you won't be able to speak in tongues.
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You won't be able to do any of these things. No, love is not the ignition switch of the gifts. In other words, how do we make sense of people who are both gifted and unloving?
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Anybody meet somebody like that? Both gifted and extremely unloving. Some of you are working for somebody like that, right?
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This passage does not say that your ministry will be inhibited by your lack of love, and that might be shocking to some of us who come from very black and white contexts.
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We have an unhealthy, I believe, an unhealthy view, an unhealthy expectation of a very
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Christianese word consecration. If I consecrate myself unto the Lord's work, then
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He will bless and do. What do I mean by that? As if my good and clean living will demand
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God's success over my ministry, and therefore my unclean living will get in the way and inhibit what
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God wants to do. And how many of you know He's not dependent on me? He wants to accomplish.
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He's not dependent upon my living a certain way to accomplish His ends. He will use a donkey if He wants to, and sometimes
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He does. But this passage ought to help us make sense of highly gifted people who we experience as empty shells.
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Have any of you ever been blessed by the ministry of somebody who's fallen? Most of us in the room have.
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There have been some pretty high -profile people like Ravi Zacharias. I don't have his name in the notes, but most of you are aware.
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But the things that he did are just, like, how in the world could he have ministered to my heart like he did? But he did.
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And God can use people who are in filth and corruption, and He can still use them to bless us. And that's a category that we have a hard time wrapping our minds around, but it's all over Scripture when you start to open your eyes to see it, because He's not dependent on me.
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He's not dependent on my holiness to accomplish what He wants to do in this world. Amen?
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I mean, that doesn't mean that I don't want to lean into holiness. That doesn't mean I don't want to walk with Him. That doesn't mean I want to walk more closely with Him. I want all of that.
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But I find it interesting that we so quickly assume that the proof of authenticity is found in the results.
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If God's blessing the ministry, they must be doing okay. False. The proof of God's presence by His Spirit in a human life, individually, is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self -control.
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That's the sign. He can use somebody who doesn't have those things. Now we might be tempted to think that God can only give gifts to those who are worthy.
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And I would refer you to just a simplistic story from the book of Judges. Samson spends the night with a prostitute.
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What? No, that's the context. Spends the entire night with a prostitute in Philistine territory.
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He awakens in the morning, and he's locked in the city, and he's being hunted by the Philistines. They're probably not going to make a movie out of it.
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Well, if Hollywood gets it, they will. And the Spirit comes upon him in the morning, and he tears the city gates from their hinges in the power of the
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Spirit, carries the city gates up the hill, and escapes with the
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Spirit's power. Talk about a night of consecration. That man was not up fasting and praying for the
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Spirit to fall on him. God can bless and do what he wants to do when he wants to do it.
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Amen? How many of you are glad God is sovereign? He can use donkeys, he can use Samson, and he does.
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My point, God's power to use us is not equal to his endorsement of us. We get that wrong in our minds, and we value these men, and we lift them up, and we put them on pedestals, and we platform them, only to find that they're made out of the same stuff as us.
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Instead of striving for results, church, instead of striving for flashy signs and wonders to validate ourselves, we ought to instead strive for the more excellent goal that's being held out here.
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A more excellent goal of faith, hope, and certainly in this passage, love. And we seek to love not out of a desire to twist
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God's arm into blessing us with success, we love because it flows out of the salvation we've been given by him at the cross, amen?
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Verse 3 is the final emphatic endorsement of the necessity of love. We could do really flashy things that look a lot like love without having love.
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We could give away all we have to the poor, and even become martyrs of the faith without love. How many of you think that giving away all you have to the poor looks pretty loving?
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And you can do that out of no love. How many of you think that going to the stake and being burned alive looks a lot like love for God?
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And you could do that without love at all. And we would gain nothing in those sacrifices without the motivating factor of love.
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Actions themselves, in other words, do not please God, one iota. Rather, actions produced by a changed heart that loves him, that's what pleases
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God. Well done, good and faithful servant is not granted to everyone who has done good things.
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Some will stand before Jesus listing their very impressive actions. We cast out demons, we did all these miracles in your name.
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And he will say, I never knew you. Why did he never know them? He never knew them because they never came into his royal presence.
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They never bowed their knee and received his love and commission over them. They served a king that never commissioned them, never met them.
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They were never brought into his love. What we have here is a weird kind of illustration, and I don't think you can hardly imagine it, but imagine that somebody like sets up shop in a cubicle at a company and has never been hired.
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Proceeds to work for the company. They never come through HR. Never even had an interview.
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Never brought in by the boss, but working for the company? And on payday, what's he going to say?
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Who are you? Standing in a line to get a paycheck, who are you? We never hired you.
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You never came in. You never came in through the process, through the way that we've designed to employ people.
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That's the image there. The pathway to a productive, blessed, loving Christian life. The way to become something.
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The way to gain is through accepting his love and his forgiveness. Coming through the channel of Jesus Christ.
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Coming through faith and trust in him. And how do I know that I stand in his forgiveness? What gives me hope as a broken person who does not love perfectly?
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It's simply this, that I have a bent in the operating system of my heart to want to love
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God. To want to love others. I hunger and thirst for righteousness. It's what I desire.
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Do I do it perfectly? Absolutely not. Do you do it perfectly? Absolutely not. But I have love growing in my heart for him and for his people.
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The necessity of love in these first three verses is not a necessity to effective ministry. Not as a way, like, if I love enough, then my ministry is going to flourish.
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Then I'm going to be good. Then I'm going to be better than everybody else. If I love better than everybody else, then it just becomes the opposite of what
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Paul is trying to communicate here. Rather, it is a necessity to eternal connection with God.
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The most fundamental thing that is held out for us in scripture. Look at the best we can produce without a love from God that impacts our hearts.
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Loud and grating noise. It's what we produce without love. Loud and grating noise. A whole bunch of power while we remain nothing.
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A bunch of sacrifices that gain for us absolutely nothing. But I'm confident, for better things for you, church, that you don't want to live there.
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To the one who has been granted a love in their hearts through the gospel, that one can serve in meekness and love.
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Genuinely moving toward God and others with what comes next in the text, of course, with love.
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What kind of love? A love that's defined in verses four through seven. The definition of love in verses four through seven are sweeping and epic and absolutely an impossible standard to keep.
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Hear me carefully, church. This is an impossible standard for you to keep. Raise your hand if you're married.
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Have you loved your spouse perfectly? It seems like if there's anybody on the planet that you were going to be able to love perfectly, it would be them.
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And I saw hands go down really fast. Yeah, impossible standard to keep.
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No place in the Bible calls me up quite short like this passage about God -ordained love.
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Love is the best of passive activities, according to verse four. The best of passive activities and the best of active activities.
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Passive as in patience. Active as in kindness. Able to endure long seasons of hardship in the cause of the other, while also kind, which is less of feeling.
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We can tend to think of kindness as a feeling towards each other, but it's not in Greek. It is more related to active helping than it is about the way we feel about somebody.
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So it's both the patience to endure hardship from the other in the midst of hardship with the other, and it also is the ability to do kindness to the other.
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And one feature of this extended definition of love is that most of it is couched in negatives. Love does not.
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It's interesting because it's part of that rebuke that I was talking about earlier. It's intentional. By stating it this way,
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Paul gets to use some of the very words he has used to identify their bad behavior earlier in this letter.
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So by couching it in negative, love does not fill in the blank. He's filling in those blanks with some of the very things that he's told them they're doing.
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Love doesn't do all these things that you've been doing, Corinth. Love never desires harm to come to another like envy does.
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Love doesn't boast. It's not out tooting its own horn. It's not puffed up with arrogance or pride.
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Love doesn't behave shamefully. The word rude in the English Standard Version in verse 5 misses a bit of the crass part of this
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Greek word, and I can understand why some translators shy away from that which is crass, but it is used for shameful or disgraceful activities.
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That's what the word rude means here. Love is not producing shameful or rude or shameful activities.
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In this sense, it prohibits under this definition of love a lot of shameful activities that factor under our modern definitions of love today.
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Literally, this word in this list of what love does and doesn't do, it actually prohibits a lot of the things that our world declares to be love today.
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We can see the word love attached to everything from illicit adulterous affairs to all forms of using the body of another for personal gratification, and we call it in English love.
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And the word here in Greek says love does not act shamefully or disgracefully in any way.
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Love is other -oriented in the list. It doesn't demand its own way but looks to the needs of the other.
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It is not easily angered or not irritable. And man, oh man, I don't know about you, but I can get irritable.
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Anybody besides me would just maybe raise your hand a little bit and say, you recognize and can relate to the word hangry?
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Okay, some of us. And that's an excuse, right? That's an excuse to be irritable.
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And, I mean, I don't see any exceptions to this in here. Oh, but if you're kind of hungry, then you can be irritable.
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No. But where there is irritability, there is no love. The love is gone in that moment when you allow irritability to run.
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The ESV translates a phrase with one word that I prefer, the old school phrase, keep no record of wrongs is more descriptive than just the one word resentful.
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But ESV has resentful, but other translations have keep no record of wrongs. How many of you like that one better, keep no records of wrong?
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I kind of like that better. But it simply means that love is quick to give the benefit of the doubt and is quick with forgiveness.
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When one says, will you forgive me, please forgive me, the one who has love will say, how could
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I not? How could I not? All that you've forgiven me, all that Christ has forgiven me, how could
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I not? A person with genuine love in their hearts is not a person who holds grudges easily.
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If you are a person who struggles with grudges, take those to God. Take them to God and give them to him and say, please help me to overcome these.
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And again, our text will tackle the content of love like it did with the word root. Again, another leaning into emphasis of what the content of love is meant to be because love doesn't rejoice in wrong, but rejoices with the truth.
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Not all that is called love is love. We've established that already. Clyde might have said to Bonnie, I love you, but their bank robbing spree was not very loving.
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He led them to death. How? By literally robbing banks and getting in a shootout with the police.
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True love will always guide the beloved into obedience to God. It will take God's way,
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God's truth as its standard. Why? Because the only pathway to grace, peace, hope, and even eternal life is found in the way of God.
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Love and sin are not compatible. So there's just all of a sudden your minds might be able to run wild with the different things that love will not do.
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The kinds of things that are in opposition to God's word that love will not do. He says, I love you, so let's just turn the lights down low and put on some
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Kenny G and see where it goes. And I say to you, young ladies, run! Run! Because that isn't love.
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It's not love at all that he's got going on there. How many of you older men in the room would raise your hand and say, that's not love!
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That's not love! Plus, Kenny G, is that really the best that he's got? Are you kidding me? All kinds of reasons to run.
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I said that out loud. The shape of God honoring love is found in the truth of his word.
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Amen? And here we see in the very definition of love that it will take
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God's way over self. It will suppress our wayward desires in the cause of the truth of God.
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The one who loves God in this way will be one who flees from that which he has revealed as sin and will instead rejoice in the truth.
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And here at the end in verse 7, we see a future sandwich. In the present, love bears and endures.
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That's the bread of the sandwich. The present bears and endures. Why? Because the present world is passing away in sin.
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We know that this life and these relationships are not what they are meant to be. You guys feel it?
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Do you know it? Endurance and bearing defines much of human relationship today.
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Within the church, within marriages, within families. A successful marriage, for example, is one in which there is a continued bearing with one another's weaknesses and in enduring always.
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Matter of fact, I would suggest to you that that's the hallmark of a successful marriage is how much can you endure? How much can you put up with each other?
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How much can you forgive? You guys know what I'm talking about? No. These friendships, this marriage, these relationships, this broken and imperfect family, and these never quite perfect relationships are not all that there is.
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But love, true love, believes and trusts in a future. A successful church is defined by enduring and bearing with the foibles and personality quirks of each other in the present.
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But sandwiched in between the present struggles are faith and hope.
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Faith and hope. These two golden gems are nestled into love this way. Love has faith and hope that this is not the end.
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Amen? This is not the end. This enduring, this bearing, this slog of love, this slog of marriage, this slog of relationships, the ways that people break and are broken, right?
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The way that we break others and are broken. That's not all there is. Love, true love, believes and trusts in a future that is infinitely better than this one.
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A place where love is the rule and not the exception. That's where it's all going. For those who are
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His. One commentary I read this week left me with a very dissatisfying assignment. It suggested that we read verses 4 through 7, replacing the word love with our own names.
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So it would read like this for me. Don is patient. Don is kind. Don doesn't envy or boast.
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You guys get it? Try it. I encourage you to put your name in there and see how far you get down the list before you are lying.
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And I'm telling you what, in all honesty, Don is patient. I just lied. I am not always patient, not at all.
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It's a convicting exercise, right? And if left to that, all we walk away from this is despair. Hopelessness.
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I can't meet this standard. I can't get past point one. I can't get there. Leaving the exercise that that leads our hearts in a very wrong direction.
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I will despair in hopelessness of this passage and this message is left as an assignment. I have never loved anyone perfectly.
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This standard is so high that we ought to be broken on it. This list ought to break you.
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But you're getting it wrong if you are left from this message with an assignment to go start loving others better.
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That's not the message. Don't go out from here and pretend, church, that you can do this. Go out here curious.
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If you have no love and absolutely no shred of any of these things in your life, don't assume His Spirit is alive in you.
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Instead, throw yourself on the mercy of Jesus Christ and ask Him to forgive you and to set your feet on a trajectory of love from Him to others.
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And this is where I recommend a different activity. For those who are in Christ, put Jesus' name in place of love in this passage instead.
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Jesus is patient. Jesus is kind. Jesus does not envy or boast. Jesus is not arrogant or rude.
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Jesus doesn't insist on His own way. He is not irritable or resentful. Jesus does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but He rejoices with the truth.
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Jesus bore all things, had faith through all circumstances, hoped in all things, and He certainly endured all things for us.
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Bow before Him in acceptance of His love for you and keep doing that. Keep fanning into flame within you that love by coming to the only, only, only source of true love.
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He died for us. He loved us. He died for us. He loved us. He died for us. He loved us.
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Not merely as a model of love, but as the one who has shown us true love. He has been patient with me.
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He has been kind over me. He has not wished harm to come to me. He has been humble toward me, kind beyond measure, not demanding
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His own way, not irritable, even as He paid for my sins there on the cross. He has kept no record of my wrongs.
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He indeed bore all things for me. He believed all things for me. He has hoped all things for me, and He has endured all things for me.
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I think that way, there's hope. So come to the tables to celebrate His sacrificial love poured out for us.
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If Jesus is your Lord and Savior and you've been captured by His love and you're at peace with others here, let me encourage you to come to the tables during this next song, grab a cracker to remember
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His body broken for us, grab the cup of juice to remember His blood shed for us, and then take hope in His love and the power of that love to transform your heart.
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Keep coming back to the gospel as often as necessary to feel the freedom bought by His love for you.
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And let His love be the guide into your relationships in this next week.
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Let's pray. Father, I thank you for your love. I thank you for hope that in the love of Christ we can be transformed and changed.
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We thank you for the symbol of His love as we come to these tables that you would be glorified and honored in our midst as a congregation and then in our families and in any relationships that you have given us in which we are called to establish this move toward others, this kindness toward others, calling them to come to the source of all love.
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I thank you, I thank you, I thank you for this congregation and for the love expressed over these many years.